46 replies to this topic

[polarscribe]

That essentially negates the point of limiting the number of hubs, because the airlines that are big enough will just build a 40-gate terminal and dominate the airport anyway, whether they can call it a hub or not.

In the real world, every airline can't build an unlimited number of gates at any airport they want, overnight. You can't walk into LHR tomorrow, build a new terminal and open a 500-flight-per-day hub... doesn't matter how much money you have, there's not the terminal space or the runway capacity. If you want to get down to it, that's the most unrealistic part of the game. If you wanted to slow things down, reducing the number of available gates/landing slots and making terminal construction take actual time (months to years) would surely do it. Or, once an airport fills up... that's it, no mas, until maybe in a certain number of years they open a new runway.

[Sheepy]

Limiting hubs, although nice, will not work in the end. It is stupid to effectively limit the growth of an airline. Sure, I agree that airlines have way too many hubs, but a hard limit is not the way to do it. As I believe I said before. Say I hub in JFK, then fly to every single airport that is physically possible to fly to, then I do the same up to the maximum number of hub cities. A real airline this size could open more hubs. They'd probably have to turn most of their country into 20 gate operating-only-A380 'focus cities'
Maybe we could limit the number of hubs based on how large the airline is. Although I'm not saying this will fix the issue, it would clear up having fifty, five gate hubs.

[berubium]

I don't know if this is so much about the airlines having fifty five-gate hubs as much as it is about having airlines with fifty fifty-gate hubs...

Ok, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but there are some mega sized airlines out there...

Perhaps a solution would be to combine parts of all of the suggestions in this thread (& other threads, an example would be to have fewer gates at many airports)...

While the game is still in beta form, this would be a good time to try out some of these things & see how they work. Perhaps that could set the tone for the next few theme games. For example, one with a limit of x hubs & y terminals, another with significantly different gate amounts at certain airports & a hard limit on the addition of terminals (say 1 or 2), another that factors time into construction of new terminals, airport expansions, etc...

[Sheepy]

There are several mega-airlines, but it's stupid to limit their growth. I, like most people, dislike them considerably. However, there is no logical reason to limit the size of an airline.

[polarscribe]

" A real airline this size could open more hubs."

Sure, but it might take years - not a single day of gametime, as is currently possible in Airline Empires. The vast majority of American airports do not have hundreds - or even dozens - of spare, empty gates lying around for the taking, and building a new terminal is a non-trivial process that takes years or even decades. You can't just magically create 100 gates at the click of a button.

Then you run into the issue of runway capacity - LGA and DCA are under slot restrictions and most other major U.S. airports are at or near the physical limits of what their runways can handle. Opening a new 500-flight hub at, say, SFO, is quite simply impossible - your operations would congest the airport to such a degree that your hub operations would begin to break down.

[polarscribe]

"A real airline this size could open more hubs."

They might, but it would take years or even decades - not the single day of gametime required in Airline Empires.

For starters, consider gatespace. Effectively unlimited gates are instantly available in Airline Empires as long as you have enough money - and just about every "big" airline has the money to build as big of a terminal it wants anywhere. Want a 1,000-daily-flight hub at JFK? Done with a couple of clicks. In the real world, the vast majority of airports are completely gate-space constrained - there may be a handful of open gates, but if you want to build an entirely new terminal for 10, 20 or more gates, it would take years - or even decades - to work through the planning process, environmental review, construction time, etc.

Secondly, there's runway availability. LGA and DCA are, in the real world, legally slot-restricted. You could build all the new gates you wanted there and it wouldn't matter - you wouldn't be allowed to take off or land. For the rest of the airports, jamming a 500-flight hub into many of them would, in terms of capacity, bring them to their knees. Your hub operation would grind to a halt as delays piled up on top of one another. Never mind, as happens in AE, FIVE 500-flight hubs added to a single airport.

[Sheepy]

I am not at all opposed to a time limit on gates. Maybe one built per five game days if you pay 3x as much, or one every ten game days if you pay a normal price. LGA and DCA are both exceptions to the slot rule. In this case, I would say that a small number of slots should open up gradually. May not work exactly as a complete slot restriction, but it does severely limit the growth of these airports.