My Budget is a Rollercoaster

[WBruce]

I don't understand this game finances. In one moment I am making 17k in the other I am at a negative 4k wihtout change anything.

I think I understand the basics. I watched videos, red guides, but I can't make money.
I play challenge mode on hard - and yes, I tryed medium difficult and I get exactly the same results.

I have scenery, I have underpaid staff, and tryed to train staff. I have rides, and marketing.
I prefer to charge on entrance and dont charge on rides, but I also tryed otherwise. Right now I charge 30 Adults and 20 Children entrance and 1-7 on rides depending on how new they are.

I have 1500 park rating and 2500 visitors.
I have priority pass at 6,00
I have food and drink, and ATM.

What I don't have is a clue on how to have a steady income that allow me to enjoy my park.

Any hints?

[Delta-9]

Most of the time, if I start going into the neg, its because I exspanded too quick. Didnt hire enough matainance crew to fix broken rides. Each time a ride brakes down, you have to refund each ticket for that ride. If the ride has a long que, and a high ticket price, that could cost a big chunck of change. Dont forget to set rosters. Break downs, and ride age, are what costs me on my parks. Oh, and Making sure your senery rating on the each ride is at 100% helps keep people in line. The only crew i ever promote, are the mech's, and entertainers. The rest will be ok if you have enough employee rest stops. Setting your vendors to freeroam seems to keep mine happy.
Good Luck.

[Monkeysam]

You're only really getting cash when people come into your park.. this can mean that guest hang about for ages using your rides for free and staying for a long long time. Park rating seems to effect how many guests will inhabit your park at any one time.. if people are not leaving others will not turn up... I'd suggest putting the price of food up.

Broken rides count againist your parks rating and will sometimes cause guests to leave.. so when rides break down.. lots of people walk out.. when it's fixed new people arrive and give you some cash.

[WBruce]

My rides rarely breaks.

[Mykepatch]

When the game first came out, I used to charge guests on entrance, as it occurs in real life in almost all parks (In Europe for those I know at least), but I fast noticed that it was undoable.
The guests stay in the park, almost none of them quit the park and after a while, you don't gain anything more....
I made a post on Frontier bug forum, because I consider this is a bug. Nothing... no reply, didn't play recently, but I don't think they changed anything about that.
I think they just don't care.
People should quit the park after a given time, just like in real life. It's quite absurd to make them spend their life in the park because they don't pay for each attraction!

The solution is, when you see you loose money, to close the park, wait for most of the guests being out and reopen it... But this is almost as stupid as not enjoyable.
So now, in my parks, I simply charge at each attraction, and just don't use entrance tickets. These are just of no use with this behaviour.

[rbaczynski]

Park guests are going to stay in your park and look at the scenary until they run out of money and are too hungry, 'thirsty or exhausted to stay. That means they stay for about 4 game months on the average. You can,t force them out of the park, even by placing them outside the park entrance since they simply walk back in. The only way to force them out is to close the entire park but that messes up your park rating, shop sales AND you have to give them a refund of their entry fee which is a big hit on your park cash reserves. Even if yoo close the park you'll have the same problem in four months

If you've capped the number of guests in your park to 2,000 people that means you will get about 400 new guests each month as the guests with no money finally leave after a four month stay. That usually means that a smaller pay-one-price park is not going to generate a lot of income from entry fees and shop sales.

I also feel that this guest behavior feels like a bug if you have a scenic park which drives the prestige ratings.. The triggers for making a guest go home should have been when their energy, thirst or hunger level turns red (not zero) while walking AND they decide not use an ATM to get more cash AND they don,t have enough csdh to purchase the food or drinks they need, they should immediately go home.

That would allow players to make a pay-one-price park work like it should. New guests would then know if they have enough money to pay the park entry fee and have drink and food money to hang around for awhile. That would be a real world behavior.

[cerealfruitcake]

Monkeysam & rbaczynski are likely right. You probably have long gaps of guests not arriving. Over time this will balance out but it can take a while. I would also unlock the population cap if you have it on.

A little trick you can do if you need a boost of cash & new guests is to shut down your major rides. A large chunk of guests will leave the park and you'll get a new round of guests coming in.

I do not recommend closing your park, this will result in refunds which will drain your funds so only close the rides down. A lot of them will also head straight for your stalls before leaving giving those a boost as well.

