#Auto Fireman mod

213 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

hollow latch
glad halo
short adder
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yes please

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fireman was really nice for my style of play (i love playing steam in vr but the constant involvement gets annoying after a while)

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honestly dont even care about the auto coal, all i care about is auto water

tranquil hinge
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I'm thinking I might try to tackle this as a mod myself - I've been wanting to find an excuse to get to know DV's systems, and this should be a good way to do so - changing the attributes of an engine directly like the injector / dampener / blower state as well as adding coal when needed.

Having managed to reliably hold 13 bar manually, I have a pretty good idea now about how to manage this...

I think I'll start with auto water - attempts to keep water in the sight glass at all times picking aimpoint based on current grade (up grade, sight glass should be 2/3 to full, down grade near empty, level grade about 1/2 to 2/3)

surreal lodge
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Hope it goes well

sinful sparrow
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Ohh even just auto water would be amazing, I am only just starting to use steam for shunting. Having it at the propper water levels would be amazing

tranquil hinge
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Initial version of this is now live: https://www.nexusmods.com/derailvalley/mods/774/ right now it just prevents overfilling / forgetting to fill water - will do more with it over the next couple of weeks. Will always keep water within the sight glass if possible

Nexus Mods :: Derail Valley
Water Protection

A basic mod to protect against water mistakes ruining your day.Will prevent over/underfilling the boiler - does not protect against running out of water in the tender.

surreal lodge
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Doing gods work my guy

surreal lodge
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Wrong channel dude😑

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Still impressive though

blissful meteor
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Ups. I'll move it. I thought I had it in the corrct place 🤔.
Sent. Thanks for telling me. I'd be confused later wondering where they were 😆

surreal lodge
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👍

tranquil hinge
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Looking for feedback about further water management - current plan is posted here: https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/issues/10 and involves 3 water curves to provide intelligent water handling that works for long runs.

Using the first curve only, I've managed a run from HB to MF without touching the injector, ended with water about mid glass, and 12.5 bar of steam pressure, was honestly a pretty comfortable run, really excited to see what I can do with even more intelligent water usage.

GitHub
Increase injector setting if pressure near safety · Issue #10 · las...

Full water management only When the safety is about to pop, (14 bar?) set injector behavior to maximize water flow: Minimum (injector on full) is half glass Maximum is full glass

surreal lodge
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Honestly I love it so far

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Swapping between up and down grades sometimes I don’t notice the water was tanking till I heard the injector kick on

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I do have a suggestion tho, maybe if the water is low but there is no water in the tender it could have so sort of alert sound maybe? Honestly could just steal the sound the contract machine does when it prints cash

tranquil hinge
surreal lodge
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Awesome

tranquil hinge
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Alright, I have a beta release - not posting to nexus mods yet / not updating UMM directly, but here's the beta: https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/releases/tag/0.1.0.RC.2 - The fireman assistant zip provided is UMM installable - feedback appreciated - I'll be testing myself and probably releasing full over the weekend <EDIT: Updated to RC2>

GitHub
Release 0.1.0 Release Candidate 2 · lassombra/FiremanAssist

Tweaks to high pressure handling - also correcting for pressure being reported offset by 1.

tranquil hinge
surreal lodge
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Nice, will give a shot

tranquil hinge
surreal lodge
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After trying the new update out I don’t really see any real problems

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Rode it when the intervention setting off and not once was I worried I’d have to turn it back on

tranquil hinge
tranquil hinge
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I have uploaded a alpha version that has coal handling - right now it handles coal, blower, and damper, but only if the firedoor isn't closed. It also varies how much coal it'll allow by how open the firedoor is (so you can mostly close it near the end of a climb to tell the autofireman to stop shovelling) can be found on the nexus mods page or on github.

This is a rough alpha, but I think it does ok. I managed with it without modulating the firedoor to do a 7 nuclear flask run from HB to MB and it kept pressure up through the whole run. At this point I'm mostly looking for reports of running out of pressure, popping safety, or letting water get too low / too high.

surreal lodge
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Nice

acoustic needle
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Does this mod manage the water levels of all the locomotives in the trainset or just the one that the user is occupying?

surreal lodge
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All

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even if not fired

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so gotta be careful with that

acoustic needle
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Oh really

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How do I set it up?

