SIBERIAN RAILROAD TYCOON - AN ECONOMICS GUIDE

Not enough resources? Always short on money? Can't afford that shiny new gun? Well, you better read this before visiting the local merchant. It's time to look at the price tags and figure out what is worth selling, buying and, eventually, manufacturing.

It's time to make some cold hard cash.

TLDR: Buy gunpowder, craft pistol ammo and sell items only at villages!

For those of you, who came here just for the quick tips, I present the keynotes on making money in this game:

#1 Buying and selling

Buy resources and items (if your needs permit) only at villages and never at the "Merchant" or train depot, because they cost much more there. Keep in mind that all the prices mentioned in this guide include the discount provided by the "avaricious" trait. At the beginning of chapter 2 you will have two characters with it, so make them your traders.
A single unit of cloth, for example, costs 13 money at the village and 14 in the town. A good way to know it the place is worth trading at, is to check that your machine gun ammo sells for 11.4 a piece. If so, then this is the place to sell your stuff!
Also, the specialization of a village does not impact the buying and selling prices. Therefore, sell as much as you can to villages along your path to make money that can be exchanged for train cars "later down the line". Only buy at the big traders if your current situation demands it.
*Check out tip #6 to see when it is worth buying in bulk at the depot.

#2 Bank that cash

If you want to buy a train carriage (workshop, passenger car, e.t.c.), make sure to build up cash along the way, because you will lose a lot of value by selling off stuff at a station. For example: 100 pistol rounds, sold at a village make you 616 money, while selling them to the big trader in town will fetch only 539 money. If you sold 1000 pistol rounds at the depot to afford a new train car, you lost 770 in profits!

Feel free to send a trade squad well ahead of your train. The worst that can happen to them is that they might run out of stamina and be forced to return to rest. Yes, a soldier will loose 10 morale every time they run out of stamina, but that is practically nothing and will be regained by resting in your luxurious train cars.

#3 The economy of HEAT

Upgrade the insulation of your train cars before you invest in heaters! (I will be using the default values for resources for this point, just to make it easier to comprehend).
First off, metal is much more important for money making purposes than wood and cloth is, so you should spend the latter on upgrading the train, before you start spending metal.
Secondly, the real-value cost of fully upgrading the heater or installing both levels of insulation on any given car is minuscule at first. The monetary value of the resources invested in heaters (150 units of metal) is 4200 money versus the insulation (100 wood and 300 cloth) costing 5800 money, FOR EACH AND EVERY CAR.
The difference lies in that once the two levels of insulation are applied (both upgrades), you will pay nothing more for being able to withstand moderate cold. Congratulations, those train cars are thick boys, able to keep you precious soldiers warm for no additional cost!

For the fully upgraded heater, however, you will be paying 256 money PER DAY, PER CAR, just to run in. So, in just six days of burning your fuel, you will have surpassed the monetary investment you could have made into insulation instead. Buckle up, buckaroo, because that massive fuel bill will be delivered at your next stop. Probably by a Soviet commissar. Probably at gunpoint. Probably next to a freshly dug grave...

#4 The Golden Bull

Choose the Towing Bull (locomotive) when you are presented with the option.
This is not just my personal preference, but an economic necessity. If you are going to follow my advice, you will have a lot of money to work with and that means more train cars to buy. You need to pick the Towing Bull because it can pull more cars. That's all there is to it!
*Hound can pull 7 max train cars;
*Grandpa can pull 8 max;
*Bull can pull 9 train cars.

#5 Stealth brings wealth

Just felt like adding this obvious tidbit. Every bullet costs money. Stealth kills save you money.
If stealth is not an option, then, depending on the grouping of enemies, a single grenade (worth about 20 machine gun or 40 pistol bullets) will be more economical. Four tightly packed men are worth killing with a grenade. A shootout will usually cost you more money.

On a ballistic note: a sniper with the correct abilities will cost you one bullet per kill, where a machine gunner would have fired off 3 to 6 to kill one enemy. And if there is a single enemy left, don't let the entire squad unload onto him. Let the sniper place the last shot. If you used the sniper to open the ambush with his special ability, it will have had the time to recharge already. Enemies in cover can evade multiple shots. A sniper can snipe them with just one. And, yes, I know that it's technically called a scout... but I don't care :)

#6 Craft your wealth

TLDR: Buy gunpowder, get metal, manufacture pistol ammo and make money!
Always, always, always pick the free workshop train car at the beginning of the third chapter. It is the key to your financial success.

