How is the price of a rural ticket calculated?

Say you go to a Deutsche Bahn ticket machine and go to the from/to part button.

How is the price calculated for single tickets and day tickets?

For example:

Königs Wusterhausen to Tropical Islands is the same price as Zeesen to Brand Tropical Islands. Though, it seems that Wildau to Brand Tropical Islands is more expensive than to Königs Wusterhausen.

What is going on here?

Best Answer

DB has a rather complicated scheme involving:

Distance of travel, with some rounding so different routes may be in the same price bracket.
Type of train. If only part of the route uses the faster train, the entire ticket may be surcharged.
Regional pricing schemes involving DB and bus and tram operators.
Time of pre-booking.

I think the only practical choice is to accept what they're calculating, and to try out various options on the ticket machine or their web site -- without ICE, without ICE and IC, and so on.

In some cases the slower train can save significant money for an only slightly longer trip, because connections match better, in other cases the slower train is just aggravation to save a little money.