Anyone who’s ever been a fan of tycoon and management games will likely hear about Planet Coaster, and console fans will rejoice as the hit amusement park management sim has finally made its way to consoles via Planet Coaster: Console Edition. Interestingly, no two Planet Coaster managers play the same, and sometimes what people think as the best strategies to grow their theme park ends up blowing up in their face - either by attractions becoming unappealing or, heaven forbid, rides collapsing while passengers are on board.
Thankfully, fans of Planet Coaster about to play Planet Coaster: Console Edition can rely on a few handy tips and tricks to ensure that their management styles conform to some of the basic standards needed by a theme park. However, just what approach should all managers use when handling their Planet Coaster: Console Edition theme park?
Updated August 31st, 2022 by Russ Boswell: Planet Coaster stands as one of the most entertaining (and beautifully crafted) theme park creation simulators out there. With so much for players to see and do, it can be pretty overwhelming to attempt to build a brand new multi-million dollar empire from scratch. Thankfully, there are a lot of helpful tips and tricks online that players pass around pertaining to the game. To better help players make it through their first days as a park builder, and to help them thrive once their location takes off, the following guide has been updated. It now features even more beginner tips for Planet Coaster.
13 Use The "First Person Camera" For More Control
When players first start their journey into building and operating a park in Planet Coaster, they'll notice the default "move" method, which has the camera panning around the map much like a traditional Simulator or RTS game. By using the WASD keys on PC, players can scan over areas of the map and place objects accordingly. But this view can be rather difficult to use as the park grows, especially when players start building complicated areas and placing tons of decorations.
To help "see" things better, players can hit the T key on PC, which will change the camera to more of a "First-Person" view. This will help players see things much closer than before and can give them a better look at what areas of their park may need improvement.
12 Slow Progress Is Still Progress
There’s a reason why businesses sometimes take years to turn a profit, and Planet Coaster applies a similar principle to each park. Essentially, it’s not wise to burn profit-building one attraction after the other without a concrete plan. At its core, going for exciting coasters and track rides will burn money extremely quickly before even turning a profit, and isn’t ideal for a small amusement park.
Instead, players should begin focusing on mundane attractions guaranteed to attract an average crowd. These are beginner attractions such as Teacups and the Cube, and they almost always turn a decent profit. The goal here is to build enough basic rides to build a “major” track ride that will attract a larger queue. This process will snowball into multiple track rides making the way to a major coaster. As with their size, coasters should go last as they don’t always make money immediately.
11 Efficiency Is About Distance
Frequentists of amusement parks will sometimes notice attractions being unavailable simply because of staff on break or shift changes, meaning it takes a couple of minutes before they become functional. This is frustrating for customers and very bad for business - and absolutely not the fault of the staff. In fact, Console Edition players can do one simple trick to make the park work more efficiently: optimizing Work Rosters.
Just like in real life, Work Rosters allow players to assign staff members to work on certain areas. Normally, staff just roam around and get to the next available area where their presence is needed, but this isn’t exactly as efficient as players would want. Instead, players should assign new staff to Work Rosters in areas they specifically want them to focus on. Moreover, players should position Staff Rooms in locations that tackle as many close areas as possible so staff breaks and shift changes don’t take as much time.
10 More Paths Remove Congestion
Sometimes it’s just unavoidable for attractions and rides to be so popular that a lot of people line up to get to them. However, it’s actually extremely avoidable for pathways around the dream amusement park to be unbearably congested for park-goers. It all boils down to how players construct pathways properly and efficiently.
For instance, while the game advises players to use 4-to-5-meter-wide pathways, it’s actually beneficial to use the 10-meter-wide path option in specific situations. A good example of this would be allocating multiple park entry gates and giving them wide pathways to ensure the smooth passage of park-goers before finally using smaller paths to specific destinations. It’s also ideal to keep bigger rides separate with wide paths to reduce congestion.
9 Get Price Hikes During Hype Season
Much in the same way as location openings in real life attract audiences, new attractions in Planet Coaster are a good opportunity in the grand scheme of things to earn a bit of extra money for a couple of weeks. When players create a new attraction or ride in a place with a high Scenery Rating, it helps to capitalize on this period by slightly raising ticket prices. Players can do the same for new restaurants and shops, but not to an excess.
By the time a few weeks passes and the Scenery Rating decreases below 80-percent, now might be a good time to try and align the attraction rating to be similar to the rest of the attractions and rides.
8 Visuals Always Benefit The Queue
Players who find themselves worried that their park-goers always skip long queues to good rides might be due to a lack of visuals. After all, waiting in a line is bad enough, but waiting in an unappealing part of the park is just boring. However, Planet Coaster has a convenient solution to this in the form of Scenery. Accessed via the Ride Overview of the page, this measures just how interesting a queue is and how likely it is to maintain ride-goers. Keeping this at 100-percent means even the most popular of rides will have audiences patient enough to wait long lines.
