Making money early in a Sandbox game

[jztemple]

OK, I'm rather bad at this. I tend to enter a death spiral early on in Sandbox games by over-expanding and creating too much infrastructure, so that I'm having to constantly get loans which is eating into my profits.

So what are some good ways to make decent amounts of money early on in a Sandbox game? I do understand about providing passenger service within a town which generates profit, but that seems small potatoes. Is it worthwhile to connect up primary source producers, like logging and oil fields, to the next user in the chain, but without connecting all the way to the final users which are cities? It's that last part that seems to be losing me money.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! :-)

[Autocoach]

Discussions here , forget passengers until you have money coming in from freight .
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1066780/discussions/0/1745644671663144113/

One example

Find a forest that is on a fairly flat route to a sawmill quite far away . Connect these two by train and add a road connection from the forest to a tools factory and stick one truck on it . The train should be 100% full of logs and 50% full of planks on the way back . Find another forest near the sawmill and connect that via another route and the train could be full both ways .

There are many examples of this , don't need to worry that the planks may be lost waiting for a truck to go to the tools factory or that tools are not shipped.

The interest rate is so low that you should have no worries spending the entire available loan - provided the network will pay dividends later.

[Maxi der Zocker]

Hey jztemple. I usually start with a train that transports timber to a sawmill and let it sit for a while untill it gives out a positive income. The important thing here is that the terrain is relative flat so that the trains don't need to climb stupid hills. The game is fine with it when the sawmill isn't connectet to anywhere. You can always expand the timber-planks line if needed. You can also start with anything else but this seems to be a good starting point. That was it from my side. I hope it helped.

[Bahamas]

I do the fuel chain with a town needing fuel near a oil refinery

[Gregorovitch]

Firstly in TF2 loans are irrelevant, the interest is a pittance, treat them as cash at hand basically. Use all your 10m at the beginning of the game to get properly set up with a banker uber-profitable line which will finance all your future projects.

The first thing to do is set up one of two types of train line: a log-plank-tool line or a crude-oil-fuel line. I'll use the tool one as an example:

Forest-------Tool Factory---------------[a long way]----------------------------Saw Mill--------Forest
.......................|
.......................|
...............City(s) demanding tools

This works because your trains will be carrying logs one way and planks the other between the tool factory and the saw mill therefore making obscene profits - for the rest of the game. You need the forests at each end because you need two logs to make one plank and if they were both at the tool factory end your trains would only be 50% full of planks on the way back to the tool factory, or to put it another way you'd need twice as many trains to get the same job done for the same pay. The crude-oil-fuel line works exactly the same way since it takes two crude to make one oil.

Optimally, i.e. so you never have to worry about money again for the rest of the game, you set up two of these uber-profit generators before you do anything else at all.

With two of those lines in place your focus can change towards what seems to be intended as the main challenge of the game, growing your cities by supplying them their goods and ferrying their passengers. To that end you should focus exclusively on expanding your network as fast as possible to connect all cities and all factories across the map. You will find that two of these super-profit making lines will easily pay for this expansion and you can concentrate on the logistical and network design problems involved with this task, which are far from inconsiderable, without worrying about money.

Not all lines required to supply cities with goods and shift their passengers will be that profitable, some may even be loss making for a while, but others will be very profitable and easily make up for it and more especially backed by these banker starter line incomes.

[larry_roberts]

I can answer in one word: Oil!.

[sergetechone]

@jztemple

It all depend on the map, industry mods and some productions mods.

As Gregorovitch example, that will work very well, if the industries are place propely and the town accept tools, if not, you may have to setup the town to accept tools, place a forest, at the saw mill, place a forest near it if you dont have the industries place properly. You can do the same with oil chain. You use only trains to carry oil / petrol or logs / planks, the trucks take care of the local delivery and the feeder lines and transfer line. With the Grains in Boxcar mod, same with Grain / Foods chain.

So that method is a complete chain setup with a feeder line, a Stone / Brick work well with trucks and ships. That method is : Complete the chain with a town, Standard starting play for TF1, work well with TF2, except Oil / Grains / Logs chain need a feeder line to supply the factory so the ship/trucks/trains can be full on the return trip.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1978124236

In this example, I only setup the town to accept Bricks and increase the grow factor a bit.

The second method work well in TF2 ONLY. A raw to factory only. A one way setup.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2008929827

In this example, using yeol senseless industry mod with 10 times industry production mod, with 4 X cargo, I just pick up clay to a brick factory. That it. It just happen to have two bricks factory near by and a clay mine in the middle. And placing my own industry is out-of-question.... over $25 million , just to place one mine. The thing is : it work well, they are cheap the setup and you can do the same setup and repeat, as long a road connect from a raw to manufacturer. With a train/trucks/ships. They will not make as much money, but it is a start. It to setup properly those lines, Full Load and wait unlimited time and drop, set up cargo filter, and the proper wagon / truck, and start with ONE vehicle only to check the rate and add vehicles until the rate match the shipping rate of the raw industry in one of the industry tab. In my example, the mine as a shipment of 500, so I did set the transport rate close to 500, so it ship 500 to Brick factory One and 500 to factory Two. The mine can produce more than 1000. On a vanila play, Stone / Brick , the rate is 100

And the third method is : Passergers to Passagers. but it will not have a high Revenue / Expense ratio compare to a cargo route. A Pass to Pass route has to be set up so the frequency and usage / capacity is balance. A train line between fairly large towns, with a proper transit lines to RCI is the key. with a proper usage / capacity is also the key. For example : you check the route manager info, a commuter line with 5 min in frequency with a usage / capacity of 10 / 30. The route need a reduction of buses to get close to a 10 / 10. if you got a 30 / 30, than you can add a bus or two. Work the same with a train line.

