Ports of Call - Tips for Building a Profitable Shipping Company

Tips for beginners.

Introduction to Ports of Call

Ports of Call is a shipping and trading simulation developed by Rolf-Dieter Klein and Martin Ulrich. It was released in 1986 for Amiga. The devs describe Ports of Call as a game "with this motto in mind: "Software with Hard Facts." (Quote from the game manual.) What they mean is that they took actual data regarding every aspect of shipping and trading such as oil prices, regional events, weather conditions, epidemics, maintenance, supply and demand cycles and applied them to the game. Yes, you will be surprised at how cheap the cost of 1 tons of fuel is in 1986.

Since there are no guides around for this old gem, I wanted to start one. Hope it helps (you remember).



RORO/LOLO. Hereafter, the best ship in the game.



And it's formidable cost ranging from 40m$ to 70m$ depending on market conditions.

Tips

1- I think the most important thing is buying large ships instead of standard capacity. (If you are going to buy the cheap ones, buy the 2m$.) Since you can carry more, you have better deals at every port.

2- You gotta learn the routes and calculate how much fuel is it gonna take, how many days, what is the daily cost of your ship etc. Sometimes shorter routes are more profitable if calculated on a daily profit basis.

scenario A: Sydney-Hong Kong can be much more profitable than Sydney-Rio. i.e. instead of a 30-day trip for 2m$ to Rio, you can take a 1m$ trip to Hong Kong and then from Hong Kong to Sydney for another 1m$ in 20 days.)

Scenario B:
Scenario A is a hypothetical and rough estimate. Let's make a basic calculation for a real case. This is Sydney port, and the ship is the largest ship in the game.


Rio: yield: 2,464,196 $ / distance: 10159 nautical mile (nm) = 242.56 $ per nm
Hong Kong: 1,057,641 $ / 5088 nm = 207.86 $/nm
Calcutta: 1,574,681 $ / 6391 nm = 246.39 $/nm
Dar-es-Salaam: 1,647,789$ / 6687 nm = 246.41 $/nm
Cape Town: 1,860,822 $ / 6808 nm = 273.32 $/nm

According to this calculation: Cape Town is the most profitable route for this instance. Note that it all changes according to supply and demand, and that another port might be more profitable in another instance.

Another calculation for another deal in which Rio, Calcutta, and DES turned out 269$/nm, while HK is 227$/nm and Cape Town 298$/nm. While Rio $/nm was lower before, it turned out the same with Calcutta and DES in the next one. HK became more profitable than before. In the end, it is dynamic and you either have to calculate or make an educated estimate according to your needs. See the next section for more.

3- Buy ships whenever you can. At one point you can sell them all to get a better ship. Meanwhile, you keep earning.

4- Do not be credit-shy. Getting credit for maintenance/repair is better than spending your capital which you need to buy ships and fuel.

5- Use mortgage when buying the high-end ships, you only need %40 of their cost to buy them. You can pay the mortgage with your earnings.

6- Be careful around those high-end ships. Their repair costs are huge.

7- Repair-costs vary from port to port. Check the repair cost at every port, and repair your ships at a cheaper cost. (for very large ships, it can vary from 450k$ to 750k$ for 1%!)

8- Visit your office once in a while. If you neglect your office for a long time, you lose money to thievery, and that's calculated by ratio. If you have 1m$, you might lose 20k but if you have 20m$ you can lose 1m$. (Do not know the exact ratio, but I have lost similar amounts so it is an educated guess.)

9- Take your time to calculate how much fuel your trip is going to take. You will face gales, and you will continue to spend your daily fuel when you move around the gales. If you run out of fuel, it will cost you 1m$ and prestige-points.

10- When the yield is not good enough, knowing the routes can help you a lot and you can visit other ports until there are better deals. If you are in Rio, you can take a profitable trip to Lima and then to Vancouver to Pearl Harbor to Hong Kong to Sydney. In the meantime you can earn much more than waiting for a profitable trip to Sydney.

11- When you first get the chance, buy the best ship. When you get your hands on your first one, it all starts to snowball.

12- Do not get limited-time contracts until you know your ships and routes. You must also be taking into consideration the port queue, customs and the unloading time. (Remember; "software with hard facts.") It takes a few days. Even when you think that you made it in time, you will be paying a fine. When you learn your ships and routes, you will realize that some of these contracts have tighter deadlines, and are not really accomplishable even with good ships and a gale-free route.

