I've been working on an elaborate switching scenario for Munich-Augsburg, which involves making up a train in the Pasing Yards, dropping it off in the Pasing West Yard, and then making up another train there for delivery back to Pasing. While the player works in one section of Pasing West, an AI switcher makes up a train in another section of Pasing West, finally dropping off that train and driving away. The result is that both the player and the AI driver wind up a couple of tracks away from each other.
The inconsistency is that sometimes, but only sometimes, when the AI driver drops off its train it proceeds to drive off in the wrong direction, thus crashing into the cars it just dropped off and causing, at best, a scenario-ending train wreck or, at worst, an SBHH error. In either case, the scenario can be resumed from the penultimate save (see below) and the AI driver gets its direction right the second time around. The scenario can then be completed by the player, although he gets the big X for his efforts rather than a nice green check mark.
I've included an instruction that warns the player of this eventuality, but I wish I knew why the magic works sometimes and others not. AI trains have been capable of dropping off cars through at least the last two incarnations of TS, so that alone shouldn't be the cause. At first, my instruction sequence included simply a Drop off instruction followed by a Drive to instruction. When this combination produced wrong-way driving after drop-off consistently, I added a Drive to instruction before the Drop off. That allowed the sequence to work as I intended ... sometimes.
I'd appreciate comments from other scenario writers who have tried something similar. RSC bashers should start their own threads rather than hijacking this one, please.
P.s.: Kudos to the creator of this route for leaving numerous tracks at Pasing West without any markers, thus allowing scenario writers to place their own.
