Crash: Difference between revisions

It is important to note that a ride that exhibits other possible causes of crashing may operate normally without incident for many years as long as it does not experience specific breakdowns. Therefore, a ride breakdown is sometimes indirectly responsible for a ride crashing because it drastically increases the chances of the ride crashing due to other causes. One of the most notorious examples comes from any ride design where the car enters the station exceeding 30mph (48km/h) while another car is at the station. Under normal operations, the car that enters the station will be slowed down safely by the station platform's brakes the moment it enters, and it would fetch up behind the other car in the station without incident. However, if the ride experiences a "Station Brakes Failure" or "Brakes Failure", the car will not slow down as it enters the station and will crash the moment it collides with the other car that is already in the station as it is travelling at a speed exceeding 30mph at the time of impact. As an example, most pre-installed and pre-built track designs in RCT1 are highly prone to crashing due to breakdowns, especially if they run more than one car.

In RCT1, it is difficult to completely prevent crashes caused by the "Station Brakes Failure" breakdown or crashes caused by a stall as the result of a "Safety Cut-out" breakdown. The easiest way to prevent such crashes is to remove all but one car/train from the ride, though this reduces the number of guests that can ride at once, and thus lowers the ride's profitability. Adding "brake runs" (sections of track filled with brakes) can also reduce the speed of the cars midway through the track or right at the end, giving the cars less momentum and possibly preventing a crash; an additional effect of having brake sections on the track is that they reduce the chances of a "Station Brakes Failure" breakdown occurring. One way to keep the duration (and, in the short-term, likelihood) of breakdowns low is to set the inspection time for rides to "Every 10 minutes", and placing a mechanic right at the exit of each ride with a patrol path on the exit of the ride. This reduces the rate at which the ride's reliability drops, and in the event of a brakes failure, the mechanic is right there to quickly respond and fix the ride. A different way to prevent crashes is to make sure that there will only ever be one train in or near the station or on lift hills by adjusting the ride's minimum and maximum wait times. The ideal amount of minimum and maximum wait time varies per ride, and there are no universal safe values or easy formula for safe times; the best way to find out good times is to experiment. Another option is to design the ride such that its cars always traverse hills and drops and approach and enter the station at safe speeds even during breakdowns, eliminating any chances of a crash.

In RCT3, peeps cannot die under ''any'' circumstances. In addition, cars that impact each other at high speed no longer explode, instead bouncing way from each other upon impact—this completely removes all possibility of a crash arising from two cars colliding with each other at high speed. Crashes can still occur, however, if the train leaves its ride boundary either by overshooting the end of the track (for incomplete circuits) or by flying off a corner while attempting to negotiate it at high speed (for rides with unattached cars). The other negative effects of a crash (such as a decrease in park rating) are also carried over from the previous games. Finally, a crash is considered to have happened the moment the first car leaves the ride boundary, as opposed to the first car exploding after leaving the ride boundary in previous games, although any cars that do leave the ride boundaries will bounce around the surface they impacted (or in the case of water, sink slowly) for a few seconds before actually exploding.