13- Always check the speed and travel time of your ship and calculate your fuel cost. There's a sweet spot in some routes. For instance:

This is a sweet spot. Going at 20kn or 19 kn makes no difference time-wise but saves fuel, so it is logical to choose 19kn. Comparison of 20 & 19 kn: 20kn; 88t/day;14days; 88*14= 1232t & 19 kn; 75t/day; 14 days 75*14= 1050t. Choosing 19 kn will save us 182 tons of fuel.

To make a further comparison with going full speed:
Ship's highest speed is 23kn. At 23kn it spends 134t/day. Target Destination Cape Town takes 12 days to reach. We would end up spending 134*12= 1608tons of fuel.

Going slower can save 558t of fuel compared to the highest speed. (This does not mean that it is profitable just yet. See below.) If we bought fuel at 100$, that would save us 55.8k $. However, since it takes 2 more days, that means (12k/day), you we would be spending 24k$ more for crew and maintenance. 55.8-24= saving 31.8k$. You can make further calculations about how much going slower will save you. However, going slower is not always reasonable and is contextual. It depends on how much you paid for fuel, weather conditions, ship condition etc.

Let's make a quick calculation of a daily profit based on the Scenario B above and the recent speed calculations.

Using the Scenario-B example: Going to Cape Town yields 1,806,822 $, takes 12 days at full speed. That makes 150,568 $/day. If you take 14 days for the journey, you end up earning 129,058 $/day.
However, we should also factor fuel cost and crew cost into this calculation. 12 days (full speed) costs 1608 tons. If fuel is 100$/ton, this makes the fuel cost 160,800 $. 12 days of crew cost is 144k $. (12k/day for this ship) That makes our total cost 304,800 $ for 12 days. If we subtract this cost from the contract of 1,806,822 = 1,502,022 $ is what we will earn as profit from this trip. That makes 125,168 $/day.
Suppose that we take 14 days to get to Cape Town, use 1050 tons of fuel (105,000 $), 14 days of crew cost is 168k $ = making our trip cost 273,000 $. Subtracting our cost from the contract we would be earning 1,533,822 $ in total. That might seem a little higher than the previous 1,502,022 $, but actually we have to now divide this by 14 to find our daily profit, and the result we get is 1,617,822/14= 109,558 $/day.

Full speed profit: 1,502,022 $ vs 19kn profit: 1,533,822
Full speed daily profit: 125,168 $/day vs 19kn daily profit: 109,558 $/day

As you can see, going at full speed is better in this instance. However, it also depends on distance, weather conditions, oil prices and availability. So you also have to consider these dynamic conditions.

14- Sometimes slowing down can make your trip safer and accomplishable while also being profitable, especially if you bought the fuel at a steep price. And on a longer route you are certainly going to run into gales. Since repairing the ship or getting towed away because your fuel tank is empty are also costs to be taken into consideration, sometimes taking a month or even 45-days of trips might be the safer option. You will be saving a lot fuel, and you can move around the gales so that your ship is not damaged.

15- Avoid Beaufort 9-strong gales! You can occasionally cross 8's but anything above 8 is very dangerous and will greatly damage your ship.

16- One last thing, do not buy fuel everywhere, anything below 85$ is a bargain and fill your tank. You can buy at 100-110 if you have to, but 120-180$ is way too steep, so lay up for a week at the port and check the fuel prices again. You can do the same waiting for a better deal.

Profitable Routes & Cargo

Some profitable routes I extensively use:

Vancouver-Karachi (from Vancouver: Arms, Electronics, Machinery; from Karachi: textiles and agricultural products) & San Francisco-Karachi has a similar, but lower yield, especially from Karachi to San Francisco.

edit: just made a calculation in Vancouver. HongKong 195$/nm (chemicals), Lima 276$/nm (electronics), Karachi 280$/nm (electronics), Point Hope 349$/nm (electronics). On a daily profit basis PH looks to be the better option, but then you have to go back to Vancouver empty. So you have to divide by twice the distance. That makes the PH route yield actually 175$/nm.

Sydney-Rio & Sydney-Cape Town (from Sydney: Chemicals, from Rio: Machinery, from Cape Town: Arms if possible.)

San Francisco - Cape Town (electronics)

San Francisco-Karachi has a similar yield to Vancouver-Karachi. However, the yield from Karachi to SF is lower than Karachi to Vancouver.

Tokyo-Dar-es-Salaam or Tokyo-Jebel Dhanna (from Tokyo: Electronics, Machinery, Chemicals; from Dar-es-Salaam/Jebel-Dhanna: well, there is really one choice.) Jebel Dhanna is a bit closer so it is better for accomplishing contracts with a deadline. Also, the pirate event is not triggered at least in my experience. Dar-es-Salaam has occasional pirate events. (%5-10 I would say)

Hamburg-Hong Kong after you have high tonnage ships. (Again, machinery, electronics, arms.)

