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Shockwave 2 (steel Twister)


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#1 Woodpecker

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Posted 23 April 2009 - 01:47 PM

After reading Fossil's article on block braking, I decided to get in some serious practise and Shockwave 2 is my first attempt. As my two previous (casual) attempts had fallen flat, I looked to mushroomer's 'Tempest' for ideas regarding the final brake runs before the station. Shockwave 2 is fast, furious, pulls an impressive 5.1 g through the vertical loops and contains 6 inversions within it's tangle of track.

A potted history:

Shockwave 2 was originally planned as a reconfigured version of Luketh's Schwartzkopf-inspired 'Shockwave', hence the name. However, I quickly abandoned the Steel Looping coaster in favour of the Steel Twister, discarded his layout and got on with building a coaster that is completely my own. It also fits into any park due to its compact and perfectly rectangular footprint. I had hoped to have the station and its building snuggled right into the rectangle but it didn't work out that way! :lol:

Throughput is nearly 5,000 peeps per hour with all four trains on the system. Only short queue/exit paths and a toilet were used when testing - what you'd expect to have around the station. I like a coaster to be good in its own right before it is artificially bumped up by trees. Any comments on the ride would be welcome.

Enjoy! :D

Edited by Woodpecker, 23 April 2009 - 04:16 PM.


#2 rcthelp

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Posted 23 April 2009 - 06:39 PM

I've never really got the hang of block sectioned mode, and you've reported a Ride Exchange bug with this so I loaded it into RCT2 and took a look. I have a couple of questions. Not criticisms OK?

Why have 7 block sections but only run 4 trains? Isn't the idea that you can run as many trains as there are sections?
If you DO put 5,6 or 7 trains on the ride, and put it into test mode, there is one section where the train won't make it all the way through and starts running backwards. Although the other blocks prevent any crashes, isn't this bad? It suggests that there is chance that this will happen when the ride is open with 4 trains, and you'll have to close it and reset it to clear the problem?

By the way, I am also looking at your Ridex bug report. Basically we read the track file, get the stored height and drop height and convert it. We do it with every ride. So unless our conversion is wrong for EVERY ride, then this looks like a bug with the game not storing the correct data in the track file that you have uploaded to the Exchange. I'm using http://www.strategyp...uk/tid/TD6.html as my reference for the TD6 file format.

#3 Woodpecker

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Posted 23 April 2009 - 10:41 PM

Thanks for your feedback.

Why have 7 block sections but only run 4 trains? Isn't the idea that you can run as many trains as there are sections?


No, it isn't. The following calculation is used for block section rides:

Number of trains = n-1

'n' is the number of blocks. You can see this on real rides such as Nemesis at Alton Towers. Nemesis has 3 points where it can stop the train: on the station brakes, in the station itself and on the lifthill. each of those is a block, so the maximum number of trains it can run is 2. In theory it could run 3, but it would be neither safe nor practical: train 2 would leave the station only when train 1 had left the lift, and if the electronics broke down while train 1 was running around it would crash into train 3, which is sitting on the station brakes. Basically, to create a smooth and safe operation the equation must be used.

On large rides, the number of blocks can become a problem if they occur too close or too far away from each other. Such was the case on Shockwave 2, where despite 5 initial blocks (final brakes, station brakes, station, lift, block brake following spiral) the distance between the mid-course block and the final brakerun was too far to prevent train 2 from waiting on the lift. That was simply bad design due to inexperience. As a result, I had to use anti-rollbacks to trick the game into thinking there were more blocks than there actually are. The coaster will stop a fully-loaded train just before the zero-g, but only in the game, not in real life. Unfortunately, placing anti-rollbacks here and near the end was the only way to ensure smooth operation without re-designing the entire layout.

If you DO put 5,6 or 7 trains on the ride, and put it into test mode, there is one section where the train won't make it all the way through and starts running backwards. Although the other blocks prevent any crashes, isn't this bad?


