Simutrans Tips
Tip #1: Town Halls
 | Town halls and monuments generate/attract more passengers than most other town buildings. |
Tip #2: Freight vs. Passenger Service
| | Transporting goods gives a much higher revenue in the beginning of the game than passenger services. Build freight routes first. Use the income of the freight routes to build a network of passenger services. The more destinations you have connected to your passenger transport network the more passengers will use your service. Connecting two cities with a bus line will not attract lots of passengers due to the lack of reachable destinations. Combine traffic: use trains or passenger ferries for the long distances and use busses to collect the people in the cities and drive them to the train stations and docks. Keep in mind that the passengers have destinations. They will transfer from one type of transportation to another to reach their destinations. They will not use your service if you don't offer a connection to their destination regardlesss of the quality of your service. |
Tip #3: Tourists
| | Some passengers are tourists and like to visit tourist attractions. Connect many of the tourist attractions (churches, castles, stadiums) to your passenger network to attract more passengers to your service. |
Tip #4: Workers
| | Don't forget to service the workers who travel from their homes to their workplace and back on weekdays. |
Tip #5: Cooperation with an AI (automated player)
| | You can cooperate with the AI. If the AI supplies a steel mill with coal, you can add iron ore supply and transport the produced steel. If you build the steel service first, the AI will most often not build another steel service in competition to yours. You can safely rely on the AIs coal service, it will not remove it as long as it gets a revenue from it. |
Tip #6: Transport Revenues
| | Different goods have different transportations fees. Check the goods list to see what is most profitable to transport. |
Tip #7: Build Networks
| | If you go for passenger transport, make sure all your services are interconnected. The more destinations you provide, the more passengers will actually use your service. |
Tip #8: Multi-mode Stations
| | You can interconnect all types of stations to create multi transport mode stations. Stations are considered connected if built on adjacent squares. Adjacent means the eight neighbors of a square. You can interconnect a bus stop and a dock by building a road which ends one square off the shore. Build a bus stops there. Then build the dock by clicking the shore tile in front of that bus stop. Now you have a station which includes the bus stop and the dock. Works similar for train stations and bus stops as well as with train stations and docks. Passengers (and goods) use interconnected stations to transfer from one type of transportation to another to reach their destinations. |
Tip #9: Categorized Goods
| | Vehicles for bulk transport can transport any bulk goods. I.e. bulk transport wagons can transport iron ore as well as coal. This allows to use one train to serve different transports, i.e. by bringing both coal and iron to a steel mill in subsequent runs. The categories are bulk goods, piece goods and special goods. Special goods always need their very own transporters, but bulk transfer vehicles and piece good transport vehicles are multi-purpose vehicles. |
Tip #10: Road and Rail Maintenance
| | If you build roads, you're the owner and must pay for the maintenance. You can save money if you try to use public roads where possible. Rail tracks also cost maintenance. While there are no public rail tracks, all you can do is to try to utilize your tracks to their best. That means running as many trains over them as possible. |
Tip #11: City Growth
| | You can help cities grow by servicing their transportation needs:
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Tip #12: Power Lines
 | You can raise the productivity of factories by supplying them with electrical power. Electrical power is produced by power plants. Some power plants need to be supplied with oil or coal in order to produce electrical power. |
