Well, real early 4-4-0's were pretty weak, anyway. I also find that measurement of the HP of the steam engines rather dubious and would not think anything by it.

4-6-0 does go 32-35km/h. 4-4-0 may be underpowered. Its engines give just 80HP (that's <60KW). If the power estimates in transport fever have anything to do with reality, that's the power of first locomotives without cab.

Granted, I may just need to weigh it down more. All three of mine are equipped with weight boxes.

Well, have you tested my 4-6-0? I've never gotten it past 12 mph.

They actually don't. You said 20mph on flat for the 4 axle one. That's 32km/h with wheels smaller than medium.

Very interesting. You have to wonder, then, why do my locomotives perform badly?

One more interesting issue: I've decided to test rope stabilization on my suspension. While it improved the sustained speed under certain conditions and greatly reduced jumping, it caused an extensive wear of the wheels. While none fell off, all of them required repair after the test.

Conclusion: While mor rigid suspension does help a little it is not that big a difference. It seems that the critical factor is the number of axles.

OK. The result of the test:
* With Your suspension (stabilized by ropes) the loco max (peak) speed 43km/h, sustained speed about 36km/k. One wheel lost towards the end of the test without critically imparing the performance.
* Mine (present version): peak about 47km/h sustained about 39km/h.
Conditions: 4-8-4 Heavy with all three engines at max throttle with 50 weights in the midestion chest.

@Xaerthus: That's exactly what I've tried to communicate.
@Johnbeere: That would be unlikely. It seems that the hitboxes are flat on the top. Rather, there may be some tiny but sudden changes of angles at the section merge points due to whatever method Equinox used for calculating the geometry of sections when merging them. Splines should not cause problems but I do not know what was really used. Also there is an issue of how the simplified algorithms of the game engine handle the interacion with hitboxes. The dependence on the computer resorces points to that as a culprit.

I think, rather, it may be that the hitboxes may have bumps between them, and when hit that causes the jumping. Whatever the case, the jumping isn't good.

@onca77
Its not the bogies that are causing the jumping, its the wheels. They are not designed specifically for the track, they just use it as a flat surface. Which tracks are not. They are a dynamic grid consisting of small objects with hitboxes one behind the other (if I understand Equinox's statement correctly). Even driving a vanilla cart on flat ground causes it to jump sometimes. And now you have a heavily weighted cart which meets a hitbox edge every 2-3 meters or so. That is a lot of calculating i can imagine. So it cant calculate it in time so the wheels get stuck a bit in the new hitbox and are then launched back up. Thats the cause in my opinion.

@Johnbeere
Yeah, that makes sense, its jumping on changing hitboxes. In my tests, max speed depends on many factors:
1. power of the engine(s) - i guess thats not a problem here
2. rope belts - they need to be absolutely perfect and smaller ones tend to do weird stuff sometimes so i personally use bigger ones
3. amount of wheel slip - ur wheels need to stick to the ground to transfer the maximum power every slip (that includes jumping) decreases it drastically
4. the suspension. It needs to be free of any dragging and catching on itself and needs to be as stable and simple as possible. Mine is not ideal i like onca's one but I am yet to test it out properly (probably going to do that tomorrow)
5. just luck. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. As I said my large loco goes over 60 without problems, and the smaller one wont do over ~45. Why? Because reasons.

Here's this, also: Me: "Oh, alright. Is there nothing that can be done about that?"

Equinox: "That's why I never intended (or plan to) make contact based wheels.
No."

@Xaerthus I've asked Equinox about the hitboxes of the track and this is what he said: "Not between the tracks necessarily. Each section is divided into 1-8 boxes."

Oh, cool. I expect it will be worse, unfortunately.

I've equipped a version of my 4-8-4 with your suspension. Will then be able to compare the performance tomorrow with the suspension as the only element changing.

It definitely jumps less, though I don't remember if it was faster.

One question: have the max speed actually improved when you made the change shown on your last screenshot? Part of the velocity loss may be related to the portion of time spent by driving wheels in the air.

I'll ask Equinox if he has any idea why they might sink.

Probably something to do with the suspension.

Hmm. I understand that the bogies can sink due to specifically designed for them physics interaction, however the mechanical driving wheels should just sit on the rigid hitbox of the track. They should not sink. In all our designs the bogies just provide guidance, they do not support any weight outside of their own.

@Xaerthus That's interesting... Have you any idea why my locomotives are so slow?

@AIXS I'll consider it when the world's at a reasonable point. I'm in the middle of redoing some of my track.

Also, just an afterthought: that should also explain why doubling the wheels makes thigs better. More surface area = better distribution of mass = less sinking = less jumping.

