Most profitable passenger line strategy?

[Grumpy Crumpy]

Hi guys, would like some opinions and experiences on the best way to set up passenger rail lines.

Currently I'm playing a 3x1 map and have one really long "main" line running through 5-6 towns collecting passengers, with some branch lines off to other towns either side of the main line.

I seem to have problems that, even though the trains are full, the amount of passengers being transferred at each station along the line is so low the trains barely if at all cover costs until they get to the very end terminus and dump everything, but the profit I earn on that stop is eaten up in the travel time to the next station.

I have tried to keep the maintenance costs of the trains as low as possible and to have as many cars as possible but my Atlantics can only handle 3 pullmans and even then they struggle to reach maximum speed. Tried it with two cars and they move quicker but the number of passengers is so low they just don't earn enough to be profitable. No other combination I can find of American rollingstock can be more efficient, unless I'm missing something.

I thought maybe running multiple short lines along the whole route, between each station or maybe 3 stations max might help bring in more money, but I don't want to screw with the lines I have and not get results.

Anyone have pointers or tips to help maximise profits on my passenger lines? I am wondering if just waiting for better rollingstock to come along would help, but the maintence costs/passenger ratios seem to just get worse the more advanced the game gets...?

Can anyone tell me just how important speed is to passengers? Like I know it's important, but is adding 20kph to the top speed of my trains worth doubling maintence costs or not, etc? Trial and error is expensive and my computer takes forever to load my games... would prefer to avoid if possible. :p

[peterhoepfner]

circular route around the edge of the map. With a few cross map lines to pick up the center towns and give more direct options for passengers. Easily the most aestetically pleasing option and gives equal town growth.
Looks great on the line profitability table also. The clockwise and anti clockwise lines are perpatually at or near the top.

[Quadro7F]

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

• You earn revenue based only on the air distance between the "on-boarding station" and the "de-boarding station"—it does not matter how long it takes you to get from station to station, or how direct the route is, or what speed you actually attain during the trip. (There's some unverified speculation that difference in altitude might be a factor, but to my knowledge that hasn't been tested or confirmed.)

That's true, but you forgot about other variable in a final formula - the running cost, which IS affected by how fast your vehicle will get to selling point station, coz if you send it by route which 2x time longer, or by slower speed road then you will simply pay a 2x times more maintance per same profit that you will get at the end. So it's in our best interest to make those lines as straight as possible (in all 3 axis, coz slope will descrease the speed same as zig-zagging).

As example, I had a food line Farm-Factory-City, using very complex S-shaped route with a perfectly calculated interval and basically loosing money coz of that, but when I made a direct road with bridge - it went into positive balance instantly, I even had to reduce the number of trucks to keep interval correct (so less overall upkeep cost too as bonus), which is calculated btw with formula: (SecondsPerYear * LineCapacity) / City Demand

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

The listed price per KM in game is for passengers only.

Not only for passengers, it affects cargo too, I was specially making those tests a few days ago - when you add/remove slow truck from a line - it drops/rises payments for all the faster ones accordingly, like if they would be the same slow models by themselves.

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

Additionally, main lines result in more balanced town growth than series-short lines do. In the latter case, towns on the "ends" of the series of lines will grow more slowly and lag behind towns in the middle of the series. With a main line, the towns grow at a much more even rate (which generally means that the end-towns grow faster than they otherwise would, which means more demand for passengers and cargo, etc.).

Well, there is such thing exist as line "capacity (aka seats) potential". You can ofc run mega-circle-all-other-the-world epic routes with perfect interval working like a clock, making you a good profit (and I did and play with that by myself too), and at beginning it's good, but when you do that for quite a while, and cities gets bigger - then you basically reduces the seat numbers for a short-range passengers by occupying them with long-range ones clients instead. And so they have to wait next train, creating a massive waiting crowds on stations who are instead of to be moved with your buses at the target city at this point already are just sitting there and do nothing.. waiting next train.. drinking soda.. roleplaying mutants with big unproportional hands (who even modeled them? xD).. and just burning profit and maintance cost for the whole chain (including buses/trams who runs half-empty). Well, idk how to explain that better, sorry ^^

As for the issue with "ends" towns slow development - this is why I said to use a separate express lines in between them and the middle cities, and + airports for additional boost. This is actually where airplanes come into a serious play.

I once had a map with 2 biggest cities which were actually at the opposite sides of the map, the exact "end" ones, and they were linked with each other with a massive air flow (like 10 B757 planes, all stuffed to the max), coming in and out nonstop like crazy, so I had to build 2 airports at each end just for the sake of runway doubling capacity.

And I always wonder - why can't we have an ability to just add an additional runways for the existing aiports, like an upgrade you know, instead of spamming the new airports nearby? xD

P.S. I see medium difficulty is easy for you, so why not to try hard one? And you could "feel" all those efficiency aspects much better too, same as it's simply more fun and challenging to survive even, just like in real world.

