The International Simutrans Forum

PakSets and Customization => Pak128.Britain => Topic started by: Eladamri on November 20, 2012, 11:54:02 PM

Title: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on November 20, 2012, 11:54:02 PM
While I wouldn't say I'm that new on simutrans I'm still learning how to make a profit in this game.
pak64 was pretty easy once I figured out which trains to build early and what to transport. (Coal)

However once I had the big bucks everything went a bit too quick and all i could do was to wait for more industries to pop up.

I wanted to try the golden age (1830)

Problem is that around here the micro management to get even a little bit of money out of things is horrendous.

So in short what hint can you give me? Where to start? How to squeese out a little bit more profit from a grocery line in the late 19th century. Maybe even if I start in 1930.
When do I start even?

I tried to look for strategy pages but the only one I found was from 2009.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: treiskin on November 21, 2012, 12:51:32 AM
In my opinion, when starting that early in Simutrans, I would focus on transporting passangers from town to town. (This is because the trains during this period aren't that powerfull, limiting the amount of carriages you can put on them). A big tip about profit, is to look at the vehicles/trains and look for the cost per hour (EX: 2.37c/KM). If you find a powerful train with a low running cost, you will be able to use large, 12 or 16 car trains that are cost efficient. And a starting year? I would go around 1900.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on November 21, 2012, 08:08:12 AM
The pakset is by no means properly balanced so any feedback you can give is appreciated. That said I have managed to play very profitable passenger networks starting around 1830 - however you must be careful to not build too much too early and make sure that whatever railways you build are for high-density flows as the infrastructure costs can be crippling in early years if you aren't hauling many passengers. Aim to connect two large-ish towns and ensure full coverage inside the towns using horses and carts. Get the trains loaded to at least 50% before making any trips, and then they should start to make profit.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: el_slapper on November 21, 2012, 09:07:10 AM
+1 with the Hood. When going to passenger traffic, whatever the pak, whatever the era :

(1) Big bucks come from long-distance travel
(2) Lots of passengers are needed for making big bucks
(3) Local networks are the only way to feed stations with a lot of passengers

And then you reach The Hood's method : good network within a big town, good network within another town, and a big fast line between both towns. Local networks are usually a net loss, or at least don't earn money. But they feed your golden cow : long lines.

Industrial transport is really dependant on the kind of industry, the era, and the pakset. I tend to save the game before building industry lines. More often than not, the line is not efficient, & I'm going backwards to the save. Sometimes, it works, & I'm happy.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on November 21, 2012, 10:11:09 AM
Interesting. This seems really to be the other way around than pak64, where starting with passengers was bad.
If my opinions and testing is needed I'll be happy to contribute, though I'm not historically versed enough to provide any help with entry years. I can provide figures as I go though.

That said I saw some engines that were way overcosted compared to others in cost/km. Cant remember which year. Maybe that was the same in real life.
Also sometimes you really need that old piece of rail that you can only go 70 km/hr on, but you cant build it any more.
I think the really low standard rail should hang about for a while longer since it was used for industrial traffic for a long time (depends on which country I guess).

I'd like to see entry and leave years, not only on the trains, but on the industries and tools as well. Or at least a small program you can use that lists every item in the pakset and when they entered and left the game. It would make planning so much easier. I have wanted that for pak64 for a while, and I'd like it even more here. You cant really have it on a wiki page since it changes so much.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on November 21, 2012, 12:39:56 PM
Please do continue giving feedback. Regarding high maintenance costs for fast locos, because of the high speed bonus for passenger these will still give very large profits if hauling fullish trains at close to maximum speed over long distances. The large cost is to prevent their use on low speed, low traffic routes.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on November 21, 2012, 04:02:13 PM
I'm happy to help.
Transporting passengers in 1830 via stagecoach and LMR Rocket really saved my sanity. At last my economy is going up. Yay!

But now that I want to expand into industrial I notice a problem. Most of it on this map is livestock and there is no way to transport livestock by road. And lets face it, I cant put a train line to every little cattle farm. Therefore that whole chain will go unused until livestock vans shows up. None wants milk either. I would have thought the market might be interested.

