- This topic has 43 replies, 17 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Bingo. They programmed the maintenance of trains, without considering what would happen if someone went against the intended design of the game and used a train of buses across the map. But trains are not so expensive that it is hard to use them. In my games they are usually the primary money earners, because I use them and don’t exploit an unintended consequence of the game’s design.
No, they didn’t. I don’t use a “train of buses” (whatever that means) and trains full of people and goods constantly lose money. I have no intercity buses at all. Those two scenarios aren’t remotely related.
No, they didn’t. I don’t use a “train of buses” (whatever that means) and trains full of people and goods constantly lose money. I have no intercity buses at all. Those two scenarios aren’t remotely related.
Wait, what? So your complaint isn’t actually about a game mechanic, it’s just about the fact that you are unable to make money? Try turning the game difficulty down then. If you can’t make money on trains on easy then I can assure you that is your problem, not the game’s.
Wait, what? So your complaint isn’t actually about a game mechanic, it’s just about the fact that you are unable to make money? Try turning the game difficulty down then. If you can’t make money on trains on easy then I can assure you that is your problem, not the game’s.
I’ve got complaints a mile long about game mechanics, bugs, and a generally poorly developed product. Balance is only one of them.
I’m sure I agree with some of your issues, I’m sure I disagree with others but at no point have I said the game is perfect. This thread is about trams and buses and trucks and so on being cheaper to run than trains. What exactly he’s complaining of I don’t know, unless he has long ass conga lines of buses running across a large map.
Wow. This thread is not for whining about a beta. (As this game is!)
Please stay with the facts and data you can get from the game and do not personally attack other player.This thread should be about the tram vs trains balance. Of course I can try not to use intercity trams, but it is extremly difficult. If you play on hard (From some statements I think the person never tried it) even with a perfect spot you could barley getting the “golden 0” in the balance. – And in the same time you can make shitloads of monies using trams…
Here is some stuff I found during testing:
– Infrastructure maintenance is not scaled with time (years). – Which makes them high in the beginning compared to the passenger count.
– There are some strange gasp / “bugs” with the vehicle timeline. – There is another thread about this. – For example “LNER Class A4” has top speed of 145, but there are no cars which can go 145 until the locomotive is already obsolete.
– The balance gets much better from 1960 / 1970 because the ratio of the top speed train vs. tram get much better – This ratio is
fastest train vs the fastest tram (running cost per passenger – tram compared to train)
1887 45km/h vs 25km/h (1/4)
1906 50km/h vs. 40km/h ( worst ratio! – 1/8)
1920 100km/h vs. 60km/h (1/7)
1965 200 vs. 60 (1/5)
– Cars do not take traffic jams into path-finding, but your tram / buses do. – Result is vicious circle, more cars: slower trams: more cars: even slower trams…
– There is pretty much no infrastructure cost for trams -> tracks, depot are free and stops are really cheap. – Even a small 3 City track with 2 train station costs about 200-300k / year…If hard is too hard for you then don’t play on hard.
Hard mode isn´t hard. I have several hundred millions after short time.
And I can´t hear anymore that you have to use trains.
A keyfeature of a transport simulation game should be the question which vehicle works best at a given job.
Why should I run a train to the town in the neighborhood ?
Small map – too little passengers – this game isn´t made for trains.
The whole concept is so stupid and now everyone´s complaining that using buses and trams to connect towns is cheating, because they can´t accept that the whole game doesn´t make sense.
“If hard is too hard for you then don’t play on hard.”
Stupid answer with 0% information and fact content, showing that you did not read my post (or did not understand it). Please read my posts and at least try to answer with some serious, new informations…“Hard mode isn´t hard. I have several hundred millions after short time.
The whole concept is so stupid and now everyone´s complaining that using buses and trams to connect towns is cheating, because they can´t accept that the whole game doesn´t make sense.”That is exactly my point. – From the “best vehicle for the job” point of view (or in other term playing inside the rules of the game, not self-created personal rules) is the Tram. If you can give some real arguments against this.
It seems we are not supposed to start rail lines immediately and the population go Yipee and start riding trains just so I can make profit.
You have to build up the towns to create demand. When you start nothing much happens at the fitst town you are working on. It doesn’t grow much, And you start hauling goods to feed the town, But it still doesn’t grow much. Two things make the citizens build new big houses in a frenzy:
1) demolishing houses and building the biggest streets available, When you unpause after spending 10 million in begining or 30 million in midgame on a town, kaboom here comes the multi story buildings, These are good cause the town now demand more goods. You try find avenues that you can upgrade, but if you want and effiient road network only the biggest roads all with buss lanes for your vehicles to use. So you want to do this first before you
2) connecting with another city now they start building houses. And if you haven already made the skelleton road networj it will now cost 30 million instead of 10 to correct the town.
—
After that it is just as you people say, you earn money by hauling goods with trucks, and you haul passengers between cities using trams. If you have done 1) then 2) the city will grow fast almost even if it does not have a supply of goods. It just magically grows. So soon you can not add more trams on the lines cause the streets are packed with them,
Warning about using the games tram stations, when you get the longest tram called “Cobra” at the end of the game they can get entangled and cause a grid lock. So I have a tip for you, I build my own tram stations, using medium city road, one lane in each direction, and it is a buss lane so no cars can enter my home made tram station.
You have big road. And at two points you have a crossing so the trams can get off the road turning in on another big road Betwern these two big roads you pack medium roads as tight as you can so that the game can not put any buildings there. I usually make this tram station where the train station is going to be. When they get off the train they will see a myriad of roads and tons of tram stops. You can have any number of tram and buss lines coming in you just build more roads. And it is fun the see the AI running around like ants jumping from tram line to tram line , trams to bus etc.
