Goods prices over time?

RedKnight · Post by **RedKnight** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:23 am

I've played a half dozen games so far (easy, solo, no opponents) to learn the game. At first I tried to work every resource I could (and my tracks got terribly clogged), but lately I've tried to be more focused.

Some goods drop drastically in price over time, esp. passengers and mail. It seems that the closer a good is to the "first level", the more it sinks in price. First level goods would be passengers and mail, which simply get delivered. Second level would be e.g. Goods (from Wood or Oil). Third level would be Autos (from Coal then Steel). However, it may just be that I didn't have enough time, industry, or free-flowing trains to drive down the price of third-tier goods.

The manual only vaguely states that profit is dependent on time and distance, and supply and demand - but doesn't say much more than those simple words.

For one thing, I would imagine e.g. coal and other raw-er resources are less time-and-distance dependent. But how much? And is e.g. livestock more time dependent than coal? But won't cars and goods be good for a long time, no matter where?

Then there's supply and demand. If you are only making X autos, is it better to send half to City A and half to City B, or just send them all to City A? (Is demand determined by the total sold, period, or is it city-specific?) If passengers and mail fall sharply in price over time - and can otherwise take up precious tracks - is it better to simply and only have a couple of passenger lines for the whole game, period? (Also compare stormfather's thread on passengers and mail.

Questions, questions. Anyone have ideas?

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:09 am

One way to check this out would be to start a map, and save it first thing as say, 'Test Start'. Then pick one or two things to compare. Save it at some point and open the Test Start again and do it another way... longer runs, less hauled etc.

leo · Post by **leo** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:58 pm

Time and distance does not matter on any goods .. only passenger and mail.

Send them all to one city as far as I can tell ... it is a global demand not city to city.

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:08 am

I'm surprised to see my goods in my scenario getting higher and higher prices in time...
i'm not even using increase-events in the scenario
And what about the limits i specify in the goods file (those black lines)
a maxprice isn't given me the result as i would expect it!
someone with a strategy guide or experience maybe, to help me out on this
see picture, but also almost all my other goods have the same graph?
does it depends on how much i ship of this good, or the cities and/or industries asking for this good (in my example there wasn't either a city or industrie asking for wooden horses...

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:05 pm

gforce - watch the price as the good is being delivered. A train of 8 will show the price dropping as the cars are unloaded. This is what was meant as to the saved game played differently. Get a corn field of 12 near a city that uses it and save the map. Then run that corn in as fast as possibleand watch the price. Reload the save, put the track between the corn field and the city going a longer way and run the corn in 1 car at a time. then watch the price. In both cases, don't run any corn anywhere else on the map.

I've had Gold or Autos starting at around $60,000. I get to start shipping them and think I'll be rolling in dough! I look at it later and it's down to around $25,000. If I cut the Gold shipments, the price goes up again. The question becomes, am I loosing money by stopping shipments to get the price up, or will I make more money???

klemc · Post by **klemc** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 11:51 am

This should be fixed.
Goods prices should rise with the distance traveled to deliver them.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 3:02 pm

klemc - actually you're only half right. town A has Beer. Town B 25Mi away and town C 75Mi away need Beer. Since I'll make more money delivering to town C, I'll have a shortage in town B. With supply and demand, town C doesn't need anymore, so the price should go down there. Town B needs it, so the price should, at the same time, go up there...

This would make a very interesting change, and in a way, reads like my above post, prices shift with the amount shipped.

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 3:46 pm

you can define your goods as passenger-types,
so there will be a distance and speed bonus
but those goods will have the same effect (hard coded) as passengers:
the effect: in the beginning high prices but very quickly they decrease in price
(this is used to have money generated in the begin of the scenario in an easy way)
i was playing without focusing on passengers, and this gives not enough money or what you can do is increase the prices of goods, but then again, those goods will not decrease so fast, so after some years you will have too much money...
so the tactics to transport passengers in the beginning of a scenario is the best way to control money, and each map maker should take this in account

vancouverexpress · Post by **vancouverexpress** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:51 am

Incidentally, because I'm not sure how many of you were RRTII players, that game had a much more complex supply/demand system. Bigger cities demanded more of all products, and the higher the demand the higher the price. If you oversupplied a city with a specific good in a year, the price went down. This encouraged players to spread their supply of goods around the map when necessary. Railroads, of course, encourages players to ship goods to the closest town which takes them. I don't think the price drop in Railroads! justifies shipping goods to two different towns. The only reason i ever do that is to send raw products to a refinery i own.

RedKnight · Post by **RedKnight** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:48 am

Hey it's me, back for just a little while.

Right Vancouver - I never saw any justification for doing anything besides keeping the levels of oversupply being kept low. In other words, the price will rise as you pick up every available unit of whatever. If your aim is to get max money for a resource, don't let anything sit idle waiting to be picked up.

And as you drop it off, it's price will rise.

There are other factors at work, obviously intended to be long scale forces on the price. Anyway. The take-home message I saw was, try to pick up "standing" raw resources to lower the price. (If they are on a train, they are no longer "standing".)

It's a bit complex, I never mastered it. But since you can easily win by doing the simplest things in solo, shrug.