That leaves fishies, veggies and orchards on this map, and they are usually rather remote. That's going to mean a dip in my income. I'll go for passengers for a while more.
I wish there was a powerplant in 1830, but that would not be realistic I suppose.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on November 21, 2012, 04:09:14 PM
There is a way to transport livestock - the livestock drover...
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on November 21, 2012, 04:55:43 PM
Cant find that one even if I uncheck timeline year. Is that an addon?
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on November 21, 2012, 06:22:54 PM
It's under the "trucks" tab. As it's essentially a bloke herding along a flock of sheep, it's considered self-powered...
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on November 21, 2012, 08:15:34 PM
Oh I see. Hehe. I thought that was a lot of horses for a carriage. Thanks.
Makes me kind of want an addon for 0BC so we can remake the silk road or something....  No! No, that's a bad idea. Back to the game.

Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 08, 2012, 11:36:05 AM
So I made a nice train network with passengers, mail, a bit of livestock and cooled goods.
But then in 1847 finally a new economic faster train came around (Jenny Lind) and I switched to that. (I had to since I'm swedish :P)
Unfortunately then I had to scrap the livestock and cooled wagons. They simply weren't fast enough. I suppose this is historically correct, but it undermines my sole industrial transportation.
Having a separate railway just for a few scraps of cows here and there isn't going to be viable. How do you make it worthwhile?

Also the mail coach (20 mails) helped my economy a great deal but in 1840s they were discontinued with no new mail wagons produced. Luckily I noticed you can just copy existing wagons so I coul keep using them. Otherwise my mail system would have failed.
Is there a replacement coach that could be introduced at that time to help continuity or could we prolong it? The passenger coaches are still there.

Other than that it's going pretty decent, but the brittish people seems awfully religious what with all the cathedrals popping up all the time. Good money though.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 08, 2012, 12:09:27 PM
The Jenny Lind is an express passenger loco - stick to a slower loco like the Derwent or Lion. You may need to add some passing places into your network to allow faster trains to pass though.

The mail thing seems like a bug - I'll check and at the very least extend retirement dates to fill the gap.

The proliferation of cathedrals is partly due to the fact that we don't have many attractions and they are one type we have a lot of thanks to Wlindley's modular medieval building set making churches and cathedrals easy to make several variants of. I did ask for an extension request to only allow one of certain types of building in each city but that never got anywhere so we're left with about 3 cathedrals per large city! In time with more variety of attractions that should become less of a problem.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: ӔO on December 08, 2012, 12:54:01 PM
depending on your station spacing, a freight train going from A to B should be able to keep up with a passenger train making every stop on the route. This does not work too well when the schedules are very busy.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 08, 2012, 02:18:37 PM
The cathedral thing was merely curiosity from my part. I would suggest the addition of a circus or a zoo.
In the twenty years from 1829 to 1849 apart from the cathedrals and cricket courts I only had a few market additions. No other industries. I hop that will increase soon.
Also I'm waiting patiently for the trams, which will show up at the end of the fifties.

I didn't realise Jenny Lind was an express train. There are others even faster trains, and the Jenny Lind has a very low cost per train set compared to the outrageous Crewe and Crapton. Sure they are faster but very overpriced. Also Sharp Goods has the same speed but is way overcosted as well. I guess it's beacuse of the higher power output.

Concerning the mail thingy, there is a CartMail still in service, but that one is just too small to be usable in any way.

Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 08, 2012, 02:22:38 PM
Oh - thought you were talking about rail vehicles. Intercity mail was all carried by train after 1840ish because the stage coaches simply couldn't compete with the train. This is intended, so time to keep up with the times and build a railway...
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 08, 2012, 02:46:55 PM
Yes intercity mail is of course carried by train. I was talking about city mail. I cant put a train station in each street corner, so I'm relying totally on the discontinued mail coach.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 08, 2012, 02:55:54 PM
The stage coach is intended for intercity, and the mail cart is intended for local collection/delivery. Clearly you don't feel the mail cart is suitable for this purpose though. How would you change things?
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 08, 2012, 03:12:42 PM
I see. I didnt know stage coach was meant for intercity. I used it in city all the time. Especially since the cathedrals pump out a lot of mail and I had several in each city.
I suppose the main problem is that I didn't know where the tools were supposed to go and I just used the ones that give the most bang for the bucks. (ie best km/money ratio)
Now I start to see why som types of transports were even there.
Maybe some items should start to yield money only on longer routes. But that would mean more complicated calculations in the game. Maybe more trouble than it's worth.  Hmm.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 08, 2012, 03:17:28 PM
In experimental there is more of a niche for urban/intercity vehicles, but standard doesn't really allow for that. Perhaps I should add a horse drawn carriage for urban mail delivery from 1840s on.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: wlindley on December 08, 2012, 04:35:12 PM
Even in the Age of Railways, small ships and stagecoaches persisted awhile where railways could not easily be built... in any case, it took many years to build the full railway system through distant, mountainous, and marshy areas -- the Firth of Forth was not bridged until 1890.

