Brake failure probability, breakdown rate & reverser coaster crash speeds.

[CSEverett]

A simple question first - what's the "flying off the track" speed for the Reverser coaster, for crests of hills and beginnings of drops? A reverser coaster of mine suffered a crash after years of operation, and I never was able to figure out why, but those speeds might contain the answer.

Second - how likely is a "brakes failure" breakdown, and what goes in to calculating the chance of a breakdown being that type? I've heard that more brakes either make it less likely or do nothing, and an offhand references that it's more likely when it's raining, and that reliability of the ride has to be below 50%, is any of that true? Also a brakes failure disables all brakes, not just the station ones, correct? 

I've been running a large park for 20 years of in-game time, and I never let anything get below around 50 percent reliability before refurbishing it, but something breaks down every few minutes, and there's usually at least one ride broken down at any point. (Does breakdown rate for a given reliability vary with ride type? I've been using wooden and other older design coasters.) 10 minutes inspections on all rides too. I've had maybe a hundred breakdowns by now, but no brake failures, which seems somewhat odd, unless that's supposed to be how it works with a well-run park, but I'd have thought the odds would have caught up with me by now.

[astraylife]

I cannot answer all of your questions. But from my experience brake failure is extremely rare. It does affect all normal brakes and the station brakes. However, it does not affect block brakes, even in continuous operating mode. So when I create a coaster that will run without block brake mode, I always add two block brakes back to back before the station. After building a block brake you have to remember to change the coaster back to continuous mode since the game will default the ride to block section mode whenever you build a block brake. But two block brake track pieces is enough to slow the trains to a safe speed in the event of a brake failure. For some reason just once block track piece doesn't always work. I've noticed inconsistencies with the speed at which just one block track slows the train. Anyway, that's my method to ensure no crashes.

As for your crash you cannot figure out, sometimes a safety cut out will stop the lift chain and the trains will back up at a lifthill. Then when it restarts, if there are some trains full and some empty, the full cars can catch up to the empty ones, sometimes at speed, causing a crash. I've had a mine car ride that would crash randomly after breakdowns. Always fun to troubleshoot and then try and build a safer coaster. Hope this helps.

This video may also help for derails...this guy does very informative videos on all sorts of RCT2 stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5l0Wl8xD2k

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by astraylife
Adding link

[CSEverett]

Funny thing - my takeaway from looking all this up was the brake failures aren't something to be concerned about. 

Than my coasters started dropping below 50% reliability and more than 2 years old, and I've had two full-blown brakes failure crashes, and one "last breakdown" of brakes failure on a coaster that (usually) just barely wouldn't crash from it. One of them was on a mine train switchback coaster that only ran one train which was half full and not at the station, so I can confirm it affects ALL brakes, not just those at the station. (I paused it and have a screenshot of a mine train locomotive plunging off the end of a "destroyed" trestle into the canyon below, If anybody's interested.)

 

Current takeaway - if your rides drop below 50% and and are more than two years old, with 10 or so coasters you'll have a brakes failure about once a year. Thanks for the top about block brakes, by the way, it's been useful during rebuilds.

[Ruuuubs]

Personally I always keep my single car rollercoasters on "Wait for Full Load", as I suspect that these crashes are indeed caused by fuller, heavier trains catching up with the slower, empty ones. While I'd suspect these are more likely after safety cut offs (especially with multiple lift hills), don't forget that on long rides with slower sections, that one full train can easily end up going 50-100% faster over parts, more than enough to eventually catch up given enough time/short releases between trains.

For coasters like the reverser though, there's always the possibility that you just got unlucky with 6 very heavy guests putting the train juuuust over the speed limit to crash, combined with some possible random variation in coaster speed (which I swear does happen occasionally, such as with brakes). You'd need to be pretty unlucky to get it, thus the delay, but if it's possible, it'll happen eventually.

As a final aside, another personal way of avoiding such crashes (in addition to waiting for full load) is to make sure the trains travel straight from the station to the lift hill, with no space for another car to dispatch when there's no block sections (and no second lift hills). That way a train can't leave the station, get stuck on the lift hill, and have another train come up right behind it on the lift hill. Even if they don't directly collide and crash (like on a mid course lift hill), the trains collision often slows them right down after the lift hill (from them still "colliding"), or requires a load of bumping to get a stalled train onto the lift hill (with similar problems).

 

That, and sometimes the game just calculates something funny that causes a crash. That's how I've had rides crashing when one's going through a loop and the other is on track going through that loop, a ride with no speed issue just... Slowing down, and the best one, a stand up coaster flying off the track. On a complete circuit. In the original RCT.

[Ruuuubs]

Oh, and for other brakes that will never fail, try the water splash on a wooden rollercoaster or the holding braking for drop on the Vertical. The former isn't all that strong unfortunately, but a holding brake followed by a steep to level piece will always leave the train slow enough to avoid crashes!