Yes it is, and it bothers me too. Even so, 2 things would have to happen in order for the train to stall in the corkscrews: 1) there would have to be a wheel-bearing failure before the zero-g, or too many trains on the track; 2) the train would have to be empty, or nearly empty in order to prevent the momentum of the passengers easing the train through at least one of them. I felt that these conditions were unlikely to occur simultaneously. There is however a more serious danger: I've seen anti-rollbacks NOT stop trains if the one in front valleys between two anti-rollbacks, thus causing a crash, although oddly that rule doesn't seem to apply on this coaster. Again, that would only be a risk if the conditions above were met. The problem is that lowering the corkscrews is not possible, as far as I have found. Incidentally, 4 trains is the maximum number you can put on before stacking occurs. There is always 1 train held for a few seconds outside the station, but putting 5 or 6 trains on means they stop somewhere else on the circuit. That's not good for rider experience or throughput. A train should not stop on a mid-course block unless there is an emergency, otherwise any gain from increasing the number of trains is cancelled by the length of time the trains stay still.

Does that answer your questions? :)

P.S. The only way to generate a decent queue for shockwave 2 is to use only 1 train, but as soon as the queue gets big enough to justify a second, I have to retest. That empties the queueline, and then the new throughput is too fast to allow enough peeps to form a queue at all! :angry: Even 2 trains struggles to get 2,000 an hour. The ride seems to be too efficient for its own good. :(

#4 rcthelp

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Posted 24 April 2009 - 07:27 AM

Well some of that explains a lot, and why I've not really been able to make block mode rides that I like.

If anybody else wants to join the discussion and review the ride, please download from this link http://forums.rctspa...m...=10&Id=2443

#5 Woodpecker

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Posted 24 April 2009 - 07:55 PM

Thanks for posting Shockwave 2 as an attachment. Here is Fossil's block-brake article:

http://www.rctmart.c...lockBrakes.html

:)

#6 rcthelp

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Posted 24 April 2009 - 08:17 PM

Bookmarked, thanks. Now going back to your Shockwave ride. Given that there are 7 trains possible, but it's only safe to use 4 trains otherwise you have a section that an empty train cannot complete, why not delete the block brake at the beginning of that troublesome section?

#7 Luketh

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Posted 24 April 2009 - 08:42 PM

Well.. put it this way, There's a very small chance that the coaster will suffer from a crash.

And AWSOME! You're using my ride as a basis... I'm flattered! :'(

#8 rcthelp

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Posted 24 April 2009 - 10:36 PM

Yes, but doesn't removing the offending block brake make the chances even smaller?

#9 Wolfman

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Posted 25 April 2009 - 04:58 AM

I use block brakes and anti-roll back constantly in my coaster designs. I've discovered, if you place a bit of track for the trains to cover before the lift hill, this spaces the trains apart time-wise, pretty well, so that you don't need to create as many block sections. It increases the time between the release of the trains and reaching the apex of the lift hill. Usually, a drop with some curving track gets the adrenalin going.

And I usually create a shuttle/holding area after the brake run, so if an emergency should take place, each train has a "parking space" before the unloading station. This has reduced the number of accidents tremendously. And this sort of renders the blocks out on the course to emergency measures only. They pretty much never need to be used, if just for the use of keeping the trains from stopping on the lift & roll back devices. Of course, if you allow the track design to create situations where the trains travel at less than 10 - 12 MPH, then you're just asking for a stalled train from time to time.

Sometimes I can end up with from anywhere from 7 block sections to 20 block sections. But only run a handful of trains. I only run as many trains as to keep a constant flow of empty trains into the loading station. Having a constant flow of trains makes it difficult to run full trains. But if you made a relatively decent layout, and don't cross into the extremes concerning the ratings... You'll find that the design will become popular, and eventually trains will become full, while keeping the wait to a minimum.

One of my best tracks is The Vine, (booster propulsion) which can be DLed HERE. It runs six or seven short trains simultaneously.
The ratings are a bit high for the average peep. But in parks where the rides need to be more aggressive, this ones a perfect fit.
No slow lift hill here. It uses boosters distributed throughout the track layout to keep the momentum going.
The brake run and shuttle block system keeps things under control.
NOT ONE ACCIDEDNT YET!

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#10 Woodpecker

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Posted 26 April 2009 - 07:13 AM

Thanks Wolfman, that's very useful. I've effected a sort of solution by lowering the first barrel roll to 35 feet, raising the ess-bend to 25 feet and adding a chain on the hill into it. That allowed me to remove the block before the barrel roll without losing the continuous movement of the trains. rcthelp: if I removed the brake before the roll, trains would stop on the mid-course after the spiral as the length of time between the roll and the final helix was too long. The new system has a nice ramp into the roll to make it look like more of a zero-g, and the final hill has been substituted with a 3-square, 15 Height mark safety block. This allows the 4th train to park somewhere and speeds up the train through the final barrel roll. :)




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