"Why this assistant train? Can't the same train do both jobs??" ... etc ... I wrote in 1998. Forget it!!!
The reason for 'surprisingly bad pay' in combined transport is what I mentioned further up: When unloading some cargo "En Route from..." on top of OTHER cargo of the same type, the program has to compute the AGE of the stuff. This age computation may make the cargo rather old, resulting in bad pay.
New cargo generated from the station fixes it.

It seems more research is needed into combined transport, with something 'en route from A to B'. From TTo I have bad experiences with 'en route' stuff - so for a long time I didn't use this much.
TTd seems to have the same problem. My experiments indicate that the program uses the age of the stuff which came first, plus a 'penalty' addition. Bad news for players who UNLOAD stuff (oil?) from ships, and transport it onwards with trains - this seems such a good idea for oil rigs!

CALCULATE before building!
This is no trick! Just common sense!
I often see games where the human player has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to build a rail or truck line - to transport tiny amounts of something - far too little to pay well!
Sometimes the explanation is an expired SUBSIDY - when (s)he built that line, it was subsidized. But subsidies only last a year ...

One typical example: In the tropical climate, players often go for DIAMONDS!
This is human and understandable - diamonds are a girl's best friends? but calculate first!

A diamond mine in TTd produces only 63 units per month; most other resources produce more: 90, 108,..130... in the tropical climate, the lumbermill makes 180 units per month!

Your diamond wagon only takes 20 units, compare to 25 or 30 units for most other resources. It's a good idea to compute in wagon loads! since a train can only drag 9 of those (and 9 is heavy early in the game)

And diamonds to Bank ends there; no secondary product, like food or goods.

A good engineer calculates before she builds: (I AM an electronics engineer, and a 'she') - Example:
The A copper mine makes 90 units/month; at ratings 78% or so (use a piglet!), that's 70 units/month; = 840 units/year; = 28 wagon loads / year.
with pay distance jj tiles, this should give about: nn £/wagon, or mmm £/year
Cost of developing the line: 2 stations, depots, rails, ...
Cost of train(s): ...
Running cost for train(s): .... (don't forget loss of value for engine and wagons!) ...
Cost of piglet: about 1500£ 1st year; less later.

Should I maybe extend those stations a little? the copper station up North 7 tiles, to the lake; the factory station a little the other way (but not so far as to lose the GOODS production....)

Cost of extending the station(s): .....
Extra gain from extending the station(s): pay distance 11 tiles extra.

When you have gotten into the habit of calculating your projects, it will be easier to see at a glance what is really good, and what isn't.

Lumber mills! The lumber mill is to the Tropical climate what COAL is to the other 2, and more!
The lumber mill makes 180 or 225 units/month - (45/week, 2340/year); at ratings 80% you can transport 1872 u/year, or about 62 wagonloads/year. Far more than most other industries. And it pays very well per unit!

Calculate! - It's often a good idea to FUND a lumber mill!
With a good Wood-to-Factory line - (use extended stations!) - you can get back your funding money in 3 to 6 years; after that, it's pure high profit.

Extra: a lumber mill near a city will help clear away those rainforest trees, giving development land for the city and YOU.
You can also plant cheap trees on FIELD tiles you wish to build on, and let the friendly lumber mill clear them for you! Cactus is enough! see Subsidies and MEGA stations further down.

Handling EXTREME MEGA stations
An 'Extreme MEGA station': is one which has been walked a good distance away from it's ORIGIN. (Uhmmm.. 1999: I no longer use them now)
My definition: If the origin is more than 16 tiles 'North+East' (or 8 tiles diagonal) from ALL the resources the station uses, it's an extreme station.

NOTE: It's often difficult to route a ship to such a station's docks! message: 'Too far from previous destination'. A series of 'between' stations or buoys will do it.

In TTd, if such a station receives grain/livestock/wheat/fruit ... it will pay you well for that, but produce no food! - same principle for Goods, Steel, Paper - the secondary production goodies.

After experimenting with 4 or 5 Factories and Food plants, I think I have the formula: Your station's ORIGIN must be within 16 tiles (North+West, etc) of the TOP (North-East) CORNER of the Food Plant / Factory / Steel Mill / Paper Plant / Refinery - for the station to produce the secondary product.

So you've taken the time and expense to walk such a station towards 'long pay'. What to do?
a: Use the station; get well paid for grain etc; go without food.
b: abandon the extreme one. Make another, nearer station for grain and food.
c: or use:

TTd - The 'Ricochet' trick:
Food is important for developing cities; so I re-created 'old V' - the old bad-ratings station next to 'new E' - the 'extreme' one; and sent the fruit to 'old V'.
Surprise! - Food was produced in both stations! a little in 'old V' (bad ratings), but most of the food in 'new E' - starting ratings 69%.

So if you take 'normal pay' for the fruit by sending it to an ordinary (short-walk) station, you may get high pay FOOD in your extreme station!

The opposite does NOT work: send fruit to the extreme one will NOT make Food in 'Old V'.

The 'ricochet' principle can be useful even if you are NOT using extreme MEGA stations: Suppose you have LOTS of trains arriving at station A, with Oil or Wood etc. Station A has no capacity left for more trains.
Then a second station B can pick up those goods for you, and chug-chug them to a city.

Note that when 2 stations contend for the food, as here, the total food production is somewhat LOWER then if there had been just one station in the area.

