Hi all

[MlemandPurrs]

mind you im playing with infrastructure costs on and inflation also turned on so your mileage may vary.

I always start with an 5 wagon coal train on an medium to short distance route. You should build an passenger road vehicle route soon as possible to up your performance rating. Next find an ironmine or forest and run to steelmill/sawmill, then either find an farm and run livestock/grain to an factory.

Playing the random maps start the game as paused and look around at begin, the map tends to have major hub cities, those are mostly in reaching distance of atleast one, sometimes multiple goods-producing industries and their supplying primary industries also in reach of those industries. You'd like to focus on growing one of those, as at late game your secondary(short-term) income will be all about passenger transport.
Build it all up as such that cargo transport's earn you the money, whilst the passenger transport income helps keeping the infrastructure afloat.

Be bothered to check saturation at your stations, there will be cases where the industries are overproducing and the cargo remaining untransported, there doubling the volume on an existing route may bring in better revenue than opening an new longer route somewhere.

Also worth the note is the fact that if multiple primary industries of same type happent to spawn in an cluster, that is 3 or more that can be covered by an single station, it may be an better idea to run one long train with multiple locomotives than relying on frequent smaller trains to generate an bulk income there, as bulk income is primary source of money to do things.
In one game there spawned 4 coal mines around middle peak of the map, so built there an 7-tile long train station and placed an road lorry station with CTRL adding to it to cover all, it did pay well off for 40 years until the mines dried up and closed one after the other.

For a long while Oil remains top revenue bringer, i have observed at around year 2000 top revenue bringer per load is usually coal followed by steel, and this despite all coal/iron industries on the map of this type being saturated early on. The revenue per cargo falls very fast on Valuables(Banks generate it) so never shift focus to it.
when the oil platforms finally begin to spawn you have to be prepared for it and begin running tanker ship as soon as possible. For passenger transport to oil platform i tend to send hovercraft rather than helicopter. In one game there was only an single bay of water at north of the map, there did spawn an pair of platforms, as years passed the bay got filled with about 16-20 platforms. The nearest refinery was next to small inland lake and reachable via canal, so built an canal to connect directly to an dock instead setting up pump transfer from shore to refinery, it did really pay off in the longterm.

Past 1965-1970, if you have bothered supplying atleast one city up until that point it will have grown to an proportion where you can run passenger bus within the city and an banlieu train around it. Only the larger cities generate enough passengers to pay off being continously shipped enmasse around the clock to another city, and then usually via airline.

The FIRS and such turn the game into something other entirely, so you have to learn the game again as an seperate game if want to play them. I have noticed scrap metal pays very good in FIRS.

newgrf i can recommend are PIPE(adds pipelines for transporting liquid cargo) and CHIPS station set, ISR and Ore Loader/Unloader Station for some graphic variety in station tiles.

[Baldy's Boss]

By way of illustration,here is a fairly young company with all its vehicles profitable (note that I only build trains).You can figure out the chronology from the train numbers.

I started at the largest city,and set up a passenger/mail route to a city of some size not too close or too far.A lot of time has been spent landscaping the mountain to make travel easier as money to pay for this was earned.
With some money in hand,I set up a longer passenger route serving other sizeable cities.
I found a productive forest (sort Industries by Production,from the top menu) and set up a route carrying wood to a sawmill.
And most recently I've found a productive coal mine and set up a route to a power plant (this is the main expense of recent years).

[bear1]

Road vehicles bring in a steady but small income. The frequency is useful to keep your company afloat early on. They're also an easier option as they don't have the complexity of building a rail infrastructure. However, my personal experience is that the income is too small.
Personally I'd start by finding the menu option which shows the cities and then looking through the cities until you find two bigger ones which are reasonably close together. Then build a single train line between them. Once you've got the trains going build a bus depot next to one of the train stations (so you have a train/bus station, not two separate stations) and a bus depot elsewhere in the city. Run two or three buses from the bus station to the train station and set the buses to transfer and not pick up at the train station. That'll increase the number of passengers hopping on the train and increase your income. Do the same at the other station, and build increase the number of depots as the cities need.

Coal is a good starting place too, especially as it's nice and simple. But I prefer wood as it then gets turned into goods and that needs to be transported to a city.

Getting the signalling right is a little complicated, but is the secret to building a profitable company. Also, I find building a complicated, efficient train network is the part of the game which provides the most satisfaction.

All of this is just my opinion, obvs.

[leifbk]

Road vehicles bring in a steady but small income. The frequency is useful to keep your company afloat early on. They're also an easier option as they don't have the complexity of building a rail infrastructure. However, my personal experience is that the income is too small.

Contrary to your personal experience, my personal experience tells me that you can build a very profitable company with ships and road vehicles only. You don't even need to do passenger transport, which can quickly get you into the feeling of playing Tetris. But it may not work if you play with inflation on, and I don't know how much infrastructure maintenance will affect such a game. But OTTD is a very open-ended game, and to each his own playing style.

[Raven1s]

Wow thank you for all the advice I will have a play around and see what is the best way to play for my playing style all the info you guys have given me is going to be very helpful I am grateful for you all taking your time to help a noob out

[Baldy's Boss]

Wow thank you for all the advice I will have a play around and see what is the best way to play for my playing style all the info you guys have given me is going to be very helpful I am grateful for you all taking your time to help a noob out

Here is that young company a little further down the line.Note that the top earners are trains that are taking a lot of cargo a significant distance,with powerful engines.At first you may need to run cheaper trains to save the money to buy these.You can build large stations and extend trains as money permits,or extend trains and enlarge the stations to fit them,but note that there is a substantial time penalty for loading and unloading if the train is longer than the platform.