Large Coaster "Wear and Tear" WAY too high [video]

[n3cr0]

Severity
Moderate

Frequency
All of the time (100% reproducible)

Area of Game Affected
Coasters

Description
I posted this before, and responded to the dev that said for me to refurbish a ride, all here: Other Bug Forum Thread

I added more detail after the dev post, but didn't receive a response, so I assume that I'm supposed to post another bug report.

Basically, when you get a ride that is too long/complicated ... or has too many of a particular piece, the maintenance gets to the point where it is IMPOSSIBLE to maintain the ride.

• Yes I know about refurbishment.
• Yes I know about training mechanics.
• Yes I know about marking zones so the right mechanic fixes the ride.
• No, I don't think that there should be a limit to how large you can build coasters. If you want to dump tons of money into a dedicated level 5 mechanic inspecting and maintaining a ride, you should be allowed to do it.

Here is a short video of the level 5 mechanic inspecting a newly refurbished ride after 10 minutes. You can see in the video that his inspection doesn't fix the "Wear and Tear" bar enough, and that it will always degrade. It takes about 2 cycles of inspection before the ride reaches 0 quality on the "Wear and Tear" meter (HD eventually -- YouTube is processing it): https://youtu.be/Uv0mKBM1Qbw


I posted on Reddit to see if there is anyone else, and while it doesn't seem a widespread concern, it is an issue. I assume that many others have the same problem and probably just don't realize that it is a bug.
Reddit Thread

It should be noted that the new "Harder" difficulty makes this issue much worse. Even smaller rides cannot be maintained.

I can provide a save file if you'd like to see the ride and test for yourself. Let me know where to send it / post it.


Steps to Reproduce
Make a big ride.
Watch it break after a while and there's literally nothing you can do about it other than hit "request inspection" every 2 minutes.

 

[QA-Mark]

The game mechanics here appear to be working as intended, but I will move the thread to our suggestions/ideas section for the design team to check out. [happy]

If others are seeing this, please can you screenshot the test results pages (with the length on it) and the running costs page?

 

[n3cr0]

I don't know if you'll see this or not -- I'm a ways after the response. But basically it's intended that there should be coasters that are un-maintainable? I don't see this crop up too often on other forums, but it seems to be a problem every so often... This thread for example: https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/16081-How-do-I-increase-ride-reliability

Anyhow, thanks for the response.

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

If you're going to make the rides break down so much as intended (especially on harder mode), please let guests stay in line and wait for it to be fixed. I have a wooden coaster and a mine coaster that break down every 5 or so minutes, it's absurd. Here are some suggestions,

- have the guests stay in line when it breaks down. if it takes too long, then they leave the line.
- a level 5 mechanic will repair/refurbish the ride and cause it to break down a heck of a lot less compared to a lower level mechanic.

 

[n3cr0]

Here are some more threads:

Multiple folks with the same issue: https://forums.planetcoaster.com/sh...t-are-long-length-break-down-after-each-cycle

Probably the same thing: https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/18236-Why-my-thrills-and-rides-get-always-broken

Older Reddit Thread (not me) https://www.reddit.com/r/PlanetCoas...es_breaking_down_far_too_frequently_coasters/

edit: It's not something that a ton of folks notice, but I bet a lot of people are dealing with maintenance getting out of hand too fast. I'm talking in terms of frequency, not cost. Maybe level 5 mechanics should cost more, or there should be a "maintenance" slider on the rides (like road/school/police etc. in Cities Skylines) that reduces or increases the amount of reliability.

 

[FinalMantasyX]

The game mechanics here appear to be working as intended, but I will move the thread to our suggestions/ideas section for the design team to check out. [happy]

If others are seeing this, please can you screenshot the test results pages (with the length on it) and the running costs page?

A ride having wear and tear so bad that a level 5 mechanic can't keep up with it and it breaks down every few runs is working as intended? [weird]

 

[Narad]

I was getting pretty frustrated with this on my challenge parks in hard and harder mode. Several folks suggested refurbishing and I didn't believe it would do anything. But after quite a bit of experimentation, i found that if I refurbish coasters every 6-10 months, a level 5 mechanic at 10 minute intervals tends to keep up. If it gets over 12 months between refurbishes the level 5 mechanic and 10 minute intervals does not maintain the coaster (or some flat rides like insanity and wild blue). I think the more complex the coaster, the more frequent refurbishing is required, but I am not positive on that. In the video, it looks like it is 8 months so I am guessting that coaster must have several trains, higher speeds and more special features.