So spamming carts / trucks will not work well. Most of the vehicles will run empty most of the time and trucks / trains / ships are not waiting until full at the first stop. The only time I setup my lines for not waiting to full load, is when they start pick up a delivery to a town and transfer line that need to get moving and no line up of vehicles, but in most case, they are waiting until full.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by sergetechone:

@jztemple

It all depend on the map, industry mods and some productions mods.

As Gregorovitch example, that will work very well, if the industries are place propely and the town accept tools, if not, you may have to setup the town to accept tools, place a forest, at the saw mill, place a forest near it if you dont have the industries place properly.

This could be true, I have only played out two large maps seriously so far. However I believe it will usually be the case that at least two tool/oil lines are available on the vast majority of maps at the start. This is because:

* At worst three cities will require fuel and/or tools, most likely four or five, even six, and there will be three each tool factories and fuel refineries. It doesn't really matter how far away the sawmill/oil refinery is from the tool factory/fuel refinery, in many ways the further the better. It is therefore extremely likely that a city demanding tools will be within reasonable trucking distance or a short train line from one of the tool factories or fuel refineries for example.

* There are a *lot* of forests and oil wells on each map which in my (admittedly limited number of) maps so far have left me spoilt for choice as to which forests/oil wells to use for these lines at the start of the game.

Personally my advice would be to start a new map looking for two of these lines and if they really don't appear to exists on it, roll another map straight away unless you want to set yourself an unusual challenge game.

[Gorby]

A Grain->Food line or a Stone->Construction Mats line are the easiest to start with, as they only require 2 industries.

Next are Logs->Planks->Tools and Crude Oil->Oil->Fuel which require 3 industries.

Chances are that at least one of these chains will be fairly easy and/or cheap to setup at the beginning.

Goods and Machines require many more industries to complete a chain, and aren't good choices for starting a game.

[Martin]

Yeh i usually go with food or sometimes fuel if either there's an easy route or sea route, starting with ships can be a good early boost.

[rkelly17]

I look for two towns fairly close that need the same good and hope that there is a factory between the towns that manufactures the good. Often there is if I look hard enough--assuming a larger map. If I can supply that factory with trucks and deliver the goods with trucks I can start making money fairly quickly--not a lot o f money, but operate at a profit and add more trucks. If I have enough money to set up the system with trains I can make even more money, but one has to be able to build the infrastructure and buy the trains before running out of loan capacity.

[SoopahMan]

The strategy that consistently works for me in TF1 and 2 (base games no mods) is:

Identify the shortest-path, simplest good to deliver to one city. For example:
Grain -> Food -> City.
Crude Oil -> Oil -> Fuel -> City

My second step if I can, is to use as much existing track as possible for a return trip delivery, making dual-use of the tracks and trains and reducing "dead heads." Planning for step 2 before laying out step 1 can help.

An example return trip opportunity: On a large map of the US, an oil well and a refinery combo sat between Dallas and New Orleans. Both demanded Fuel. My initial track was a straight-line delivery - oil, refinery 1, refinery 2, New Orleans. When I had enough money a decade later, I extended the track to Dallas, so I could now double the tracks on the passing area, dupe my train, and get freight revenue out of both cities.

Early trains are all slow, so throwing passenger on isn't risky. My next investment was passengers between the cities - which were growing because they had freight delivered. That grew the passenger business, and I was out of debt with >$1mil annual profit. That's generally when I've made it out of the challenging phase and into the do whatever you want phase of the game.

I like to play on very sparse maps for more of a challenge (and less annoying drivers making traffic - just don't build highways!), and that usually wrecks any early return trip opportunities. In that case I try to identify a second straight-line simple freight, and deliver that - anywhere on the map. If possible, I then connect the 2 cities with passenger, ideally reusing the freight rail.

If that's not possible, I just let the 2 freight lines provide me with a base of revenue, then connect one of them with the cheapest to connect nearby city with passenger rail. Even though the other city isn't growing yet, the fact one of them is will ramp up the passenger traffic.

I avoid any complex freight until late game. For example one map (Real USA TF1) had this supply chain:

(Logs -> Planks + Coal & Iron-> Steel & Slag) ->
Slag -> Bricks -> City
Planks & Steel -> Tools and Machines

This is the kind of thing that'll kill you early game, don't build it until you've got $50mil+ in the bank.