398 replies to this topic

[mxax-ai]

Another problem is that no matter how much your ifs costs, all the passengers will want to buy it. Irl, not every guy flying Ryanair buys the whole shop (so to speak).
I'm not sure that I'd really like scheduling all my aircraft. While it might be fun work and make the gameplay more involved, it'd make a whole lot of work that a single person just can't do with current delivery rates. And a backlog system might even work, if we'd implement real delivery speeds (soon 42 A320/737 per month). Perhaps coupled with a system stopping big airlines to take up all delivery slots (like giving each airline only every 3rd or 4th delivery slot) it would be possible.
@Apassionato: A lot of routes (even longhaul) can support a daily 747 in AE, some even manage two daily A380, although I can understand your problem, if you max out your configs, which I don't. There should be higher penalties for such configs anyway.

The demand system is quite OK imo, as a lot of extra people would fly, if they could fly nonstop to everywhere from anywhere. What could be changed is the static demand; it should vary either seasonally (problem with high game speed) or during the whole game, growing constantly until the next recession and growing afterwards again.

[Northern]

Don't reduce the demand, as it'll wreck it for regional airlines

[OfficialMcGeek]

Sound's like something I would really like to see in this already amazing game.

[berubium]

Demand needs to be edited for some tiny airports so their intl. demand falls and their regional demand goes up.

 

I couldn't agree more with this statement.  I really enjoy building up little regional networks, but find it silly to see that the regional markets that I am serving have higher demands to cities that are thousands of miles away...

 

I'd also like to see the demand go up for domestic flights between big cities within the same nation too, but drop for international flights (except maybe between the largest markets).

 

I also like the previously mentioned idea of demand changing over time.  Specifically I mean growth in demand of markets that are well served (but not too much of course) as time progresses.  It could really be a challenge if demand for a particular route fluctuates more than it does currently, but that would probably require endless tweaking by the player, which could really be a chore.

 

It would be interesting to have demand for popular holiday markets fluctuate with more amplitude depending on the season, although I understand that it could be very difficult if not impossible to simulate.  With scheduling, perhaps an airline would be able to pre-schedule service based on these changes.  An example of this could be something like:

 

• I have a Canadian based airline.  Demand to the Caribbean & Mexico would be very high from October to April whereas demand to Europe (and to a lesser extent some Asian markets) would be greater during the summer months.
• Let's say I have a 2x daily flight to Cancun from Montreal & a 1x daily flight to Nice from Montreal during the winter months.
• During the summer, I would prefer to fly from Montreal to Cancun only 1x daily but increase my flights from Montreal to Nice to 2x daily.
• It would be useful if I could preset my schedules to do this instead of having to change it every October & April. 

[Stevphfeniey]

Actually AE already has fluctuating demand throughout the year, it's just that the system recalculates routes so slowly it doesn't even matter 

[Yuxi]

Actually AE already has fluctuating demand throughout the year, it's just that the system recalculates routes so slowly it doesn't even matter 

 

For technical reasons it's very likely that AE 4's passenger distribution will be regularly calculated all at once (instead of on-the-fly as it is now), so as a side effect it would make seasonal and holiday spikes a very real effect to deal with.

[mxax-ai]

But spikes within a year lead to a maximum say on monday morning and a mimimum on about tuesday night, followed by the next maimum on wednesday. The speed of AE is so high, that someone would rather keep capacity and accept a lower load factor every two to four days (i. e. for about one third of the year) and a capacity that's significantly smaller than the demand during the opposite third. Furthermore, a city like London or New York will have a quite static demand year round while places like Majorca and [insert popular summer holiday place in the US] will have significantly more demand in Summer than in winter. And some places like EGE or INN will even have higher demand in Winter than in Summer.

[ar157]

Heck, in real life there's even peak hour spikes. Anyhow, if we were to incorporate all the possible seasonal spikes in demand, i fear that they would take many moons to find and would blow up the pax script as well as Flunjace HQ and half of Chicago.

[berubium]

Actually AE already has fluctuating demand throughout the year, it's just that the system recalculates routes so slowly it doesn't even matter 

 

I am aware of this, which is why I suggested that holiday markets should fluctuate with more amplitude.

 

For technical reasons it's very likely that AE 4's passenger distribution will be regularly calculated all at once (instead of on-the-fly as it is now), so as a side effect it would make seasonal and holiday spikes a very real effect to deal with.

 

I like this idea, but I am hoping that we can preschedule ahead of time to anticipate these changes (if we so choose & assuming there is scheduling in AE4).  Using my last example, say I create my YUL-CUN & YUL-NCE routes at the same time on Jan 1st.  I would like to be able to preassign the plane to fly to CUN 2x daily & NCE 1x daily from Oct 1 to Apr 1 & then have it fly to CUN 1x daily & NCE 2x daily from Apr 1 to Oct 1.

 

Again, it's just a thought & I understand that this could be way too complex to program & perhaps not possible.