Ok, so this will be the densest part of the guide, but it will also explain in great detail just how to make money consistently. You can scavenge the combat maps, yes. You can stealth-kill damn near everything to save those precious bullets. But can you craft your way into wealth? Yes. Yes you can. You just need to know what to make (the kitchen car will not make you any money, only more food, which is acceptable, but the wrong first pick).

On your journey you will occasional find "free" metal at abandoned villages. You will scavenge metal during missions. Heck, you can even buy some! I always buy it, even the profit is nearly zero, because it gives me options. Wood and herbs can sometimes be skipped. Those resources are relatively free and abundant along the way. Then again, once you have as much money as I do, you won't be skipping anything until you run out of cargo space.

But gunpowder is different. Gunpowder is mostly bought at stations and, sometimes, in villages for cheaper. Now, I hear you asking, "why should I care"? It is expensive. I can't burn or eat it.

One word, my friend: Bullets. Because metal and gunpowder makes bullets.

The answer to your monetary woes lies in crafting the single most profitable commodity in the game. Indeed, the military industrial complex that is your train will see you through to Vladivostok, if you are able to craft your own ammo. Follow my advice and your soldiers will not only return home without frostbite and malnutrition, they will be able to retire in style with all of the money they will have made.

Once you have acquired the workshop car, you can immediately start up your money-making industry. Always pick the workshop first. It positively prints money!

*Do get the kitchen later, because it makes food an easy resource to maintain. Just cook soup!
As of late December, I have added a section to the guide for making money with the kitchen car. You can find it further down below.

Turn your metal and gunpowder into more money by crafting pistol rounds. Then sell them at villages along the way. 1000 money made here. 1500 money there. By the time you will have made it to the next depot, you will have enough to finally purchase that shining new train car you have been dreaming about. To see exactly why you should do that, check out the next chapter on the economics of bullet manufacturing. It will explain in greater detail the correct methods of acquiring the necessary goods for your traveling cottage industry.

The next part of the guide will tackle the free market of mid-civil-war Russia, so stay tuned...

The Last Train Home: Manufacturing and trade guide

I am excluding consumables like mines and smoke bombs from the listing as they are not important to my point. Sell them or keep them. Just don't make them, unless you like using them.
Here is the list of prices for all of the relevant items (expressed in single unit values) that you might wish to buy and sell (the grenade is included for a point of reference, nothing more):

BASIC RESOURCES	FUEL	FOOD	WOOD	METAL	CLOTH	HERBS	GUNPOWDER
Selling to a village	14.1	17.6	19.4	24.6	10.6	8.8	21.1
Buying from a village	17.3	21.6	23.8	30.2	13	10.8	25.9
Selling to a town/depot	12.3	15.4	16.9	21.6	9.2	7.7	18.5
Buying from town/depot	18.7	23.4	25.7	32.8	14	11.7	28.1

AMMO	Pistol	Rifle	LMG	Grenade
Selling to a village	6.2	8.8	11.4	197.1
Buying from a village	7.6	10.8	14	241.9
Selling to a town/depot	5.4	7.7	10	172.5
Buying from town/depot	8.2	11.7	15.2	262.1

There is much that an aspiring merchant can make of the above listed data. I had a few ideas, so allow me to break it down for you all.
Firstly, never sell raw metal and gunpowder. Craft them into ammo instead. Pistol ammo offers you the best value overall, while LMG ammo can be crafted twice as fast (as in 100 LMG rounds sell for about the same as 200 pistol rounds, all for the same resource cost). Do not produce artillery shells to make money, because they are worth less than 100 pistol bullets, which cost the same amount of resources to produce. The same goes for grenades - don't produce them for trading purposes.

As you can imagine, the time spent on making the ammunition is a factor, especially when you first get your hands on the workshop car. But for now let's just focus on the most profitable ammo for our purposes, which is pistol ammo.

