Author: riser
Personal vehicles should be banned because taxis are cheaper. At least, they should be.
$Gas stands for the cheapest gas price in Virtua. This will be used because the price for gas changes but the analysis below doesn’t.
You are a citizen of Cashington and want to refill your shop in Nasdaqar. Like most citizens, you learned an important trade in school, efficient vehicle handling (a.k.a transport skill).
You own everyone’s favorite car, the MitsuIshi because that car is the most fuel efficient car to ship goods (higher than 1 squst).
You send your goods to Nasdaqar (3.25 km away) and use 2 gas (2 km/gas, rounded up). You take the car back, 2 gas.
Total: 4 $gas to send 4 squst.
After a few dozen times, your car is badly damaged and needs to be repaired.
Instead of using your car, you use Kavelrovers taxi (for example Cheaper MV’s), at the price of 1 $gas per km. You thus pay 3.25 $gas.
Total: 3.25 $gas to send 6 squst.
You save about 20% to be able to ship 50% more.
A similar analysis is possible with Cheaper MV’s Miniconimini when you want to move less than 1 squst (like yourself) or with different cities and is left as exercise to the reader.
What’s more is that you don’t have to pay for repairs (costly on MitsuIshis), you don’t need to buy the car and you’re not wasting a valuable parking space.
Q1 – What do i do if there is no taxi in my city?
A1 – You wait, hoping people will stop buying their own cars so taxi MV’s can make more taxis available. While you wait you take the time to ask your mayor politely for more parking lots.
A2 – Send something from your shop to your warehouse.
A3 – Put a phone in your backpack. From what I’ve heard, you can now call taxis doing that, I’ll try it as soon as someone starts making phones.
Q2 – Ok what if I want to send more than 6 squst.
A1 – Send your goods as usual and check more than a single taxi. Cheaper mv is offering different prices on its taxi so you can see them all and check more than one. You did notice that you could check more than one car or taxi at the same time, right?
A2 – There is a single Kavelrover taxi somewhere with a cheaper price that you can use back and forth. Its price per squst is still better than anything else you own.
Q3 – I want to export trees, what is the cheapest way of doing that?
A – It is often cheaper to go to Nasdaqar and use the cheaper taxi back and forth (note: this might now be true in every trading period or during the whole period, see below)
Q4 – How can that be cheaper than buying it in my own city?
A – Depending on shop location, you can pay more than a single gas to send cargo to your warehouse (gas used = cargo size in squst * distance in km). Since trees are very large cargo, you often use so much gas that you end up making almost no profit at the exim. Even more than that, Nasdaqar tree cutters can often offer a cheaper price for trees sold in their own city. Contact your favorite tree seller for details.
Q5 – There was no taxi in my city and I asked a taxi mv for a taxi but now the price is higher. Why is that?
A – With such cheap price, the taxi might lose money sending you a taxi and even if you pay for the ride. They might increase the price a bit to pay for that extra gas.
Q6 – You call 3 ish per km cheap?!? Are you mad?
A – 2 trading periods ago, taxi prices were 2.5 ish with gas at 0.7 ish (or more than 3 times the price of gas). With a price:gas ratio of 1:1 the profits are lower and free rides are burning up the profits. You want cheaper taxis? Taxis need cheaper gas, which might not be possible.