Switch Coaster Types: Booster sometimes not working

[S-Man42]

Hi

I played around with the roller coaster type switch and I found something strange. I build a test coaster with a brake and a booster. The brakes always work. But the booster sometimes has no effect. How can this be explained?

1. Wooden Wild Mouse: No brake, no booster --> brake works, booster not.

2. (Steel) Wild Mouse: Brake, no booster, but has booster sprites (!) --> brake works, booster not.

3. Giga Coaster: Both pieces exist, both work. (But: Booster is set to 20km/h, the graph shows much more?!)

4. LIM: Brakes, no booster: brake work, booster work (with correct 20km/h value)

 

The brake always works as expected but the booster piece always work different. What is the logic behind this? Or is this a bug?

 

Greets S-Man

Edited March 20, 2018 by S-Man42

[Deurklink]

Not all trains are coded to work with boosters. For those it may be better to use a fast chainlift.  

^ disregard that, boosters work if you use a different train.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Deurklink

[X7123M3-256]

3 hours ago, S-Man42 said:

 

2. (Steel) Wild Mouse: Brake, no booster, but has booster sprites (!) --> brake works, booster not.

It does not have booster sprites. That's a spinning control toggle. The booster piece is actually the same track piece as the spinning control toggle, the game just changes the behaviour based on the track type. On wild mouse track, it functions as a spinning control toggle, and on everything else it behaves as a booster. This had to be done because it is impossible to add a new track piece to the game without a new save format, so they had to repurpose an existing one that most track types don't use.

 

48 minutes ago, Deurklink said:

Not all trains are coded to work with boosters. For those it may be better to use a fast chainlift. 

What do you mean "coded to work with boosters"? Object files don't contain code. Can you give an example of a train that doesn't work?

[S-Man42]

I tried dinghies and at the screenshots you can see the spinning mouse cars

[Deurklink]

6 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

It does not have booster sprites. That's a spinning control toggle. The booster piece is actually the same track piece as the spinning control toggle, the game just changes the behaviour based on the track type. On wild mouse track, it functions as a spinning control toggle, and on everything else it behaves as a booster. This had to be done because it is impossible to add a new track piece to the game without a new save format, so they had to repurpose an existing one that most track types don't use.

 

What do you mean "coded to work with boosters"? Object files don't contain code. Can you give an example of a train that doesn't work?

Ah, my bad, confused some stuff. Other trains indeed use boosters normally. Depending on the used trains, you will see different acceleration rates though.

@S-Man42, thats because that track type doesnt have boosters. If you build a giga coaster track and put a wild mouse car on it using cheats, you will see the wild mouse car accelerate over the booster.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Deurklink

[X7123M3-256]

6 hours ago, S-Man42 said:

I tried dinghies and at the screenshots you can see the spinning mouse cars

Both of those work for me.

 

3 minutes ago, Deurklink said:

Ah, my bad, confused some stuff. Other trains indeed use boosters normally. Depending on the used trains, you will see different acceleration rates though.

That's probably due to the trains having differing mass.

[S-Man42]

Sorry, this is confusing me. Let us take the fourth case: The booster works althought the LIM hasn't one. At the screenshots you see the spinning mouse which originally hasn't one too. 

At the giga coaster's booster the same train is accelerating too much. No weight difference because it is same train. 

And why does it work for the LIM and not for the wild mouse: Both have no boosters.

Edited March 21, 2018 by S-Man42

[X7123M3-256]

3 hours ago, S-Man42 said:

And why does it work for the LIM and not for the wild mouse: Both have no boosters.

Because the wild mouse treats that piece as a spinning control toggle. This should be a special case; the wild mouse is the only track on which boosters will not work, because there are no boosters.  As soon as you switch the track style to wild mouse, every booster piece turns into a spinning control toggle piece.

As for the reason why it's not reaching full speed, I don't think this is to do with the train but the track style. I think the booster acceleration is different on different tracks, but someone else would have to confirm as I've not looked at it in too much depth. If you put a longer section of booster it should reach the specified speed.

Edited March 21, 2018 by X7123M3-256

[S-Man42]

2 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

the wild mouse is the only track on which boosters will not work, because there are no boosters

Ok, and this is for all wild mouse style? (because it is also for the wooden wild mouse which has no spinning piece) 

2 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

If you put a longer section of booster it should reach the specified speed.

But the problem is: The LIM is right (the booster value is 20kmh; the LIM graph shows this value), the giga is too fast as you can see at the graph. 

Edited March 21, 2018 by S-Man42

[jensj12]

The booster strength has been boosted for some coasters to reduce the number of boosters needed for accelerating large trains to high speeds. As you can see in the graph, the gigs booster is stronger than the LIM one. I think the speed simply overshoots the target value. The same thing can happen to brakes (try a 6km/h brake on single-car vertical drop coaster, some will almost come to a complete stop).

[S-Man42]

Hm seems logical... in a way I have to accept it Thanks. 

But there's still the mystery why the booster doesn't work with the wooden wild mouse althought there's no spinning piece which could override the booster functionality

[S-Man42]

OK, I played around a little bit. I think my problem can be explained: The wooden wild mouse interprets the spinning piece also as spinning one and not as booster.

[Gymnasiast]

On 23-3-2018 at 16:35, S-Man42 said:

OK, I played around a little bit. I think my problem can be explained: The wooden wild mouse interprets the spinning piece also as spinning one and not as booster.

Nope, not the case. Only the Steel Wild Mouse has the spinning control toggle logic. The reason it doesn't work is that every ride type has a 'booster acceleration factor' that determines how fast the booster accelerates. On the wooden wild mouse, this factor is set to 0.

Most of these values were directly taken from RCT2, even though it didn't have boosters as such, just launched lift hills, and then only on the Twister RC. Why RCT2 actually set proper acceleration values on many roller coaster types is not completely clear.

[TheMathsGod]

Going back to the Giga coaster, its boosters have a max of 134mph as opposed to 67mph on most other coasters. (Yes, I use miles per hour. You can convert it if you really need to.)

I'm not sure if this is what you meant earlier, but based on what I've seen people talking about the game code, I assume that the Giga coaster uses the same values (whatever they are) for the booster speed and interprets them as higher speeds, so what would be a 20km/h booster on another coaster type becomes a faster booster when switched to the Giga coaster. That would explain the higher max speed.