[Saint Landwalker]

Quadro7F님이 먼저 게시:

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

• You earn revenue based only on the air distance between the "on-boarding station" and the "de-boarding station"—it does not matter how long it takes you to get from station to station, or how direct the route is, or what speed you actually attain during the trip. (There's some unverified speculation that difference in altitude might be a factor, but to my knowledge that hasn't been tested or confirmed.)

That's true, but you forgot about other variable in a final formula - the running cost, which IS affected by how fast your vehicle will get to selling point station

Running cost isn't a factor in revenue, it's a factor in net profit. Running cost also doesn't change according to how quickly you run a route. (Technically, it changes if you spend a ton of time sitting in a station, but if you're sitting in a station, you aren't running between stations to earn revenue.)

Obviously, from a profit perspective, running routes quickly is preferred; you can make more trips per year, and therefore more revenue, and therefore more profit.

Quadro7F님이 먼저 게시:

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

The listed price per KM in game is for passengers only.

Not only for passengers, it affects cargo too,

Did you read the sentence I wrote immediately after that?

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

Freight pays twice the listed rate

The listed Price per KM is for passengers. If you double that number, you get the "ticket price" for freight.

Quadro7F님이 먼저 게시:

Landwalker04님이 먼저 게시:

Additionally, main lines result in more balanced town growth than series-short lines do. In the latter case, towns on the "ends" of the series of lines will grow more slowly and lag behind towns in the middle of the series. With a main line, the towns grow at a much more even rate (which generally means that the end-towns grow faster than they otherwise would, which means more demand for passengers and cargo, etc.).

Well, there is such thing exist as line "capacity (aka seats) potential". You can ofc run mega-circle-all-other-the-world epic routes with perfect interval working like a clock, making you a good profit (and I did and play with that by myself too), and at beginning it's good, but when you do that for quite a while, and cities gets bigger - then you basically reduces the seat numbers for a short-range passengers by occupying them with long-range ones clients instead. And so they have to wait next train, creating a massive waiting crowds on stations who are instead of to be moved with your buses at the target city at this point already are just sitting there and do nothing.. waiting next train.. drinking soda.. roleplaying mutants with big unproportional hands (who even modeled them? xD).. and just burning profit and maintance cost for the whole chain (including buses/trams who runs half-empty). Well, idk how to explain that better, sorry ^^

Yeah, I don't really understand what you're getting at here. Sorry. =\

Local transportation is, in the grand scheme of things, a non-factor in your bottom line by the time you're considering running rail main-lines, so whether they're running full or half-capacity is immaterial to the overall picture, as long as the trains are full (or at least, nearly-full).

Short- versus Long-range passengers also don't really matter unless you're using a very non-linear line, in which case, you shouldn't be using a main-line arrangement to begin with; that's where the serial short lines come into play. If my main-line train with a capacity of 100 and running on a straight A-B-C line only unloads ten passengers at B, it doesn't materially matter because the other 90 are just going to pay for the difference when they get off at C.

Quadro7F님이 먼저 게시:

P.S. I see medium difficulty is easy for you, so why not to try hard one? And you could "feel" all those efficiency aspects much better too, same as it's simply more fun and challenging to survive even, just like in real world.

I did a Small Hard map after the previously-mentioned Medium, with a self-imposed rule of using no trains at all (I figured as long as I was going for the Hard achievements, I'd pick up Truck Fever on the way there). Started in 1850, and hit $1B around 1980 or so. Playing with only trucks, trams, and buses is actually pretty fun. I did add a single plane line between a couple of towns on opposite edges of the map in the mid-20th century (when DC-3s became available), and it ended up turning a decent profit. Used trams for inter-city transportation (European trams are actually pretty good for this).

[ez1]

In general, to get profitable passenger routes up and running, put away your calculators and parsing locomotive capacities and just do a few basic things:

*Start with your hub cities, the ones you began the game with, because they will be the most developed as well, offering the largest potential ridership. They should aready have a strong bus network between them and feeding into them to leverage your trains onto.

*Feed the stations with tram lines in the two major cities, they will pay off handsomely in increased ridership with time.

*Don't build the line until you have enough profit from freight and buses to take it on, and you've already paid off the first wave of road vehicle upgrades to stage coach and 5-capacity horse wagons.The trains will barely break even for the next decade in any event, as ridership ramps up and the towns themselves grow.

*Don't make your main line more than 3 stations long if you want to make an early profit. You can expand later on, but that is just too much infrastructure investment for pre-1900, and too long a wait-time between stations. Expansion/branches are easiest using MUs.

*Whatever the rolling stock on offer at the time, buy at least 4 of the latest passenger cars, and the best locomotive available. I think the sweet spot to build the first passenger lines is the decade of the mid 1870s-1880s.

[HappyWillyMonkey]

I pretty much do the same ez1. Shame I haven't worked out the ships yet.

[.]

Towns DO NOT DETECT connection to other city via Changing lines !!!!!!


If you connect 3 towns in a row they will have 2 neighbours each and will grow to according size.
If you connect 3 towns with 2 lines , end towns will sense 1 neighbour and middle will sense 2. So they will grow slower than middle one.