Also, when I was short on cash in the game, I was able to extend the life between refurbishing by manually requesting 2 inspection right in a row. Each inspection brings it up a little. Usually only 2 were needed but sometimes I would do a third. Specifically: When a ride was getting weak, I would click request inspection and as soon as the mechanic stepped off the ride, I would click for another. It was a bit of a pain.

Please note: This was all before the winter update (v1.1), so I am not sure if something is tweaked differently now.

 

[n3cr0]

I was getting pretty frustrated with this on my challenge parks in hard and harder mode. Several folks suggested refurbishing and I didn't believe it would do anything. But after quite a bit of experimentation, i found that if I refurbish coasters every 6-10 months, a level 5 mechanic at 10 minute intervals tends to keep up. If it gets over 12 months between refurbishes the level 5 mechanic and 10 minute intervals does not maintain the coaster (or some flat rides like insanity and wild blue). I think the more complex the coaster, the more frequent refurbishing is required, but I am not positive on that. In the video, it looks like it is 8 months so I am guessting that coaster must have several trains, higher speeds and more special features.

Also, when I was short on cash in the game, I was able to extend the life between refurbishing by manually requesting 2 inspection right in a row. Each inspection brings it up a little. Usually only 2 were needed but sometimes I would do a third. Specifically: When a ride was getting weak, I would click request inspection and as soon as the mechanic stepped off the ride, I would click for another. It was a bit of a pain.

Please note: This was all before the winter update (v1.1), so I am not sure if something is tweaked differently now.

I've also done the "request inspection" a couple times in a row to bolster it -- but I'm not going to do that for multiple rides, it would become the game and in my book is not fun. Even though this ride is 8 months out, the fact remains that I cannot even refurbish it right now and so it basically is acting as "brand new" as it can be. I don't care how much money it costs or whatever, but I believe that it SHOULD be possible to maintain it.

edit: I've tested a few of my rides after the update and it's still an issue. I have actually stopped playing because I cannot build the way I want and until this specific mechanic is fixed. or I find a mod or cheat to bypass the maintenance issue, I feel very "meh" about playing since I know the things I love to create cannot be used in any park that relies on base game mechanics.

Thanks for the reply.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

A ride having wear and tear so bad that a level 5 mechanic can't keep up with it and it breaks down every few runs is working as intended? [weird]

I honestly think they don't really understand the issue yet. It's difficult to state clearly and even more difficult to search for in forums. I would best good money that tons of people are running up against this bug and either not noticing, or just think it's just them.

 

[Narad]

I've also done the "request inspection" a couple times in a row to bolster it -- but I'm not going to do that for multiple rides, it would become the game and in my book is not fun. Even though this ride is 8 months out, the fact remains that I cannot even refurbish it right now and so it basically is acting as "brand new" as it can be. I don't care how much money it costs or whatever, but I believe that it SHOULD be possible to maintain it.

Thanks for the reply.

Just to clarify: I wasn't defending the behavior, just sharing my observations and offering a painful work around. The developer confirmed this maintenance problem was intentional by moving this thread to suggestions from the bug forum. Take your own conclusions. I think the squirrel has left this tree.

 

[FinalMantasyX]

I honestly think they don't really understand the issue yet. It's difficult to state clearly and even more difficult to search for in forums. I would best good money that tons of people are running up against this bug and either not noticing, or just think it's just them.

Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Rides are in a state where it is literally impossible to keep them running, even if they aren't 60 years old. That's a problem, I dunno how they can say so confidently "that's working".

 

[edjenoh]

What would be really helpful is if we could at least change the inspection frequency to 5 minutes as a minimum instead of 10, or heck even make it custimizable to the individual minute.

 

[Curlyriff]

Yep ride breakdown is silly frequent at moment. It is just frustrating and has been brought up before with no real answer yet.

In sandbox all the stuff that should be removed:

Rides should be auto classic
Staff should be auto level 5
Staff happiness should be 100% constantly
Breakdown should be off or a super low frequency
Money stuff of any type should be off

And that way people who play Sandbox can just enjoy building and watching their guests etc. That is what sandbox after all is all about.

Career and Challenge just need major re-balance to make it work.