If you want to be artistic you can put the medium roads on the diagonal as it is done here and there IRL.
The goal I had was to lure the AI into building the biggest houses veeery close to the train station. Which the AI did. So then I add my first train a diesel, and a few carriages. I say it is darn difficult to attract travelers, even if I beat the trams in speed.
IRL there is a time table. People know when the train comes. You can relax watch TV or do something useful. Then you get to train station when the train comes. Who cares if the is a tram every 20 minutes with a travel time of 60 minutes if there is a train coming every 40 minutes with a traveltime if 30 minutes.
I think it is hard to make the passengers like the train. Or stop liking trams and start shoocing train. I remember when I just got the game I just slamed down a railway between a couple of cities and hoppla they started to ride them when there were not other choice. And after a couple of minutes a full game speed I had 9 trains between 5 cities.
It seems that if they get used to taking the tram it takes forever for them to change if at all.
Give them a train and nothing else and hopefully they stick with trains until end game.
The first paragraph, I mean if you build the road network between cities then you are toast it seems. Never give that AI a choice. But I and I guess you want to create something realistic, and so you build big roads across contryside that connects the cities.
If you don’t give the AI any choice then it is easy.
Maybe one can use those small rail busses, get high frequency, and teach them to use the rail and not the road.
When the time is right maybe one can sell all those rail busses and buy a big train when the poplation fot the point of trains. Maybe I could change the fare, or offer free newspapers in the morning.
Long distance trains should need a dining car with coffee, otherwise the travelers get grumpy.
I played 30 hours straight now, but I am ready to do it again, but a but different, scrap the trams buy rail busses. I will have to pepper the rail line with signals to create a million tiny tiny blocks to squeeze them all in , so they dont say waiting for free path.
then you remove them when you start running big trains that you want propers spacing on.
I give this game 5 more tries and then I will try a medium map. I use all the tricks I figured, and all tricks you have written on the forum … except trams. I think they are a trap that will result in total gridlock.
Also remember that you can tunnel under the old city so you can warp from one end of the city to the other. beep beep! 5 more tries. Got to get the trains working, at the same time the entore map looks realistic and the AI have multiple choices.
Have you noticed another weird thing in the end game you get a 34 ton modern truck, it can load more then a railway car? huh?
I’ve had a lot of success with passenger trains that connect multiple cities combined with local bus or tram traffic in each city.
I normally start by connecting 3 cities (in 1850 start) with double track. You need to buy multiple trains to keep the frequency down. The first trains are so slow that the frequency needs to be high to keep the total travel time low. As the train speeds and passenger capacity goes up, I add more cities to the line, going up to 5. This you can do when you get the first 100 km/h train. Also you can afford to have a bit lower frequency as you get faster trains because the total travel time remains the same.
I’ll try to make a guide with screenshots some day this week 🙂
Sorry for digging this discussion up out of its slumber. This is about my story with cargo transport:
I’ve started a hard game a few days ago to earn the achievements, first of all “Truck Fever”. I made good money and was loan-free after ~3 years and had ~10mil after the first 15 years, using only 3 profitable cargo truck lines (1 supplier, 1 factory, 2-3 cities). So in that time, I could scale the transportation effort with single vehicles to perfectly match the needs.
At the high of 50 mil (achievement earned), I decided to switch to cargo train lines. So I built the first line (Supplier A, Factory B, City C). To push the production I added 2 more lines with 2 buying cities each (Factory -> City A -> City B), raising production need to ~250 (nice!). But no train line made any money. After switching to Supplier A -> Factory B in the supplying line, that made a plus ~ 100k a year, while the other “selling” lines made a minus of 500 to 1 mil a year.
“If hard is too hard, don’t play hard”!?
Yes and no. If the goal of “Train Fever” is to play only with trucks, the game failed somehow (I love the lines I had on easy, though).
With trucks I can fine adjust the transportation effort, having
- no wait times on “load full” (which then regulates everything nicely)
- no jams (a jam is an indicator, you have that too many trucks on the road for that line)
- no overloaded (and thereby lost) cargo (overloaded cargo means too few vehicles on that line)
With trains, you have to plan in advance and have to be so careful, how many wagons you put on how many individual trains. You make losses in the first few years, that’s right. But the adjustment is so poor and I could never break even.
With too little cargo on a station I could
- Run empty but more often (increasing the running cost, as moving trains cost more than trains in depots and stations)
- Wait until fully loaded (reducing the possible transportation effort calculation, making the line less attractive in the future [cargo volume * frequency with wait => frequency+?])
So both ways are not optimal, but production now raises, so my single train (line) needs improvement in the cargo volume (while loosing ~500k per year, as one way is almost empty). I could
- Buy an additional train (doubling the running cost to match that small +% more cargo to move at this moment)
- Send the train to the depot, add 1-2 wagons, send it back on the track (reducing the transportation effort calculation on that track for missing a) supplies and/or b) consumers, reducing the production on all involved industries by quite a lot. At least, if you hit the re-calculation between month, which is very likely, as you cannot control when your train hits the depot).
TL;DR
In my experience, you cannot earn money from cargo train lines in hard difficulty, supplying more than 1 city as
- the running costs will always eat up the income
- you will never be able to fine tune the transport volume by adding or removing single wagons
Even with pushing the production over 200, the supplying line did not make a great amount of money, financing the selling lines.
Trucks however make money, even one way empty, than their running cost. Even “distribution lines” from your supplier (i.e. oil rigs) to nearby cities pay off, while for trains….they don’t.
- The forum ‘General Discussion’ is closed to new topics and replies.