Perhaps stagecoaches could be "obsolete, but build-able at higher cost" ?
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: greenling on December 08, 2012, 04:41:52 PM
Wlindley
Thank you!
That you speak over the bridge Firth of Forth.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 08, 2012, 06:12:30 PM
Of course, you can always build obsolete vehicles in the game already...
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 09, 2012, 03:47:09 PM
Is Jenny Lind undercosted?

Jenny Lind 1847-1875
cost 49920
cost 3.96/km
Power 200kw
70 km/h
Gear 2.75 (Not sure what this means)

Craven 1855-1866
cost 70100
cost 8.00/km
power 208kw
70 km/h
Gear 3.00

Craven is the most comparable train at the time but the others also cost a lot more than Jenny Lind.
Both were used by the same company. They must have had a reason to use the Craven, but I cant see it from these figures.
Not being very knowledged in trains is there something I'm missing?

Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 09, 2012, 04:00:29 PM
Very probably. Costs need a thorough overhaul, something I don't have the time to do right now.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on December 09, 2012, 04:20:27 PM
Right. I just point out what I find odd.
By the way, at some zoom levels the 35km/h roads aren't aligned perfectly so you can see the underlying grass. Not sure about other roads.
Not a big deal. Just to let you know.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on December 09, 2012, 04:35:08 PM
Thanks. All the feedback is useful.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 02, 2013, 01:05:42 PM
(This is for 1.12. I haven't tried 1.13 yet.)
In 1890 I receive a bunch of new items including LT tunnel track and "Padded cell" tube.
But how do I use them?
I've checked trains trams and roads both underground and over ground. Is there a trick to it?

Also the prize tag on electric trams is a bit inconsistent. Basically the Blackpool Original is so cheap there is no valid reason to switch to the toastrack.
In fact given it's prize steam-trams and horse drawn trams aren't viable either. I think it should be raised in prize from 0.06 to around 0.60 at least.
Even then I'm ubsure about the steam tram but since it wasn't used for long I guess that's okay.

Would it be possible to add some sort of object editor or at least viewer to the game to easily see when all transports, factories, roads and other things are introduced and retired?
It would make for great planning and while the wiki pages are nice they generally focus on trains and aren't that well updated with all the patches.

It's kind of hard to find the different factories in the cities on the normal map on PC. In pak64 and pak128 Britain Mac version they are shaded red. Is this a setting I have missed?
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: jamespetts on January 02, 2013, 02:13:33 PM
I can answer your first question - you need to electrify the depot to see electric vehicles, such as the deep level tube stock.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on January 02, 2013, 02:15:44 PM
Quote from: Eladamri on January 02, 2013, 01:05:42 PM
(This is for 1.12. I haven't tried 1.13 yet.)
In 1890 I receive a bunch of new items including LT tunnel track and "Padded cell" tube.
But how do I use them?
I've checked trains trams and roads both underground and over ground. Is there a trick to it?

There were a few bugs with inconsistent intro dates here which should be fixed in 1.13. I suggest you upgrade. The track is built using the "tube tunnel" in the rail menu and the padded cell tube is in the train depot (there is an electric loco which hauls them, so track needs to be electrified first).

Quote
Also the prize tag on electric trams is a bit inconsistent. Basically the Blackpool Original is so cheap there is no valid reason to switch to the toastrack.
In fact given it's prize steam-trams and horse drawn trams aren't viable either. I think it should be raised in prize from 0.06 to around 0.60 at least.
Even then I'm ubsure about the steam tram but since it wasn't used for long I guess that's okay.
Thanks for the feedback on this - I'll add it to the list of info on balancing for future reference.

Quote
Would it be possible to add some sort of object editor or at least viewer to the game to easily see when all transports, factories, roads and other things are introduced and retired?
It would make for great planning and while the wiki pages are nice they generally focus on trains and aren't that well updated with all the patches.
This would need an extension request. One thing I'd like for pak128.Britain (but haven't had the time for) is an online reference for all objects which could go on the wiki for this sort of purpose. This could be something someone with no coding/drawing experience could do if they wanted to help. For the foreseeable future I will continue to focus on drawing the objects to complete the set and balance them.