 

[edjenoh]

They should just make a wider range of strategies of how to do ride maintenance policy. Give people more options:


-Change the inspection rate so we can set it to individual minutes

-Change the depth of the inspection (more thorough inspections should allow you to lower the frequency time)

-Refurbishment (and initial building) should be available in different types of quality of the material (invest more to build a longer-term more reliable coaster or build cheap material and expect more frequent demand for inspections and refurbishment)

-Partial refurbishment as a cheaper alternative (only replacing the most run-down parts of the ride for example)

-Ride breakdown should not be affected by challenge mode difficulty, it's not realistic at all, why would material all of a sudden decay faster (well maybe in the new arctic biome it would make sense [big grin], but then they should also reduce wear and tear for example on coaster stations/ride that are build with a roof over head and walls around as an indoor ride is less exposed to weather elements and should be more reliable). Factors that should be affected by difficulty should be the implementation of new management challenges occuring in the game (yes, we want more features, not just tweaking of the existing stuff[yesnod]), staff wages, guests being harder to please (make happy) and attract to the park, guests willing to pay less money for rides, requiring more scenery and excitement/fear/nauseau rating to get a good prestige value of the ride, etc.

 

[RoninWoof]

It seems completely Bizarre that JUST because a track is long or higher that THAT would make it break down so much..... I built a standard large strata coaster in the style of a giga, with the only moving parts being the lift chain, the mid course break, and the block break at the end. The same exact thing on my smaller coasters, but the Giga coooooonstantly breaks for no apparent reason other than "derp that track with no elements or moving parts is longer!!!" It's silly!

Logically a coaster with a lot of moving parts or something would be more prone to breaking down. Like something with multiple break runs, something with a ton of magnetic accelerators like a Cheetah hunt or something.... Does King Da Ka break down constantly all day just because the track is tall?? Does Fury 325 break down simply because the parts of the coaster that are not breaks, or lift hills are long? Why can't a master mechanic keep up with operation in the SAME day?

 

[n3cr0]

They should just make a wider range of strategies of how to do ride maintenance policy. Give people more options:


-Change the inspection rate so we can set it to individual minutes

-Change the depth of the inspection (more thorough inspections should allow you to lower the frequency time)

-Refurbishment (and initial building) should be available in different types of quality of the material (invest more to build a longer-term more reliable coaster or build cheap material and expect more frequent demand for inspections and refurbishment)

-Partial refurbishment as a cheaper alternative (only replacing the most run-down parts of the ride for example)

-Ride breakdown should not be affected by challenge mode difficulty, it's not realistic at all, why would material all of a sudden decay faster (well maybe in the new arctic biome it would make sense [big grin], but then they should also reduce wear and tear for example on coaster stations/ride that are build with a roof over head and walls around as an indoor ride is less exposed to weather elements and should be more reliable). Factors that should be affected by difficulty should be the implementation of new management challenges occuring in the game (yes, we want more features, not just tweaking of the existing stuff[yesnod]), staff wages, guests being harder to please (make happy) and attract to the park, guests willing to pay less money for rides, requiring more scenery and excitement/fear/nauseau rating to get a good prestige value of the ride, etc.

I'd honestly be happy with only the first option of more granularity with mechanic inspection rotations -- this seems like a very easy and quick fix (and one that modders could easily make if the mod system was implemented).

 

[breezerHOG1]

Something like this is what I call "over compensating". The devs did not put enough depth into management and this inability to maintain ride functions is not how to make the game more fun. The devs said they scrapped/delayed security and vandals because it didnt seem fun to them, but condiments and refurbishments were fun?

Management should be something that happens within the game world, not within a menu. Raising employee levels should not be a click of a button, but to build a training facility that employees spend time in learning. All staff should require break rooms with shift changes, which would mean we would need to hire even more employees, but the hire system should also be based in groups of 5. Guests should wait in line for a short time during a breakdown. We should be able to switch the cars of a coaster (like in RCT1) as part of the refurbishments, and maybe there could be a visual cue to let us know when things are getting bad, like some smoke from the operating booth?

 

[FinalMantasyX]

Guests should wait in line for a short time during a breakdown.

Honestly with guests whining about 3 minute queues I guess if you scale the timeframe it makes sense they leave immediately. These guests won't wait in an hour long queue for a coaster, of course they won't wait 40 minutes to see if it comes back up or not. [haha]

 

[Curlyriff]

Something like this is what I call "over compensating". The devs did not put enough depth into management and this inability to maintain ride functions is not how to make the game more fun. The devs said they scrapped/delayed security and vandals because it didnt seem fun to them, but condiments and refurbishments were fun?