[mxax-ai]

But how would you find out how the demand fluctuates and with what amplitude? Of course it's obvious with some popular tourist destinations or bug financial centers, but how would you manage the fluctuation of some bigger chinese city's demand? Or of an afrikan town with some 100.000 pax or even no official stats?

[KJS607]

Simply skip out what we don't know?

Couldn't put it better myself

[mxax-ai]

Simply skip out what we don't know?

So perhaps 90% of airports?

[Amadeus Inc.]

I think the high demand for aircraft comes from:
A) Demand being too high; Yuxi found himself that demand in one world was about 5 times higher than real life. I think reducing the calculated demand between smaller airports could help.

Customers being willing to pay too much, leading to huge profits.

C) Replacing old planes is a chore; just replacing like-for-like planes can take a long time. I actually find for my large airlines that this takes far more time than anything else, because I try to keep the fleet age down. Replacing old planes actually seems to give very little benefit.

So for example:
* Real world airline replaces 747 with 777 to reduce costs, increase load factor (same number of passengers) and hence increase profit
* AE airline replaces 747 with new 747 as old plane has a 100% load factor, makes big profits and doing anything else would take too long

 

I would like to see:
1 - Lower demand in general, occurring at lower ticket prices. Maybe 50% of current passengers, mostly by reducing demand to small airports, with 10% lower default prices

2 - Demand that grows over time, so that an airline has to respond to demand. Any completely new route should have to be grown over time by slowly building route reputation. This should also allow for demand to grow about the original calculated levels. It would be nice to build somewhere like Kent International (MSE), but start with almost no demand, rather than have permament low demand.

3 - More reason to use newer planes
 - financial penalties for using old planes (representing hush-kits etc)
 - customer dislike of very old planes (hurting route reputation)
 - more emphasis on flight time when passengers choose an airline
 - much higher maintenance costs for old planes

4 - Competition between similar routes (e.g. all London to Tokyo compete together)

5 - More non-price competiton for airlines with similar prices (a route reputation mentioned above)

6 - Much lower willingness to pay for scam IFE and IFS
 

 

these are awesome if can be implemented, would certainly drive the game to more realistic side.

[Stevphfeniey]

Personally, there should be zero tolerance to pay for scam IFS

[Pineair]

Would like to see forced retirement of planes after x years or take off and landings. Too many mega airlines never replace planes which is unrealistic. Secondly would like to see a last available delivery date introduced rather than the current policy of allowing airlines to order unrealistic numbers ( in S3A. 747-300 are due for delivery 50 years after the game end) there is a need to make it more time consuming for those who choose to run mega airlines.

[Slider]

first ae is a great game.

 

i agree entirely that beyond branding aspects & seat configs, nothing truly RANDOM...with the exception of a needed aircraft suddenly appearing in the used aircraft market happens. so the 2 drawbacks are unrealistic fleet size & unrealistic profits. if ae can support sending an admin email warning for missing a lease payment or bond payment, i would suggest the following RANDOM-pull event that could impact an airline @ anytime & the user would be notified by the admin email...

 

1) a random email alert that aircraft #123 is no longer in your fleet or operating due to an "incident". (making it more complex, which is not what we would want to do because of time constraints on yuxi, an insurance premium that was very costly every month could be paid & make an airline immune from RANDOMLY losing aircraft & not getting any compensation back)

2) a random government inspection & a fine for like $10-$50mil.

3) a random grounding of a specific type of airplane. yes this would impact all airlines, but if 1 airline has 100 A320's & another has 10...obviously the larger one would be impacted more greatly. also, if the airline with 100 A320's were in the top 10 & competing against an airline with 100 737's that would be a big time random grounding event that could significantly impact that airline.

4) a random strike based off of what your paying employees----so, you go off-line for 10 hours & expect $20 mil in profit to be available & instead you have $0 & need to increase the salaries to all employees.

5) to simplify it has to be big time incidents like planes that are "gone" or groundings or faa fines. weather delays at a specific airport are too small & would only have a slight impact & be a waste of programming time to randomly generate.

i could go-on, but i think you gotta start by thinking small & focusing upon the 2 largest unrealistic realities of ae----an airline with 15 hubs & 3,000 planes & an airline making $20 mil profit in a day. the only way to impact those 2 things is have airlines randomly lose airplanes & randomly get hit with fines/strikes/etc that impact the amount of $$$ they have on hand. just some thoughts!

[Stevphfeniey]

Well I don't think it should necessarily be "random" per se

If I run an airline that does everything by the book, then something like a random government fine for something would really rotate my johnsons and wouldn't make sense. Groundings would be interesting, though I'm not sure how the coding would work out. Again, "random" strikes would just be silly, but as you said, strikes based off s*** employee pay would make perfect sense.

 

However, I do recall that these things were discussed to be implemented into AE3.1

[Northern]

The randomisation thing never works it just attacks one person over and over again

[Sheepy]

If that person's Amadeus, I see no issue.

[Northern]

If that person's Amadeus, I see no issue.

I would fail to differ