I was mislead for 3 years! The amount received is based on the line, not the final town/industry being delivered to!

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    I partially blame myself for not testing, but I just made a huge discovery that will change the way I play this game for the better. This may have been obvious to many, but I was specifically told it didn't work this way previously, so there will be others that may benefit from this being said aloud.


    I was previously told that profit was based on the delivery of good or passengers to the final destination, such as Logs to a Saw Mill, that it is based on a straight line from one to the other, and that transfers from one delivery method to another that aren't on at least in that straight line to some degree will only lose profit to the final destination. Most of that is true, but it turns out the last part is completely false.


    I like to have rail stations at cities and towns. I'm not a fan of having them out at industry buildings. So I have trucks deliver from the industries to the rail station at the town.

    I'm playing a Very Hard map and had a nice rail line opportunity where one city was by a Forest and Tools Factory and another was by a Saw Mill. So the train could deliver both ways.

    The issue was the Forest was in between the two cities, so backtracking towards the first city was necessary. So I did that because I hoped the profit from the two way train would offset it.

    Sure enough, comparing to other lines, there was no money loss on any of the lines.


    So I did a little test with some trucks in a test map and, indeed, if you have two industries beside each other and send trucks out to deliver to and from a depot out in the middle of nowhere, they will earn the same amount as a line delivering directly from one industry to another.


    Again, this may have been obvious to many, but not everyone. And I'm both happy and frustrated knowing that I can and could have been playing exactly how I wanted to the entire time. Because it really has been a frustrating few years playing this game in generated maps trying to utilize Truck > Rail/Ship lines thinking that they all had to be one straight line. ;(

    Oh well. I can go forward much happier now. I hope this information helps someone.

    The price for a line usage is calculated from the point where you pick up the goods to the point where you drop them, but "as the crow flies". It is not from the origin to the destination of the good/passenger. This wouldn't work for passengers. They are not charged for the distance between their home and the commercial or industrial building, but for the distance(s) where they enter and leave your vehicles. And so it's the same for the goods.


    In your example the goods have no other choice than to use Line 2 and Line 3 and to pay for booth. But don't exaggerate this for passengers. They have a limit of time they are willing to spend on their way.


    A little micro-optimization, where S are stations and I are industries:

    Code
    -+-----------+-
 S I       I S

    For the situation above the price is higher as when you place the stations between the industries.

    Code
    -----+---+-----
   I S   S I

    On the other hand the way is longer and the rate goes down a bit. As long as the rate doesn't drop that much that you need another car it's a win for you.

    Aye, that's basically what I was trying to say but less aptly. I was just noting how that one detail was always wrong and I just believe it at face value because people said it.

    I'm also aware passengers are looking for time efficiency so this only really works with goods.

    I'm noting how good it feels to be able to transfer the goods to a city hub for transport rather than what I always did based on what I was told and made a line directly from industry to industry. It just feels more realistic and organized.


    Another thing I do for Truck optimization is start with the trucks that have larger capacity for specific goods, and then replace them with the "All cargo" trucks with a lower capacity and running cost, but same speed and power as the other truck, to lower the rate down to as close to the round number as possible, with the goal of having the trucks stopped for as little time as possible at the depot.

    The wrong information comes maybe from knowledge of previous versions. In Train Fever there was a 20 minutes rule. If the travel time estimation was more than 20 minutes neither good nor passengers started to travel. You had to make your routes as short as possible to stay within these 20 minutes. This rule was at least removed for Transport Fever, but I don't know how Transport Fever 1 really works in this case. I assume that people concluded from observations mixed with old knowledge and were wrong, but from their point of view it seemed legit. As long as the game works for them they don't have a need to question their knowledge. And that's maybe what they told you. Nowadays people had more time observing the behavior and the general knowledge of the game as well as current tutorials are more accurate than at the time after the release. In the Guides section of Steam for TpF2 is a very good one titled "UnicornPoacher's Transport Fever 2 Guide" written just half a year ago. Both sections Local Network and Regional Networks describe the way to organize goods distribution with Cargo Hubs, the way you want to do it. And in Vehicles and Rates the author writes about calculation rules and that it is no problem at all to have parts of the route going in the opposite direction. Your test confirms this.

    Yes, that's the case and the calculation is basically the same as in TPF1 (I never played Train Fever).

    It is common knowledge that revenue is calculated by air distance, which you can observe, because straight lines are more profitable. This detail that revenue is payed per line / partial transport way, is maybe not that prevalent. But acutally it makes sense when you see the animated numbers of your income at every station where something is delivered, not only at the final destination. I realized it first for passengers because they have to somehow pay for the bus to get to the train station. For another situation with transporting goods around a mountain in a trianlge, this leads to the unintended fact, that inserting a transfer station at the side of the montain will increase your profit, rather than just one line.

    It is not ideal, but I have no better solution. The question is how do you split the money and assign to the lines? Also the money would be transfered delayed to the previous lines.

    Ah. So those who said it likely assumed it worked the same as TPF1. I never played TPF1 myself. TPF2 is what got me hooked.

    The reason I didn't question it was likely because I thought it made sense realistically. If you transfer to a depot in the middle of nowhere in the opposite direction, who is paying for the goods?

    But then there is the fact that there may be more than one industry to deliver to on the map, so how would it know which one is your target?

    So yeah, gameplay > realism comes into play at some point.


    Passengers also don't mind backtracking if it means they can get on a high speed transport, since they're based on time overall. Hence even if you have an isolated town on water with no roads, the people won't even board a non-hovercraft boat if the destination is too far away. That's one of the things I'm not fond of in the game since I like using passenger boats. Even if you're using a boat line to transfer from an far island, you could be missing out on a number of passengers simply because the slow boat like Klondike increases the time too much even if it lands at a town with a high speed train to get to a farther city.

    I guess that's were planes would come in. But... eh. XD

    Some note, you don't have any street connection between the nearby factories.
    Technical this means, TPF2 won't be able to find a better transport way, so the best way is your long travel line anyway.


    however as soon TPF2 has a shorter path it will use it. If you have a dense network, cargo will travel the "best" way.
    This could mean, it will use a different cargo train or truck in your network and overtime the best route will change. This may be a surprise when the normal empty cargo train is now full or a station get overcrowded an cargo disappear.

    A simple street connection doesn't change things. I guess you mean a line that connects both industries directly. In Train Fever the goods traveled itself between industries. This is an image of a newly started game, I only switched on the cargo layer. Wood is traveling from a forest to a saw mill.


    But in TpF2 the goods don't do anything without a line. Here they use my lines, the street connection doesn't matter.


    And yes, a more direct line that can transport stone in this case would be preferred. This is sometimes unexpected for players. They have a plan in their mind what goods which line should transport but the game obviously cant read the player's mind. It just sees a new line that can also transport the things and there it goes, until you micro-manage the lines, telling the game which goods can be loaded/unloaded.

BlueBrixx