Starting with passengers

[Feresc]

Hi all.

I've been trying to start in 1850 by setting up a passenger line, generally between 3-4 cities, but have had no success. Although I know good money is in cargo, I'm all for passengers. It always worked out ok on TF1, but seemingly can't get the key to passenger success in TF2. I have been able to get going with cargo, although nowhere near having a city of a few thousands as some people are reporting.
I've been having a look and couldn't find anything in any discussion.

Thank you for your help.

[ajax_post]

The key is knowing where people want to go and providing a service that allows them to get there (and back) more efficiently than travelling themselves.

Find a couple of reasonable sized towns reasonably close to each other and create a bus route between them. Then, if there's another town nearby link into that one as well. If the towns are large enough to need more than one stop to cover the three building types add in a route or two to cover intra-city traffic and make sure these link to the inter-city routes.

Make sure you have enough coaches on the routes to keep frequency to under a minute or two.

After a few months of game time, check the destinations tab of the town details dialog box and it will show you where people want to go (tip: you can click the headings Shop/Work to sort the list more easily see the highest traffic demands).

If you have a couple or three largish towns that have long road routes a straight rail route can be profitable but don't put on too many trains/wagons to start with, wait for the demand to build up - obviously ensure your citizens can get to the train station either being within the catchment area or having a good bus service to take them there.

It can be done! :)

P.S. If you have a large town or two very close to each other check the street traffic density overlay and ensure your routes do not get stuck in the traffic jams!

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by feresc:

I have been able to get going with cargo, although nowhere near having a city of a few thousands as some people are reporting.

Outside of using edited maps or using mods you are extremely unlikely to ever be able to get a single "city of a few thousands". In fact you are highly unlikely to get even a city of 2000. Most players probably won't even get a city of much more than 1500. You need exceedingly favorable circumstances to get a town of that size without an edited map or using mods.

[Kenny]

Originally posted by feresc:

Hi all.

I've been trying to start in 1850 by setting up a passenger line, generally between 3-4 cities, but have had no success. Although I know good money is in cargo, I'm all for passengers. It always worked out ok on TF1, but seemingly can't get the key to passenger success in TF2. I have been able to get going with cargo, although nowhere near having a city of a few thousands as some people are reporting.
I've been having a look and couldn't find anything in any discussion.

Thank you for your help.

As the player earlier said, playing it vanilla means that you'll have a max capacity of 2400, you can change this though in the map editor and increase the max population. Regarding passengers this shouldn't be very hard, just make sure you have your line between two large cities since there are a lot of very tiny towns out there, and if you start at 1850 it is crucial that the area between the the towns is flat, even minor hills will quickly make your early steam trains unprofitable.

[T3kx]

A few tips on top of my head (worth to consider) :

- Target big cities first, ideally not connected via roads (not an inssue in 1850 tho).
- Using the Destination UI and offer services to the highest numbers (between cities).
- Solid Intra-city bus system and/or a well centred station (cover is rather large).

- Using trams between cities is apparently very lucrative
- point to point (A to B) seems to work better than serial (A-B-C-D-C-B-) imho.

edit : Money is in cargo yea, but its a good investment to offer cargo to city to let them grow faster.

- Leave enough time to let vehicles spread out and decent frequencies (I know you know ;) )

[Kenny]

Also, Unlike TF1 the towns chain up, the town growth of public transportation is not decided by how many towns a town is connected to directly but how many destinations a citizen can reach within a reasonable amount of time. So if you have a train connected between town A and B, and add a line between B and town C, all three of the cities will grow even though A and C are not connected. Therefor it can be suggested to not link all cities together as your citizens will have to go through your "hub" to take a second train to another town, giving you more profits for a cheaper cost.

Also, don't hesitate making longer lines even at the early stages if you can afford it, the citizens in TF2 isn't nearly as spoiled about waiting times as in TF1.

