398 replies to this topic

[Slider]

Not to be critical, BUT...

 

How does methods for keeping a Bankrupt airline still in the game, help to curb expansion? Yes it would be "cool" to have a means to re-organize & become solvent, but that just adds another layer of complexity for programming & writing code. As I mentioned...everybody has personal "want's" that they would like implemented, however shouldn't great emphasis be placed upon "basics" of the most consequence---Labor & Fuel & Maintenance & random-pull events? Bankruptcy & panels, etc---again---"would be cool"...but so would a Labor Strike...which of course could cause bankruptcy...which makes the point of this posting pointless .

[channy_thegreat]

Just a thought, to limit successful and rapidly expanding airlines we could tax success the same way the Obama tax code does. :rtfm:

 

And I'll show myself the door...            

[Stevphfeniey]

Just a thought, to limit successful and rapidly expanding airlines we could tax success the same way the Obama tax code does. :rtfm:

 

And I'll show myself the door...            

 

[Slider]

That is a perfect video.

[mxax-ai]

I don't get it.

[rubiohiguey]

This is a part rant, part suggestion:

 

I have been on AE for less than a week. I have made great money in every world I set up the airline just by following a simple strategy.

 

My rant: I find and develop a profitable route. I price gauge the maximum out of it. I make good money. Then somebody else moves in and depresses the price, BY CHARGING TEH SUGGESTED PRICE even if the market by demand/supply could support much higher price. It depresses not only my profit margins but also the competitors who could actually make more money on the route by charging more.

 

I usually do not enter routes that have oversupply or are even on supply/demand side, it is so much more profitable to service routes with more demand than supply, but even in equilibrium demand/supply, a price higher than suggest price can almost always be charged.... there are so MANY scenarios where even on competing routes, more money can be made by charging more (I know it because I have myself entered some competing routes and I can make money by charging more than suggested price and even more than the competitor's price, without much suffering load factor decline)... so why does every single competitor I have encountered charge the suggested price only? Is it only I that spends a lot of time on finding precise price points to charge the highest fare the market can bear?

 

I am an entrepreneur in real life... and I have studied business administration. I behave logically in this game. The computer behaves logically. So why is there so much lack of logic in other players' behavior? Just click, and service route. No analysis of market, of possible alternative routes (I have made good money by finding niches in AE), no analysis on what frequency to put on the market (even competing market can make good moeny for all players if there is equilibrium among supply and demand).

 

Why do I put this rant in this topic? Because I believe that the "constant expansion" factor is responsible for this, people just get planes and try to dump capacity anywhere possible without thinking as much whether it's a logical move or not.

 

If AE rewards the airline with higher demand based on frequency, service, departure/arrival times (scheduling) and type of aircraft (adequate for the route, general preference for jet aircraft), and aircraft age (newer the better) I think it would be much better competition-wise. True business minds would prevail over the "buy planes and dump capacity" players.

 

 

 

 

Also some of my suggestions for AE (I have not been a member here not even for a week, so maybe this was already suggested):

 

- Make some slots (in real world) available for International traffic. If a local player buys all slots/gates, there should be some slots/gates available for other country's players/airlines.

 

- Allow negotiation of gates/slots (I buy a terminal, get  gates, maybe I just need 3, I should be able to sell/lease the remaining gates, or even slots)

 

- Return all unused gates to the pool after a year or two. This would prevent players from stocking up on gates to deter competition.

 

- Slightly modify the "aircraft conversion" process. Right now, i can batch convert all in default category, or in a specific category. But what about if I have 20 A320's in 10C/160Y config and I just want to convert 1 or 2 into 2F/10C/156Y config to service new route? I don't think individual conversion is currently possible.

 

- Allow route switching from one aircraft to another in more detailed way (selecting a specific aircraft, I think tight now only a specific category is permitted). This would allow you to fre up space on a particular jet and move traffic onto another particular jet.

 

- Maintenance costs are ridiculously low for old aircraft. A 13-year A320 costs less lease + maintenance than a brand new A320 lease + maintenance. Maintenance costs should increase annually for each aircraft, and should be much steeper over 10-year period, and maximum after 15-year age period of the airliner.

 

-Allow airlines to set up subsidiaries in another country, the limitation should be that it is on the same continent. E.g. an airline from Chile could set up subsidiary in Peru. This would reflect current trend of international airline consolidation. The limit could be a financial cost (similar to buying a new terminal) and this could be two fold - financial cost to the country gov.authority (set up cost) and airport terminal build cost.

 

- Allow airlines to buy/merge with another airlines (alternative to setting up subsidiaries in another country).