A hypothetical: Assuming that you have gotten your hands on "FREE" metal AND gunpowder, you can either sell it, use it for upgrades or turn it into ammo.
Ammunition is crafted in bulk. For example, 10 metal and 10 gunpowder makes 100 pistol bullets (in about 5 hours). Costs go up with bigger calibers, but profits decrease. Time goes down with more skilled workers.

Here are the profit margins of "free" resources if sold to a village, considering the value of the resources required and the ammo produced (never sell to a town/depot!):

AMMO TYPE	MATERIAL VALUE, IF SOLD	RESOURCE UNIT PROFIT (AVG)	AMMO VALUE (100 units)	PER BULLET PROFIT
Pistol (10 METAL + 10 GUNP.)	457	22.85	616	30.8
Rifle (15 METAL + 15 GUNP.)	685	22.83	880	29.33
LMG (20 METAL + 20 GUNP.)	914	22.85	1144	28.6

It's pretty obvious that you should always be turning you "free" resources into ammo, unless you need them for upgrading the train. You loose 1/4 of your money by selling off metal and gunpowder. This is by far the most profitable way to make money. You get free stuff and you increase its value further. Simple as.

If you see gunpowder in a village store, always buy it. You will end up with extra 22 money for the next batch of pistol ammo. However, there is very little gunpowder that can be found or purchased for cheap at villages. This means that you will most often times be purchasing gunpowder to go with your "free" metal.
The question is, can it still be profitable? Even when buying gunpowder in bulk at merchants or depots?
Yes. Yes, you can - AND SHOULD - buy all the gunpowder you can get your frostbitten Czechoslovak hands on.

Here is the final data. We are buying expensive gunpowder (28.1 a piece) here, but it still pays off:
1. Buying 10 gunpowder and using 10 "free" metal to make PISTOL rounds costs us 527 money in expenses/items not sold. The 100 PISTOL rounds we made net us 616 money at the village shop. This results in a net gain of +89 money.
2. Buying 15 gunpowder and using 15 "free" metal to make RIFLE rounds costs us 790.5 money in expenses/items not sold. The 100 RIFLE rounds we made net us 880 money at the village shop. This results in a net gain of +89.5 money.
2. Buying 20 gunpowder and using 20 "free" metal to make MACHINE GUN rounds costs us 1054 money in expenses/items not sold. The 100 MACHINE GUN rounds we made net us 1140 money at the village shop. This results in a net gain of +90 money.

Looking at the above mentioned data, don't get fooled into producing LMG ammo. It will make you 90 less money for the price of producing pistol ammo twice. That's right. For the same 20 metal and 20 gunpowder, you will be making 90 more money, if you run the pistol bullet line. The catch is that you need to produce 200 pistol bullets (it takes the same amount of resources) instead of 100 LMG bullets, which, admittedly, takes only half as long.

The one important bit of information I must mention, in conclusion, is that IF you buy both gunpowder and metal in a depot, you will be losing some money (-77 cash, if crafting it into LMG ammo, but will still gain +7 cash, if crafted into pistol bullets). Then again, I always buy metal, because I might just need it a few kilometres down the tracks. Most of your metal will be coming in cheap or free, so buy that stuff for good measure. It's a marathon, not a sprint and our hot, steaming locomotive needs some iron in its diet.

The Roaming Restaurant: Making money with the kitchen car.

While producing bullets will be your shortcut to success early on, once you have amassed enough wealth to afford the other train cars, it is possible to put them to good use as well.

We are going to look at the kitchen car next. Yes, you absolutely can open your very own food production and delivery service in this game. Just like any other corporation, once you've taken over a stable market share in one product, it's time to consider branching out into other markets!

Remember that consumables, such as Apple Pies and Grilled Fish are not meant to be "food". They give status boosts and remove bad effects. Food is food. You need the food resource to keep your train crew fed. The fancy "foods" are special consumables, so don't turn all of your real food into them.

TLDR: Make and sell Goulash, because it is the most resource efficient kitchen-made consumable. You will need to research it first.

BE WARNED: A precondition to operating the kitchen car as a profit machine, is having enough food to feed your own troops in the first place. You can't afford to be fighting hunger cramps, just to buy a new gun at the next village. Always have enough food for yourself, before you start producing consumables to sell.