[canophone]

Originally posted by Chaos:

Also, Unlike TF1 the towns chain up, the town growth of public transportation is not decided by how many towns a town is connected to directly but how many destinations a citizen can reach within a reasonable amount of time. So if you have a train connected between town A and B, and add a line between B and town C, all three of the cities will grow even though A and C are not connected. Therefor it can be suggested to not link all cities together as your citizens will have to go through your "hub" to take a second train to another town, giving you more profits for a cheaper cost.

Also, don't hesitate making longer lines even at the early stages if you can afford it, the citizens in TF2 isn't nearly as spoiled about waiting times as in TF1.

Actually, town growth has been tied to number of destinations a passenger can reach since Train Fever, including in TpF1, within a time and cost. The difference is the formula used that goes farther in TpF2 and bonuses to expand growth with cargo.

[Feresc]

Thanks for all your replies, I'll spend some more time understanding what people need and looking for a better, more lucrative route to start with :)

[Kniff]

I tried it myself two days ago and it works well for me.
I connected one center town with three other towns where already were roads.
With only one station in the center of each town.
I didnt care about the town sizes.
Sometimes I spent a little money to make the connections more staight.
I play with only 500K loan and invested every earned money in more vehicles.
Each line makes about 20-30K earnings.
I play with 25% time speed.
I am now in 1855 and spent the earned money into two cargo lines still with 500K loan.
Just for fun its not the best possible start but makes fun.

edit and I play on "difficult" setting

[Gregorovitch]

I am wondering what the OP wants to achieve here. If it is simply to try to see out the whole game using only passenger routes just to see if it can be done, then OK, I'm sure it can be done although it will be a struggle. If not, then why?

The game is heavily weighted in favour of cargo for two reasons:

1. Four of the six wares production chains involve either a logs-planks or crude-oil train leg that can be full in both directions. These routes make vastly more money than any other, cargo or passenger. Essentially they pay for your network expansion. There is a fifth "golden route" available between steel and construction materials involving a shared train line between a goods/machines chain and a bricks chain.

2. City growth is heavily influenced by the supply of goods they demand. Without city growth there are few buildings for civs to shop and work in (which in the game are the only reason civs use passenger services at all) so passenger numbers will be severely limited.

Both these factors would make a passenger service start, let alone a passenger only game, much harder and grindy.

[Martin]

It is easy to do and not a struggle at all, in 1850 - 1900s it's just abit slow going. Esp in startup.

Make sure you have bus/taxi/trams moving people around in each city and it shouldn't be an issue. I have just finished a linked system, where 3 trains all run to a junction station in middle of nowhere and it's profitable.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964895837

I'd add in an Airport but it's a small map, so airports are pointless.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Martin:

it's just abit slow going. Esp in startup.

That's what I meant by struggle.

[sergetechone]

@Gregorovitch - I do agree with you that cargo is better when you start up and it does help to grow the cities better. Adding passenger later do help to grow the cities.

I start this play in 1950, easy mode, with sandbox ( can build and delete industry )

I start with a few Grain - Food lines, and add the passengers later using trams inside the cities, and only two intercity one using one train and the other using a trams LRT. I was using a street mod that can build a dedicated bus/tram/truck reserve road ONLY, no cars is allow using that road/lane. So I try to build an LRT - Light Rail Transit, reference to Toronto . Like St-Clair Ave West, Spadina Avenue, and the under construction Eglington LRT . It was the idea. To do a profitable line, I just needed the right amount of units in the line, so they can be full both ways as much as possible.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964902464

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964903028

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964903695

The help a city grow, you need these factors : Intercity traffic between cities : For personnel vehicles AND Your transit network, An internal transit network, supply the cities goods - Commercial and Industrial, setup the transit line to connected the Residencial - Commercial, and Residencial - Industrial, reduce the emission as much as possible by re-route some of the busy lines, control the overcrowded of bus/train stop/station and control any traffic jams as possible.

[Feresc]

Originally posted by sergetechone:

I was using a street mod that can build a dedicated bus/tram/truck reserve road ONLY, no cars is allow using that road/lane.

Uh, this seems interesting, could you share a link to it please? I'll have a look.
Cheers!

[sergetechone]

Here the link :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1933747406&searchtext=Street