I've been starting to play around with rct2 and am amazed at some of the dense examples I've seen - this game is really deep!
I'm still using the premade rollercoasters (honestly, just getting the pathing right for them is complex enough!!) and am really struggling to get the ramps to connect without massive amounts of stuffing around. I've only just realised with the elevated ones I can have the path coming off them remaining elevated which tends to help with the pathway / track collisions, but I'm not even sure how I did it!
I hate sitting through mindnumbing YouTube videos as typically they're completely uninsightful (rct2 might be a different situation, I suppose, especially being a beginner), I feel like jumping in and learning as I went might've been a mistake...
Are there some tips I'm missing and how the hell am I supposed to see the entrances and plan the paths without buying the coaster and hoping it going to work? (I've rebought the same thing several times when I can't get it working!)
I'm sorry for not answering your question, but it sounds like you are trying to build coasters around the paths? So you're trying to build a path to the entrance/exit to the coaster before actually placing the coaster itself?
Why not buy the coaster and put it in the place you want it, then start a path (queue or exit path) beginning from the entrance or exit?
So instead of designing your coaster around your path, build your path around the coaster!
Again, sorry for not answering your actual question and immediately offering an alternative, but this is how I do it when I play.
Sorry to mislead you - I find when I plonk down a coaster that I have such a hard time getting the paths to connect (why do people use elevated entrance/exits?), I often give up.
Because the track of the coaster runs past the entrance it really needs some pathing gymnastics just to make it work
Ah, I understand what you mean now. Because of the complex coasters you get stuck trying to get "out of" the spiderweb of tracks. Yep, that can be hard. It also doesn't help that the game is a isometric top-down 2D pixel game. :D
As Die4Ever already said, your best bet is probably the bridge building mode and working your way out from the entrance, and rotate the view while you wiggle your way out.