OilCan wrote: Passenger Fares and Profits
Summary: Passenger fares vary by distance between stations with the cheapest fares between closer stations. The average base fare stays the same throughout an entire game unless changed by hidden event. A fast, high-priority and attractive train with a dining car and express cargo consist can substantially increase profits from fares.
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- The unaltered average passenger fare is $28 at the start of every game regardless of the size of the map. This is the base fare.
- Using a fast engine could result in a speed record which would then increase passenger fares on that train by another 20%.
- Passengers will pay more in fare if the train engine is attractive. The RT3 Manual (page 51) states that, “A locomotive with a high passenger appeal earns a revenue premium of up to 30% on all passenger traffic it carries. Conversely, a particularly ugly locomotive will drag down passenger receipts by up to 15%.”
I have some questions about these points.
Passenger Base Price: I'm wanting to experiment with changes to the base price set in the .cty file. I've checked the hex and the base price is set at $85K/load, not $28k/load.
- If maps always show an average delivery price of $28k/load at the start of a game, which seems about right from my experience, does anyone know how this relates to the $85k/load price set in the .cty file?
- Allowing for the game rounding off to $1k intervals, $28k would be one third of $85k. Has anyone managed to confirm if a 1/3 multiplier is applied to the nominal base price from the .cty file?
- Also, does anyone know why this is done?
Experimenting with changes to the base price is proving to be a nuisance. It appears to have no effect on the results. This is when using a saved game, and editing the .cty file between runs from the save point. What occurred to me is that it may be partly like the way saved games treat locomotives and cargo cars.
Once you have bought a particular loco it is locked into the.gms code as soon as you save the game, and you can't then run the saved game without it. However, you can alter the loco stats between runs and the edits will apply as they should. Cargo prices don't behave like this. You still need the cargo files for the saved game to run, but any edits you make to the base price are simply not applied.
So, I ran some quick tests on various ideas:
- I tried quitting the game, editing the base price in the .cty file, rebooting the game, then starting a new game of an existing scenario. Result: no change in pax delivery price.
- I tried quitting the game, editing the base price in the .cty file, rebooting the game, then creating a new scenario from scratch. Result: no change in pax delivery price.
Conclusion: The base price of pax is fixed, and it is not fixed in the Passengers.cty file. It is probably fixed inside the .exe itself. The result is that the pax base price can only be changed by editor event. It cannot be changed by editing the .cty file.
Speed records: The behaviour of these is weird. When you start a game the record speed is always zero. Your first train run, no matter how slow, should set a speed record. It doesn't. Also, introducing a faster train later in the game should automatically result in another sped record, but it often doesn't. Speed records seem to be far less frequent than they should be.
- Does anyone know how the coding behind speed records really works?
Passenger Appeal Ratings: This one isn't a question, but a statement. I've recently been testing changes in passenger appeal ratings pretty thoroughly. This testing has confirmed that the information given in the RT3 manual is misleading.
The manual claims that the difference in passenger fares is +15% for each one level increase of passenger appeal rating. This is incorrect, and may have been changed after the manual was written. The actual difference between ratings is 10% of fare price.
- Ugly returns 90% revenue.
- Acceptable returns the base 100%.
- Looks Sharp returns 110%.
- Ultra Cool returns 120%.
Also, although this is still experimental, I have confirmed that
non-standard passenger appeal ratings are possible with the right hex values. It is possible to implement ratings that will return 0%, 20%, 50%, 60%, 70% and 80%, then the default ratings, then 130%, 140%, 150%, 160%, 170%, 180%, 190% and finally 200%. As far as I know it is not possible to implement ratings above 200%.