3/2 :P - it gets better the more rigid axles you have. There is a big difference between my large and medium loco, the large is MUCH more stable despite them being the exact same design and construction
- and lastly the weirdest one. I have several times experienced that the jumping decreases when you pull some cargo (not very much though). A lot of times it could go slightly faster with a bit of cargo, than without it.

2/2 Now what to do about it is a different question. I have made several observations while working on my projects, so let me share them with you and maybe someone will come up with something:
- the jumping has a severe impact on the max speed of the loco. Even small jumps can limit the speed from 70-80 km/h down to 30-35 (because of collisions)
- it is also very hardware dependent. I mean I tried the same setup with and without some other programs in the background (using lots of RAM) and in the case of them running, the jumping was far worse.
- it gets worse, when bogies get weighted down directly
- it works better when the loco is weighted more front-back, than in the middle (but that does not always work, sometimes one weight placed one block closer/further makes a BIG difference. Its inconsistent to say the least.)

@onca77 @Johnbeere
1/2 From my previous experience the jumping occurs on the seams between every track piece. Also things tend to sink a bit into the track the heavier they are (actually my very first version of the loco depended on that - it had no suspension at all, it was just weighted so much, that the bogies sank enough for the wheels to make contact :P ). Now, when the locomotive is moving, every new piece of track is a different entity, so if something is sunken even just a bit, it gets pushed out on those seams and that (I think) causes the jumping.

Hey, could you maybe upload the world in which you made the screenshots?

this made it to third on the leader board congratulations!

I have to withdraw my previous opinion.
- I've tested the collision box of the rail by dragging a piece of timber across it and the rails do not have any higher box than the ties.
- Also by building a rig where a single axle was attached to the handcart by a suspension used by Xaerthus I've tested the weel interaction. It jumps just because of the interaction with a surface (true for both blocks, rails and voxels), probably because of the way the game engine calculates it. No difference here with respect to the axle width or the wheel size. The difference may be just between the whole assemblies.

Huh, seems it is not spinning as freely anymore as it had. Still, I think that's not hurting anything.

I've always guessed the cause of the jumping is the geometry of the wheels hitting the ground in a strange way.

@onca77 It's touching the bogie, but it rotates freely. I've done enough testing with that kind of thing to know it's (probably) not a problem.

Also, I've noticed that your suspension is scrapping against the bogie (which with the engine used in SE/ME may in part be a reason for the bounces). Have you considered to move it one block up to avoid that?

Strange. Being totally honest I have not tested it in your design and based the comment on the experience with mine. In mine just moving the wheels one block to the outside (changing the interior axle width from 4 to 6) reduced the jumping considerably as in the relatively straight portions of track the wheels rested on the rails by default. I still have a problem in tighter curves, where one side is sliding from the rail to the outside. With locomotive weighting almost 100T that did incredible things with bogies (in my wildest dreams I have not considered these things are so agile) so I will most likely need wider wheels. Within a couple of days I will try to test it with your blueprint directly. Your suspension is much softer and the locomotive much lighter. This may be making a difference.

I've just added a second layer of wheels to one of my 4-6-0's and it seems to be jumping to the same extent that it was before they were added. Could I have done something wrong?

Huh, I'll do testing with that. If I find that to be the case, which I don't doubt you, I'll see if I can have Equinox change it.

Johnbeere, it seems that the jumping happens because the rails are slightly higher than the ties of the track. The wheel suspension of total width 6 fits right between the rails in perfect conditions, but when moving, especially on bendies, one of the wheels jumps on top of the rail and back down. At the cost of making the design wider (and a bit less aesthetic) this could be remedied by adding another layer of wheels (like in trucks).

understood

Unfortunately I'm not sure that would be possible for them to add.

yea. or the devs could just make is so that ropes don't dissapear when loading and reloading a creation with rope! that would make things so much easier.

I'd have used gears were they reliable enough to use. With rope belts, almost no force is lost. With gears, they require a lot of power themselves, and they will skip under the right circumstances. I'd like to use gears, too, but it's just (probably) not going to work.

i am still tryin to figure out how to do this with gears and not ropes so that you wont have to manualy place the ropes everytime you crash the dang train.

I have added something to increase stability, check the last screenshot to see how to set it up.

I will be improving it soon, though it may still be bumpy. I hope to get it faster and smoother.

This is by far the most impressive construktion I've ever seen. Though, driving is very bumpy somehow. I guess it's because the friction via large wheels, there is a lot of strange sounds and it doesn't run smooth. Besides it's pretty slow. Sadly I'll still have to wait until Equinox surprises us with a "real" steam locomotive some day. But still very impressive. :)

If you subscribe to it it should show up. It will be near the top of the workshop blueprints, as it begins with a number.

I can't find it in my blueprint list; is there something I need to do?