Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Liction]

this looks really interesting. i remember playing simutrans a while back and finding it really difficult. any chance of a bay12 server for this?

[Girlinhat]

Aw man, really having trouble figuring out trains and signals here...  Looks to be more complicated than OTTD...

[tryrar]

Girlinhat, here's a simple explanation of train signals:

A signal divides a track up into blocks. Trains path along a track on a per block basis, so if a train approaches a signal, it'll path to the next signal reserving the track as it goes. There's a helpful tool accessed by hitting b that'll show you track reservations made by trains so you can observe this and diagnose track pathing collisions.

[FritzPL]

Ah, but how does one make profit? And get the trains to pay for themselves in less than a decade? I just can't find a way to make more money than the starting amount. Do I have to do a cross-map 9-tile coal train and hope for the best?

[martinuzz]

Indeed, I keep going bankrupt. I've followed advice, and started with supplying oil to an oil refinery. That got me at minus 1 million credits. Which was okay, cause my net value was still okay.
I let the game run, and 5 ingame years later, I was actually only 750k left in the red. And no Bankrupt. I thought, great. That line is paying itself back, albeit slowly. So let's make another line, cause I really don't think it makes sense to wait 15 more years till 1960, for cash to reach positive again, while not being able to do anything in the meantime.

So I connect oilk to refinery, refinery to printing works, lumber yard to paper mill, paper mill to printing works, printing works to publisher. Done setting up tracks, signals and stations. Unpause. Start buyng trains to populate the new lines.  1 ingame week later. Bankrupt.

This game's economy is too harsh.

[andrewas]

It has to be harsh, or the game becomes to easy.

Maintenance is a killer, it can be mitigated by building multi-use lines. Don't just run coal across the map, find another industry that can share part of the route. Maybe tack on truck lines to bring more cargo to rail stations.  Operating costs are also huge, and can be mitigated by running cargo in both directions to avoid running vehicles empty. Ships are easiest to make money with since there's little infrastructure to build, just a shipyard and docks. Passengers are essential in the long run since you need cities to grow, but I've never been able to make a profit with them.

If all else fails, there's always beginner mode.

[martinuzz]

Maintenance is a killer, it can be mitigated by building multi-use lines. Don't just run coal across the map, find another industry that can share part of the route. Maybe tack on truck lines to bring more cargo to rail stations.

I already made sure not to use tracks that are too good for the trains that run on them. Joining lines on tracks, dunno how to place signals right, for that to work. I am already extremely pleased that I finally managed to make simple 2 station loop tracks work with standard block signals. Apart from that, it's no solution, since I go bankrupt before I even have a second line to join up with part of the track

Operating costs are also huge, and can be mitigated by running cargo in both directions to avoid running vehicles empty.

starting in 1940 with pak128 limits the choice of trains much. It's either the very expensive to buy, slightly expensive to maintain diesel train, or the slightly cheaper to buy, more expensive to run steam train.
Also, running goods 2 ways is just not possible on most industry lines. Trains won't transport power, and oil wells don't accept chemicals.

If all else fails, there's always beginner mode.

Already using that

It has to be harsh, or the game becomes to easy.

Don't get me wrong, I like harsh games. But just not seeming to be able to get set up, even with beginner mode, and following advice from guides, going bankrupt 10 games in a row, after just 30 minutes playing? I dunno.
 

[burningpet]

Haven't played in a long time and started a new game to see how harsh it is. dunno, simply connected 2 coal mines to a factory and empowered the mines with electricity from the factories. built urban bus lines. i did go bankrupt, but that's simply because i built two airports and forgot to edit the bus lines to include the airport stop  .

It's harder than OTTD, but its not that hard if you start it minimal and slowly slowly expands.

[Cerapter]

I myself have played with pak64 for a long time, and stopped, and just today I saw this thread.
So I tried pak128.

...Rather quick bankruptcy.

I need to learn this game again.

[Robsoie]

Something to keep in mind is that the game features very high maintenance for roads and that will destroy your company and lead you to bankrupt.

To avoid this, do not make roads between industries, use the pre-existing roads as much as possible, only where there's no road make one, but still link it to the pre-existing roads in order to have the less possible amount of roads tiles because you will have to constantly pay for every of them.

Problem is that some industries are very far from any pre-existing roads, it mean that trying to build your company around those industries will have good chance for bankrupt.
Maybe railroad could be a better choice in those cases, but i haven't experimented enough yet with rails to see how manintenance is in comparison to the insane one for roads

[Djohaal]

Road transport is not the way to go on pak 128. Too little troughtput and too tiny a profit margin. They are best used as auxiliary transport (such as to gather the coal from 3 close mines to a single stop)
You need a good three-stage industry or two stage industry to bring up your company on early game (some maps lack them altogether, a big problem if you only spawn the car or goods chains), such as a farm -grain mill - bakery or cow farm - dairy. A textile mill can also work if you start small and build up carefully. On to signals it is a bit more complicated than OTTD and at times, dumber. 

[Robsoie]

I just gave a try to a simple double train railroad (with signals to avoid both trains blocking each other, took me some tries to get this right) to move oil between an oil field and an oil fired power station

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's profitable so far, though it isn't that great for 2 trains with each of them having 12 cars full of oil, they're at least constant every months.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The game visuals read a lot better once i enabled "Hide Trees" that do not hide them at all but put them small instead of the huge trees that make reading the visuals very painful (and transparent tree didn't do much better with trees still oversized).

edit : just added 2 transformers to carry electricity from the power station to the oil field and it increased the production speed a lot, my trains do not have to wait a bit anymore to fill 100%.
Took a whole year and a couple of month to repay how much i spent into that electricity thing

[USEC_OFFICER]

Huh. I've just started getting into the game _{using the easy 64 pak instead of the brutal 128 one} and I have a question to ask: Why do you have two extra stations on your railroad? From what little I've played, signals seem to work just fine for that sort of stuff.

[Robsoie]

They're remnant of my earlier no-signal attempt at making the 2 trains working.
I just forgot to remove them

Oddly it seems they're giving me money when the trains reach them

[USEC_OFFICER]

Oh, I see. That sorta makes sense actually, though obviously it didn't work. No clue why you're gaining money stopping at the stations though. Unless your trains are rapidly unloading and reloading at the stations or something stupid like that.