During testing I’ve noticed that one or two testers get scores much higher than mine. Research reveals that they do this by exploiting the bonus for allowing a train to overtake one of lower priority. On reflection, it seems to me that avoiding delay is sufficient reward for doing this, and that the bonus has a negative effect by encouraging the player to delay lower priority trains unnecessarily just to get the bonus. What do you think?
Sometimes I can barely focus on everything happening on all the screens, misregulating trains to achieve more bonus point is something I have no spare brain cells. Getting bonus for doing right something is a reward to me, thinking “Hell yeah, I’m mastering!”, and not the main and sole aim while playing your sims.
I think in most cases I will only put a slower running train into a loop if I don’t think it will clear the area before the faster running train following it would come to a stop. It is about managing the traffic and I think in instances like this, it is good practice and a bonus should be awarded
In principle I agree, but it would be rather difficult for the program to judge. Also, as I said before, in effect the bonus is that you don’t get a penalty for delaying the faster train.
It’s a difficult one, and my own view is that there should be some satisfaction with achieving a good score whilst operating the railway properly. For example, when I start a day at, say, Woodford Halse or Carlisle (1973 in my case) it’s usually the case that the shed is full of locos which are generally in the wrong order. It would be easy to create room to ‘work’ by clearing them out to yards and carriage sidings and putting them on trains that are not due to depart for several hours, but in practice the railway didn’t operate like that. Likewise with shunting freights into loops to let higher priority trains overtake – in practice you would only do that if there was a genuine need to do it. I guess it’s for each person to choose what their own standard is, but I like to try and keep it real if I can.