Transportation basics

From Simutrans Wiki

Simutrans supports four basic means of transport:

• Roads (Trucks and Buses)
• Waterways (Ships)
• Air (Airplanes)
• Railways, with three subtypes:
  • Railways in the classical sense, from steam to diesel to electric to fuel cell and to hydrogen.
  • "Light Rail", which usually means Trams
  • Monorails, Maglevs, and other miscellaneous types

Let's start with classical railway, which has the greatest usability

Contents 1 The basic tools 2 Finding a factory pair 3 Building the track 4 Building the station 5 Building a depot and a train 6 Schedules 7 Supply and Demand - Industry Chains 8 Passengers and mail

The basic tools

• Info tool - The most basic and the most important tool is the info tool. To use it, click the magnifying glass icon in the top menu or press the hotkey a. You can query everything in the game including free spots (grass), trees, buildings, monuments, factories, citycars, tracks, roads, stations ,stops, signals, depots, bridges, tunnels, trains, ships, vehicles, airplanes, trams, monorail and maglev.
• Remove tool - The tool for removing everything what can be removed. Anything may be removed using this tool, except for your transport vehicles and buildings owned by other players. Vehicles must be sent to a depot and sold there. The hotkey is r, and the menu button is the bulldozer.
• Map tool - You can display a map window, which has many functions for a good overview of the game. The map window is explained in its own section named Map window.
• Other basic tools are explained elsewhere, but they are not as important as those listed above.

Finding a factory pair

The industry buildings—wood plantations, mines, farms, ponds, gas stations, car/book/wholesalers/furniture shops, chemists—everything which can produce or accept some goods are called factories in Simutrans. They have what we may call contracts with other factories. Factories can accept goods only from those factories which they have a contract with, so it is not enough to match a factory with a good it needs—you must connect a factory with the specific factories in its info window to move goods and thus make money. The list of contractors is in the info window of each factory (displayed with info tool). You can jump to each contractor by clicking the small arrow in the factory info window. Or you can see them in map window if you point exactly on the factory sign in the map. Be sure that the first factory can produce goods and does not need supplies (mines, wood plantations, oil wells and so on). Once you have located a factory and its supplier(s), you can build a track between them.

Building the track

Once you have selected the pair of factories, which can deliver good from one to the other, you can start building the track. Select a track tool from the 'railway construction menu'. There are (or will be, depending on the era you are playing and if you have a 'timeline' turned on) multiple track types, so select one (For beginners select the best one.). Click to the place you want the track started and a small bulldozer appears. Then click the other place the track should end or lead through and the track will be built immediately. You can undo the track building, if you press the z key just after the track is built. Build the track from one factory to the other in one or more steps. Take care that the track lies at most two tiles from the factory, and the last tiles of the track are in a straight line for building the station. "Straight line" in this case means "north-south" or "east-west" according to the map, as diagonals are treated as alternating turns.

If you want to use electric trains, you'll also need to have third rail, fourth rail or a catenary on the track. Select and build the catenary in the same way you built the track. You must electrify the entire track you want the electric train to run on.

Building the station

Now you need stations. Select a 'station tool' in the 'railway construction menu'. In the upper-left corner of each station tool is one or more little icons representing "people," a "pile of freight" or a mail envelope -- these show the type(s) of goods that can be carried by that station type. For now, you need a station with a small icon of a pile of freight (such as a freight platform or a container station), as the station for passengers can't service freight. Note that in some paks like pak128, the Simple Platform has no attached goods type -- you will have to build at least one square of coal-station, or else attach a road truck station, to have the station handle freight. (You can see the little goods types icons for which stations handle which types of goods in the Station List.)

Build the platform on the end of the track at most two tiles far from each factory and at least three tiles long. You will see the service area as you build the station (You can toggle the display of the service area of built stations by pressing v). In the info window of the stations you can see the connected factories - the factories which are close enough to give the goods to them.

Building a depot and a train

Once you have built stations for both factories, it's time to build the trains. To do this, you need a rail depot.

Before you can build a depot, you'll need to build a small branch of track — depots cannot be built in the middle of a track. Select the depot tool from the railway construction menu, and click on an unoccupied dead end. The cursor should turn into the info tool, so click the new depot to bring up its info window.

Since we're hauling freight, click the Locomotives tabs under the two rows of buttons and pick a locomotive. For now, just click the best one available (you did start the game in -freeplay mode, right?).

