Post by Jimi on Aug 30, 2019 1:01:08 GMT
Ed and I were chatting this evening as we have been aggressively testing the final set of scenarios - some of which are quite complex with a lot of trains and conflicting moves. And we were debating a situation where the player has to wait a few minutes at a red (WB5 on the way from ECT to OLY for the curious) because it doesn't clear northbound until any train on the single track from OLY has cleared onto the dual track. So sometimes there's a wait - and you can't see the other train and may wonder why you're waiting...
And Ed opined he'd bet our current users who were used to the V1 signals would wait 2 minutes and them try to TAB through thinking it was broken. And I had to agree. So I thought I'd briefly update you on the Phase II signals and how they are very different from V1, so as to set your expectations.
We've used a combination of JT's Met LUL signals and UK Pro for the NL sections of the route. Both are very well constructed, look the part and best of all act the part. Personally I'm very impressed with JT's LUL signals, as LUL signal practices are not likely familiar to those who mostly inhabit the Real Railway. (To that end, I deliberately wrote a multi-page section in the Route Guide describing LUL signals and their operation - so you will have NO excuse for not knowing what a Green over Yellow signal means).
So they work very good, and we have been very careful to place and "wire them" correctly so they exactly mimic their real life counterparts - location, type, purpose, plate number. This means they behave as they should and the message that you should take away is simply - believe what they are trying to tell you.
There is a practice when determining the likelihood of something called applying Occam's razor. Simply stated it says that when faced with multiple possibilities, choose the one that has the least number of assumptions or the simplest. If you hear hoofbeats behind you, tend to think horses not zebras. So to apply this to the signals, if you see a red one the most likely cause is not that it's broken, but that there's a train in the track section ahead (e.g. WB5 approaching OLY). Or that the route is set against you at a converging junction because another train is scheduled ahead of you or has priority (e.g. EC1 OLY/EC3 WKN convergence in the EB tunnel approaching ECT). It may be unusual for you all at first after your long V1 experiences, but trust the signals and look ahead so you build a mental picture of the likely traffic around you and what it might do - and what you might have to do. The District is the busiest of the LUL lines, and the traffic density can be high. And there's a lot of signals. OK, exactly the right number. It just looks a lot :-)