Ports to Avoid & Final Words

Basra: avoid at all costs! it's never worth it. It's a war-zone and your ship gets damaged. The only way to mitigate it is to carry contraband weapons to Hong Kong for 1m$, but if you get caught you pay a fine and do not get the 1m$ and the only thing you achieve is getting your ship damaged.

Monrovia: there's a good chance that you will be robbed by pirates. It's true Dar-es-Saalam has a similar problem but the spawn rate of the pirate event is way down compared to Monrovia.

New York: very poor yield.

Houston: I avoid Houston simply because of the Bermuda Triangle. It's a random event, but you can lose a ship to the Bermuda Triangle, and I do not want to take any chances with 50m$ worth ships, when I cross the ocean. (Lost some cheap ones a couple of times very recently.)

Point Hope: Contextual. It might sometimes look profitable, but there is no cargo to be carried so you will have to go the nearest port (Vancouver) in ballast (with no cargo). You have to take that into consideration in your cost analysis. Check slightly above (Vancouver-Karachi) for an example.

However, I found out a profitable instance. (from Lima). I took into consideration the distance it would take from Lima to Point Hope, and then to Vancouver. The ending result of 125$/nm was more profitable than a trip from Lima to Buenos Aires for 101$/nm. This does not mean that it will always be so. Supply/demand is dynamic.


That's all I can think of for now. I would be glad to add your opinions & comments to the guide.


Ready to buy another RORO/LOLO or two?

[Tommy]

The best ship for the purpose of building wealth is the 20 000 tons pre owned, its cheap to run and you can run it at lower speed and just wait out all bad weather. But, to beat your friends in multiplayer you need to also build status and for that you need the shiny new largest ship.

40000 tons, cost a fortune to maintain and buy and is almost 4 times as expensive per day. But it does give status.

time limited contracts: many are a loss, since you have take the hit from bad weather which costs money to repair. The 20 000 tons preowned can do some of them with a profit, and the 40 000 tons those that give insane profits. (getting 1mil extra on the 40 000 tons ship costs more in repairs than you gain when you encounter bad weather)

new ships gets higher priority getting in and out of harbours, which will save days.

Running the ships at full speed will make them need more repairs.

skip the ship sim, it takes up so much time and gets to repetetive after a while.

[kalendisnovembrinus]

Also, if you have any info about the 12th tip (about time-limited contracts) it would be appreciated. It's a deduction I made, when I realized that even when I was making it in time, contracts kept failing.

[kalendisnovembrinus]

Thanks for the recommendations. Starting with small and medium ships are a good suggestion for learning manual controls. Since those are mini-games that you come learn to be good at through practice, I did not include any info on those, but you are right. (I played this game on A500 as well, and even had the chance to play hot-seat with a friend back in the 90s) Also, I did not really know that using other ports contributed towards status points. I'll definitely update the guide to include these info. Thnx again.

[lsj82]

Sorry for the bad english btw!!!

[lsj82]

you have not told that the route Vancouver ---> Karachi or San Francisco ---> Karachi, is also expensive in repairs from all the storms you encounter that area.
Thats why i say San Francisco ---> Cape town .

[lsj82]

lol sorry , it seems like i only have read from "PORTS TO AVOID & FINAL WORDS" OOOooouupps

[lsj82]

try select San francisco as home port, buy 2 small medium size ships (easy to navigate with).
Concentrate on route San francisco (SF) ---> Cape town (CT) ---> San Francisco, aso. Do not have problems use the "LAY UP" oppurtunity 1 day at time to look for the good loads (Electronics).mayby a good trip to karachi (timed arms) appears in SF. take it.. BUT return to SF from Karachi, DO NOT GO to Vancuver yet! .
When you have grinded your route a year or so its time to look new ships to the fleet.
still go for the small of medium size ships,
When you have +4 ships on the main route you can take 1 ship and go "Status collecting" use this ship to go round the world and navigate in /out of new harbours ,every new navigated harbour gives valuable status if succeded. some other things does that aswell.....

[lsj82]

Hello there.

Good stuff . thanks.
I agre in al your words.. i may have some add's to your knowledge!?!.
Well i played this to death.. to be precise, since 1987 - 88. (Amiga 500 back then , lol still have it, and sometimes i go nostalgic and cut all out in adv. of good old timer gaming! )
Lagos!!! I Think is the worst all time .
San Francisco!!! Best of all time.