 

- Make marketing efforts results more obvious. Allow promotion of specific routes, a promotion for a specific route would increase not only demand in general, but mainly demand for your airline, even at higher price point.

 

- Make IFS service count when shaping demand for a particular airline – a better IFS would get more demand, and also people willing to pay higher fare for better IFS. This would allow low costers to capture bottom levels of market and premium airlines to capture premium passengers.

 

- Allow editing of IFS, instead of having to create new one and delete old one.

[Slider]

I don't get it.

i think the humor was the lady fumbling a food out of hr cabinet....obviously her clumsiness & fault...and her natural reaction after dropping the food was to "blame" Obama as if everything is his fault no matter what...kinda difficult to explain humor or nuance.

 

 

This is a part rant, part suggestion:

 

- Slightly modify the "aircraft conversion" process. Right now, i can batch convert all in default category, or in a specific category. But what about if I have 20 A320's in 10C/160Y config and I just want to convert 1 or 2 into 2F/10C/156Y config to service new route? I don't think individual conversion is currently possible.

 

 

create 2 configurations for an a320, "A" & "B" & then select the one you want modified differently from the majority & apply that modification.

[mxax-ai]

This is a part rant, part suggestion:
 
I have been on AE for less than a week. I have made great money in every world I set up the airline just by following a simple strategy.
 
My rant: I find and develop a profitable route. I price gauge the maximum out of it. I make good money. Then somebody else moves in and depresses the price, BY CHARGING TEH SUGGESTED PRICE even if the market by demand/supply could support much higher price. It depresses not only my profit margins but also the competitors who could actually make more money on the route by charging more.
 
I usually do not enter routes that have oversupply or are even on supply/demand side, it is so much more profitable to service routes with more demand than supply, but even in equilibrium demand/supply, a price higher than suggest price can almost always be charged.... there are so MANY scenarios where even on competing routes, more money can be made by charging more (I know it because I have myself entered some competing routes and I can make money by charging more than suggested price and even more than the competitor's price, without much suffering load factor decline)... so why does every single competitor I have encountered charge the suggested price only? Is it only I that spends a lot of time on finding precise price points to charge the highest fare the market can bear?
 
I am an entrepreneur in real life... and I have studied business administration. I behave logically in this game. The computer behaves logically. So why is there so much lack of logic in other players' behavior? Just click, and service route. No analysis of market, of possible alternative routes (I have made good money by finding niches in AE), no analysis on what frequency to put on the market (even competing market can make good moeny for all players if there is equilibrium among supply and demand).
 
Why do I put this rant in this topic? Because I believe that the "constant expansion" factor is responsible for this, people just get planes and try to dump capacity anywhere possible without thinking as much whether it's a logical move or not.
 
If AE rewards the airline with higher demand based on frequency, service, departure/arrival times (scheduling) and type of aircraft (adequate for the route, general preference for jet aircraft), and aircraft age (newer the better) I think it would be much better competition-wise. True business minds would prevail over the "buy planes and dump capacity" players.
 
 
 
 
Also some of my suggestions for AE (I have not been a member here not even for a week, so maybe this was already suggested):
 
- Make some slots (in real world) available for International traffic. If a local player buys all slots/gates, there should be some slots/gates available for other country's players/airlines.
 
- Allow negotiation of gates/slots (I buy a terminal, get  gates, maybe I just need 3, I should be able to sell/lease the remaining gates, or even slots)
 
- Return all unused gates to the pool after a year or two. This would prevent players from stocking up on gates to deter competition.
 
- Slightly modify the "aircraft conversion" process. Right now, i can batch convert all in default category, or in a specific category. But what about if I have 20 A320's in 10C/160Y config and I just want to convert 1 or 2 into 2F/10C/156Y config to service new route? I don't think individual conversion is currently possible.
 
- Allow route switching from one aircraft to another in more detailed way (selecting a specific aircraft, I think tight now only a specific category is permitted). This would allow you to fre up space on a particular jet and move traffic onto another particular jet.
 
- Maintenance costs are ridiculously low for old aircraft. A 13-year A320 costs less lease + maintenance than a brand new A320 lease + maintenance. Maintenance costs should increase annually for each aircraft, and should be much steeper over 10-year period, and maximum after 15-year age period of the airliner.
 
-Allow airlines to set up subsidiaries in another country, the limitation should be that it is on the same continent. E.g. an airline from Chile could set up subsidiary in Peru. This would reflect current trend of international airline consolidation. The limit could be a financial cost (similar to buying a new terminal) and this could be two fold - financial cost to the country gov.authority (set up cost) and airport terminal build cost.
 