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Just enter all the locomotives once?

surreal lodge
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I believe all locos on the map would start doing the water

acoustic needle
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Ah interesting

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Separately calculated/managed though, I assume?

surreal lodge
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mhm

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Personally I have it set to full managed with no ability to overide, never had any problems

tranquil hinge
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It does it off of the locos you have entered, and any that have been coupled to one being managed.

Each one gets is own virtual fireman.

On default settings it won't do much with water on unfired locos, just keep it above the sight glass bottom.

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I should say any in the same train

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You can head and tail with this

acoustic needle
acoustic needle
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Oh wait just open the firebox door huh

tranquil hinge
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yep, firebox door open and a fire lit

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in theory you can run with the firedoor completely open, but you can also partially close it to limit how much coal the fireman will add, or fully close it to make him leave the fire alone entirely

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if you leave it fully open, it'll try to be smart about how much coal it adds

tranquil hinge
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and apparently I misspoke - I didn't include the modulating feature in this alpha - that was code I started but ripped back out because it was misbehaving

surreal lodge
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How’s progress with the coal stuff?

quick peak
tranquil hinge
# surreal lodge How’s progress with the coal stuff?

I have a couple of changes that it really needs to avoid massive over firing that I'm trying to work out - and also looking to add a custom mode to the comm radio to tell the fireman to start the fire or let it burn out, with an option for the second command to apply to the whole train.

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then just need to add some configuration settings and should be good to go

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I'll probably be releasing a new alpha build tonight or tomorrow with my attempts to fix the overfiring (I'm making progress yay!)

I'm also looking at slowing down the decision loop but also keeping instant response to urgent conditions (too much/too little water)

surreal lodge
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Sweet

tranquil hinge
tranquil hinge
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New Version! Definitely needs some alpha testing. New in this version:

  • Fixed an issue where you could end up with too little water after shutting down if you had very little water to begin with. Now, provided you have "None" as your override mode (meaning the assistant handles water completely) the assistant will add water even if the fire is off.
  • Fire door is no longer monitored and does not mean anything - keep it open or closed as you see fit for your play style - fireman can add coal with the door closed.
  • Fireman can now ignite the fire automatically
  • Comms radio control to both summon a fireman to a steam engine (automatically happens if you board one - as before) and to tell the fireman whether to start the fire, or let it shut down. Status and actions shown on the comms radio
  • Comms radio highlight when outside the cab or when pointing at another train to show you what you are affecting - no highlight while in the cab (mostly affects 060 as it has a proper cab)
  • Fireman watches your regulator and cutoff positions to decide how much to fire - if you close the regulator or cutoff, then fireman will only add enough coal to keep the fire going. When you start asking for power, coal usage will ramp up, but then back down as you reach the end of the power stretch.
  • Fireman will still manage the damper and blower even when not firing for efficient shutdown (maximizing pressure acquired from the coal)
  • Blower now stays on a little longer than it did previously - mostly helps with shunting in the 060 since you want to basically have the blower going the whole time while shunting.

Known issues:

  • An edge case where if you idle too long on a positive grade with the fire going and then turn to a strong negative grade you can end up with far too much water - causing priming.

Now Requires https://www.nexusmods.com/derailvalley/mods/813

Download at https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/releases/download/0.1.1-alpha.3/FiremanAssistant.zip

Nexus Mods :: Derail Valley
Comms Radio API

Enables other mods to add new modes to the Comms Radio.

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Upcoming still:

  • Settings for fire management (full, damper/blower only, keep from burning out, none)
  • Option to enable auto cylinder cocks
  • Blowdown control for when the water gets accidentally too high

All of those features are planned for the full release, but this mod is functional in this state I think

tranquil hinge
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New Alpha version https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/releases/download/0.1.1-alpha.4/FiremanAssistant.zip:

  • Implemented auto cylinder cocks
  • Implemented detection for low water level - fireman won't add anymore coal if water is below 10%. You can check this status with the comm radio.

