Guide for public transport?

[irisidem]

So, I recently started, and have been able to get some pretty decent freight networks going (With the help of a few guides). I haven't, however, been able to work out intercity/long distance public transport. I tried buses, but eventually the stations clogged up.

I tried trains, but they were never profitable. Nobody would ride in the boats (Even though I had a bus taking them to the port), and air-planes had the same problems as the buses, which was made worse by the fact that they would circle the airport waiting to land, wasting money and time, even when there were three landing strips.

So, are there any good, comprehensive guides to public transport in this game?

[Tomcat]

Sorry, no guide, but some tips:

I think it's important to understand how the simulation differs from real life here. For example, people in Simutrans have no issues with having to take ridiculous routes to get somewhere. They'll happily take a 1000km trip to travel 1km and they will pay for the long route (as long as it has enough stops on the way), which leads to ring lines being king, because those can guarantee full vehicles the best.

I have made good profits with creating a big ring line over the whole map to fill with buses, one station for each town, from which passengers are further distributed locally. I try to make this big ring line not get in the way of local traffic by having the exchange station outside of the borders the town. If you build the station correctly, spanning over several roads, your bus lines never interfere with each other. If stations clog up with passengers, expand the stations and use more buses. This ring line should easily become your main source of profit. Only when the road clogs up, buses become a problem. Then I replace the entirely bus ring line with a train ring line (one directional, since it saves a lot of railway maintanance costs and assures fluid traffic). Also I use the fastest trains I can buy at the time, since faster trains mean higher profits (the simulation is programmed to give a good speed bonus for passengers and mail).

If you are interested in how exactly profits are calculated in simutrans, googling for "pay_for_total_distance simutrans" shows some discussions and charts, that have been very insightful for me. (pay_for_total_distance is a game option to decide how profits are calculated).

[Nadson_Rafael]

How to make buses with MakeObj?