- Allow airlines to buy/merge with another airlines (alternative to setting up subsidiaries in another country).
 
- Make marketing efforts results more obvious. Allow promotion of specific routes, a promotion for a specific route would increase not only demand in general, but mainly demand for your airline, even at higher price point.
 
- Make IFS service count when shaping demand for a particular airline – a better IFS would get more demand, and also people willing to pay higher fare for better IFS. This would allow low costers to capture bottom levels of market and premium airlines to capture premium passengers.
 
- Allow editing of IFS, instead of having to create new one and delete old one.

Well, where to begin.
1) Yes, it can be annoying if someone ruins your best route simply needing a route for his aircraft. I'd suggest that setting the standard price significantly lower could solve something like that. (So you have to work on the price if you want to make more mlney than just break even)
2) you already can change the config on single aircraft
3) you already can select the specicif aircraft you want to change a route to
3) mergers were not approved due to them increasing the likelyhood of utterly huge airlines
4) Yes, imo service, including ifs, but also the config and frequency should play a larger role when finding a price and working with/against competitiors. It is ridiculous that a significantly better service gets me just a minimal load/yield improvement. Yet I might agree that Y pax will care more about price than service; but a better service should always lead to higher loads when competing with the same price.
5) Yes, maintenance costs are nearly negligible. Unless your airline is very small and thus gets a larger impact from extra families or the difference between new and old aircraft, you can easily operate 60 year old planes of every family and not go bankrupt. There should be extra incentives to replace old aircraft. Having to order replacements would slow your expansion.
6) What I'd further add: Scrapping aircraft never gives you more money than selling them, even if the only buyer is the AE market. I suggest that scrapping revenues get higher than sale revenues at some point and that you only actually get the money if someone else really buys it.

[flyboy17]

I don't often participate in the forum, but I noticed this thread and figured I'd throw in my two cents.

A major restricting factor in real world airline expansion is capacity, both at airports and from an Air Traffic Control perspective. In the real world, most airlines don't build terminals or gates at every airport they serve, they buy slots. Slots at major airports are unbelievably expensive...I believe Etihad Airways bought 3 slots at Heathrow...just 3!!!...for $70 million US dollars. Imagine how much realistic the game would be if, rather than buying a gate that allows 50 flights a week, you had to buy slots at realistic prices. And guess what...although Etihad has landing rights, it will cost them tens of thousands of dollars a day for Heathrow to park and service their airplanes.

 

From an ATC perspective, there is an upper limit to the number of flights possible in an area in a given time. The Northeast Corridor in the United States, where I fly, is an excellent example. The flight levels are totally packed all the time, and there is simply no more capacity (at least until NextGen goes into effect) for additional flights, even if the airports could park more airplanes. In fact, it's not entirely uncommon to hear fuel emegencies being called in the NEC, simply because ATC can't land arplanes fast enough. The North and Middle Atlantic crossings are other examples of slot based scheduling that are always at capacity. In AE, there are possibly hundreds of times more daily flights than these high traffic areas can handle. Sure, every airline wants a New York to Heathrow flight, but only a few can get the slots (both crossing and landing) needed, and they do so at the cost of tens of millions of dollars a year.

Additionally, in AE, the margins are ridiculous. Fuel is too cheap, slots are too cheap, taxes are too cheap, wages are too cheap, insurance is too cheap, and slots are FAR too cheap...and what about dividends? Investors (owners!) must be paid! One of my airlines has 20% margins. That is totally ridiculous. Real airlines are lucky to make 1%. Another part of this has already been mentioned...the packing in of passengers and scamming IFS. I do this, so it's not like I'm pointing fingers, I'm just pointing out the facts. Also already mentioned is that real airplanes fly much less than those in AE.

Fundamentally, in order to control high growth rates, you have to make the expense of growth much higher, while making airlines much less profitable. One might protest that this would make the game too slow at the beginning, but I'd counter that the game could provide lower fuel costs and much more low cost credit to airlines early on. This is realistic, as in many countries, airlines were (and often still are) propped up by the government through subsidies, easy credit, or mail contracts. There is also the possibility of introducing an investment system, and the paying of dividends along with it.

So, in short, AE's realism suffers due to a)virtually unlimited carrying capacity and b)very high margins. Fixing one should help fix the other. The only question is whether fixing them would ruin the fun of the game. I think that it would make a fundamentally different game, but I would much rather enjoy the challenge of building a realistic airline over 50 years or so over the current state of things, where I have an airline with half it's airplanes sitting idle that is the 5th largest airline in the world..

