Steel Hydra Swinging Coaster Thoughts

JayketheKid

JayketheKid
For me, the part of the recent update i was most excited for was the swinging coaster, Steel Hydra. I thought it could be one of the most accurate coaster types in the game. Upon building my own Steel Hydra, i was slightly disapointed. I have a few problems with the coaster that prevents me from making realistic versions of the ride in game. The biggest complaint I have is that the track piece length is limited too much. Many of the real life swinging coasters have tiny changes of directions that you can not recreate in game due to the track segments having to be so long. I could not find a picture of said quick changes in direction, but watch a pov of Ninja at Six Flags Magic Mountain or Vampire at Chessington. A quick solution to this would be to allow players to make short track sections. You can make short track sections with the friction brakes, but just not with normal track. Another issue i have is that the swinging of the ride vehicles is dampened too much. If i go from a hard right turn to a hard left turn, the vehicles do not swing out to the other side until its nearly out of the second turn. Yes, in real life the swinging coasters are dampened, but having ridden a few myself, i can say they are definitely not dampened that hard. And the last, but minor, complaint i have is that the catwalk is ugly and very unrealistic. The actual stairs of the catwalk is too spread out. I'm sure its that way because the developers thought it would prevent collision of the ride vehicles and the catwalk itself, but in real life, the vehicles wouldn't be swinging on catwalks except on a brake run. I know I've had nothing but complaints over this ride, but i must say, it is still a very good coaster, and i'm sure a lot went into its creation.

Also, i forgot to mention that when banking above 45 degrees, the supports seem to disappear, especially if you're turning to the right.
 
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Chems

Chems
Yeah I agree with all of this. The long sections of track really limit this coaster's potential. The reason it can't have short track segments is because the coaster cars would collide with each other. I really wish they just got rid of all the coaster restrictions. I kinda understand why they're there for career mode but in creative mode they should be able to be turned off, just like collision.
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
Yeah, the minimum track section of 18m is bothersome but I can deal with it. What bugs me more is that I built a layout that I can't use because it won't let me place an entrance on the station. The track crosses over the brake run, not the station, before entering the final helix. Yet despite not having any track over the station platform at all, I'm unable to place an entrance. I can't even change the type of station to put the entrance o the other side. And this happens whether I have collision detections on or off. Very strange. I need to research this a bit more and submit a bug report (although if anybody wants to go this before I have the chance, feel free).

Bugs aside, I find this coaster to be somewhat disappointing because you can't do anything very interesting with it. It of course can't invert at all. Then the inflexible track length prevents carefully sculpting long airtime hills. So all you're left with is a series of turns, which at least play to its feature of swinging cars. But this itself is problematic because swinging the cars requires converting some of the coaster's forward momentum into angular momentum. Thus, this coaster loses speed VERY quickly whenever it does anything. This means either short tracks, boring layouts, multiple lift hills, or some combination of these.

The original Kings' Island "Bat" needed 3 lift hills for its ~2 minute duration. So I suppose the version in PC is being very realistic in the way it bleeds speed so rapidly. Yay, realism :) But multiple lifts increase operating costs, decrease reliability, and put a hurt on EFN ratings due to the coaster being slow through them. So short, boring tracks seem to be somewhat more practical, but hurt prestige due to short duration. But then the irreducible track segment length makes it difficult to squeeze the layout into a small space.

BUT, OTOH, this type of coaster was considered a real clunker. As I understand things, few were built and they didn't last very long. So I suppose we shouldn't expect to do any better in the game.
 

Ddef12

D
I also have noticed the supports are removed if the banking is too high and you have a lot of sections of floating coaster track. Hopefully they work on this coaster a bit. I know they made a change to it in 1.2.1 but I think it was to have the sections be longer if I'm not mistaken
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
Ddef12 said:
I also have noticed the supports are removed if the banking is too high and you have a lot of sections of floating coaster track. Hopefully they work on this coaster a bit. I know they made a change to it in 1.2.1 but I think it was to have the sections be longer if I'm not mistaken
Click to expand...

The Bakasura had the issue of no supports on banked curves and they fixed that in 1.2.1. Maybe nobody reported it for the Steel Hydra?
 

Phenix Studios

Phenix Studios
Bullethead.. I'm going to agree with everything you have said here. I've gotten my Big Bad Wolf coaster as close as possible as I can get to the actual ride. I wish it was faster.. I had to make the first drop higher to get speed through turns than it should be.. and the last drop isn't exact either because I can't do shorter track pieces.. Plus.. god forbid you take a piece out of the track to try to change it and then have to reconnect it. I understand they updated it today with LONGER pieces so that might help with connection problems.. but i really want shorter pieces. I get why they aren't there because of the cars colliding. I just wish it was possible. it would make things a lot easier for me anyway. Still I think I got a pretty accurate as can be recreation of BBW.
 

Ddef12

D
I really hope smaller sections get added too. They exist in real life.
I took a screen grab of the Big Bad Wolf train leaving from a YouTube video but I'm on mobile and can't upload it right now

But in the very beginning of the video attached it is smaller sections

[video=youtube_share;wD37Kn39de4]https://youtu.be/wD37Kn39de4[/video]
 

Bullethead

Bullethead
I don't understand the connection between track segment length and cars colliding. I mean, that seems like it would be more a function of turn radius than segment length. So just put a limit on how much bend you can put in a track segment of a given length and allow the length to be arbitrary.

I mean, the game does allow you to make block brakes and such down to about 5m long, so why not the regular track, too?
 

JayketheKid

JayketheKid
Bullethead said:
I don't understand the connection between track segment length and cars colliding. I mean, that seems like it would be more a function of turn radius than segment length. So just put a limit on how much bend you can put in a track segment of a given length and allow the length to be arbitrary.

I mean, the game does allow you to make block brakes and such down to about 5m long, so why not the regular track, too?
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly. They should limit the radius instead of the track length. By using friction brakes, it allows for short segments and you can bend those far enough for the cars to collide. It seems that a lot of the problems with this coaster rely from the inability to make short segments.
 

Chems

Chems
Bullethead said:
I don't understand the connection between track segment length and cars colliding. I mean, that seems like it would be more a function of turn radius than segment length. So just put a limit on how much bend you can put in a track segment of a given length and allow the length to be arbitrary.
Click to expand...

AFAIK the game already does this for the vertical angle, so there really isn't any reason for the 18m track length. And even if the cars collide, so what? We can turn off collision and make the coaster track intersect with each other.. Also, on coasters with bigger trains like the mine train or single rail you can make the cars intersect each other when making sharp turns.
 

S100Headache

S
Fired up the game quick and built a little track. Yeah, the huge track sections are stifling. On the plus side, the nausea ratings are not through-the-roof like they were in the RCT series.
 
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