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How to find out if a route is good to make money

Started by oyasuminasai, September 17, 2008, 10:28:13 AM

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oyasuminasai

Hi everybody.

Is there a way to find out if a route is good to make money? I think I've found it:  ;)

you have to see if the cost per km of your mean of transport is higher than the revenue of the goods it's carrying.  ???

Example: a H-Trans Car transporter carries 16 cars. It costs 5,00 ¢ per km. 1 carried car's revenue is 1,27 ¢ per km (as seen in "all goods list"); so if you carry 16 cars your revenue is 1,27 ¢ *16 = 20,32 ¢ per km. So 20,32 ¢ per km (revenues) - 5,00 ¢ per km (cost) = 15,32 ¢ per km (pure earnings).  :o

I use this method to find out if trucks are more profitable than trains in carrying the same type of good, or to find out what is the minimum profitable percentage of load that gives pure earnings.  ::)

But I've seen that for cement transport it doesn't work, even if the calculation I do tells me that would be earnings: when I transport cement I'm always in loss.  :-\
So I think my method isn't totally right and I ask you: what is the way Simutrans calculate costs and revenues of goods?

Sorry for my bad English  :(

DirrrtyDirk

I think one thing you forgot is that while you must pay for every km your vehicle moves between stops, you don't necessarily also get paid for all of them (detours are / should not be payed). Also speed bonus comes into effect somewhere along the line.

Don't know if that's enough to explain the cement issue, though...
  
***** PAK128 Dev Team - semi-retired*****

yoshi

Usually, you cannot operate goods route with 100% full and one way of the return trip is emply. This is the main reason that your calculation doesn't work. So in your example, the actual operation costs would be 10.00 ¢ / km.

And also, Simutrans calculate the revenue, based on the the shortest distance between the starting point and destination. So if your line makes a detour, you could have less revenue than you expected.

oyasuminasai

Yoshi you are right: before I forgot to say that you usuallay have to double the cost per km...

I also made a mistake: the unprofitable transport is AAC stones (and not cement as I said before), because a H-Trans Truck costs 12.30 ¢ per km * 2 = 24.30 ¢ per km. H-Trans Truck can carry 46 crates boxed goods; AAc stones revenue is 0.43 ¢ per crate; so 46 * 0.43 ¢ = 19.78 ¢ per km.

19.78 ¢ (revenues) - 24.30 ¢ (cost) = -4.52 ¢ (net loss per km). Even if the route the straightest