Quote
It's kind of hard to find the different factories in the cities on the normal map on PC. In pak64 and pak128 Britain Mac version they are shaded red. Is this a setting I have missed?

They aren't like this in windows - maybe it's a bug or intended? Either way, if pak64 does it too, it's a game thing rather than a pak thing.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 02, 2013, 05:31:14 PM
Quote from: The Hood on January 02, 2013, 02:15:44 PM
There were a few bugs with inconsistent intro dates here which should be fixed in 1.13. I suggest you upgrade. The track is built using the "tube tunnel" in the rail menu and the padded cell tube is in the train depot (there is an electric loco which hauls them, so track needs to be electrified first).
Right. There is no way to electrify the normal railway. Only roads. So I guess that in 1.12 there is a fault with the intro date for that.
I guess I'll switch to 1.13.
Quote
This would need an extension request. One thing I'd like for pak128.Britain (but haven't had the time for) is an online reference for all objects which could go on the wiki for this sort of purpose. This could be something someone with no coding/drawing experience could do if they wanted to help. For the foreseeable future I will continue to focus on drawing the objects to complete the set and balance them.
I was actually considering making a contribution to the wiki about intros and retirements. However...
The reason why I would like to see an ingame viewer for that is just because it's so hard to keep an online list updated. Plus you can only see dates for buildings and trains ingame anyway so it's very hard to know the intro dates for tools and other things. The electrification above would be an example. With an ingame viewer it would be much easier for developers to know that the intro dates dont much up as well.
If I were to make an online page I would first need a list of all dates and preferrably I would also like the images of all the trains and buildings and stuff to use for the page. It's much harder to do once the files are packaged.
Quote
They aren't like this in windows - maybe it's a bug or intended? Either way, if pak64 does it too, it's a game thing rather than a pak thing.
Actually they were marked red in pak64. In pak128 they only seem to be marked red on the mac version as far as I have seen. That's why I figured mac version was from another version of the engine.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: VS on January 02, 2013, 05:39:38 PM
Marked red? Sounds a bit like transparent building hiding... that's toggled/cycled with key " (as if typing that - needs shift of course).
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 02, 2013, 07:09:49 PM
It seems I had an older version of the game. I noticed it when I couldn't apply 1.13.
After I switched version the factories were shown in red like in the mac version. So that's that mystery solved.

And now I can electrify the rails as well.

Unfortunately the toastrack was even more expensive than the Blackpool Original in 1.13.
0.86/km  compared to 00.6/km for the Blackpool.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: wlindley on January 02, 2013, 08:45:56 PM
I wrote a little Perl program to parse all the .dat files.  Here is a complete chronology of Pak128.Britain as it stands in the repository.

For the record, this is over four thousand events, which makes manual maintenance of this list rather impractical.  If anyone would care for the Perl source, let me know ... I may post it eventually.

Edit: Post much too long, it overflowed the edit-box in this forum.  I posted it on my blog (http://blog.wlindley.com/2013/01/pak128-britain-chronology/).
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: wlindley on January 02, 2013, 08:55:22 PM
Quote from: wlindley on January 02, 2013, 08:45:56 PM
I wrote a little Perl program to parse all the .dat files.  Here is a complete chronology of Pak128.Britain as it stands in the repository.

For the record, this is over four thousand events, which makes manual maintenance of this list rather impractical.  If anyone would care for the Perl source, let me know ... I may post it eventually.

Edit: Post much too long, it overflowed the edit-box in this forum.  I posted it on my blog (http://blog.wlindley.com/2013/01/pak128-britain-chronology/).

