Are planes that useful?

[SgtHorton]

I dont get it, there are so many planes in the game, more planes than trams and buses but somehow even when I play on big map, nobody wants to fly. Cargo also seems to be easier by land/water than planes. Am I doing something wrong?

[Profound]

I only ever really use them in very long maps.

[lozacenz]

Originally posted by CanadaMyCountry:

I dont get it, there are so many planes in the game, more planes than trams and buses but somehow even when I play on big map, nobody wants to fly. Cargo also seems to be easier by land/water than planes. Am I doing something wrong?

The trick to getting people to fly on planes (and flat out overloading the airports early, until planes get bigger) is, so far as I can tell, to make sure that the planes are connecting places that are Not connected otherwise, or involve a Lot of transfers to get between... and that are also a long way away from each other. So long maps, or the bigger experimental maps.

Then, like train stations, make sure to use busses and/or trams to link the airport with several places in a town.

Actually, ideally, you link an airport to a railway station which has trains coming from several different cities, as sticking airports too close to cities is basically the easiest way to take emissions from 'irrelevant' to 'crippling'. But just putting it a bit further away from the city and using a slightly longer than usual tram route will do the job just fine too.

If I remember rightly, planes Do give you a lot of money per passenger, because speed affects ticket prices.

Edit:
Also, there is only one set of planes and one set of ships. Trains, busses, and trams are split into three sets based on one of the map settings. American stuff on dry, Asian (including Russian) stuff on tropical, and European on Temperate. Though you do have the option (in the custom settings thing) to enable all of them at once.

[sergetechone]

Like lozacenz said, planes are useful on a bigger larger map. Meaning they earn more money vs a short hop. To make any air route to work properly, you need : Large City A and Large City B - bus / tram line that cover Residence, Commercial and Industrial area by placing one bus stop in each area. Place the airport outside the town limit. Place a bus / tram / train station in catchment with the airport, and place a bus / tram in catchment at one of the city bus stop ( make sure the catchment of both bus station cover the airport and the other the bus stop / city - IMPORTANT, if not, the system will not work ) . Built a road to link station from the airport to the station in the city. Make a route from the airport to the city. And a route inside the city to cover the city - if needed. Start placing buses to cover the Airport route link. From both airport, built a route and place one plane at a time, one takeoff, wait that plane arrive in mid point of the map, place an another plane, and possibility an another plane after the second reach mid point, place a plane on the route until the frequency is close to 8 min or below. On a long 1:5 extra large map, you may need 3 to 4 planes - 1970 + For slower planes, need more. Wait for 1 to 3 income report ( year in normal speed ) for the airport getting more passages.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2320076020

[larry_roberts]

I find that planes work much better in Transport Fever 2 than in Transport Fever, they can, actually, be profitable and useful!.

[lozacenz]

Originally posted by larry_roberts:

I find that planes work much better in Transport Fever 2 than in Transport Fever, they can, actually, be profitable and useful!.

Yeah, pretty sure there was no such thing as a non-experimental map big enough to make them viable in TpF1, for one thing.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by lozacenz:

Yeah, pretty sure there was no such thing as a non-experimental map big enough to make them viable in TpF1, for one thing.

I'ed have to disagree. I think people were generally just not supplying their airports very well. Another likely issue is that they are splitting the passenger base of the towns between too many locations. There is a finite number of passengers in a town and the more locations you create a direct connection with the fewer passengers will be available for any on of those lines (airlines being especially sensitive to this because of their high ticket price).

I had no trouble at all making aircraft work quite profitably even on maps as small as medium size 1:2 ratio. And although I would not create competing lines via trains that would directly connect towns that had an airline between them, I still didn't need to segregate them either. So long as there were a number of transfers needed to go between the two towns via other transport methods than an airline between the two towns would work. I also didn't use airports to service multiple towns at either end. I would put airports very close to the specific town I intended it to service.

I personally never noticed much difference between the use of airplanes between TpF1 and TpF2.

[Rapture571]

I honestly don't see the point in planes at all. Even the megalomaniac map is only like 30x30 miles (1x1).

How many planes fly that short of a distance? And why would you ever need a boeing 737?

I just use train on far distances.

Edit: The only time they'd seem useful to me is if you're island hopping and the ferry is too slow.

[Overlord]

Every vehicle in the game is profitable enough if it runs at least 1/2 full on each of the trips. With trains and trucks you can get away even with just one trip full A-B and B-A empty. The further the distance the betterm it gets and you ahve to transport people to and from airport hub to increase volume of pax.

[RadiKyle]

Originally posted by Rapture571:

I honestly don't see the point in planes at all. Even the megalomaniac map is only like 30x30 miles (1x1).

How many planes fly that short of a distance? And why would you ever need a boeing 737?

I just use train on far distances.

Edit: The only time they'd seem useful to me is if you're island hopping and the ferry is too slow.

Don't take the distance units literally (nor any other units in the game), everything is a scaled abstraction from reality. I mean when's the last time we saw 40 cities fit inside of "30 miles"? Or it take "months" to cross it? That 30 miles represents a wayyy bigger distance.

For a given line rate, aircraft have the highest net income potential of any vehicle in the game (ignoring infrastructure costs)..., meaning they can have the highest ROI and the shortest payback period. But they need to be used for long distances where they can maximize their speed advantage. They should work well on the larger map sizes.

Cheers

[ajax_post]

In my experience planes can be nicely profitable for both freight and passengers even on modestly sized maps.

The key thing for profit is ensuring there is no competing route that the game might deem more efficient.

For me it's about creating a fun and diverse network. If your objective is to get the most money for each cargo to every destination or create the most 'realistic' map you might find the aircraft simulation lacking.

It's basically about what you want to achieve and how you like to play transport games.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Originally posted by Rapture571:

I honestly don't see the point in planes at all. Even the megalomaniac map is only like 30x30 miles (1x1).

How many planes fly that short of a distance? And why would you ever need a boeing 737?

I just use train on far distances.

Edit: The only time they'd seem useful to me is if you're island hopping and the ferry is too slow.

The ingame measurements have no correlation with map "distances". Ingame towns, for example, are heavy simplifications of the real deal, for example, unless you dump a lot of cities together, and airports are extremely small, compared to the real life counterparts.

Think of it this way: they are there just to provide you with a frame of reference for network sizes, and for things like vehicle and station lengths.

By the way, there are some very short airplane routes, usually connecting islands with each other or with a mainland. For example, Minami-Daito to Kita-Daito, 12 km long:

https://youtu.be/1JX7x4STHQQ

As for ingame, they can work well connecting any cities with slower connections, not just ferries. High speed trains though tend to decrease air traffic a lot, which often occurs in real life anyway.

[HellDuke]

They can be quite profitable. Keep in mind, distance matters for how much you make. Since unlike in early game where you do routes just to supply a city and start doing distribution centers you will start seeing that planes will even become a proffered route.

For example in my current game the first route I had was a food processor near a city in the center of the map and it took food to a far away city by boat. Now I connected it by train to another city on the opposite edge of the map (the food processor became a defacto hub since loads of different goods get sent there to be shipped off by boat). The 2 edge cities got connected by airport and now instead of taking the boat, goods from the centre take the train to one edge of the map and then a plane ride to the other edge

[hayspggammer]

Originally posted by Rapture571:

I honestly don't see the point in planes at all. Even the megalomaniac map is only like 30x30 miles (1x1).

How many planes fly that short of a distance? And why would you ever need a boeing 737?

I just use train on far distances.

Edit: The only time they'd seem useful to me is if you're island hopping and the ferry is too slow.

Check out 100 Aircraft Challenge save game in the workshop.