However, just tailor-fitting certain objects for a high Scenery score can get tricky. Thankfully, the Scenery section does have Blueprints, allowing players to access pre-built visuals that they can use to decorate ride environments. Players with no time to deliberate on visuals can use a Blueprint to match their rides.
7 Treat Staff As An Investment
At first glance, spending money to train workers and even give them a raise could worsen the efficiency of the entire theme park. However, managers should remember that proper management training and incentivizing staff have actual positive returns, depending on how they utilize these perks properly. For instance, players should use Perks like Staff Healthcare to prevent overworking among staff to keep their Happiness Bar above average.
Moreover, it’s advisable for managers to regularly spend money to train staff and give them periodic pay raises, especially after training. This not only ensures their Happiness but also boosts their efficiency - which in the long term is cheaper compared to hiring multiple new staff members and retraining them for work that a single staff could’ve done before.
6 Assign Janitors To Work Rosters
At the start, players won't have to worry nearly as much about park cleanliness and ride maintenance as there won't be an abundance of people making a mess or wearing down the machinery. As the park grows, however, so do its list of potential issues. One of the first things players will start to notice when their park is bustling with visitors is how messy things can get. To combat this mess, players can hire Janitors, which will patrol the park and clean up any dirt and grime they spot.
But these patrolling employees can miss areas, so players should assign them to a "work roster" found in their menu to increase their productivity in specific areas. By using this tool, players can then choose specific rides and areas that Janitors will patrol more closely, allowing them better management of the messes as the park continues to grow.
5 Decor Can Affect Ride Value
It can be easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of rides and shops that players will have access to when starting their park in Planet Coaster, so much so that they completely forget about purchasing and placing decorations. These items won't directly affect how much excitement that park visitors get from a certain ride but they do have the ability to increase the "value" of the ride itself. More specifically decorations near a ride will affect how much value park goers see in the attraction, which can be seen by checking out the appropriate ride's menu.
By placing decor around a ride, visitors may be more inclined to pay more to enjoy the ride, simply because it seems nicer.
4 Hospitality Is All About Location
Of course, no theme park would be complete without amenities like souvenir shops and food shops. In Planet Coaster, park-goers often look for Hospitality stalls when they feel tired or empty and just need to recharge and eat good food. Of course, with so many rides around them, players might panic and put a lot of food stalls there. However, this might be extremely detrimental since not all food stalls get occupied anyway, potentially sparking a loss in profit.
Instead, players might want to keep their Hospitality areas at a minimum. While this may result in more complaining customers, this does give players a lot of area to maximize profit. Players should remove or reposition existing Hospitality booths in areas with maximum congestion to boost their profits instead of simply building another food area or souvenir shop.
3 Autosmooth Works Best With Manual Supervision
Players of Planet Coaster can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the Autosmooth option in the console version’s coaster building allows the game to automatically smooth out weird areas and optimize roller coasters based on certain algorithms. Thing is, Autosmooth doesn’t necessarily “fix” coasters that aren’t built properly, and may still perform worse if not properly adjusted.
To maximize Autosmooth, players still need to give their track a proper inspection. Ideally, Autosmooth is best completed with readjustments towards banking, heights, and turns from both an overall perspective and a car’s perspective. Players should do this repeatedly until the ride feels optimized enough for them. It helps to pay attention to banking to help the track avoid any weird twists and turns. Using the car perspective lets players see “logical” pathways for the coaster to go for maximum enjoyment.
2 Priority Queues Help With Longer Lines
Congestion can become a problem when it comes to maintaining a ride-goers’ interest and a ride’s earning potential, and the Priority Queue can become an easy fix for this. At its core, building an Information Center can help players give ride-goers Priority Queues that help them skip lines.
While this applies to almost any ride, they should almost be used exclusively to bigger rides with longer queues - such as track rides and roller coasters. When used properly, more ride-goers can enjoy thrilling rides and help the park earn more while easing congestion as more users get to try a popular ride.
1 Think About Classics Carefully
As with real-life, older rides in amusement parks become boring over time and become obsolete, especially in the presence of newer and more updated rides. Its effects are all the more visible in Planet Coaster, especially since older rides earn less over time. However, players who wait it out can potentially have a ride become a classic, boosting its reputation and increasing its profit margins more than in its prime.
Of course, with this in mind, it’s like encouraging all rides to become classics, right? Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case as, remember, initial aging cycles in rides do mean decreased profit. Instead, players should ideally have just one popular and more expensive ride become aged. That way, even if players lose a bit of profit, its transformation into a classic can potentially get the low profit back.
Planet Coaster: Console Edition is currently available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.