Upcoming:

  • Optional comm radio mode that will report coal and water available in a locomotive or it's attached tender.
  • Blowdown control
  • Settings for enabling / disabling various levels of assist.
acoustic needle
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It literally supports everything now 🙏🏻 This is amazing.

surreal lodge
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ikr

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Will make shunting a lot better

spiral wing
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Hey @tranquil hinge i noticed that auto fireman keeps the coals low while running

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From my experience I find that more coal in hole = higher fire temp. I always keep my coal levels more than half when i run

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Anyhow really love ur mod

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Keeps the boiler pressure right btw 12-13bar even at tonnage.

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Great work

tranquil hinge
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So the reason it keeps the coal lower than I think you expect is to avoid wasting coal at lower loads. If you are running full tilt and using all of the pressure it can generate, you'll notice it hovers around 60-80% coal level. When pressure is already rising, or when the demand is gone, it allows the coal to burn down quite low. Partially this is a factor of not being able to know what demand is about to look like. Ideally, the fireman would start/stop adding coal early before a large grade change but I have to work with what I can know programmatically.

surreal lodge
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I was trying to go in full up a the harbor grade and the fireman decided to take a break and let the coal go out completely before adding more

tranquil hinge
surreal lodge
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Left side and it was around 870 tons

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The pressure dropped to 10 before I realized what was going on

tranquil hinge
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Which loco?

surreal lodge
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S282

tranquil hinge
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ok, I'll attempt to recreate

surreal lodge
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This was also with water doing its own thing too, I have it set to full control with no overide

spiral wing
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i think i was facing the same problem as pepper73

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2000t of coal

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i had no problems with the pressure dropping and like i said b4 it was btw 12 and 13 bar

tranquil hinge
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so I wasn't able to recreate dropping all the way to 10 pressure, but I have recreated that sometimes it still doesn't do enough coal.

If the fire is almost keeping up some of the time, the coal will drop to almost none. I'll have to adjust the algorithm for that.

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however, this weekend is a Starfield weekend 😛

surreal lodge
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Well the pressure prob dropped cause it took me that long to realize the situtation

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I had auto water on too so I basically just focused on the driving until I started losing speed and then checked everything

tranquil hinge
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did you do something after you noticed the pressure dropped to help it along, or did it figure itself out?

surreal lodge
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I had to just shovel the coal myself but I was able to still leave the water alone

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Next time I hope on I’ll just use a new loco and let it fire itself up and shall see if that’ll help it

tranquil hinge
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did you tell the fireman to start firing? As of a couple alphas ago, by default the fireman only is managing water - you have to tell him to start adding coal using the comm radio. This allows for control of when to spend coal, and also allows to run down the remaining coal rather than adding more when approaching your destination.

surreal lodge
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I did indeed

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My theory is something didn’t like that I had a loco already fully fired up when I gave the command

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So I’m thinking a fresh loco may help

tranquil hinge
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you can try, but I'd like to know what happened because it shouldn't have cared about that. All it carers about is the current pressure, the pressure over the last 25 ticks and the regulator and cutoff positions.

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ideally if you can get a screenshot of the driving ui while it's misbehaving - there's a lot of info in there that can help me understand the state it was in.

spiral wing
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Just wasted to confirm, there are no other firing modes than fire on and fire off right?

tranquil hinge
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correct

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there will eventually be settings like with water for how much control you give to the fireman - but this alpha is trying to get the fire algorithm locked in.

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There are a couple of sub-modes that can happen (not selectable) - shutting down is fire off selected, but there's still fire there. Water out kicks in at 10% water remaining in the tender, and will not add more coal automatically.

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that will also be togglable in the future

rocky wraith
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for i second i thought that said "uncouple tender"

surreal lodge
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Seems to be good now, a loco fresh was it wanted I suppose

tranquil hinge
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alright, let me know if you do end up recreating the issue - I'm still trying to really nail the fire behavior - it's difficult because there is so much lag between actions taken and the result - especially in the case of adding coal. Adding coal in one tick may take up to 50 ticks to actually change the pressure trend.

rocky wraith
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if i were the fireman, the engine would look like this

image-8.png
burnt jolt
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For me it looks like this most of the time

tranquil hinge
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Quick update - I'm in the Quidditch play test so I have one more week of that and it's kind of intense right now - after that I'm going to be putting some of the finishing touches on this version and probably releasing coal management to the wild. So I'd say probably 2 weeks from now expect a beta version which has all the settings and stuff, and then provided that beta goes well, release in a week after that

surreal lodge
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It’s been going well for me as far as worrying about it goes

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Can pretty much leave it be

tranquil hinge
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New beta: https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/releases/tag/1.0.0-rc.1 updated with settings

EDIT: Warning - if you were using the previous alpha that had the cylinder cock management, this version has moved that into a configuration option defaulted to off as it's something that normally would be managed by the engineer. I've included it primarily for people who either a) struggle with when to use them or b) are using the Steam alpha of the no cable mu mod and don't want to blow out cylinders at random.