Now for the freight cars under the next tab. First, bring up the info window of one of the factories and take a look at the good type you're transporting. You'll see a category for the good; for example, if you're hauling coal, you'll see the phrase Bulk goods. Now move the mouse over the freight cars (don't click yet) and find a car that handles that category (it should appear as something like 18t Bulk goods). Click it to append it to the train. Naturally, the most expensive cars will carry more freight at a higher top speed. Continue adding cars until you reach the size of your stations, which is also indicated for you below the train. If you add too many cars, just click the extra ones to remove them. These are stored in the depot for later use or sale and are indicated with a number above its icon.

You can add vehicles to the front of the train by clicking the "append" button (it should turn into "put in front"). This is useful for upgrading the locomotive of a train. Click the "put in front" button to bring up "sell mode", which you can use to sell off individual vehicles in the train or stored in the depot.

Although any locomotive will probably do the job, you'll have to keep in mind the top speed of the locomotive (and the cars it pulls), as well as its power output. You can see both at the bottom of the depot's info window when you hover the mouse over a vehicle. If the top speed is too low, you might not make as much money as you'd like, and you could have pileups of goods waiting for the slow train. If the power output is too low, a fully-loaded train might not even make it out of the station. If you pick a locomotive that's faster than the track or freight cars allow, you've probably spent too much for that locomotive, as it will never reach its top speed.

Schedules

You're now ready to assign a transport schedule for the train. Click "schedule" and you'll see an empty schedule window, and a different cursor. Click the supplier station first, then find and click the destination station. Close the window, and click "start". If everything is set up properly, you'll see goods enter the supplier station, and the train will go back and forth between the factories' stations, delivering the goods. The more goods and the farther you take them, the more money you will make.

After a while, you may notice that the train isn't hauling as much goods as it did the first time, as it may be outpacing the supplying factory. To make the train wait until it's carrying a full load, click the train with the info tool, then the "schedule" button. Click the supplier station in the schedule window to select it, then look for the "Wait for:" above the station list. Click the arrow buttons next to the number to the desired load percentage (in our case, 100%). Close the window, and the train should now go to the supplier station and wait for a full load before delivering to the other factory. Make sure your station is big enough to accommodate the train.

Supply and Demand - Industry Chains

Factories have a given throughput limit, and they need to be supplied with all their input materials (if any) to manufacture their products. Markets and power plants are special in that they only consume goods. Consumption and electricity/power output of a power plant doubles with each transformer added to it. Supplying electricity (from power plants) allows you to double the consumption/production limit of any given factory (except power plants) on land (your choice, which ones). You can see the numbers and goods types in the factory details window.

Starting with Simutrans version 0.87.x (released in 2005), factories will stop sending goods to a consumer when the recipient´s (per-freight-type) input storage is full. This applies per freight type, too: when all recipients of a factory have run out of input storage space (or the serving station overflows), that factory continues to produce until its output storage is full, then it stops to produce and consume goods, waiting for consumers to accept again.

Conclusion: In the long run, you (maybe together with your competitors, e.g. the AIs) have to provide comprehensive transport service to an industry chain (at least all the goods that are needed to supply one end product to a market), or it will stop to work after some time (so there's nothing to transport any more). Therefore, it's best to start with the easier industry chains - in pak64: coal or oil to a power plant (of the matching type), then some with two levels etc.. To achieve smooth operation, your transport capacity should match the effective production of the chain.

(Question: If the input storage of the factory supplied from a supplier is full, does the supplier's info window display a red bar under the picture? If not, what's the meaning of that red bar?--Dummzeuch 14:56, 23 August 2007 (CDT))

Passengers and mail

Passenger transport only brings earnings, when used in big suburban congested areas (usually by train (even profitable if used as connection with many stations), tram (in mid sized population density) or even subway (to be really profitable, really big population density is neccessary) ). Bus transport to remote locations brings more earnings, if more places are connected. Passengers will, like other goods use the shortest route. If any two locations are connected via more than one lines, passengers will use the shortest one.

Mail is a very rare category. It is not very likely to earn much with mail, unless many post officies are interconnected, and the density must be high enough.

There are even exotic transportation means available to Simutrans:

• monorail train
• MAGLEV train (addon)
• Trolley bus (addon)

Using planes and ships as transportation means is only profitable, when used in dense areas or as a connection between two or more dense populated areas.