How to make big money

[mfanschen123]

Comparing with OpenTTD, I found it is difficult in Simutrans to make money. And I always have little money on hand.
How to make a bigger transportation web quickly?

[el_slapper]

PAK128 is especially difficult. The key, IMHO, is to set up a full network. One single line alone tends not to make money. You have to optimize infrastructure use.

If tou are playing PAK128, one good way is to find a city with 20,000+ inhabitants, and to set up a tram system there. You'll need probably a few tries before it works, but from then, you have an income base plus a network to connect. If your map is favourable, you'll have a second big town. Make a network there also, and then, only then, join them(with train or plane).

Big bucks are made with nearly-full long-distance transport, but for those, you need a comprehensive local network at each end - feeder lines to your main lines.

[mfanschen123]

I play with PAK 128 from 1930, my biggest city is 7000. Now I'm in 1970, every month I best get 36000 or 28000 dollors. Some month is red.
It's my first game, and I think maintainning fee is too high, which PAK will be easier?

[kierongreen]

pak64 is easier supposedly. I find best way to make money is to have bus routes around biggest two cities, then connect them together with a railway. If other cities happen to be on the route between these two build stations for them as well. The buses might not make much money but the railway is almost guaranteed to make a huge profit. As and when you have money connect more towns up to the network and your money will eventually be accumulating faster than you can spend it.

[prissi]

pak128 is very easy for money making with road transport especially in the 1930s. Freight is also more rewarding in pak128. Railway is very expensive in pak128, while in pak64 road and rail are almost equal.

Generally you should avoid large railway stations. Built them just to the size your need them.

[gauthier]

To my mind, pak128 is unplayable, especially in the 30's, because of ridiculously high maintenance costs of stations (a single bus network will never make money, even if all buses run full) and because of vehicles not making much money. Zeno advises to replace all convoys every 10 years, which is obviously impossible without going to bankrupt (if only you can mannage to play at least ten years lol).

I have three pieces of advice :
_ this game is a high speed dictature, in early times you should always use the fastest trains for passengers'transport, it makes the biggest amounts of money.
_ being in debt is mandatory (although keep an eye on your wealth !)
_ before starting a game, go into settings, in costs'tab and divide maintenance multiplier by two or three.

[kierongreen]

Ah yes - the point about debt is well made - in simutrans you can go into debt as long as your assets exceed the amount you owe. This is very useful for expanding quickly.

Playing around with the maintenance multiplier is a bit of a cheat - to be honest you're as well off running in beginner mode if you just want extra cash.

[Ters]

Profitability in a pak set vary with time, mostly in-game, but also sometimes from version to version. Pak64 is (or at least was) so profitable during the 20th century that I soon never had to think about money again. It breaks down early in the 21st century, especially (or only) for trains, so now I'm living off the cash reserves. I haven't had a positive income for two or three decades, though I have managed to reduce the losses somewhat (mostly be switching to the only profitable intercity passenger train, but I want some diversity in my rolling stock).

There's lot of talk about passengers here, but I find the easiest money-maker is freight. Freight gives (for the most part) full throughput at once, though in some cases a chain of many factories is needed to get it going.

[el_slapper]

The main advantage of freight is that it is a fixed income & cost system. Though, in pak128, as other said, you'd better chase for industries near existing roads. Especially in the 30s. It is not uncommon to me making lines of 100+ small trucks between industries.

[Sarlock]

I usually start a 1930 pak128 game with freight.  My favorite is the fuel (coal/oil)-->power station routes, if any exist on your map.  Run a low-cost rail line between the two, the cheapest stations you can build and run a good powered (but not necessarily the fastest=most expensive) train between them.  Make sure the train is set to be 100% full before departure.  Depending on how far away the two stations are, add more trains as necessary and use just a single rail line with a couple of sidings for passing.  You want to watch that you are not over-delivering to the power plant, try and balance out the supply/demand.  It's not that important if your freight train sits in a siding for a short wait while the other train passes by.

I find passenger and mail very difficult to make money with in a 1930's game unless you have enough cities tied together to establish a good sized network.  Travelling between just two or three cities is very difficult to make profitable.  The amount of passenger and mail traffic grows exponentially as you connect more and more cities together--something that is much easier to do with an established profitable freight line to create positive cash flow to pay for the expansion.  Once you connect 6-8 cities together with bus lines and a main train line, future profits will be easy.

Experiment and you will quickly find which initial setups work and which don't.