Tips for Free game ?

[Uri]

Hey there,

I like this game but the way goods are handled and what is a good way to transport them is still hard to understand.

I tried since 12 hours to somehow manage to make money while playing free games, like in the campaign I fail at that pretty much.

The in-game tutorial is missing a lot of depth, so any tips of how to start a game and best way to make money in early game ?

(please no "go watch a lets play" comments) I hate those videos, people talking annoy me so much

[Krakanu]

I'd suggest starting out on a large/flat map for your first free play. You want a large map because the industries are randomly placed so it will be easier to find a decent "starting area" on a larger map, and flat because it gives you a lot more room to play with in the areas between towns. You might have to generate a few to find one with a decent area.

Things to look for in a "starting area":

Starter Industries - Look for an area that has both a farm and food processor. Both livestock and food can be carried by boxcars, meaning you can handle all the relevant cargo with a single train. Similarly, look for oil well + oil refinery to do the same with crude oil/fuel. Again, both can be carried by a tanker car which makes it easy to handle with a single train. Even if you don't have enough money for a train you can still run the line with 5-10 horse carts for easy starting money. Start by only delivering the finished goods to a single town, then branch out as you get more money. Avoid steel/plastic/machines/tools industries. These are far too complex for the early game, and require a larger initial investment before you will see decent returns.

Clustered towns - Look for an area with several towns and relatively flat area between them. This will make setting up the initial passenger lines easy and cheap. Avoid making many tunnels/bridges starting out as they are expensive. If you construct tracks in smaller segments it will follow the terrain better. Use the contour line overlay (bottom right corner) to see the elevation changes more easily.

Starter Tips:

When deliverying cargo to a town, make sure the right buildings are getting the deliveries. Click the town name to see what commercial (blue) buildings need vs industry (yellow) needs. To deliver goods to the inner city, you can actually deliver cargo to the small street-side bus stops (I didn't learn this until yesterday!) which can save you from having to demolish expensive buildings in order to put a large truck stop in place.

Stick with A->B lines and avoid A->B->C->B->A lines when starting out. Your trains are too slow and capacity is too low to gain much from long loops like that.

Also stick to 1 train per line in the beginning. If there are extra passengers on the line, simply up the capacity of the current train instead of adding a new one. The passengers will wait regardless and this will save you on the large initial cost of locomotives. You'll also save on the costs of adding a second line of tracks + signals.

Don't be afraid to take out extra loans to get things started. The additional revenue gained will more than make up for the interest costs in the long run. In addition to this, pay off as much loans as you can in December (if you have the cash lying around). Interest is calculated at the start of each year, so this will save you from some of the interest. If you still need the money come January, simply draw it back out again. Also, if you pull 500k in January, then pay it back before the next year, it costs you nothing! So don't be afraid to use loans to make starting out easier. The max amount of loans you can have is $10m.

Avoid multi-purpose trains. Don't mix freight/people. Avoid having one train with mixed freight types. Late game this might make sense. Early game it will just cost you money.

Advanced tips:

Cargo is worth twice as much as passengers (presumably because half the time cargo trains will be empty). If you can find a way to run a cargo train that carries cargo on both the outbound and return trip, you can make bank!

Ticket price (how much passengers/cargo pays) depends on two things, theoretical max speed of all vehicles on the line, and straight line distance. This means you don't want to mix slow/fast vehicles on the same line, and that you want to deliver things in as straight a line as possible. Frequency is not as big a deal (however it can affect revenue in other ways).

Passengers won't wait forever, but cargo will.

When upgrading or selling/replacing a train, if you want to save as much cash as possible, pause the game the instant it lets off all its passengers/cargo and before it begins to pick up new ones. Then send it to the depot (build a new one nearby if you must, they're cheap). When you send out the new train, all the passengers/cargo will still be waiting. Later in the game its not a big deal, but in early game, every penny counts!

[canophone]

If you want to divert trains between specific platforms (ie: to ensure a fast vehicle gets precedent leaving the station), use waypoints and one-way signals, and turn off the train.

Trains will always go to the platform pathed to when it leaves a station, is reversed or manually turned off after turned off, and won't change unless forced by one-way signals. Pathing for trains first goes to the line pathing if it can, then stations if it can't path to the track the line is on.

