What percentage to use for profit sharing?

[aantono]

I'm playing a game using Cargodist for passenger and mail delivery with symmetric delivery.
My question is: what would be the best suggested percentage value to use if I have multiple transfer points for pax going across the map taking buses, trains, boats and airplanes. I've tried a number of options but can't seem to find the right balance. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

[PikkaBird]

"The right balance" is subjective. What is the problem and what is your aim? I've always left mine at the default, whatever that is, and not had any issues.

In any case, the % to pay feeders is entirely cosmetic. It makes no difference to your bottom line or to the functioning of the network.

[aantono]

The problem I have is that many passenger vehicles show a loss at the end of the year. I know that one answer is to disable the popup notification of a negative yearly income, but it is not always the case of just being the distribution problem, sometimes those vehicles do indeed "correctly" loose money, so it is nice to be notified of that.
My current setting is at 70%. The way I read that, is that on the final pax/mail delivery 70% of the profit will be given to the intermediary feeder vehicles. So if I have passengers taking a bus to the airport to take a plane to another city and then another bus from the airport to the city, those 70% would be divided between the bus and the plane (but what proportions)? Is my assumption/understanding correct?

[Alberth]

No, your understanding is wrong.

Each leg of the journey, you are (virtually) paid a sum of money based on assumptions/estimates of the destination and the route (without cargo dist, it has no clue where the cargo goes, in case of cargo dist, the final destination is of course known, but how it gets there, in particular w.r.t. timing, is unknown). The vehicle doing that leg of the journey get (in your case) 70% of that amount. Basically, you're paid based on what the cargo has actually traveled so far, rather than based on percentage of where it is going.

At the final leg, the final payment is computed, where all intermediate payments are deducted. If the total comes up short, the vehicle is paying the bill. Note that all this is virtual money, the sum of all legs will still be positive, even if some legs are negative.
As such, the percentage is totally irrelevant, you will get the same amount of money in the end, no matter what the percentage is.

This system works fairly well, if your vehicles travel in a mostly straight line from A to B, and all have about the same speed.
It fails horribly no matter what in other cases, like going from A to nearby destination B, but via C which is far away. The first leg A-C will pay a lot, because you moved the cargo a long distance. Leg C-B will then get almost the same amount, but as payment rather than profit. (In other words, moving cargo around the map before delivering will not give you extra money.)

Negative payments are often a sign of inefficient routing (like A-C-B above), or large speed differences in the vehicles doing the transport.

[Eddi]

if you find vehicles making losses on delivery, lower the transfer setting. i usually arrive at something like 30%.

[moki]

I use feeder services all the time, building airports outside of towns and getting the passengers there by tram or metro trains, or building ferries instead of just making a long railway bridge across a body of water... 50% payment seems to work well enough for me. There will always be a few buses that make a loss on paper, but since I don't care for the company rating (which is a terribly outdated method anyway) , that's not a problem.

I just check the capacity and usage map regularly, because that says a lot more about whether a line works as intended or not. If a bus line constantly loses money but is at near 100% capacity, it's probably just quirky calculations again... besides, the calculation may be a mess, but the outcome is somewhat realistic. Sometimes you have to invest at one point to make a profit at another.
When you (in real life) book a flight and it includes a bus ride to the airport, the airline doesn't make any money from the bus (it probably costs quite a bit), but they don't care, because getting you to the airport and onto the plane is what makes a profit for them. If you can't get to the airport, they'd be going bankrupt in no time at all... Sometimes, openTTD is more realistic than you think

[aantono]

I guess that makes sense that the flow should be more even and I also get that some "shuttles" would be operating at a loss, just wish there would be a way to mark those vehicles as "expected to operate at a loss" and not get a notification about "a tram costing $500/year to run operating at a loss of $50000"

One comment about the "subsidized" vehicles is that in the real world, when you go to the airport, you not only pay for the airfare, but also pay for the rail ticket to get you from the city. Those "airport express" trains are not included into the airfare price. There might, or might not, be a free shuttle from the near-by station to the terminal, but that's about it.

I'll try setting the percentage to share to 30% to see if that way I can get a better distribution of profit.

As for CargoDist, I thought that the final destination is not pre-determined and finalized at the point of origination, and that it changes at the transfer stations, when the order does not explicitly says "transfer", or am I wrong on that assumption as well?

[andythenorth]

Turn off notifications...

[Pyoro]

if you find vehicles making losses on delivery, lower the transfer setting. i usually arrive at something like 30%.

...exactly what I'm doing and exactly what I usually end up with as well. ^^;