Since the release of the cheat codes about two weeks ago I've spend quite some time thinking about and honestly being quite frustrated with the friction in the game.
Some of my favorite wooden roller coasters are made by The Gravity Group, one of their most impressive ones being The Voyage, a 50m tall and almost 2000m long coaster. Before the cheat codes building a coaster this size would be far from possible, even without hills and turns taking away energy a 50m high wooden coaster in game only make it about 1100m (lift hill included) so I happily renamed a guest "JAMES TAYLOR" and built a beautiful woody, approx. 45m high and 1400m long (about as long and 10 meters higher than Boulder Dash, a CCI coaster, on whose cars the in game cars seem to be based). It made the track slightly to fast, but trim breaks made it perfect. After this I muttered some to myself about why Frontier would not simply give us a slider for controlling friction but overall I was satisfied. I also noted that the block break sections at the end of my coaster, the part before the lift hill and the turnaround at the top of the hill felt much better with the cheat activated, no longer did the train crawl to a halt instantly unless the track had a 11deg incline.
2 weeks later, yesterday, I decided to add a wing coaster to the park, built one inspired by Thunderbird and boy, the thing went through the track like a greased lightning on crack. From this (and watching some videos on YouTube) I came to three conclusions:
1: Friction is generally fine
2: Air resistance need to play a bigger role
3: Wooden coaster friction is based on quite old coasters
My suggestions based on this is as follows:
1: Make air resistance a bigger component of friction, right now a train going fast will lose speed at a reasonable rate but if you're at the end/beginning of the track and the train is moving at a slower speed it will lose what speed it have over no noticeable distance at all (which look quite silly if you have a flat turn between your break run and block breaks for example).
2: Allow different friction for individual coasters of the same type. This way you'd still be able to build a classic, high friction wooden coaster inspired by 1920 but you'd also be able to build modern, low friction, woodies like the ones build by CCI, GCI, Intamin and others. In game you could, for example, offer different sets of wheels/track, modern and classic, in the coasters settings and have them affect friction.
PS.
Planet Coaster is without a doubt one of the best games ever made
Some of my favorite wooden roller coasters are made by The Gravity Group, one of their most impressive ones being The Voyage, a 50m tall and almost 2000m long coaster. Before the cheat codes building a coaster this size would be far from possible, even without hills and turns taking away energy a 50m high wooden coaster in game only make it about 1100m (lift hill included) so I happily renamed a guest "JAMES TAYLOR" and built a beautiful woody, approx. 45m high and 1400m long (about as long and 10 meters higher than Boulder Dash, a CCI coaster, on whose cars the in game cars seem to be based). It made the track slightly to fast, but trim breaks made it perfect. After this I muttered some to myself about why Frontier would not simply give us a slider for controlling friction but overall I was satisfied. I also noted that the block break sections at the end of my coaster, the part before the lift hill and the turnaround at the top of the hill felt much better with the cheat activated, no longer did the train crawl to a halt instantly unless the track had a 11deg incline.
2 weeks later, yesterday, I decided to add a wing coaster to the park, built one inspired by Thunderbird and boy, the thing went through the track like a greased lightning on crack. From this (and watching some videos on YouTube) I came to three conclusions:
1: Friction is generally fine
2: Air resistance need to play a bigger role
3: Wooden coaster friction is based on quite old coasters
My suggestions based on this is as follows:
1: Make air resistance a bigger component of friction, right now a train going fast will lose speed at a reasonable rate but if you're at the end/beginning of the track and the train is moving at a slower speed it will lose what speed it have over no noticeable distance at all (which look quite silly if you have a flat turn between your break run and block breaks for example).
2: Allow different friction for individual coasters of the same type. This way you'd still be able to build a classic, high friction wooden coaster inspired by 1920 but you'd also be able to build modern, low friction, woodies like the ones build by CCI, GCI, Intamin and others. In game you could, for example, offer different sets of wheels/track, modern and classic, in the coasters settings and have them affect friction.
PS.
Planet Coaster is without a doubt one of the best games ever made