I once thought that by making 2 stations near a resource, each with 60% ratings, I could get 120% of the production .... but THAT bug is not in the program! Maybe the A.S. opponents can do this?
Only 2 stations get stuff from a source - the 2 stations with the 2 best ratings.
You never get more totally than the BEST station's ratings; the worst station of the 2 gets at least 1 unit at each production DATE (production DATE periods: from 3 1/2 days to 17 1/2 days, I think).
Typically, when your station competes with the AS's one: you get 1 unit, the AI gets the rest; they get higher ratings than we mortals are allowed.

Some may recognize stuff from Mike Wieclawek's Tropical competition:
The righthand station is old 'Valdivia North' with bad ratings. It receives fruit from 'Bolivar', producing most of the food in the lefthand big station: ElliVivaldi (started near EL LImon, trains near VALdivia).
From ElliVivaldi train 2 takes the food to Coro, and earns a small fortune each time. then to a depot force, then back for piglet duty (1 copper, 1 rubber wagon) - wait for next food lump.
ElliVivaldi also has large amounts of Cops'n Robbers (... Copper and Rubber) - The fruit/Food is just one of it's functions.

Subsidies and MEGA stations
MEGA stations do not always mix well with Subsidies. Reason:
For a subsidy to be established, both the sending and the receiving station need to have their origins near enough to the subsidized resource.
Near enough means: within 16 tiles (S+W) of Top (North) CORNER; but no more than 9 tiles in ONE direction ... I've had to rebuild one big station because I thought that 14+2 was ok!
9 N, 7 W is OK; Earlier, I thought 10+6 was OK; it's NOT.

Theory is best shown by examples. At Thor Hovden's TT fan club, you COULD - I don't know where he is now - download this competition:
a 98k deluxe AusTrans saving. Look at the South East map corner:

There's a subsidy on offer for FOOD from Shepparton (you already have a station) - to the Mt.Gambier FARM! You have a station at the farm, but it's too far from the town to accept FOOD!
Solution: extend the Mt.Gambier farm station towards town: add bus, lorry, bus-stop. Now the farm station accepts FOOD - if food is brought from Shepparton, you will get the SUBSIDY.

But the subsidy now belongs to those 2 STATIONS. There's nothing to hinder you from moving these stations elsewhere!
Since there's another subsidy on offer: Passengers from Mt.Gambier to Broken Hill: You can destroy the whole Mt.Gambier station; hop it South East through the town; give it a new origin by the sea, East of the town, but still near to the centre.
Now extend back through Mt.Gambier: remove some streets to get through. Leave an anchor near the lumber mill - you want to transport WOOD - Broken hill has a FACTORY!
Extend out to the old rail station site - reuse that.
Your Mt.Gambier station is in position to get it's next subsidy: PASSENGERS.

So in a TTd game with high subsidy multiplier (3 .. 4), you should plan a little before developing expensive MEGA stations. example:

Factory near to city X: Place the station's origin within 9+7 from the factory top corner, and no more than 4+2 from the city centre. That way, any subsidies offered for 'passengers to/from X' - or - 'Wood, Copper, Rubber, etc to Factory' will fall in your lap easily.

Port'a Subsidy 1:
Suppose you're offered a subsidy for 'Oil from W to Z'. First build a temporary small W1 rail station (1 short track); send a small train to Z, get that subsidy; on the 1st of a month, preferably!
Now destroy the temporary W1 station, and hop it away from Z. At the new spot W2 (far from oil and all, maybe near a city centre), place the new origin of your subsidized station.
Then extend back towards the oil; make a new permanent rail station nearer to Z, with an anchor around W1 - 4 tiles from the oil well.
You now have a long pay oil station with a subsidy!
The Z station - at the refinery - may also be moved about after the subsidy. Note: If you've ported your oil station too far, it will receive no NEW subsidies! - If a new subsidy is offered to that oil well some day, you would have to do the whole job again; or forget about the subsidy.

You often have to make a choice between 'long pay' with an extreme MEGA station, and possible future subsidy offers.

Port'a Subsidy 2:
After a subsidy has been established, the program doesn't check WHERE the station gets it's oil from!
So if the oil subsidy in the example above was from a small oil well, you might do your porting to another oil well! With a higher production.
Same for the Z station: you might port it to a more convenient refinery, maybe one where you want a station for other purposes as well.

In principle, once a subsidy has been established: it belongs to the STATIONS. These can be hopped or walked elsewhere. As long as they end up with anchors to the subsidized commodities (Oil and Refinery), the stuff will be paid for at subsidy rates, wherever it comes from - or goes to.

But remember: as always: a subsidy only lasts for 1 YEAR. So compute the cost of the whole operation, and decide whether you will be happy with the resulting transport line, when that year is OVER.

NB: Important! Never let a station which has a subsidy disappear!
When a station Y is deleted, it's name shield turns grey. It can be recreated until about 25 days later; by the same or another player!
But after those ~25 days the Y name shield is gone, the Y station can't be remade. If this happens to a station which has a subsidy, your game will crash next time you invoke the subsidy list, or a train containing cargo from Y.
NB: TTdPatch has a fix for this.

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Last updated: ttd-tips.htm 2004-0417, 2003-0905a, 0106, (20020226, 2001-1004,..980602,..)

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