44 replies to this topic

[lake]

Maybe we just add the focus city option.
5 gates for a focus city
10 for a hub
It could be a blue arrow for focus cities well it could be a red arrow for hubs.

[sviridovt]

SirMoo, Delta has major operations at Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, JFK, LaGuardia and while they've been hit by the merger and economy they have smaller operations, but still hub activities, at Cincinatti and Memphis.

That doesn't include their major operations in Tokyo and to a lesser degree Amsterdam.

They have nearly 100 departures a day from the likes of Boston, Los Angeles, etc...


In this game, if you want more than 40 someodd daily, you've got to set up a hub.

"8 or so" or 7 or whatever...I'm not disagreeing there's a lot of airlines running operations that wouldn't sustainable in the real world, but I agree with sviridot. There are more realistic ways of limiting growth without a hard cap on "hubs" (fwiw, "hubs" as most think about them as, are not always necessarily discernible entities in the real world from a "focus city" or what have you.")

Make it harder to grow, make terminal expansion helluva lot more expensive. They can cost somewhere in the billions in the real world.

and add an option to buy gates in existing airports, kinda like building a terminal only allot cheaper to start, and there is a cap on how many there are per airport, that way in the beginning of the game where everyone is small, its easier for airlines to expand and it would also kinda put a cap on how many airlines can operate from one airport, so we dont have 50 airlines havinga hub at JFK

[Superman]

Have anything to say thats on topic? Else go away.

Sure

[SirMoo]

Aggie, Deltas hubs being Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-JFK, Salt Lake City, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam and Tokyo-Narita, this is the exception to the rule much like CO/UA. These hub numbers are unrealistic without mergers though.

Reason for a hard cap is to prevent them from profiting off the bonus pax. Yes the costs are higher for a hub, but you can over fly flights and fill them up with connecting pax. If you're hubing over 50 airports (like the top player in the world I'm in) you're going to be profiting on that.

Problem is gates have no restrictions on them and the game just goes crazy. I personally think you should have 10 or more gates at a hub before you can build a terminal, and to build one you should pay a very large sum.

Gates are the real problem, but lowering hub amounts will push realism into it. No person should have over 10 hubs...

[sviridovt]

Aggie, Deltas hubs being Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-JFK, Salt Lake City, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam and Tokyo-Narita, this is the exception to the rule much like CO/UA. These hub numbers are unrealistic without mergers though.

Reason for a hard cap is to prevent them from profiting off the bonus pax. Yes the costs are higher for a hub, but you can over fly flights and fill them up with connecting pax. If you're hubing over 50 airports (like the top player in the world I'm in) you're going to be profiting on that.

Problem is gates have no restrictions on them and the game just goes crazy. I personally think you should have 10 or more gates at a hub before you can build a terminal, and to build one you should pay a very large sum.

Gates are the real problem, but lowering hub amounts will push realism into it. No person should have over 10 hubs...

No where in the FAA regulations does it limit how many hubs an airline could have, yeah airlines dont do it doesnt mean we should force people to play realistically. The bottom line is: its a game for enjoyment, you play it how you want to, I play how I want to. While you may think that I fully support large airlines, I dont. I value realism as well (which is why I play in realistic world), but I put competition before realism, I want to stay competitive. Putting a hard cap on anything means there is no room for expansion once you get to a certain point, so instead of saying stuff like "oh, you must not have more than x number of hubs" or "you shall not have more then x number of flights" you are making the game not only unrealistic, but limiting room for growth once you get to a certain point, and if there is no room for expansion then why even play the game? It works much the same way right now in real world, it just took it a little longer to get to that point because of challenges involved, so instead of putting a cap, why not make the game harder. The way it is right now is that airlines are merging which causes them to have allot of hubs, allot of planes, and allot of controversial planes (like A320 and B737 like DL and UA has now due to the merger)

[Mr Tree]

Not on the first hub though. We don't want to scare off new AE members.

[BritAbroad]

I hear both sides of the argument - rather than a cap, why not just make it prohibitively expensive beyond a certain point? That way, you can still open as much as you like, but - like the real world - consolodation is rewarded.

[txaggie]

An exception to the rule? Maybe, but an excpetion nonetheless.

I hear what you're saying and I don't disagree with your motives. I'm just saying I think making it more costly to build terminals, run hub activities, etc... and making it more cost inefficient to run a huge number of hubs would solve the problem you (and I) have, while doing it in a more realistic way, that would make the game more challenging and require more strategy on the part of its players.

[Cyclone1001]

While this has little to do with hubs, it has alot to do with terminals: add a certain number of 'lots' you can build a terminal on. Basically, have it be the amount of space around an airport you can build on. I've seen this feature on other airline sims, so don't say its a terrible idea.

P.S. Sorry if it seems like I'm stealing this thread, it seemed like the most relevant place to say.

[txaggie]

I hear both sides of the argument - rather than a cap, why not just make it prohibitively expensive beyond a certain point? That way, you can still open as much as you like, but - like the real world - consolodation is rewarded.

I think the price for infrastructure should first and foremost get jacked up. Terminals are expensive to build in the real world. Bloody expensive!



I think there is a balance that need be struck here. Consolidation is rewarded, but so can a good point-to-point system (you all know the airlines I'm talking about).

[SirMoo]

No where in the FAA regulations does it limit how many hubs an airline could have,

I stopped reading after this. I'm sorry, but this just shows how ignorant you are to how things actually work. DoJ would be the ones who say if you can or can't have a hub in location as this falls under Anti-Trust NOT aviation regulation. DOT also have to approve all routes outside of the US for anti-trust reasons. FAA are for safety regulations.

