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€€€ Difficulty to start a game AND making money €€€

Started by Argelle, August 18, 2016, 06:33:24 AM

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Argelle

Hello !  :D

After 2 or 3 dozen hours long games and picking up here and there tips and advice, I may be a little positive operation profit (yea !).
Trouble is, most of the time, industry a far from existing road, and I have problem evaluating the good oportunity before I test it.

So, for the very first line:
- try to find something not of nowhere
- look at goods rentability (shift G)
- send the first truck to work
- evaluate truck operation cost

So far, so good, with finances (F) I can tell how many trucks I need before my operation profit is positive, since
- maintenance stays the same
- after a run with very first truck, I know how much benefit I will get
- I can monitor all of this with finances (mounthly)
All of this on a 1024*1024 map with latest pak 128 (coal to a glass maker, sand, they do work).

Now, the second line, I can guess what the costs are, not so the profit, as it fluctuate for the first line.
And when I start adding passagers busses, hello nightmare. The breakdown line by line is too complicated.
I end up trying to connect inductry to town workers (work ok, but as far as making money ?)
Trying to connect cities (big failure).
But my main concern is :

how do i get a nice finance resumé line by line?
- benefice
- operation
- maintenance
- operational profit


Vladki


Argelle

Oh, I see.
Thanks for your quick answer.
I did not use the line management for this, because it lacks the management costs and real profit. but I guess it's due to the fact that different lines can share the same equipment?




DrSuperGood

Quotebut I guess it's due to the fact that different lines can share the same equipment?
Ways and stops can be shared with multiple lines and there is no sensible way to meter them for individual lines (it is possible, but not worth it for the computer overhead).

Maintenance is not really a problem once you know what you are doing. I would recommend avoiding coal and such low value industries at the start. Instead industries like milk (high value) or oil to a power station (high quantity) will be much more lucrative.

Argelle

OK, I'll try this. I choose coal, because it was possible to set up sand as well for glass factory and cereales for a brewry. I'm still struggling to get a map that look "natural" (see http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=15673.0 ). May be early (1930-1950) starts is bad (no much infrastructure), and I should try later times or wait for industries to pop up ?

Ters

Starting year does not affect how many pre-built roads there are or how many industries. Both are direct settings in the map generation. As far as I know, there will not be built any new intercity roads after map generation, just streets, except by players (including AI players, if enabled). More industries will pop up based on growth stimulated by the player(s).

Vladki

Look also for opportunities to deliver some cargo both ways with the same vehicle, or sharing the infrastructure by multiple lines

Argelle

Thanks to your advice, it's getting better. Still go some questions :

First, storage.

On this exemple, the platform close to the harbor is the starting one (1930) and should hold 160 t (storage capacity).
But anyhow, the dockers must be skilled as these are 660 tons of fishes !!

Second : where are the bottlenecks?
If I only supply an industry with one out of three products it need, when will it stop accepting (no more space)?
Do I have a long time till it happens?

Last question : what would you do in such a case ?

The fishing boat is way too poxerfull, and brings back way to much fish.
To start slowly, I only use trucks from harbor to industrie. But it feels like emptying the sea with a spoon.
Short of stocking the fishing boat at shore for half of the year, how do you manage this ?

Vladki

Station storage affects only the source station. In your example it is the fish swarm in the sea. The harbor is a transfer station and can be overcrowded. (There are options to disallow routing over crowded stops, but not enforced ny default.)

Click on factory to see the input and output storage size and actual amount of stored goods. Also production rate is shown there.

Check if your trucks are able to supply the cannery faster than fish is consumed. If not, add more trucks or build a train line. If you supply enough, try to deliver fish to more canneries.

Ters

Quote from: Argelle on August 19, 2016, 04:31:00 PM
If I only supply an industry with one out of three products it need, when will it stop accepting (no more space)?

That depends on whether the industry is an end-consumer or and intermediate industry. End-consumers will consume whatever it is supplied with. Intermediaries will only consume when it has something of every kind of input. If that condition is met, it will however keep producing as long as at least one of its outputs is not full. The overflow of the other products are simply discarded. Once all outputs are full, it will stop producing, and therefore also stop consuming.

Argelle

Thanks, that clarify a lot for me.

About transfer stations getting overcrowded well above the storage capacity, can it be exploited to transport goods from a produceur, "store" it in a transfer station, and transport again to a consummer? Therefore transporters will be running forever (and get paid) and the transfer station will serve as an infinite "sink"/buffer.

Ters

A relatively recent addition to Simutrans keeps track of how much goods is in transit. This will cause industries to stop ordering more from their supplier at some point until some of it eventually arrive and get consumed. I think this applies to both industry simulation modes, knows as JIT1 and JIT2.

Even without that, if one keeps filling a station, but never emptying it, the game will eventually crash. It will take a very long time, though. And one could simply remove and rebuild the station to reset.

In general, Simutrans doesn't try too hard, or even at all, to prevent players from "cheating". This means that players can choose their own style of playing. With multiplayer games, this lack of rules can be problematic.

DrSuperGood

Quote
Even without that, if one keeps filling a station, but never emptying it, the game will eventually crash. It will take a very long time, though. And one could simply remove and rebuild the station to reset.
The time for this to happen might be unrealistic. I have had stations with over 20 million passengers waiting in them and the game still has not crashed! If it does crash report it as a bug and whatever causes the crash might be fixed.

I do plan to work on JIT2 more in the future. Some practical tests showed there is some room for improvement. My current thinking is to add a periodic "think" job to industries which runs every ~120 seconds and does some basic control logic based on metrics accumulated between thinking. Maximum input storage would be dealt away with and maximum output would be made dynamic. The thinking process would control production rate as opposed to current output levels allowing for much smoother response (no power instability) as well as add the ability to cope with supply shortages (consumption rate lowers to supply rate for continuous, although reduced, operation).

Ters

Quote from: DrSuperGood on August 20, 2016, 08:14:32 PM
The time for this to happen might be unrealistic. I have had stations with over 20 million passengers waiting in them and the game still has not crashed! If it does crash report it as a bug and whatever causes the crash might be fixed.

That means you were only 1/100 or 1/200 of the way there. And I might have been a bit imprecise in saying that the game will crash. It might just behave weirdly. All this is just theoretical, because I don't think anyone has ever accumulated that many passengers on on stop. Perhaps not even in one game.

prissi

If there are more than 2^24-1 passengers to a specific destination, the next passenger will reset this to zero. No crash will occur.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

If anyone could pack 16,777,215 passengers (safely) in 1km² in real life, I might consider this a problem in Simutrans. ;-)

Ters

Quote from: prissi on August 21, 2016, 08:05:25 PM
If there are more than 2^24-1 passengers to a specific destination, the next passenger will reset this to zero. No crash will occur.

So only a country worth of Simupeople will experience spontaneous massive existence failure, then, not the entire Simuworld. I guess that's comforting.