Management should be something that happens within the game world, not within a menu. Raising employee levels should not be a click of a button, but to build a training facility that employees spend time in learning. All staff should require break rooms with shift changes, which would mean we would need to hire even more employees, but the hire system should also be based in groups of 5. Guests should wait in line for a short time during a breakdown. We should be able to switch the cars of a coaster (like in RCT1) as part of the refurbishments, and maybe there could be a visual cue to let us know when things are getting bad, like some smoke from the operating booth?

I don't want to hire in groups tbh as I want to maybe only have 3 total people at one point. Other than that I agree with everything.

 

[BlackShark]

The game mechanics here appear to be working as intended, but I will move the thread to our suggestions/ideas section for the design team to check out. [happy]

If others are seeing this, please can you screenshot the test results pages (with the length on it) and the running costs page?

I have never had this issue. But this is because I tend to build coasters as mild and as low as possible.
But I noticed something : the 2 people who posted screenshots/videos of their coaster have built giga woodies and don't understand why this was very wrong.

I believe the root of the problem is not the fact that they have built impossible coasters, I believe the problem is that they do not understand why these coasters should not be possible.
-the game does not explain the reliability system
-the game does not explain the strengths and weaknesses of each coaster type (giga woodies, seriously...)
-the game does not provide any feedback of your action while you build it
-the game does not provide any detail on why the ride is unreliable and how you can modify it after you have built it
-sandbox mode does not deactivate the reliability system (no cheat mode for people who just want to make silly coasters)

I like the suggestion of being able to pay more for reinforced construction in order be upgrade the capabilities of your coaster.

 

[random name]

Something like this is what I call "over compensating". The devs did not put enough depth into management and this inability to maintain ride functions is not how to make the game more fun. The devs said they scrapped/delayed security and vandals because it didn't seem fun to them, but condiments and refurbishments were fun?

I totally agree here.

TBQH I think the update has impacted the game's fun factor, and I find several items that have been added to "improve" the challenge of management (i.e., make things harder, pointlessly) have just made the game less fun. And I'm playing sandbox, mind you, not high level challenges, yet I am constantly having rides breaking down, physically replacing a few (if this is necessary, then give us a "rebuild in place" checkbox), seeing floods of peeps overwhelming queues of popular rides, desert wastelands made of flat ride areas which once bustled along, even though you spent hours to make the scenery rating perfect (all that work for nothing), some shops crazy popular, others shuttered, and so on. Not much fun, this.

That said, I do like the idea of aging and of shifting popularity with time, but these mechanics have been too aggressively implemented and have lost any mooring to simulating RL. They should be dialed back and re-balanced. But more broadly, this is not how you make management more interesting; these are quick fixes, band-aids, and just throwing grit in the works and creating annoyance is not helping gameplay. I really encourage the devs to invest the time to create some entirely new management mechanics; this will pay off with higher player approval, given the bad rep this area of the game currently has, if well-handled.

I also agree and posted a suggestion thread before that this should not be more pop-up windows, but something that affects the map--I like the idea of facilities like a back office for staff and warehouse/distribution point needed to be actually integrated into the game and plopped down to open your plot of land as an actual park. Like the mayor's house and utilities plant in a city builder. And they should not be brick cubes but detailed, banal buildings that you have to dissimulate in your landscape. You can click on them and get your stats and management screens as well. The devs can also do things like create advisors, competitors, economic swings affecting profits, these are tried and true for the genre, and they surely can come up with their unique take on this stuff. These are the sorts of things that the game needs to make management more interesting, not rides breaking down every five minutes, the peeps shunning your rides until they're "vintage," and having to re-plop your rides.

On a related note, I'm not sure what factors motivate the "guest brain" -- I assume it is a mix of the ride factors of excitement, fear, nausea, as well as price and overall appeal, based on the scenery rating -- but what I sense is going on is that the ride factors are too important in guiding the peeps, particularly the family segment, which should favor the calmer flats, but which nonetheless flock to coasters with all the rest, doubtless drawn by the excitement factor, now redoubled by reputation. I think there should be much less appeal of that adrenaline rush for families; though I've oriented my marketing budget to them, they largely ignore family rides and amenities. They should have more attraction to scenery for example, which is important for flat rides. I hope the rides like carousels and Ferris wheels are tagged for families, but somehow doubt this is the case.

The point here being, not only are wear and tear and reputation out of whack, but the guest brain also appears unbalanced right now.