GitHub
Release 1.0.0-rc.1 · lassombra/FiremanAssist

It's finally happened - Coal management is in RC status - this latest update finally adds the mod options.
NOTE: Previous alpha version included automatic cyinder cocks - this is still availabl...

soft urchin
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@lucid scroll was it you with the "he didn't bother with scooping coal" issues on Monday?

tranquil hinge
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If someone is having issues with coal, please try the new beta and let me know - And if it's actually still breaking a save file with the issue present would be amazing

acoustic needle
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whoa, 1.0.0 release candidate 👀 gonna test this out (late to the party)

tranquil hinge
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lol - there's a new RC coming soon with fixes to some things I've found (such as the blower thing...)

short adder
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oh shit thank you for keeping this updated

woeful heath
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Ooh, I just might install this mod!

tranquil hinge
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RC2 - getting closer to full release. I have a bug in the comm radio where if you put it away while pointing at a steam engine and then take it out pointing else where, it doesn't update until it gets pointed at a steam engine again. Any other bugs please let me know.

https://github.com/lassombra/FiremanAssist/releases/tag/1.0.0-rc.2

GitHub
Release 1.0.0-rc.2 · lassombra/FiremanAssist

Full Changelog: 1.0.0-rc.1...1.0.0-rc.2
Generally - tweaks to various logic to make controls less twitchy and to help handle more mid-range demand as previous curves and settings handled high and l...

tranquil hinge
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Minor update - the issue with the radio not resetting when put away is identified but I'm not sure what approach to take to fix it. Also, I'm not really happy with the cylinder cock behavior in this version - it wastes too much steam...

static steeple
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It has been great seeing how far this mod has come from only water management to coal only when the door is open then being able to use the radio and finally the cylinder cock operation. I don't use the mod all the time, but it's nice when you want to relax a little and still run steam.

tranquil hinge
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I'm glad you are liking it.

tranquil hinge
acoustic needle
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Woot!

ruby depot
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Correct me if i’m wrong, but isn’t this just a stoker?

tranquil hinge
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I mean - a stoker only adds coal. And not in any way intelligently...

In a stoker-fired engine, you still have a fireman managing fire and water. That's what this mod does. Adding the coal is the simplest part of that job. Stokers are used when getting the coal to the entire firebox becomes just not viable anymore, and uses steam jets to move that coal instead of a fireman with a shovel. This does everything the fireman would normally do.

shrewd ember
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Like ghost busters afterlife style

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Better still like a cut off engineer hand

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Like the original owner of DV

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Or of the SH282

ruby depot
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I wasn’t meaning to put down this mod in any way. The mod is great! I use it myself

tranquil hinge
tranquil hinge
tranquil hinge
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For anyone using this who is still paying attention here please update The 1.0.0 version can get stuck if you pause while it thinks it needs to add coal resulting in it draining your tender but not actually adding coal! This bug is fixed in this version. This also fixes the bug a few people have occasionally run into where it'll just stop adding coal - this should be resolved now!

errant kelp
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thank you for the notification!

obtuse cliff
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If I'm outside the locomotive it doesn't add coal, NOTE: It's in the latest version of the mod

image.png
tranquil hinge
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What difficulty and career or sandbox?

errant kelp
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I get the same thing in career mode on normal, but i do have many other mods and its already an easy fix by just either havibg locos in render didtance or standing on the tender plate for a second

tranquil hinge
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however, if the coal is logically out, even if still visible, it might error like that

obtuse cliff
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when I'm at F4 it's the same thing, don't add the charcoal

