Vehicle speed analysis

[AlphaCentauriBear]

I tried to balance economy in game and discovered that vehicle speed has huge impact on profit. Here is my analysis.

There are single unit vehicles (road, plane, ship) with fixed capacity. Trains are multi unit vehicles with modifiable capacity.
Profit related vehicle parameters are capacity, speed, and running cost.

Running cost is base expenses.
Capacity is a proportional divider to expenses (running cost). It takes proportionally less number of bigger capacity vehicles to deliver same amount of cargo per month.
Train power is essentially a capacity multiplier allowing to pull more wagons.

Speed is much more complicated that that.
1. It is a proportional divider to expenses (running cost) - same as capacity. It takes proportionally less number of faster vehicles to deliver same amount of cargo per month as they do more trips in same amount of time.
2. It decreases delivery time reducing time factor penalty, thus increasing the revenue. The effect is non linear: could vary from 10-20% on shorter routes to infinity on longer routes where slower vehicle cannot even deliver in time.
3. It increases the station visit frequency improving station rating and amount of cargo generated and, subsequently, higher profit. This point usually does not apply to road vehicles as they hit station pretty often anyway due to their sheer number.

Due to above, speed requires careful in game economics balance.
That is the less concern for road vehicles, ships, and planes whose speed is upgraded quite rarely and matches the era pretty good. Planes fall into three speed classes: small, jet, and super-jet.

Trains, from the other hand, have multitude of different speeds those go a wide spectrum: from 64 km/h to 643 km/h. Ten times the difference! Even more than super-sonic jet increase. If this is not enough their power grows in steep progression to increasing their max capacity tremendously. Modern locomotives are order of magnitude more profitable. Clearly, we may allow modern machinery be more profitable but not at this exponential rate.

I am trying to reshuffle train parameters to make early trains relatively profitable too.

[Redirect Left]

I tried to balance economy in game and discovered that vehicle speed has huge impact on profit. Here is my analysis.

You get more money for faster delivery of all cargo. I believe goods for example is relatively time specific moreso than the rest, everyone wants their next day delivery, next day!

Thinking logically, I guess passengers will also be very much more $ for quicker delivery. I'd be surprised if things like coal was time dependent, coal has been sitting around for millions of years, it isn't like a small delay of 2 week is going to make it any better or worse. However, I do not know if the games cargo delivery times use any form of logic, or the will of developers, be that OTTD or Chris Sawyer, i dunno if OpenTTD has altered the delivery delay costs.

[Eddi]

3. It increases the station visit frequency improving station rating and amount of cargo generated and, subsequently, higher profit. This point usually does not apply to road vehicles as they hit station pretty often anyway due to their sheer number.

additionally, there is a speed bonus to station rating.

[AlphaCentauriBear]

3. It increases the station visit frequency improving station rating and amount of cargo generated and, subsequently, higher profit. This point usually does not apply to road vehicles as they hit station pretty often anyway due to their sheer number.

additionally, there is a speed bonus to station rating.

Exactly! Forgot this. With that speed has 4 (four) factor affecting profit!