Only place signals on the right side of the track leaving a station up to a crossover or switch, and never on the left side of the track. Place signals indicating the opposing direction on the other side of the switch instead.

[SBGaming]

Start with Road Vehicles. They are far more versatile than Trains, especially at the beginning when you start with nothing. They are cheap to purchase, and don't need much more than truck stations, and maybe a few bits of road to connect a more direct route, compared to the $Millions it'd take to lay down rail, build stations, and buy your first train.

Bus services between towns is likewise very profitable. Connect two towns and you'll find people interested to travel. The nice thing about passenger travel is that different passengers have different travel preferences. Some like it Fast, others like it cheap, and so you can supply both rail and bus passenger services between the same towns, and people will still travel on both. The same can work for Planes (Fast) and Ships (Cheap), though each of those have their own issues, where I find Rail and Road tend to be more reliable.

Look for resource chains that are clustered around cities. Two optimal setups (using Food as an example):

1) Farm <> Town <> Food Processor, or
2) Food Processor <> Farm <> Town

In the first example, you pick up Grain or Livestock at the Farm, drive them through the town over to the Food Processing Plant, and then on their return trip make their stop off in town before returning back to the Farm for more. The more of their trip they run full, the more profit you make. You could also do a Farm > Food Processor line, and then a separate Farm to Town line.

In the second example, you pick up Grain or Livestock at the Farm, deliver it to the Food Processing Plant, and then deliver Food back to the Farm, where a second line will pick up the Food at the Farm, and haul it the rest of the way to the town. You could also have one line servicing such a route.

Even on Medium difficulty, with a setup like this on the three simple consumer goods (Food, Fuel and Construction Materials), you can make a lot of money which will allow you to finance your future expansions and operations. USA Campaign Mission 5 is a really good opportunity to practice with truck lines, since the terrain is atrocious and you're better off with road vehicles. Start with a few vehicles to ramp up production, and then keep adding trucks until your roads are packed with them.

Each of these can be done with trains as well, but it'll be a significant investment early on, where trains work best when you're hauling passengers or goods long distances, and the trains can get to and stay at their top speed as long as possible. For trains, it may be worth more to spend a bit extra getting a bit of flat track, than to create a rollercoaster of a line.

Ideally, what you want is two or three cities each with convenient access to Food, Fuel or Construction Materials. After you get one of these lines setup to each town, run a separate Freight line connecting the two towns. This will allow Goods produced in one town to be transported to other, and then goods in the other town transported back the other way. I had a setup where Food was going one way, Construction Materials the other way, and it just made my Food and ConMat setups even more profitable because there was increased demand.

Videos on Youtube are a really good way of being able to see something in action, rather than merely reading about it, how someone managed to get past the early game struggle to profit. There are some Youtubers that annoy me as well, but I will say that if you want an example of the above in action, my own Freeplay series is a good example. Mute the video and put it on 2x Speed if desired.

[canophone]

Direct growth in cities with passenger connections. Throttle where growth gets directed in cities with unused railway tracks!

[Uri]

Thanks guys this is what I was looking for to know!

I will try those tips and see how it goes later!!

[Badenser]

Originally posted by Uri:

Hey there,

I like this game but the way goods are handled and what is a good way to transport them is still hard to understand.

I tried since 12 hours to somehow manage to make money while playing free games, like in the campaign I fail at that pretty much.

The in-game tutorial is missing a lot of depth, so any tips of how to start a game and best way to make money in early game ?

(please no "go watch a lets play" comments) I hate those videos, people talking annoy me so much

I have to agree, I tried several Free/Custom maps, all but the Ontario ones, were relatively flat.
it doesn't seem t matter what I do when starting in 1850 the earnings are so marginal that it is absolutely boring. It looks like the 3Mil startup isn't never enough.It also doesn't seem to matter if there is cargo sitting around or if one adds additional wagons, except that the alert of shipping more goods stops; the extra income seems to get eaten up b the increased maintenance cost.
There also seems to be a bug<?> with this cost, according to tutorial this cost goes up as trains get older, but when only replacing a loco the cost stayed exactly the same (same dollar vallue x same percentage), so not sure if one needs to replace the entire train to reset this cost factor.
Other big issue I have is that stopped trains cost as much maintenance as running trains.
As I mentioned before, a game good for those among us who are gluttons for punishment.