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 Economy
In TransportGiant you take on the role of a haulage contractor. That is, you won't produce goods (as you do in IndustryGiant 2) and you won't have to sell them either. You make money simply by transporting all kinds of goods.
Freight rates
No freight rates - no profit. Every product in the game fetches different freight rates. As a rule, less money will be paid for transporting raw materials than for processed goods.
As mentioned above, you don't buy the products you transport. That is, you don't have to pay for them. Similarly, you don't sell the products but are paid for their transport.
The freight rate paid depends on how far you had to transport the product. However, this does not mean that you should aim to transport your goods over longer distances: The rate is always based on the shortest connection between two points. So if your vehicles take a detour, this will adversely affect your profit.
Similarly, the freight rate paid depends on how quickly you transport the goods in question. To this end, the average speed achieved is calculated. For many products the speed should be quite high to achieve a good price. You may safely assume that raw materials won't require high speeds – after all, iron ore rarely goes bad during longer transports. Perishable goods, and particularly passengers or mail, need to be taken to their destination as quickly as possible.
On short distances therefore, you might well achieve a higher freight rate with a slow but quickly accelerating vehicle than with a vehicle that is very fast but takes a long time to reach its top speed.
This diagram shows the different freight rates depending on the average speed reached for iron ore, fruit and passengers. This goes to show that these products have very different requirements as to transportation speed.
While you can use very slow vehicles for iron ore without any significant price changes, passengers should always be transported with the most modern and fastest vehicles.
Passenger transportation
Passenger transportation has its own chapter in the game, offering very different challenges. Passengers travel from town to town or want to be taken to places of interest. Above all, they want to travel very quickly. And they have particular destinations. As an entrepreneur, you must take these destinations into consideration and create the necessary connections. Even the most elegant luxury train or the fastest airplane will not draw passengers if they can't use them to reach their destination.
While at the beginning the transport of goods is far more lucrative and far easier to manage, passenger transportation will become more attractive and lucrative once faster means of transport become available.
You might even make some extra money here by upgrading stations with restaurants or hotels.
Fluctuations in economic activity
Naturally, the economy will not remain stable over 200 years. Various events can mess up even the best of plans and cause sharp drops in once splendid profits. But in good times even unprofitable routes may suddenly yield a nice profit.
A clever entrepreneur should know how to respond to such events to achieve a maximum profit.
But challenges are not only posed by global events. Individual factories may also offer higher freight rates. In this case, it's up to the entrepreneur whether to react to short-term fluctuations in prices or not.
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