I hear both sides of the argument - rather than a cap, why not just make it prohibitively expensive beyond a certain point? That way, you can still open as much as you like, but - like the real world - consolodation is rewarded.

An exception to the rule? Maybe, but an excpetion nonetheless.

I hear what you're saying and I don't disagree with your motives. I'm just saying I think making it more costly to build terminals, run hub activities, etc... and making it more cost inefficient to run a huge number of hubs would solve the problem you (and I) have, while doing it in a more realistic way, that would make the game more challenging and require more strategy on the part of its players.

I do think this would be a good compromise, it's way to cheap to run a hub in the game. Prices should be severely more expensive and not simply 4x gate costs (or what ever it is now).

While this has little to do with hubs, it has alot to do with terminals: add a certain number of 'lots' you can build a terminal on. Basically, have it be the amount of space around an airport you can build on. I've seen this feature on other airline sims, so don't say its a terrible idea.

P.S. Sorry if it seems like I'm stealing this thread, it seemed like the most relevant place to say.

I think the price for infrastructure should first and foremost get jacked up. Terminals are expensive to build in the real world. Bloody expensive!

I think there is a balance that need be struck here. Consolidation is rewarded, but so can a good point-to-point system (you all know the airlines I'm talking about).

This is another thing I intend to propose in the near future, increases in fees for terminals and taxes.

[sviridovt]

I stopped reading after this. I'm sorry, but this just shows how ignorant you are to how things actually work. DoJ would be the ones who say if you can or can't have a hub in location as this falls under Anti-Trust NOT aviation regulation. DOT also have to approve all routes outside of the US for anti-trust reasons. FAA are for safety regulations.

it doesnt matter who controls it, the point being there is not limit in the real world about how many hubs an airline could have, so why should we have a limit in AE

[SirMoo]

it doesnt matter who controls it, the point being there is not limit in the real world about how many hubs an airline could have, so why should we have a limit in AE

Again, it's subject to regulatory approval. So yes, there is a cap, it's just not set in stone. I can say that 60+ would not be allowed.

[sviridovt]

Again, it's subject to regulatory approval. So yes, there is a cap, it's just not set in stone. I can say that 60+ would not be allowed.

they have to get it approved but thats only to make sure that there arent too many airlines in one airport or such, not to control the amount of hubs they have

and 60+ is different from 9 hubs I have

[txaggie]

I stopped reading after this. I'm sorry, but this just shows how ignorant you are to how things actually work. DoJ would be the ones who say if you can or can't have a hub in location as this falls under Anti-Trust NOT aviation regulation. DOT also have to approve all routes outside of the US for anti-trust reasons. FAA are for safety regulations.

Technically, the FAA actually is the agency that categorizes airports, determinations that qualify or fail to qualify airports for the AIP. Designations like that are really just an argument of semantics. The DoJ's actions aren't that basic.

Everything is subject to regulatory actions, but the DoJ has been willing to allow these mergers and the creation of super airlines that are running more than your proposed limits. In this game, if you want more than 40 or so flights a day, you have to open a "hub." In the US right now, numerous are operating more flights than that a large number of airports.

We can set a hard cap on the acquiring of gates and what not, but that would be a pure shot in the dark at what the regulatory powers that be would do given the specific set of circumstances of a specific incarnation of Airline Empires.

And don't get us wrong, I don't think anyone here disagrees that 60+ truly significant operations would never exist in the real world...

[Stan11]

I really cant pick a side for this, I joined a 1990-2015 world that was already in 2003 so I enjoyed the challenge of trying to build up a startup airline. I really had to dig deep to find the best routes for a fleet of 737-300s and MD82 jets. There was already 3 hubs at my hq city but thats what made the game fun and now I have 10 planes with more on order and Im working my way up. But I don't think its fair that some airlines may have over 50 hubs in the United States. it should be limited to 20-25 hubs per continent, this way it doesnt really limit growth and big airlines can still grow all over the globe

[conmanflyer]

ok- the making hubs more expensive from UN1's post... thats comepletely counter productive. making it to where Nobody has to have a hub. i feel the more hubs a person has the more money hes likely to spend. if anything raise terminal per month prices to 3/4 that of a leased gate

[ccvl]

I use 2 hubs in the game. Just 2. And one of those I would like to consider a focus city

[berubium]

I like some of the suggestions on this thread.

The one I agree the most with is that terminals should be massively more expensive to build. They should also take time to build, say 6 months to a year. Also, I second the motion of limiting the amount of additional terminals that an airport can have. After all, real estate is not unlimited at airports or anywhere for that matter.

If hubs are to be more expensive, perhaps to make things easier on startups, a hub in one's home-base city could be at a discount (say the price of hubs now), as if it were a tax-break given to the airline by the city, while subsequent hubs could cost 3 or 4 times as much.

Eryk's suggestion about leasing companies is great. Even with a C credit rating, an airline can lease many planes. It takes little time to get it moved up to an AA credit rating anyways...

There are also way too many gates at most airports. The airport in my hometown of Kamloops, BC (YKA) has 4 gates, in AE, there are 25. Nearby Kelowna, BC has 6 or 7, but has 50 in the game.

On the flipside, it would be nice to see a larger amount of connecting passengers at hubs without having to have hundreds of flights connecting to it. I don't see why a hub with 7 or 8 fully used gates can't have a large amount of connecting passengers. 7 full gates is 350 slots, which would be 50 daily departures & arrivals, plenty of opportunities for connections in my mind...