Trains doubling back on each other

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo · Post by **The Chatanooga Choo-Choo** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 3:50 am

No doubt some of you guys have experienced this, but what happens (usually with a long train), is at a given point, the train will start looping back on itself. In other words, the engine will proceed backwards through all the cars, which will then reappear behind the engine and it will repeat this quite a few times before getting its arse to the destination! Sometimes it'll keep doing it and you have to delete the train! Has anyone come across a fix for this? I'm running v1.10.

pherschel · Post by **pherschel** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 4:52 pm

It usually occurs when I've dramiticly altered the route. If the train is suck I delete and start over. It does clear up for me when it gets out of the station.

One time I had the train dissappear. I pressed the dot key to cycle through trains and the screen jumped to the ocean! I just pressed the delete key at that point!

It's never been a major problem for me, I usually radically alter train orders when it's at a station and has unloaded.

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo · Post by **The Chatanooga Choo-Choo** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:59 pm

Once, I had a wool train arrive at the station, it stopped and then the engine disappeared and reappeared flying towards the station, disappearing and then doing it all over again! Weird stuff, I didn't think they could do that in the 1800s!!!!!

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 10:00 pm

I think the programmers occasionally got lost in the routing code and then let the engines and trains fly to a new starting point. To see what was happening, they made this flying behaviour visible, and didn't have time to switch everything to invisible before the game went out.

That, or it was a sort of hidden protest against their insecure working conditions.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 10:07 pm

A friend of mine plays the game in easy difficulty mode. I have seen his do that because the tracks were too full for the second, third train...or the station platform was too full. I run my game in Hard mode. The trains never do that in hard mode. In hard mode you really need to watch how you lay your track and handle your traffic. On my maps the Distribution centers station platforms are really busy, and it can be a big challange to get everything moving in and out just right. In hard mode instead of flying around and stating back over from the last station where it just came from...the trains just stop...and stay stuck till you fix their route.

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo · Post by **The Chatanooga Choo-Choo** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 11:47 pm

Lowell wrote:A friend of mine plays the game in easy difficulty mode. I have seen his do that because the tracks were too full for the second, third train...or the station platform was too full. I run my game in Hard mode. The trains never do that in hard mode. In hard mode you really need to watch how you lay your track and handle your traffic. On my maps the Distribution centers station platforms are really busy, and it can be a big challange to get everything moving in and out just right. In hard mode instead of flying around and stating back over from the last station where it just came from...the trains just stop...and stay stuck till you fix their route.

Sounds like hard mode is the way to go then.

Star Ranger4 · Post by **Star Ranger4** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:29 am

Lowell wrote:In hard mode instead of flying around and stating back over from the last station where it just came from...the trains just stop...and stay stuck till you fix their route.

Incorrect Lowell. I also only have my routing logic set to hard, yet I've had this problem come up numerous times while working my way though Amerigonia. I dont know what causes it, but once it starts, you might as well delete the train because its not going to be making you any more money.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:01 am

That map only or do others do it too? What is the size of that map?

MotherBoard Nvidia 680i SLI, 8800 Nvidia graphics, 4gig 800mhz system ram, 3.0 dual core Intel...my gaming machine specs.

The game has never freaked out on me like that and the Florida Gold 20x20 sized map with over fifty three trains running and a slap full map. Runs perfect. Now the game may freak and drop after five hours of that...but I just go right back in...that is just because the game was never suposed to have maps that big in it.

Never any Flying trains, I have seen it in easy mode when things get too jammed to where they can't even go through each other...but never in hard mode.

P.S. I used to use those Asus boards till I found that in Half-Life2 that the max they would pull is 300 frames a sec...the motherboard I now use pumps 1000 frames a sec. MotherBoard and the NorthBridge chip are your Future Friends as the old stuff starts to die. Better get used to figuring out what they do and are.

Dr Frag · Post by **Dr Frag** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:49 am

Yeah, it happens in hard mode too. I just finished Dog World and it happened when I rerouted a train.

Star Ranger4 · Post by **Star Ranger4** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 12:16 am

Dr Frag wrote:Yeah, it happens in hard mode too. I just finished Dog World and it happened when I rerouted a train.

I've had it happen with trains I didnt THINK I'd re routed... which makes me wonder if its a buggy part of the pathfinding code. So when a train looks at its route and says "I dont think I can get through that way, what about this way instead" might be when things start going pear shaped?

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:36 am

Exactly. That's when it happens to me. On hard routing.

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo · Post by **The Chatanooga Choo-Choo** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 4:30 pm

It just makes you wonder how long it'd really take Firaxis to fix that...

CeeBee51 · Post by **CeeBee51** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 5:23 pm

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo wrote:It just makes you wonder how long it'd really take Firaxis to fix that...

couple a years or longer by the look of it

CalmDragon · Post by **CalmDragon** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:49 pm

The flying trains do look cool for a minute as they find their way back home.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:10 pm

I wounder if it only happens on certain maps?

I have not ever seen that on the Florida map or the two holiday maps. I will ask my testers if they have seen this.

Now at station platforms, if there is no light at one end and it loads cars, it will fly cars past there, but it is filling them the train isn't in the middle of a route and doubling back. It stops that if I make a short rail past the platform and a light pops up...they stop flying around at the platform then.

I do remember one time I caused something like that to happen. I had made a passenger train that went through five cities and then back. I re-did some track and bumped the passenger train over by one track towards one end. Even though the next track over went the same way and the train should have had no trouble...it started acting just as you have described. So any trains that have a route built and I edit the track to where he gets bumped over, I delete the train and start over after the track edit. I wounder if you changed something with your trains track route and that is what caused it to happen? But to do it just on it's own I have not seen. The game tracks the trains route and movements, you can even see it on the mini map with the blue dots. Once a route is set, if the track gets erased/altered maybe the game freaks.

Smr Simple!

Trains doubling back on each other

Trains doubling back on each other

I see it sometimes