I really ought to write a Gazeteer that lets you navigate all the various timelines of all the various paks, and shows you previews of the images, who they were drawn by, and so on... Hmm...
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 03, 2013, 01:04:26 PM
Now this is exactly what I was talking about.
It doesn't have to be an ingame feature, although that would of course be brilliant as well.
It really looks like you're on to something here. A perl script that could be run aside from the game and which creates a hitml structure that I can read in my browser. That would be awesome.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on January 03, 2013, 02:45:47 PM
If we had something like this I'd love to include additional "description" fields (either in the pak file or some other way) that allowed a brief historical description of the vehicle allowing some comment along the lines of "useful for suburban passenger transport" or whatever.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: wlindley on January 03, 2013, 03:09:34 PM
Pak64 puts quite longish descriptions, including text that ranges from whimsical to questionable, in the translation table... rather annoying, really....


so, yes, I heartily agree there should be a "short description" and then a "comments" field.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: The Hood on January 03, 2013, 03:35:29 PM
given that makeobj ignores things it doesn't understand in dats, could your perl script read additional fields such as comment=?
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: AP on January 03, 2013, 07:28:03 PM
Quote from: The Hood on January 03, 2013, 02:45:47 PM
If we had something like this I'd love to include additional "description" fields (either in the pak file or some other way) that allowed a brief historical description of the vehicle allowing some comment along the lines of "useful for suburban passenger transport" or whatever.

A reverse filter would be good - a "recommend me something for suburban passenger tranport in year _" based on the data loaded in-game.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: greenling on January 04, 2013, 10:43:13 PM
I have a work projekt in the way beginning.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 08, 2013, 09:55:25 PM
One more thing I'm wondering: How do you make a railroad line where a highspeed train can overtake a slow train?
I tried just making a third rail in the middle and just have the faster trains chose that track when they wanted to speed past the slower, but I couldn't find how to make that work.
Basically they just didn't care about it.

Is there a trick to it? In videos I have seen elaborate railway lines where they seem to pull it off but I cant grasp how it's done.

Basically I always build two tracks for each line. One in each direction and keep them separate. But to build two new separate tracks for high speed trains seem un-economical somehow. Also if an even faster train comes around I would have to make a separate railway for that as well. That just isn't feasible. There must be an easier way.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: kierongreen on January 08, 2013, 09:58:50 PM
If you add loops for slower trains off the main line and direct the slow trains for use the loops the high speed trains should take the shorter route and hopefully overtake. Takes a bit of practice to get the timing right on this though knowing where and how long the loop should be.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: jamespetts on January 08, 2013, 10:00:23 PM
You could use waypoints to make the fast trains always use your passing points - but then you would have to rely on luck that they use them at the exact moment that slow trains are on the ordinary tracks beside them.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: ӔO on January 08, 2013, 10:06:08 PM
It's slightly more difficult to use express service together with slow service in standard.

usually, it's cheaper and slightly easier to add extra platforms at stations and add waiting times to let express trains pass.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: AP on January 08, 2013, 10:48:05 PM
Quote from: Eladamri on January 08, 2013, 09:55:25 PM
One more thing I'm wondering: How do you make a railroad line where a highspeed train can overtake a slow train?

Look at the demo game playing on startup bak-gb (standard) - click to load a map, then cancel, and you'll be in the demo game. I deliberately put in some overtaking loops when I made that map, with the signals set out so they work to enable the trains to overtake - in part because I wanted to find the best spacing to achieve such a system for myself. It does rely on the slow Lines having waypoints set in each loop to pull the trains off the main line each time.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 09, 2013, 12:40:45 AM
bak-gb? Hmm. Is that a pakset? The one I have for Britain doesn't seem to have any waypoints on the two train lines.

Also using waypoints means my express trains have to have their own lines. I had hoped to avoid that, but I guess it might be the only way.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: Eladamri on January 09, 2013, 02:00:31 PM
I see now that there is something fishy going on with the demo scenario.
There are several lines that I can't see in line managment.
Havenpool Branch Line is one of them. It doesn't have a schedule and no link to the managment.
The depot it came from isn't clickable either so I can't see a way to check that line.
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: ӔO on January 09, 2013, 02:56:59 PM
^ switch through the players with shift+P
Title: Re: Polite request for help with early profit
Post by: AP on January 11, 2013, 07:50:39 PM
Quote from: Eladamri on January 09, 2013, 12:40:45 AM
bak-gb? Hmm. Is that a pakset?Also using waypoints means my express trains have to have their own lines. I had hoped to avoid that, but I guess it might be the only way.

Apologies for the typo and shorthand, I meant pak-Britain 128. I could have sworn I used waypoints in the standard version (the experimental version may differ...)

I recommend having them as seperate lines anyway, it allows you to better use the graph functionality to identify where money is coming from and being wasted. If you have one line and lots of different train types (mail, passenger, express) using it, you can't tell which sort is profitable and which are loss-making. Anyway, I doubt your express will call at all the same stations as slower trains?