Does anyone make a profit with ships?

[PPT]

I have 6 oil tankers.
They all carry full loads.
Some go short distance, some medium and some long enough to need a buoy to go that far.
They all lose money.
About $200,000/ year.
Since my 5 oil trains make about $1,000,000/ year I tolerate the loss on the ships.

If I just owned the ships and not the trains as well, it would be an impossible business.

If you make a profit on ships, how do you do it?

[sss]

Really?
my ships can make me 250 k a year in +
i dont know what you are missing. I shall take a look at the savegame.

[Emperor Jake]

I see the problem - you're using unload instead of transfer orders.

See these wiki pages for more information:
http://wiki.openttd.org/Feeder_service
http://wiki.openttd.org/Orders

[PPT]

I changed those orders to transfer and now the ships are making some profit.

Thanks.

[Rob2269]

I don't make much use of ships, however I do find the Bakewell Hovercraft between two decent sized coastal towns makes decent profit

[Pyoro]

Only "problem" I have with ships is the annoying "profit warning" you'll frequently get once the routes are a bit longer - even if they do make a profit, calculated over 2 or 3 years (I know this can be turned off, but I generally like the feature )

[Transportman]

Only "problem" I have with ships is the annoying "profit warning" you'll frequently get once the routes are a bit longer - even if they do make a profit, calculated over 2 or 3 years (I know this can be turned off, but I generally like the feature )

That warning also serves for me to detect problems in my train network. I have a High speed line with 2 different train types on it, when the fast one gets behind the slower one all trains group together waiting for each other, making profits drop and give a warning that trains lose money. But when you have longer routes with slower vehicles (a run back and forth takes over a year), you get that warning because the return route is empty and thus not making money. That is the reason I always try to get the return also some profit (or I just ignore the message).

[Fastphil]

I had ships delivering directly to an oil refinery that was near the shore and the edge of the map. I just landscaped the shoreline to get the dock within range of the refinery. Don't remember how much they were making per year, but it's better than losing money.

[PPT]

I'm having better luck using a larger number of smaller ships going shorter distances.
This also creates a steady flow of oil to the dock

[yodasws]

I've been experimenting with using the Sailing Ships NewGRF as I like to start early (typically mid-1800s, though recently tried 1700 a couple times). Also note that I focus primarily on passenger service and maybe a little mail service (because Villages Is Village requires towns receive both to grow).

Sailing Ships's Brig (the only ship available between 1700 and 1750) has a small cargo-hold and a relatively high purchase price, so I determined early on that this cannot make any money.

Starting later in 1800, I've got a faster ship and a couple larger ships, but after a few years my system is losing money, and my deficit keeps growing!

So, my conclusion is passenger ferry service with the Sailing Ships NewGRF (at least before the train era) is infeasible. Since things work out well in the beginning of a new system, it seems that inflation is raising the property maintenance on the docks much faster than the fares on passenger service.

Another problem is that old vehicles in need of replacement likely also raise their costs and drop their revenue… So as my vehicles reach the point of needing to be replaced, I keep finding my profits shrinking and soon get stuck with a growing deficit.

I would try to take out loans to replace my vehicles, but the ships are so expensive, over $60,000. Plus taking more loans means more interest to counter any gain you can achieve by using the money to replace vehicles.

So, as you can see, my few games with Sailing Ships have lasted a few decent decades but then suddenly begin to spiral into debt…

Guess I'll need to try a normal game and see how that works…

[lostpawn]

In this game I have a lot of ships. I have build a large port with several docks. Incoming: steel, food, clay and chemicals.
My ship income is now almost 7 mln. each year, the costs app. 5 mln. So I guess it can be done, profitable shipping.
I also found that a lot of smaller ships on the same route works better than a few large ones.

[leifbk]

yodasws, two points:

1. Turn off inflation. It's only intended to work for the original game time period 1950-2050, when tech and incomes are skyrocketing. Starting a game in 1700 with inflation on will suffocate you no matter what you do. (There's one, highly artificial, setup where it may work, see here. But I wouldn't recommend it, except as an exercise.)

2. Load FishAteSquid (Fish 2) together with the Sailing ships. It manages to make all shipping a lot more profitable.

As a proof of profitable shipping, see my thread about Ships and RVs 1700-2050 in the sig below.

[SquireJames]

OTTDTankerProfit.jpg (79.19 KiB) Viewed 5110 times

I'd say that was worth it's while

[leifbk]

OTTDTankerProfit.jpg

I'd say that was worth it's while

Does the Hyperion by any chance have a sister ship named Endymion?

Selection_051.png (8.69 KiB) Viewed 5090 times

Here's a ship with a more modest income from my current game, in 1966. It's carrying bricks ("tegl" in Norwegian) from the Hovstad brickworks.

[yodasws]

1. Turn off inflation. It's only intended to work for the original game time period 1950-2050, when tech and incomes are skyrocketing. Starting a game in 1700 with inflation on will suffocate you no matter what you do. (There's one, highly artificial, setup where it may work, see here. But I wouldn't recommend it, except as an exercise.)

I will try that.

In my games since I've discovered NewGRFs, I've loaded a lot of vehicle/train sets together. There are a lot of price/cost discrepancies between these NewGRFs and I have no doubt that inflation is part of the problem.

• one set will give me a tram/train to carry hundreds of passengers with a running cost of a few hundred dollars, but another set will give me a tram/train to carry tens of passengers for thousands of dollars…
• some sets have train cars with maximum speeds but no running costs, one set will give me train cars with high running costs and no maximum speed. Wish there was some more consistency in requiring these properties on vehicles.

[leifbk]

With inflation turned off, running costs will always remain manageable. Even the Brig (with SquidAteFish co-loaded) will typically have a Profit over Running cost ratio of about 4:1, cf. my Ships & RVs thread. The same ratio for modern ships is more like 10:1. It's an insane profit margin, but the economy model of OTTD doesn't match the realities of supply and demand. It's more like the old Communist economy, where prices were dictated by the government.