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[Sensei]

So, has anyone had much success with the scenarios?

I tried the "manufacture cars" one, that wasn't bad. Then I tried the "sell textiles" one... holy crap! It seems simple at first, until you have to move steel from a steel mill to a cannery... about 1000 tiles away. I can't imagine how one could possible accomplish this with the money allotted. You're not allowed to use cargo planes (unless I missed that they got unlocked at some point) and the terrain is so mountainous, you can rarely build more than a few tiles of track without without aggressive landscaping or a tunnel. Add to that, every single slope is too steep to place tracks by default, you have to either manually shallow it out or tunnel in. Was this scenario made before the "half height" terrain slopes update, so you would originally have been able to build track on them, or am I just missing something? I went bankrupt before I made enough track to go half way, and that was before buying a train!

[Sensei]

Bump:

As of right now, Djohaal's steam is live and you can chat on the stream Discord channel as well. He's showing the early basics of the game and how to start off effectively right now.

[MrWiggles]

I generally do coal to power plant, or steal for my early game. It depends on distance.

[Sensei]

Noob question for anyone with some experience still reading the thread:

I've been tampering with the worldgen settings a lot. Is there an easy way to reset them to defaults if I want to get really crazy with them?

[Djohaal]

Noob question for anyone with some experience still reading the thread:

I've been tampering with the worldgen settings a lot. Is there an easy way to reset them to defaults if I want to get really crazy with them?

Sadly I don't think so, the game has no reset to default option. I think those values might be stored at a settings.xml file on mydocs/simutrans. Give backing it up a try. On the scenario woes, it probably was made pre-half height.

I generally do coal to power plant, or steal for my early game. It depends on distance.

Coal to power plant is a valid starter but the profit margin usually is very low, it slows down your future expansion potential. It is a very good second route specially since you can use the power to boost a saturated chain even more.
EDIT: Another thing I noticed in a map I started with simpler chains (dairy, foie gras from the french pak, and then flour) is that your total possible income for a maxed out simple chain is much lower than the complex chains, so the fabrics chain still remains more profitable.

[MrWiggles]

Yea. I mean I generally do Coal and Iron to Steel to start. But sometime the maps arent friendly to that, and I dont wanna just keep regenning maps until it happens. Also often start to do electrification doing a middle point in the game, after the ability to go broke has mostly subsided.   

And then I get bored after I hook up most of the map with passenger and mail transportation, as that lets you make stupid amount eventually.

[Djohaal]

Are you playing with just-in-time on? That significatively ups the game's difficulty, in a sense that you can't endlessly supply a factory unless you also take the resources from it.

[MrWiggles]

Are you playing with just-in-time on? That significatively ups the game's difficulty, in a sense that you can't endlessly supply a factory unless you also take the resources from it.

No, I havent. Though I generally often start to take the steel away. I wish there was an easier way to make large depots with roads disconnecting the pick up spots, without having to make it all one continuous block first. It feels exploity.

[The13thRonin]

Is the Experimental (now called Extended) version much better than the standard?

I've only ever used the standard with Pak128.

[Paul]

Huh. I gave this game a shot. I started with crude oil to refinery and petrol to gas station. Two looped tracks with 4 trains each and I was making just over 50k annual profit.

So I decided to deliver another of the refinery's goods, plastic, across the map to the only other consumer for the refinery. Built a huge straight railroad going all the way across the map, then put 6 trains on the job, thinking I would get a huge fee for deliery.

Trains head that way with the cargo and wind up using ~$2200 just to get there. Deliver goods and it only gives me 6000. Another $2200 getting back. Net profit of only 1600 x6 trains, I'm looking at only 10800 for the whole line - and it takes months just to go back and forth. The maintenance cost alone is way higher than that. My annual income went from 50k to 25k.

I guess long range trips just aren't worth it. I get 1500 for delivering the petrol, and the distance is less than 1/10th that of the plastic route.

[The13thRonin]

Huh. I gave this game a shot. I started with crude oil to refinery and petrol to gas station. Two looped tracks with 4 trains each and I was making just over 50k annual profit.

So I decided to deliver another of the refinery's goods, plastic, across the map to the only other consumer for the refinery. Built a huge straight railroad going all the way across the map, then put 6 trains on the job, thinking I would get a huge fee for deliery.

Trains head that way with the cargo and wind up using ~$2200 just to get there. Deliver goods and it only gives me 6000. Another $2200 getting back. Net profit of only 1600 x6 trains, I'm looking at only 10800 for the whole line - and it takes months just to go back and forth. The maintenance cost alone is way higher than that. My annual income went from 50k to 25k.

I guess long range trips just aren't worth it. I get 1500 for delivering the petrol, and the distance is less than 1/10th that of the plastic route.

Is it not a straight line?

You should make a profit over distance as long as the route is efficient.

[Akura]

Yeah, I always figured that the furthest routes were the most profitable. What kind of trains are you using? Best check the the running cost per km, and maybe pick a different train.

[Paul]

The route was mostly straight, I had to go around some water but for the most part it was straight. The thing that made it unprofitable was the really low delivery fee. Maybe it's penalizing me because my train is only going 45 kph? My trains delivering fuel are also going the same speed and making tons of money and they're actually going around a big lake so the track isn't straight at all.

The fuel is going to a local gas station not very far away and it's paying 1500 for 7 train cars full of fuel, it's about 80 tiles away. The other one is going all the way across a 1024 size map probably 800-900 tiles away and it only gives $6000 for 7 train cars full of plastic. If I was getting 15000 for it I would be rolling in money. The only thing I can think is maybe it's penalizing the delivery fee due to the trip taking so long, since I started in 1900 and the only train available is slow. If it's a straight money per tile I should be getting way more than 6000.


-edit- Lol, I just tried the 128 Britain pak and started in 1750. Horse drawn carriages are ridiculously cheap and profitable. With just a little setup I'm making over a million a year with only 388k in assets by hauling passengers around the map.

[Akura]

Maybe it's penalizing me because my train is only going 45 kph?

Last I checked, yeah, speed is a factor in fee calculations. Look under the Goods list, it'll give you the the speeds needed for each vehicle type. I quickly booted up a 1930 start with the default pak, and the rail speed to qualify for a bonus was 84km/h.

[Paul]

Yeah I was playing 1901 thinking it might be fun to start early and work my way into better trains. At that date only 1 train is available going 45 km/h and the min speed is 48 km/h.

I did a bit better measuring on the save I made when I started before I made the rails. Looks like it was actually around 140 distance on the petrol since a lot of it was diagonal and 900 on the other. That's still over 6x the distance though, so I have to wonder why the pay was only 4x.

It seems that 112 units going around 900 tiles would make more than 4x that of 72 units going around 140 tiles. Maybe something was wonky with my save game. Went bankrupt already now though, so I can't test it more without totally rebuilding the track across the map lol.