[maculator]

NoobMan | птн-хло님이 먼저 게시:

Towns DO NOT DETECT connection to other city via Changing lines !!!!!!


If you connect 3 towns in a row they will have 2 neighbours each and will grow to according size.
If you connect 3 towns with 2 lines , end towns will sense 1 neighbour and middle will sense 2. So they will grow slower than middle one.

I usually go for something like A<->B + B<->C + A<->C
All towns grow the same but I don't have the problems with passengers blocking seats for others or empty trains.

Edit: to be more precise its one track going from A to C over B and A<->C is some kind of "express"-train skipping7bypassing B.

[Vimpster]

NoobMan | птн-хло님이 먼저 게시:

Towns DO NOT DETECT connection to other city via Changing lines !!!!!!


If you connect 3 towns in a row they will have 2 neighbours each and will grow to according size.
If you connect 3 towns with 2 lines , end towns will sense 1 neighbour and middle will sense 2. So they will grow slower than middle one.

Towns don't "detect" anything period. Each individual building determines how far away other buildings are within a certain estimated time. One building next to a train station maybe able to "detect" a building that it can utilize that is 4 cities away through 4 transfers. While another building in the same town but on the far side of town from the train station may only reach buildings 1 town away within the same estimated time limit.

[clixor]

Vimpster님이 먼저 게시:

NoobMan | птн-хло님이 먼저 게시:

Towns DO NOT DETECT connection to other city via Changing lines !!!!!!


If you connect 3 towns in a row they will have 2 neighbours each and will grow to according size.
If you connect 3 towns with 2 lines , end towns will sense 1 neighbour and middle will sense 2. So they will grow slower than middle one.

Towns don't "detect" anything period. Each individual building determines how far away other buildings are within a certain estimated time. One building next to a train station maybe able to "detect" a building that it can utilize that is 4 cities away through 4 transfers. While another building in the same town but on the far side of town from the train station may only reach buildings 1 town away within the same estimated time limit.

Interesting. So following this logic, it would make sense going total overdrive with inner-city transport. Or anything you can do to make the trip to the station as short as possible (time-wise). That also means that (only) tram-loops are not the best way to go, unless you make connections with point-to-point routes.

[maculator]

Time is not a factor in this game. Passengers and cargo are treated the same way and it only matters if there is demand. How long you take to bring them to their destination doesn't matter at all.

[canophone]

maculator님이 먼저 게시:

Time is not a factor in this game. Passengers and cargo are treated the same way and it only matters if there is demand. How long you take to bring them to their destination doesn't matter at all.

I've learned: don't fly an air line between Dunkirk and Hastings on the EU7 campaign mission map. Though Dunkirk will pick up passengers, they'll become lost, and {little to no} return. That's a time factor.

As well, both cargo and passengers have preferences: cheap and/or fast. More a "connection" and "storage" factor than "demand" though "demand" plays a role.

[maculator]

If a town can take 100goods/year it won't accept 1 unit more than 100.
If you do it all in one anual trip or if you do 8 trips, the payment is the same (well the maintenance cost may differ because of the different train-setups).

Passengers travel because there is work/a place to go shopping available.

Just take a A-->B line, watch the green number when a full train reaches the station, devide that number through the passengers it carried and then repeat with a different train.

Or watch the lineusage in a cities window then don'T change lines but spam a line with 10 trains, it won't change a thing.

[canophone]

maculator님이 먼저 게시:

Passengers travel because there is work/a place to go shopping available.

Just take a A-->B line, watch the green number when a full train reaches the station, devide that number through the passengers it carried and then repeat with a different train.

Or watch the lineusage in a cities window then don'T change lines but spam a line with 10 trains, it won't change a thing.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=828724610

Line Destination: Hastings (from Dunkirk). Home, Work, Shop Locations? Elsewhere. Those "agents" disappeared after landing.

[maculator]

For me it all works just fine:

3 agents waiting for a ride to the next village:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830474283

On the way:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830474501

At the station in the next village:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830474767

2 of them sharing a bus to the store, the otherone took another line:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830475025

The two arrived and decided to go for a walk to the commercial district:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830475262

2 Arrived and this is the last screenshot of the remaining one whos about to reach it's final destination:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=830475542

[Vimpster]

maculator님이 먼저 게시:

Time is not a factor in this game. Passengers and cargo are treated the same way and it only matters if there is demand. How long you take to bring them to their destination doesn't matter at all.

The evidence would suggest otherwise. If time is not a factor at all then how would you explain the accessibility stat working the way it does? From what I have seen the accessibility stat is altered by the exact same factors as it was in Train Fever where time was a deffinite factor. And why do people not walk from one town to another or drive to far away towns when they have a car? Why do people go farther with their cars when the roads are upgraded to higher speeds to match their car speed?

There are obviously differences between how cargo is handled compared to passengers. Cargo does not appear to have any limits. But people deffinitely have restrictions based on time.