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Failures Page

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 11:05 #106494
norman B
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111 posts
Hi,
Having used SimSig for a couple of years I have some questions related to the Failures page under the options tag.

As a passenger guard in the late 80s in the Wigan area TCF judging by my old journals did not seem to affect our operations at all! Points failures over a full year can be counted on one hand and signal lamp failures did occur from time to time.

At the present time,with the modern equipment,are these failures more widespread?

During a recent session with the Rugby Central sim several TCF,Lamp problems and points failures happened when using a standard setting.

My question is ,are the presets present for each sim and situation based on real life or are they present just to make the sim more
interesting ?

Do players adjust these for personal preference or do they leave them as preset?

I much prefer dealing with reality,therefore based on my real world experience from the late 80s,my feeling is that some of the presets produce excess random failures even at increased levels of difficulty.If on the other hand the modern equipment has produced more of these types of failure then the presets may be accurate.

Would any of todays signallers/controllers care to comment and even suggest how often a particular type of failure occurs(weather conditions permitting.)

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 12:22 #106496
Chromatix
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190 posts
Speaking as a player, not as a professional...

...I believe the failure settings are provided, and tuned to their present levels, for two reasons:

1: To make things more interesting in the game.

2: As a training tool (for the commercial, professional version of SimSig which most of us never see).

What I usually do is take all the failure-rate sliders down to zero, then press the right-arrow once on each (which is visually indistinguishable from zero), and use the limits on simultaneous active failures and repair time as difficulty scaling factors. On a large and/or busy ARS sim like York, Waterloo or Swindon, this gives something like a dozen failures per day, which is quite enough to be getting on with.

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 15:15 #106497
Stephen Fulcher
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2084 posts
Failures occur in SimSig far more frequently than in reality under most circumstances, although they can be adjusted.

Failure rates in reality vary widely by the type and age of the equipment involved. For instance in my experience HW points are far less likely to fail than Clamp Locks.

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 16:18 #106499
Steamer
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3985 posts
I think it's also true to say that the default repair times in SimSig are faster than most in reality. I recall a fault on my local line (which appeared to be a track circuit failure- trains were running as normal, just picking up 5-10 minutes delay at the affected location) taking around 6 hours to resolve.
"Don't stress/ relax/ let life roll off your backs./ Except for death and paying taxes/ everything in life.../ is only for now." (Avenue Q)
Last edited: 06/03/2018 at 22:44 by Steamer
Reason: None given

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 20:53 #106511
norman B
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111 posts
I started Rugby South on a hard setting,then adjusted the failure options so that all failures had a low setting with no delays showing and a high repair setting when within the short space of 15minutes ,3 lamps out and one TCF reported.

How often does that happen in the RW. Two lamp failures featured consecutive sigs with the third failure happening two before!

Would it be more realistic if the workings of the failure panel was left as an operator choice function?

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Failures Page 06/03/2018 at 21:06 #106513
AndyNTH
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norman B in post 106511 said:
Would it be more realistic if the workings of the failure panel was left as an operator choice function?
Well clearly a realistic signalman would never 'choose' to have failures

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Failures Page 07/03/2018 at 02:41 #106522
Chromatix
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190 posts
IRL, a spate of closely spaced failures like that would have me suspecting a common root cause - vandals, for example.
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