One size fits all?

[Roads]

I'm in trouble in my current game.  This again for the nth time.  Now I realize what Sam Walton figured out a long time ago.  There is money to be made in quantity.  I have simply not begun my games with enough cities.  This problem would also happen, I think, to standard games with a small map.


With that in mind, I suggest the yearly increase in cost of 10,000 be changed and based on map size instead of a "one size fits all."  The way it works currently gives a huge advantage to big maps and the bigger the map, the more advantage.


Actually it would really be more fair if it were based both on map size and the number and population of beginning cities.

[isidoro]

I can't remember what is that 10.000 yearly increase... but why don't you just found new cities o, better still, enlarge the map?

[Roads]

Actually my map is already plenty large.  In fact most of it is empty.  I was just eager to begin playing when creating the world and only made a few cities - I think 6.  Anyway I added a few as time went by.


The way the game engine works, it subtracts 10,000 from your monthly income each month - for the first year.  This increases each year.  I thought at first it increased 10,000 each year but have not tested that to see but it does increase a lot each year.  By the time 20 years or so have gone by this yearly cost is a lot.  Also it seems around 1950, the cost of vehicles jumps astronomically.


If you simply add cities at this point you don't have the income to buy new vehicles plus you are paying out that big maintenance or whatever the monthly charge is called.

[Fifty]

The way the game engine works, it subtracts 10,000 from your monthly income each month - for the first year.  This increases each year.  I thought at first it increased 10,000 each year but have not tested that to see but it does increase a lot each year.  By the time 20 years or so have gone by this yearly cost is a lot.

The game engine does not work like that. Are you talking about the "this month" number? This number is your maintenance payment for the next month. Maintenance has nothing to do with how large a map is, when you start playing, the year, how many citizens/towns/industries are on the map, etc. You pay nothing for cities, city road, and industries. The maintenance number is only the cost of maintaining the infrastructure that your company owns: Railroad tracks, road, canals, bus stops, train stations, station extension buildings, etc. A new company has no maintenance obligations until it builds something.

If maintenance payments are keeping your company down, then you need to cut excess infrastructure. Make smaller stations, make queuing areas for multiple trains instead of multiple stations, and consider removing services that may make money in operations yet loose money on the road and track they operate on. Remove station extension buildings, and make sure that the roads and rails you build are not more expensive than you need. Make stations smaller: don't use high capacity stations if you don't need them. Everything has 2 costs listed when you hover over: the building cost, and the monthly maintenance in parenthesis. For example, wooden sleeper track 150.00 (8.00) 110 km/h means that it costs 150 credits per tile to build and 8 credits per tiler per month to maintain.  Stations and bus stops, in particular, have high maintenance payments. The "this month" number is a total of all of these per-tile maintenance costs on your map. Pak 128 has particularly high maintenance costs as compared to other paks.

Also it seems around 1950, the cost of vehicles jumps astronomically.

If you simply add cities at this point you don't have the income to buy new vehicles plus you are paying out that big maintenance or whatever the monthly charge is called.

You do not go bankrupt until your net wealth goes below zero. Your net wealth includes both your cash on hand and your assets, which are the depreciated value of your vehicles. Thus, for the most part, your balance can go below zero as you purchase vehicles, as you gain assets on which you can borrow money on. You can also build cities with public player.

[Roads]

@Fifty, thank you!

I have done some testing.  Up until now, all I had really looked at was my bottom line and had come to the conclusion that you had to constantly build - add infrastructure and/or vehicles - or your profit margin would steadily decrease until you were losing money.  This is not the case.  It only appears that way or at least did to me the first year.  After that, I saw very little change in my profit margin.  It did drop from around 25% at the end of each month to between 10% to 15% thereafter.

You are right.  Both the maintenance cost and operations cost stay basically the same year after year if nothing is done.  What you have said is a great help and I appreciate it immensely.


MODIFY:  I did not realize you can borrow money.  How do you do that?  I've only actually gone bankrupt once, at least I thought I was, when my loan lasted 3 months.

[isidoro]

That was the reason why it seemed strange to me that monthly cost...  BTW, why don't you just use the public service to found the new cities you need?

It's not that unrealistic since founding cities is not a job of transportation companies, is it?

[Fifty]

MODIFY:  I did not realize you can borrow money.  How do you do that?  I've only actually gone bankrupt once, at least I thought I was, when my loan lasted 3 months.

There is no formal procedure for borrowing money, you simply go into the red. I don't even think you are charged interest in standard simutrans... (correct me if I'm wrong). I think bankruptcy used to be 3 months in the red, but now it has changed to simply net wealth must be above zero at the end of any given month.

Simutrans is a complex game, and there are still things I learn even after playing this game for years-- mostly things I stumble upon by accident or see others do in their savegames and netgame networks.

[Roads]

@Isidoro

Yes, that is what I'm going to do now that I've reloaded from a previous save when I had 400,000 plus bank balance.  The reason I'm not doing it with the current save is I realize what I did wrong.  Too few cities did have some effect but the real problem apparently was building too fast.  At the end of the first year from the save game, the maintenance cost went up 100,000 and the operations cost went up almost 80,000.  If this was not the result of building too fast I have no idea because I had not built anything major that year.  It must have been the cumulative effect of building airports and buying planes as fast as I possibly could in previous years.

@Fifty
This is good to know I was not aware of the change.  At any rate, during all this playing and reloading and discussion, I've learned a lot and can appreciate the game even more.  I am very happy to learn that I can manage expenses instead of thinking it was just some set amount that I had to build fast enough to stay ahead of.