To that end, you will find the ability to produce "Soup" in the kitchen car to be of great value. It basically turns 10 food and 20 herbs into 20 food in ~5 hours, effectively doubling a portion of your food stocks with each production run. Assuming ~100% efficiency at the work station (it can be higher than 100%), making soup will produce ~50 food every day, all for the paltry expense of 100 herbs, which are inedible on their own. Considering that an average hunting/fishing trip will net you around 20 food and can also gain you up to 120 herbs (if a soldier has the herbalist trait), this is by far the best way of ensuring a stable food supply.

One workstation producing soup 24/7 will be more than enough to supply the needs of your train crew. But the kitchen car has whopping 4 (four!) workstations to... work with. So, let's use them!

The way that the kitchen car can earn you money is by turning "raw" resources (food and herbs) into finished goods, which adds more value. When choosing which type of food to produce for the purposes of selling it at the nearest village (always sell at villages), there are 3 factors of food production that must be considered:
1. Raw food requirements (all kitchen-made consumables require 3, except for "Coffee");
2. Herbs (from 0 for "Caviar" to 11 for "Goulash");
3. Time spent on each production run (depends on the skill level of the soldier manning the station, but I will go with the default time, as shown in the cooking menu).

My conclusions, after running the numbers for food production and the resulting profits, are as follows:

1. The most resource-efficient consumable to produce ended up being "Goulash". It takes longer than all the other foods, but ends up netting you a bonus of 38.7 money per production run. It costs 3 food and 11 herbs, which is good, because you probably will be drowning in herbs all the way to Vladivostok. 3 food and 11 herbs sell for 149.6 money at a village. Goulash sells for 188.3.

The second place, in terms of resource efficiency, goes to "Roast meat", which adds 32.6 money in value, when compared to selling 3 food and 9 herbs to a village, without turning them into a consumable first. In fact, for every 24 hours spent producing "Roast meat", you will make a little more money, when compared to Goulash. 232.2 for 24 hours of producing Goulash as opposed to 24 hours spent on producing Roast meat, which will net you 260.8 extra money. So, if you want to make more cash quickly, and don't care about "Goulash" being more resource efficient, make "Roast meat" instead!

2. To make the most money in the shortest amount of time you need to produce "Scrambled eggs". Yes, I know, it seems very strange, but for the price of 3 food and 1 herbs, you gain extra 14.1 money every hour, netting a total of 338.4 extra cash every 24 hours. This does, however, burn through your food at an obscene pace, so be careful. If you absolutely need to turn 300 extra food into money, do this. Otherwise, stick to making "Goulash", since we are really looking to reduce the herb stocks first.

*By selling 300 food and 100 herbs you will earn 6160 cash. If you turn them into "Scrambled eggs", you will earn 7570 money instead! Yes, it's a hundred production runs of "Scambled eggs", but that's how profit is made, baby!

3. If you don't want to spend food, you can make "Coffee", which will turn 44 money worth of herbs into 54.6 money worth of goods instead. Run the coffee line for 24 hours and you will have earned ~254.4 extra cash.

The math looks like this: If you sold the 120 herbs (5 herbs per hour of production) required for running the Coffee mill for 24 hours, you would have made 1056 money at the village store. Turn 120 herbs into coffee and you will make 1310.4 instead!

I would, however, still advise you to turn your herbs into food by producing soup. You can then convert the extra food into Goulash later down the line. More exp and more profit.

Never produce caviar unless you intend to consume it yourself. It's a money drain and food is better spent on other consumables.

Contributions and bonus tips

People in the comments have offered up some of their own economy tips, which they have allowed me to add to the list:

7. How to decrease the coal consumption of your locomotive by training your crew. Contributed by =яενєηąŋŧ=.

Additionally, regarding the workshop car and ammo crafting, this generates much faster Engineer XP than driving the train. Thus, as soon as you get the engineer car, it is beneficial to use it to "power-level" your drivers to get the extra speed as soon as possible. The same goes for your Stokers with the Worker skill. It's beneficial to un-assign them from stoking when the train is stopped and doing upgrades to have them work on the car upgrades, as this will level their Worker job much faster and give you the reduced fuel consumption from having higher skills earlier.

