News:

Simutrans Sites
Know our official sites. Find tools and resources for Simutrans.

No more profit after HS line

Started by accord2, June 01, 2018, 09:17:57 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

accord2

I am playing the Highway Revolt map from 1965 (to who doesn't know it's a USA map from coast to coast). My profit was increasing every year until 1975, then it stopped falling. In 1976 I opened my first High-speed line because the regional trains were drowning  with too many passengers. It was from DC to NYC. I thought the solution was increase the lines and expand the services. In 1980 I built the HS line from NYC to Boston. Then profit went negative.

I am now in 1984 with 2M$ negative in my account and I can't find out what is wrong! Every transport's profit is negative except Ships, Trams and airplanes.
When I go to the line management in trains the lines profits are: rural regional 5k$, goods 147k$, north-east regional 30k$, north-east express 38k$, Boston area regional -1k$, HST -6k$, south regional 10k$, mail -7k$ (but all mail trains have more than 50k$ profit, weird?),  south HST 18k$, Harrisburg regional -4k$ yet in finances report the operational profit of railways is -2M$ All truck/buses lines are profitable but in total I lose 500k$ per year.

So I suppose that the money is being wasted in infrastructure, but if almost all lines are profitable,  every rail and road is being used (and some sections are even over used with too many profitable trains) how can I start losing money after a High Speed line??

Is there a way I can save this company?
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

DrSuperGood

I am not too sure about the scenario in question and any scripted mechanics it might have, however I can offer you general pak128 advice.

Making profit with passengers is very difficult unless payment model is between stops. Towards destination means you get charged for back hauling which destroys all profit from commuter lines.

The reason your profit fell was likely due to falling revenue. As the years progress in pak128 the speed bonus speed for rail increases making moving passengers slowly around less profitable. To compensate for this one has to increase maximum line speed with new rails and rolling stock. This is reflected by the general trend of trains in pak128 becoming faster and cheaper per power as the years progress. Ultimately there comes a point late game where speed bonus speed will stop changing, I recall around 2050 odd.

Like in all Simutrans paksets, passengers are stupid. They will take the lines resulting in the fewest transfers rather than the shortest journey time. This means that a high speed line running in parallel to a commuter service will likely be detremeantal to the profitability of both lines as one will hardly get many passengers and the other might overflow with passengers and loads will likely not be symmetric.

Generally one wants only 1 way for passengers to flow to/from a city. This allows one to optimize the infrastructure and not have to deal with the internal order of the routing logic. Slower commuter lines from a few cities bring passengers to large hubs where larger passenger lines, eg high speed lines, move the passengers between hubs. In a very well developed late game map one can even have local commuter lines running with high speed trains making a ton of profit.

Infrastructure in pak128 is quite expensive to maintain. One needs to optimize infrastructure usage when possible. Avoid roads for industry as few industries make enough profit to justify them. Take advantage of the free roads offered by cities to set up commuter lines rather than making your own roads.

Point to point passenger lines are the most profitable. This is because one can make them wait for 100% load at one end of the line and they will remain full until the other end maximizing revenue per km travelled.

Empty vehicle capacity is wasted money. It is often better to make a less efficient line to assure that vehicles are always full early on. I find this is the only way to start a game with passengers. For example get around 20-40 bus stops between many cities and a line with 10-20 odd busses and let the stops overcrowd to assure the busses are always full, adding more busses only if there is significant capacity for them.

Avoid industries like waste and coal as there is practically no profit in them due to the small quantities involved with regard to the infrastructures. Some like Oil can be profitable due to the large quantities involved getting efficient usage from infrastructure. More complex multiple step chains are usually the most profitable but can be very hard to setup with the small starting funds one gets.

Like with all paksets, deviations mean more distance travelled for the same revenue. Either use redirection stops, a stop which only purpose is to change where the travel distance is being measured from to account for a a deviation, or terraform a straighter path. Each tile of deviation has a double travel cost associated with it as ultimatly the vehicles will have to travel back from the deviation through another tile. Even seemingly small deviations can quickly eat up profit with extra running costs.

If one does not mind cheating one can use the cargo bounce exploit to generate as much money as one ever needs. In its most simplest form you build a airport at the diagonal corners of the map and get fully loaded passenger aircraft to bounce across the map diagonal on way to its destination. This effectively adds a huge distance which the passengers pay for resulting in insane profits. The line can bounce the aircraft across the diagonal as many times as desired, each time earning a huge profit. It works with every good as long as the payment model is between stops and moving the goods results in a per tile profit. Using this there really is no limit to the profit you can generate from very little cargo. It also is plainly cheating which may result in company removal from online games as well as hurting your sense of self accomplishment.

accord2

I'm not understanding how that cheat works. So I just build an airpory for example on the right up corner and send planes there in mid journey?
Thanks for the help!! ;D ;D
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

el_slapper

1 way to go from one point to another means you have to thin in regions and subregions. Each with a given hub, that is the only way to go from one region to another(or subtegion to subregion).

I tend to link regions with planes, subregions with trains, and whatever fits within the subregion(often coaches early in the game, later can switch to train-monorail-whatever - monorail is very specific, you need 2 points with very high demand between themselves, and very careful thought-out crossing points).

I even had a game with a lone central hub. All planes were from regions to there. No way to avoid it. Worked well. Most money comes from the planes, anyways, all the rest is just feeder lines for the plane network.