Sorry for the long post, just thought I'd share my perspective.

[AytchMan]

[Continuing from the Beta thread]

 

Yuxi--

 

Appreciate your response.  I guess the thing that troubles me here is that cutting the overly-generous route revenue and resultant wild expansion would be extremely easy.  I haven't been around long enough to know if a test world with a realistic** revenue model has ever been tried.  If it has, I'd be interested in the results.  If it hasn't, I have to wonder why not.

 

**  I define "realistic" here to mean whatever level of pax-demand/revenue-produced is required to slow the rate of expansion and preclude the 4000-plane, six-trillion-dollar gorillas by the end of a game. As I said earlier, these types of game worlds, if adopted, needn't replace the beer-and-pretzels free-for-alls.  Simply warn the potential players of the more difficult environment.

[The Malaysian Kiwi]

Could there be a way to block parts of the new/used aircraft market? It may be tough to implement (I think, I'm no computer expert) but would certainly add a degree of realism, especially where spamlines are concerned (with the ultraefficient props like the Tu-114 and Il-18D). This would be a good start:

 

From the world's start date until 1992, Tupolev, Ilyushin, Antonov or Yaklovev aircraft are prohibited for sale to all countries except:

 - The Soviet Union (Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan)

 - People's Republic of China

 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea

 - Cuba

 - Mongolia

 - Bulgaria

 - Poland

 - Romania

These are the base countries - other countries can be added or subtracted based on the world start date (so basically any country which were signatories of the Warsaw Pact or members of the Eastern Bloc - so Soviet satellite states http://en.wikipedia....ki/Eastern_Bloc. A list of Marxist-Leninist countries are good for reference too - http://en.wikipedia....alist_countries ) North Vietnam or East Germany would have to be excluded unless regional restrictions to such a degree could be implemented.

Conversely, any aircraft not produced by Antonov, Ilyushin, Tupolev or Yaklovev cannot be sold in any of the aforementioned states until 1992.

[The Malaysian Kiwi]

Also could aircraft production be halted after the finish date? For example, in the case of the Canadair CL-44, deliveries would actually stop in 1970, instead of just stopping new orders. In R1, for example, 4 years after the ostensible 'halt production' date of the CL-44, there is still a backlog of 1630 aircraft. With the Bristol Britannia, 196 aircraft are still bound for delivery a whole 9 years after the end of production. That is, I think, a major stumbling point in realism as even though the end date means new orders of airframes are halted, spamlines can still lodge a huge order just before the end date then just keep delaying it so the aircraft arrive brand new, an acknowledged loophole in the system which many take advantage of (like a certain airline with nothing but over 1000 CL-44s and 200 still on order).

 

A limit system could possibly be put in place so that no new aircraft of that type can be ordered which would be due to be delivered after the 'end of production' date.

 

I don't think this would be very hard to implement and would certainly go some way to curbing the rise of the AE spamlines.

[Yuxi]

Also could aircraft production be halted after the finish date? For example, in the case of the Canadair CL-44, deliveries would actually stop in 1970, instead of just stopping new orders. In R1, for example, 4 years after the ostensible 'halt production' date of the CL-44, there is still a backlog of 1630 aircraft. With the Bristol Britannia, 196 aircraft are still bound for delivery a whole 9 years after the end of production. That is, I think, a major stumbling point in realism as even though the end date means new orders of airframes are halted, spamlines can still lodge a huge order just before the end date then just keep delaying it so the aircraft arrive brand new, an acknowledged loophole in the system which many take advantage of (like a certain airline with nothing but over 1000 CL-44s and 200 still on order).

A limit system could possibly be put in place so that no new aircraft of that type can be ordered which would be due to be delivered after the 'end of production' date.

I don't think this would be very hard to implement and would certainly go some way to curbing the rise of the AE spamlines.

The counter-argument to this is that production lines are shut down because there are no more orders, not the other way around. By that logic, production should actually be extended until the orders dry up. However, in AE (in its current form) the demand for aircraft is so great that large airlines can almost always make more money even by adding obsolete aircraft in addition to current-generation types (as opposed to just ordering new generation models), so if we actually follow that logic, many production lines would never close.

In my view, the real solution has to come from a fundamental reduction in demand for aircraft, such that it is not profitable to constantly buy any and all aircraft an airline can get its hands on. The biggest driver of the insatiable demand for aircraft in AE is the total passenger volume, which is several times more than that in real life. This is due to inherent issues in the passenger demand model (generating way too much demand on routes between small airports) and treating all passengers as O&D. Even if the traffic on each large route is realistic, a huge percentage of it is duplicated because that proportion of traffic through real-life hubs are connecting traffic, not O&D.

