Ships are mostly not financially viable

[Chalkstix]

And why? In almost all transport games I've played over the years, ship transport has been more or less running with a deficit. In reality, ship transport is used because it's good business. In games like Transport Fever 2, transporting goods with planes is financially more viable than by ship... Just... why...

[marc345]

I noticed it too. Ships are only good to cross the river/lake for short distances.
It‘s a pity.

[Huperspace]

ships are a cheap transport Option nothing more, only with volume you can make money.
But as the ingame "customer" have an infinite budget they all using the fastest but most expensive option.

[Kniff]

Mostly its all about to make the line as straight as possible to make a plus because you are only get paid for the shortest distance between both stations.
I am on 1854 and my ship is transporting only logs in one direction and so far was never full but makes a 60K win.

edit and on difficult setting ^^

[grapplehoeker]

That's the beauty of this game. It depicts the chronological advancement in transportation very nicely so that you can clearly see what was viable, when and why ;)
I have been playing mostly island maps and as a result I've been forced to use ships instead of trains for most of my cargo lines.
From 1850 onwards, they have been very profitable, especially the crude/oil/fuel lines.
In fact, in 1850, with a capacity of 90 no other form of transport comes close to the Zoroaster for movement of freight.
The advantage of shipping is that it can move huge volumes of freight at a cost of longer travel time. Air freight was a lot faster, but it is only in the modern era that planes can carry larger volumes and for that reason, it takes a long time until air cargo overtakes shipping, historically.

[Chalkstix]

Honestly, I was transporting fuel with airplane and with ship, and even though the plane could only carry something like 14, and the ship could carry something like 200, the ship route's finances were always in the red while the planes were making money. That does not seem historically accurate in any era...

[Kniff]

Is it a straight connection?

[Chalkstix]

As straight as the terrain allows, but one of the things I like about transport games is to avoid as much terrain terraforming as possible, since historically it's been more profitable to avoid changing the land masses to accomodate more direct routes.

[Chalkstix]

I don't think the game really takes into account how expensive it would be to transport everything with airplanes - even if it is the most direct route

[Parkera]

I had a save where all 6 of my massive ships were transporting Iron Ore from Wisconsin to Toledo and making avg 6.5 mil per trip each and this was not set up until 1960 ish

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Chalkstix:

Honestly, I was transporting fuel with airplane and with ship, and even though the plane could only carry something like 14, and the ship could carry something like 200, the ship route's finances were always in the red while the planes were making money. That does not seem historically accurate in any era...

I beg to differ ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968770082

[Kniff]

"As straight as the terrain allows"
thats unimportant for the money you get, you only get it for the disctance you draw with a fictive straight line between supplier and consumer. So even a full line which looks like the part of a circle could be the same earnings like a 30% empty but straight line.

[Gregorovitch]

In the game ships run up against balance issues against trains. The problem is that game is built around station/dock storage capacities suited to trains. Ships should, per IRL, carry far more per load than a train but in the game they don't, they carry about the same but are at the same time far slower.

Why I don't know. I might guess it's 'cos the way frequency works in the economy simulation, it may not work easily with much more occasional but massive loads being delivered by ships. If a ship could arrive with 2000 ore on board to be picked up by a train it would throw out all the "normal" game calculations, platform capacities, factory production rates etc, as well as make getting such shipping line up and running to provide steady supply take many years considering how long it would take many fewer ships to complete round trips.

Ships work well in specific situations mainly because they are much more flexible in what cargo they can carry so it is possible to set up shipping lines that are largely full in both directions. Such lines are very profitable, albeit not as profitable as train freight routes full in both directions, but more profitable than train routes full in only one direction.

[Chalkstix]

I get that the game can't take everything into consideration and needs some kind of "simple" calculation for how much money you make from a route. But since Transport Tycoon, ships have just never really seemed that profitable compared to trains in these games. It simply pained me to see that a ship transporting fuel was running a deficit compared to a plane transporting fuel which was making money (in the Mallorca campaign map)

[Martin]

For Cargo ships are awesome, if you can find the right places to put them.
For passengers, they're a complete waste of time until late game and even then only for crossing a river and very short high volume distances. They do however add the advantage of two way profits. If you can find anywhere that is profitable.

[Kniff]

Many ships can carry any cargo so its much easier to get them full both ways.
And to start 1850 with carrying 70 units of any kind isn't so bad either.