8. What train cars to upgrade first? Contributed by =яενєηąŋŧ=.

As far as train upgrades go, I would strongly recommend getting the locomotive upgrades that reduce fuel consumption and increase speed as soon as possible. When you get the option to swap your locomotive, it comes with all the upgrades you've added already, so it's not wasted.

Another econ tip I'd found is fully-upgrading one Infantry Car first in the Comfort section before working on the others, since it will give you 12 passenger slots with +1 stamina regeneration to get your scavenging teams with good traits like Hunter, Burglar, etc. rested up and looting more sites faster.

9. Making money by crafting Medical Kits. Contributed by =яενєηąŋŧ=.

As far as converting materials into goods to sell for profit, Medical Kits are also a good option when you have the hospital car. Cloth and herbs are both abundant, especially once you have all your cars insulated and your uniforms upgraded for cloth, and the kits can be produced for only 5 cloth and 5 herbs. First Aid Kits are just barely more profitable per unit in terms of inputs, but require twice as much cloth which is the more useful resource than herbs.

*It costs 5 cloth and 5 herbs to produce a Medical Kit (for use during missions by medics). The value added is 20.9 cash, when selling the finished Medical Kit to a village.
**It costs 10 cloth and 5 herbs to produce a First Aid Kit (used on the train after the mission to restore lost health). The value added is 33.9 cash, when selling the finished First Aid Kit to a village.
***A caveat I would add is that this money-making strategy should not be used in the first few chapters, since upgrading your train using cloth and wood must take priority.
For that reason, it is advised to produce "Stimulants" instead. They cost 20 herbs and take ~3 hours to make. You will turn 20 herbs worth 176 cash to a village store into a product that will net you 217.4 money instead. Must be researched before production becomes available.

Quick tips:

An engineer working has to be fully fed to prevent accidents while an idle engineer can be kept at half rations. Contributed by profile.

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD (train upgrade guide)

When and how you should upgrade the train?

After Moscow: Upgrade your first and second passenger cars with all recovery and space boosting upgrades (4 in total). Have the passenger cars provide maximum comfort for the maximum amount of people.
Upgrade the storage car to prevent rat infestations.

Use metal to upgrade your train to consume less coal. You won't really need metal until you start crafting, after obtaining (choosing) the workshop car in Penza, but don't sell it! Never sell metal, gunpowder, wood or cloth. They can all be transformed into products and sold for more.

Remember to pick up the train car that you chose from the Penza depot at the beginning of chapter 3. It will be shown as costing 0 money, while all the other cars will cost ~10 000.

Then, once you have the workshop car, you can upgrade it to increase efficiency and add one more production slot. You should not invest into more than two crafting slots just after Penza, since you won't have that many engineers to man them at this point. At this point you should start spending metal and gunpowder on producing pistol bullets.

To give and example of how successful you can be when following these tips, while playing on the normal difficulty setting I ended up in Vladivostok region with the following resources:

170 000 money, 3600 units of coal, 2000 units of cloth, 500 food and an equal amount of herbs and 1200 units of wood. Plus some metal and gunpowder scraps. I had bought all the tier 2 and 3 sniper rifles, all tier 3 and 2 machine guns, plus all of the tier 3 pistols and rifles that I could find.
Ammunition was not an issue, so I only kept on as much as was needed for a 10 soldier mission. In fact, I ended up with so many resources that I skipped the armored car and went straight for the extra cargo car. I was running near-full the whole way to the end, because there were not enough villages to sell my surplus items at. I decided to sell all that I would not need for the final battle on the last world-map to a merchant (loosing about 10% of the value), ending up with a little over 300 000 units of money by the time I boarded the last ship home.

[DrSalty]

So for food just make pies. Why? Because there is no such thing as Morale, its just a hunger bar :)

Feed them all nothing, then when the mor- i mean hunger bar hits 50 or they get the starving condition feed them apple pie, bam right back to 100 across the board. This is insanely cheap, 3 food and 1 herb per pie means you can feed 20 people fully all with guaranteed 100 morale just for 60 food and 20 herbs every ~2 days!

This is WAY better than 44 food and 120 herbs a day! (30 herbs makes 10 food for infinite food)
If you do make food with herbs that means only 90 herbs (100 if you include the pies) a day to feed the crew infinitely.

