Planet Coaster has arrived and it’s everything we wanted Rollercoaster Tycoon to be and more. Offering an unprecedented level of creative freedom in its genre, developers Frontier Developments have done a great job of providing a canvas for would-be theme park creators to have their way with, and the Steam Workshop is already filled with examples of people using the studio’s tools to develop some amazing rides and attractions.
Along with the game’s sandbox mode there’s also a challenge mode, which allows players to deal with the managerial aspects of running a park, building it from the ground up and working hard to attract new paying customers. However, in order to make your park as popular as it can be you’re going to need to put in a considerable amount of work, so we’ve created this guide in order to help you make your park reach its full potential. In the following slideshow, you’ll find helpful advice on everything from building rollercoasters, through to placing down priority pass lines and increasing foot traffic.
Take a look at our Planet Coaster guide below:
Planet Coaster Guide
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Place your shops and facilities where you want foot traffic
Regardless of how great your newly built rollercoaster is, if you've placed it too far away from the shops and facilities in your park then it will struggle to generate the profit it deserves. As such, if you're looking to expand your park, then you're going to need to be sensible with your placement of burger joints, milkshake vendors, toilets and all the other park necessities.
If your guests are complaining that they're hungry or thirsty, it can be tempting to simply place another Chief Beef or a Cosmic Cow near the entrance and be done with it. However, it's much more beneficial if you spread your park out a little more, by building a new path where you plan to develop more coasters and placing more shops alongside it. Doing so will encourage foot traffic to spread out, ensuring your park will become less crowded and that the rides and coasters you have placed on the outskirts will attract more patrons.
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Build priority pass lines
One of the most awkward elements of Planet Coaster is building priority pass lines, with the game failing to explain exactly how you should go about implementing these shortcuts into your existing queues. In order to get priority passes up and running, you must first research information centers, before placing one in your park. Then you'll need to enable priority passes on individual rides and coasters, before adding a priority pass entrance and exit onto the lines you've made. In order to do this you'll need to ensure that there is enough room for a direct line running from the priority pass entrance to the exit, as this will provide the shortcut that priority pass owners can take advantage of.
Priority passes are a tough sell. You'll find that many of your park's guests will be unwilling to part with money in order to skip to the front of the line, especially if you don't have many coasters or popular rides to your name. As such, it's worth keeping the cost of the passes to a minimum initially, and although you may suffer a monthly loss as a result they will help to keep wait times for rides to a minimum. When your park becomes more popular, priority passes will also become more highly sought after, so bump up the price accordingly.
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Create work rosters
While setting your mechanics and janitors to free roam initially is a good idea, as your park grows you'll want to ensure that they're as efficient as possible. You can achieve this by way of setting up a few work rosters, in which you select a section of the park that can be assigned to one staff member.
For instance, in smaller parks you can have one half of rides and coasters managed by one mechanic, while the other half is managed by another. When your park grows, you'll want to assign the coasters and rides that are more prone to breaking down to your most skilled mechanic, while it's always worth assigning your most efficient janitor to the areas that generate the most foot traffic. Ensuring that your staff members are making the best use of their time will not only help keep your park up and running, but it will also elevate your employees' happiness by making good use of them.
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Don't overlook family rides
The family rides are unequivocally boring. After all, who wants to spend cash on a roundabout when you have giant hammer swings at your disposal? However, considering that families bring in higher ticket prices, in order to maximize profits you'll want to look at developing rides and coasters that appeal to all age ranges.
Although families do not necessarily generate the most profit -- adult-oriented rides can be priced higher and as a result they're typically the most coveted demographic -- that you can raise the price of a family ticket by a considerable amount ensures that they're a great way of generating easy cash before they've even tried out your rides.
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Train your staff (but do it sparingly)
If you're finding that your rides are breaking down far too frequently or that your bins are routinely overflowing, rather than investing in whole new members of staff it can be more advantageous to train your current roster instead. You can train each member of staff once per month, improving their proficiency at carrying out their job and ensuring that you'll have a more stable park as a result.
However, if you're just starting out or are struggling to make profit, then training your staff can backfire. With each new level of training your staff will want a pay rise, which can eat into your monthly profits if you aren't careful. As such, it's best that you look at the areas of your park that need the most improvement (selling food/drinks, ride maintenance etc.) and then invest in training for this particular department instead of upgrading all of your staff members in one fell swoop.
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Refurbish your rollercoasters
Unfortunately coasters are very prone to breaking down, and over time wear and tear will make them less reliable. When you begin raking in a bit more cash from your park, you should focus upon hiring and training a specific mechanic to carry out your park's refurbishments, as a more skilled hand will buy you more time with each coaster before they endure their next technical fault.
Though hiring a member of staff for a specific purpose may seem like a waste of money initially, eventually your coasters will be able to stay up and running for much longer, thus ensuring that they'll experience less downtime and you'll generate more profit as a result. It only takes a few of your most popular attractions to break down simultaneously (which happens more often than you'd think) for your park to start bleeding out cash, so having a skilled hand to ensure that this won't be the case than be hugely beneficial.
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Don't make your park too spacious
Overcrowding isn't really an issue you'll have to contend with in Planet Coaster. I've found that my park's paths can become quite congested before guests start to complain, and it can also work in your benefit as rides and coasters placed in highly populated areas are more likely to receive more interest.
However, if you choose to make your park too spacious, visitors are unlikely to venture into its far corners in order to check out your new attractions. As such, it's much more useful if you pack out every inch of your park with things to keep your guests entertained, rather than spreading your rides and coasters too thinly. Also, while it can be tempting to build a transport system given how nifty they look, given the monthly costs required for you to do so this is only something that should be implemented as a last resort for when your park is large enough to justify such an addition.
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Focus on your test ride results
Even though it's possible to create some out-of-this-world coasters in Planet Coaster, your visitors will always prefer something more realistic than 60ft sheer drops and tracks that inexplicably take them underwater. When you're testing each new rollercoaster, you're going to want to ensure that at least two of your ratings are green to maximize each ride's profitability.
Though it may be tempting to create a crazy coaster and ignore the test results informing you that there's a high likelihood your guests will vomit after experiencing it, instead look at altering the parts of your ride in which the three meters veer into the dangerous red territory, and replace those parts of the track with sections that put on the brakes and slow down the car's momentum.
If you want to create a rollercoaster with less jarring motions, something which can prove to be off-putting for most guests, then you're going to need to focus on the angles of each turn your ride takes. Jolting those riding it from left to right on a whim is a surefire way to up that nausea meter, so you're going to want to ease your guests through each turn it makes. You can do this by way of angling each track into a bend -- for instance, if you're taking a left turn, angle the track from 23 degrees into 45 degrees left, then straighten it out at the next available opportunity. It's also important that you don't cram in too many loops or rolls, as doing so can prove to be disorientating for those riding the coaster. If you focus upon creating an exciting rollercoaster that doesn't make your guests want to barf, then you'll ensure that they'll rake you in as much cash as possible.
