Thanks for your interest in the Persistent Jobs mod for Derail Valley. I originally created it to enhance game immersion after I got frustrated that jobs—and thus also the train cars in the yard—were refreshing while I was shunting at Steel Mill.
Since then, it grew to be a collection of gameplay tweaks for various aspects of the game's job system that I wished behaved differently. This organic growth was not always well documented, well communicated, or well structured. The mod slowly succumbed to scope creep.
The code became hard to manage, and I had other projects that demanded my attention, so I no longer wished to support Persistent Jobs. This happened around the time that Derail Valley build 92 was released. (For reference, the first release of the Simulator update was build 93.) Build 92 introduced some incompatibilities, making build 91 the last version of the game that Persistent Jobs actually works with.
One such other project is Rolling Stock Ownership (RSO), a mod that introduces the gameplay mechanic of having to purchase the railway equipment (locomotives and wagons) that the player wishes to use to complete jobs around the valley. As it would be No Fun™ if the equipment one buys—and thus the in-game money one had invested in it—disappears, RSO necessarily introduces persistence for locomotives and wagons. Therefore, I view it as a spiritual successor to Persistent Jobs.
RSO introduces a number of improvements over Persistent Jobs too. Locomotives are persistent, an oft requested feature of Persistent Jobs that it was never made to do. Performance is improved, a common complaint from players who have visited all the stations at least once while running Persistent Jobs. And most importantly, RSO has a well focused scope.
Therefore, Persistent Jobs has been sunset. I may eventually seek to port additional functionality from Persistent Jobs to separate, interoperable mods, but I will not be updating Persistent Jobs for Simulator or making any further changes to it. The repository will remain published in an archived state for reference and archival purposes.
Thanks for all the fun over these years of developing Persistent Jobs.
See ya in the next mod,
Niko Fox 💜