The other option is taking your park into scenario editor, give 100% of all guests the "Day Tripper" trait & then they'll leave the park sooner (around 2 hours instead of 3+). You can take it back into challenge mode and continue playing in that way.

[rbaczynski]

CerealFruitcakes

Nice tips about closing only your rides and the Day Tripper option. I'll have to try that.

Took a look at your parks and ioved what I saw. I build the same way, medium sized but scenic.

[HeatherG]

3 flat rides is how I start any of the career scenarios. No shops until i hve 1,000+ people and $$$$. Shops r very expensive monthly, and staff. Some coasters can make u a lot of money and sometimes they drain the bank account. I usually hold off a little while until i have a constant profit overall.

It takes time to figure out the balance.Until your set with $ just keep shops and staff to a bare minimum.

[WBruce]

So I tryed to close my coaster and when I open again I made a lot of money.
I also noticed that guests go to the exit of my park and get back in. After a while I was loosing money again until I was on negative.

I notice that my rides and tickets income changes abruptaly. One moment I am making 17K an in the other -4K.

As I said I am way over a park start. I have 2800 guests and 1800 Park rating.

The majority of my rides are on negative profit, and I don`t know why. Great part of my guests concentrate on a coaster and dont visit other rides.

Another thing that makes me crazy is that my park management keeps bouncing from -13k to zero and than rises up again.

[Admiral Obvious]

Park management will start at 0 at the start of every in game month, and then go up until the end of that month, so what you are seeing is normal.

As a suggestion for ride pricing, I've heard that $6 per ride per star is the way to go, but that doesn't factor in entrance fees. Entry fees tend to mess up all of the "best" pricing for the park, especially once you factor in maintenance for rides and shops.

You can go with stupid expensive entry tickets, but have to give nearly free rides, or you can do the opposite.

[Joelvn]

Build one or more 'Steam'. charge 26$ a ticket, have it have 6 carts, and full speed.
I've easily made 500.000 in 2 hours or so.

If Steam's too bulky for you, try my mod that makes it a lot more compact ;)
Seriously though, try it, open it, and look at your park entrance.

[jpinard]

Aspira eredeti hozzászólása:

I don't understand this game finances. In one moment I am making 17k in the other I am at a negative 4k wihtout change anything.

I think I understand the basics. I watched videos, red guides, but I can't make money.
I play challenge mode on hard - and yes, I tryed medium difficult and I get exactly the same results.

I have scenery, I have underpaid staff, and tryed to train staff. I have rides, and marketing.
I prefer to charge on entrance and dont charge on rides, but I also tryed otherwise. Right now I charge 30 Adults and 20 Children entrance and 1-7 on rides depending on how new they are.

I have 1500 park rating and 2500 visitors.
I have priority pass at 6,00
I have food and drink, and ATM.

What I don't have is a clue on how to have a steady income that allow me to enjoy my park.

Any hints?

You have too many rides for the admission price. If you want to keep the number you have you'll need to run advertising campaigns. BTW you will NEVER make nearly as much money charging entrance fees as you do on a per-ride basis.

[Ancient]

Aspira eredeti hozzászólása:

The majority of my rides are on negative profit, and I don`t know why.

If you do an entrance fee and free rides this will always be the case. The rides themselves are not generating any income and are always operating at a net loss.

It's the primary reason I gave up on a set entrance fee and free rides: you can't properly budget each ride independently. At first it seems like you are saving yourself time/micromanagement by avoiding having to fine tune prices/prestige per ride, but the amount of mental gynastics you need to do to factor this: [entrance fee * actual new guests / total ride and staff costs = profit/loss]. It's much more work (and you have to tally and do it manually) and means every new ride needs costly food/drink stands or a large, sometimes damaging increase to the entrance fee to support it.

The game economy is just not set up to imitate real life US/EU theme parks. It's clearly balanced around a canival/fair economy where entrance fee is small/free and each ride must generate it's own income based on it's individual prestige/age. The entrance fee doesn't scale properly to work like a real theme park would because the timescale isn't simulated accurately. IRL, they charge $50-100 per person, per day. In-game you're only charging people (maybe) once every 3 months and are paying the maintenence and staff costs as if 3 months has passed, but in terms of guest cycling and repaying the entrance fee, it's really only been less than a day (because guests don't leave and repay 90 times in that "3 months" as they would IRL).