Yes it comes with the hungry debuf but like all that does is stop passive healing of morale and health. If you have medical car which you should then they still heal. So this saves you having to waste resources on upgrading the infantry cars with the healing buffs too!

Crew takes a morale hit? no worries they needed feeding anyway

[Fortune]

@elbadge
More and more villages being deserted the deeper you go into the campaign seems to be a random thing. I would reckon that you simply got exceedingly unlucky to get that many abandoned village events.
I would consider this guide to be much more important for the first few chapters of the game, rather than the second half. It sets one up for the long haul, as by the time you finish chapter 3 you will not be running into resource shortages due to the initial build-up.
I was hoping that the latter DLC's would add more areas to visit, which would, in turn, further bolster the strategy I have laid out here. More locations = more resources for your mobile industry.
Frankly, I don't think the game's economy can stand up to this strategy, because of how the prices and items are balanced.

[elbadge]

While I found this guide useful and did manage to buy all train cars. I ran into 2 problems I never found a single village after chapter 4 to sell to as they were all murdered or empty. The first time I found anyone that sold tier 3 weapons (one of each type) was the last stop before Vladivostok. I did find some tier 3 weapons along the way in missions. So my workshop became useless midway into chapter 5 and I ended up dragging it all the way to the end in the hope something changed but it didn't. No point making bullets if you can't sell them. There was one town that paid the better price's and had 40k coins on offer. I think it was in chapter 4. Because of this guide i managed to get nearly all of the 40k which I wouldn't have managed otherwise so thanks for that.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

The part about snipers reminds me of either a book or film I encountered once, where they state that very same point. There's a discussion where they say an average soldier spends 10,000 rounds per kill, while a sniper is spending just 50 cents.

Part about keeping upgrades when swapping the train engine is excellent info. That type of thing is always my worry in any management game or RPG, where I wonder 'wait, will all those upgrades jump to the new item I bought that replaces what I had been using'. So that's good info to share.

[Fortune]

Sounds like a bug. The developers might not have caught that.

[SkyRiderJM]

I used this guide and it works. I'm not sure if this is important but I at the start wanted to gain XP before Moscow so I upgraded the medic car in some area's that wasn't upgraded and I can say when I was able to save up enough money to buy the medical car at first chance I noticed that my Medical Research of: First Aid and Advanced, Sleep Flask and Stimulants transferred over so I didn't have to research them currently and I was wondering if that was intended or not?

[Fortune]

I appreciate the discussion. Thank you for sharing your strategy and experience.
I am looking forward to replaying the game once all the DLC is out. If the extra missions will add more resources for acquisition, I might update the guide, if the impact on the economy will be noticeable.
Keep on keeping on!

[Dorn]

Fortune, it's been a pleasure debating with you and, again, hats off to you for the guide.

[Fortune]

Much of the initial stock, past Moscow, such as weapons, can and should be sold off to accelerate the early game resource acquisition. This guide is rather heavy on min-maxing, if followed to a letter. If a reader simply follows the advice on what ammo to produce for money making, it will be more than sufficient to get them all the way to Vladivostok with ample resources.

Early gunpowder acquisition only really matters if you want to have the maximum amount of cash by the end of the journey. Which adds nothing to the experience by itself. :D

There is a lot of merit to following your advice, especially for a more balance play through. This entire guide is heavily skewed towards wealth acquisition first and foremost, which is a holdover of my own focus on survival and city building sims, such as Frostpunk.

[Dorn]

Again, good cautionary advice, however, with my play style, I only make use of at most:

6x Scouts
1x Machine Gunner, Grenadier and Rifleman each
2x Medics

Thus I sell (only to merchants at POI's) the tier 1 weapons that are excess to requirements, alongside what I noted in my prior comment. I also had enough credits to buy up all of the gunpowder, metal, wood etc that has been available up until and including Penza (none of which has been sold at all).

Admittedly I didn't take a screenshot at the time, though what I can say is that I am currently at Aksanovo, I have the workshop, kitchen and hospital cars, 113 metal and 710 gunpowder, 220 pistol ammo, 400 rifle ammo and 250 machine gun ammo.

To each their own, however it is possible if you forego luxuries like medical kits, first aid kits, cigarettes and alcohol.