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I say 3 person via F4

tranquil hinge
obtuse cliff
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that

tranquil hinge
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It could have been exacerbated by the previous version of this mod which could leave you in a state where you appear to have coal, but logically don't

obtuse cliff
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I removed some mods, and reinstalled the game, I'll test it now

tranquil hinge
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best bet is to refill tender coal and then see if the issue persists

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the 1.0.0 version had a bug which would cause coal to be removed from the tender but leave the tender coal visibly full. Doing so would cause all further attempts to fill coal to fail, such as from the UI

obtuse cliff
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When I fill up with coal via F4 in 3rd person, it also gives a warning on the console and the coal doesn't fill, I think it's a bug in the game

tranquil hinge
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it's not

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probably

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go refill the coal in the tender at a service station

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after that it should go away

obtuse cliff
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OK

tranquil hinge
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if it doesn't, then yeah, it's a bug in the base game - and since this mod actually just calls the same function as the shovel button on the F4 screen, if that doesn't work, neither will this mod

obtuse cliff
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it makes sense

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According to my tests, it happens when you have more than one steam locomotive

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So yes, I think it's a game bug

tranquil hinge
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unlikely - I've been running trains of 5 locomotives regularly without issues

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there's probably something else involved

obtuse cliff
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So the problem is just me lol

obtuse cliff
acoustic needle
tranquil hinge
acoustic needle
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Sweet!

tranquil hinge
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combined with the aux tender mod I'm working on and steam start and loco swap mods.... This game is slowly turning into a steam paradise 🙂

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speaking of which @acoustic needle Steam Remote Control when? 😛

obtuse cliff
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I'm using it

obtuse cliff
tranquil hinge
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lol

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add in remote dispatch and you literally will have the same mod list as me

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oh, wait, and persistent jobs

obtuse cliff
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Yes, I also use these two, I forgot to mention lol

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we need more steam train mods

acoustic needle
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I wonder if there’s just a function for determining whether a locomotive can be connected or not

tranquil hinge
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there is... however two issues:

  1. the RC in vanilla depends on self-lapping brakes
  2. The reverser control is all or nothing - and for steam you really want a bit more refined control of that
acoustic needle
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Oh right… and also control over the blower, damper, cylinder cocks

tranquil hinge
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well, I mean yes, but for that we have this mod

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so just overcoming those two limitations would be enough

obtuse cliff
tranquil hinge
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brakes shouldn't be too bad - just need to convert increase and decrease to handle positions rather than repeated events - report the actual brake pressure...

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the reverser though - that's a bit more complicated

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@obtuse cliff are you using a custom difficulty?

obtuse cliff
tranquil hinge
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hmm - that's really weird

obtuse cliff
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standard career mode

tranquil hinge
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can you try and reproduce it in a new save with no mods installed?

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even in sandbox would be enough - then you could report it as a vanilla bug

obtuse cliff
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ok

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I will see

tranquil hinge
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and if not then perhaps there is a new bug in this mod...

obtuse cliff
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I tested it here, it's probably a game bug

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all mods disabled

image.png
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It only happens when there is a 3rd person

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Game bug for sure, but with you it really works normal?

tranquil hinge
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I always play first person

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and have had only issues when first loading the game - otherwise yeah

obtuse cliff
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I use quiet mods in build 96

tranquil hinge
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so we've discovered a vanilla bug with 3rd person - time to make a bug report - and I suspect it'll be fixed very soon

obtuse cliff
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Can you report this bug to me?

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I'm not good with this kind of thing

tranquil hinge
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I would just describe your experience in #dv-support-and-bugs people there might have additional questions for you - and since I've not experienced it directly, I won't have the answers...

obtuse cliff
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Then try to test it in your game on your PC, if it happens please report it, if it doesn't happen the problem must be with me

tranquil hinge
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I mean it'll be probably quite a while before I have the opportunity to do so

obtuse cliff
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ok

tranquil hinge
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I have 4 in-progress mod updates that I'm juggling right now

obtuse cliff
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I'll try a few things here, if I can't find a solution, I'll report the problem

obtuse cliff
tranquil hinge
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Does anyone using this have time to let me know if / how badly this got broken with the new update? I know things changed with the comm radio, but I don't know if this was broken by that

tranquil hinge
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Alright, I've updated this for B98