For example, right now I can profitably fly A342s on any long haul route with at least 30-40 demand. Many many routes that have 30-40 demand in the game has nowhere near that much demand in real life. These two factors compel me to operate about 10x as many A342s in AE as the same route network would be able to support in real life. Given this environment, artificially constraining aircraft quantity on the supply side would be about as effective as the war on drugs. Can you imagine how high prices would go if we auctioned off all aircraft delivery slots in AE right now?

[Mobeer]

Agreed that high demand is a driving factor in having huge airlines, along with high prices that can be charged. Also agreed that an artificial limit on deliveries makes little sense; if anything airlines should be able to continue ordering new planes beyond the "halt production" date if the aircraft were still selling well.

To take issue, the problem right now is that we have theories without facts. What would happen if demand were less, or fuel costs more, or X or Y or Z? I have my pet theories, I'm sure others do as well. But we won't find out which are any good unless some of these ideas are actually implemented in game worlds and tried out. Each new airline does get a warning that each world is a beta-world and subject to reset at any time. Maybe it's time that some worlds actually did get used for a research reason, then reset when lessons are learnt, rather than every world running its full horizon. Have a few worlds that do run 40 years, but use the others for shorter trials of different adjustments. Otherwise this thread will soon mark being 6 months old with plenty of talk and no outcome.

Sorry to be mean, but if change is desired then there needs to be action.
 

[Stevphfeniey]

In a sense I think we are getting some feedback on how to develop the game from ongoing worlds, and some serious and glaring issues have been raised here. It's just that pretty much everybody is repeating each other

[iquit]

I find fluctuating demand undesirable as it encourage players to spend time updating routes to cope with unnecessary changes. The change should come from competitors, not introduced but system.

As to curb expansion, one way is to increase employee salary. I.e. for every 8 employees you need a manager; for every 8 managers, you need a senior manager, and so forth.

[Yuxi]

As to curb expansion, one way is to increase employee salary. I.e. for every 8 employees you need a manager; for every 8 managers, you need a senior manager, and so forth.

It kind of does that already, but it has little effect when there are no meaningful repercussions when you pay everyone absolute minimum wage. The labor market in AE assumes an unlimited supply of airline employees (willing to work for $7/hour), and considering the total passenger volume I wouldn't be surprised if half the AE world population works for the airlines and flies as revenue pax weekly.

IRL labor is a huge part of success/failure in the airline industry, so in AE 4 I think we need to overhaul that as well.

[iquit]

LOL, theoretically minimum wage would translate to high attrition, which will translate to high training cost, which in turn translates to higher overall expenses compared to paying on-par with market.

If I am not mistaken, assuming 1 manager every 8 employees: a 4096 employee company will end up with 512 managers and 64 executives, which still increase linearly in cost; as oppose to 512 level 1 managers, 64 level 2 managers, 8 level 3 managers and 1 level 4 manager, where managers have no upper limit on their levels.

[mxax-ai]

LOL, theoretically minimum wage would translate to high attrition, which will translate to high training cost, which in turn translates to higher overall expenses compared to paying on-par with market.
If I am not mistaken, assuming 1 manager every 8 employees: a 4096 employee company will end up with 512 managers and 64 executives, which still increase linearly in cost; as oppose to 512 level 1 managers, 64 level 2 managers, 8 level 3 managers and 1 level 4 manager, where managers have no upper limit on their levels.

Those are (give or take) about the numbers I've noticed in game. I start with 3 executives and some managers and end up with quite a lot of managers and executives. The bigger problem, as Yuxi has mentioned, is that a high attrition rate is extremely cheap on AE compared to one's savings by paying everyone $7 .

[NeJo73]

Forgive me if someones'already said it...

 

Could the load/demand be calculated more like the Airwaysim algorithm?

 

Which seams (maybe overly simplistically!) to be - current demand on a route divided by the number of airlines or seats flying on it, then taking into consideration reputation, service, ticket price, advertising, and frequency for a final LF %

 

This would even up the playing field, making it possible for someone to dominate only to a certain degree, but not force immediate huge losses to competition, and unrealistic fare wars etc. Ie if there was massive over supply, then all airlines LF would come down (still considering all the factors above), also making 'frequency dumping' far less attractive.

 

I think this coupled together with higher overhead costs as mentioned before, would make for some great realism, and bring new dynamics into play.

 

Neil