50 replies to this topic

[The Flying Cow]

There has been many discussions going on over different strategies on how to end up on the top spot in valuation. Many discussions pointed towards the fact that at the end of the day the whole point was to "go big or go home" as bottomline the more passengers you have, the more profit you make as long as your margin is positive.

 

Nevertheless, while building an airline with thousands of planes it might still not be evident on what exactly large spamlines do to end up on the top of the ranking in valuation. Also for those that once are there, the lack of competition makes the game less intersting from the perspective that if in a world where you have about 200 or 300 airlines you end up competing always against the same top 10 or top 20, the game loses part of its challenge as the remaining 90% of the airlines are not competitive enought.

 

This post is not directed for those who are building airlines that pretend to look real but for those who would like to understand the tactics that spamlines use and at least have all the information they need to compete with them if they wish. At the end of the day it can all be summarized in some tips that proved to work and that would allow any airline to remain financially competitive and prevent them from having to bankrupt. While The Flying Cow "helps bots to bankrupt their airlines :)" , it would also be nice to make all the worlds more competitive because, as others pointed, otherwise it becomes too boring.

 

Thus, here's the short list of simple observations on what can be done to boost valuation:

 

1) Planes: For the same amount of passengers, when choosing an engine or a plane choose the one with the lowest fuel flow. Good examples are CL-44 Yukon or Tu-114. If you ever plan to fly routes longer than 500 miles you should care about it. Regarding seating, just go all Y seats as sooner or later spamlines will do, and that would be always much more profitable than having any other type of seats on the plane plus time wise you would only need to care about filling 1 type of seats when updating/reviewing routes.

 

2) Scam IFS: Min quality and Max prices for everything. Same with in-flight entertainment. 1 TV screen to be able to put ads every minute and charge max price for use.

 

3) Routes lenght: Schedule first routes below 500 miles (use the filters when browsing airports). Profitability of the route decreases with its lenght (talking about connecting PAX, as those don't care how many competitors you have on a route, they are "magic"

 

4) Hubs: Open hubs in every airport you fly - you gonna use the connecting PAX (blue bar) to make money on them by charging ridiculously high prices. You gonna get 50% of that rediculously high price which will be always way more that you would ever make with "green bar" passengers. Connectig PAX do not care how many competitors you have on the route.

 

5) How many seats to allocate: As a reference you can allocate up to 10 times the seats that you see as "route demand" (green bar). It will mainly depend on how many planes you have. Bottomline - when allocating 10 times more seats than needed you can still charge connecting passengers around $1 per mile and fill the "blue bar" of connecting passengers (e.g. for a route of 400 miles charging $400, from which you'll end up getting $200 as connecting PAX only pay 50% of the fare). This is how you can get operating profit beyond $10B on a route... and way beyond

 

6) Pricing: directly depends on how many seats you allocated. If you allocate 3 times the seats needed, ticket price = miles x 4, if you allocate 10 times the seats needed, ticket price = miles x 1. Find the sweet spot where you gonna fill the blue bar. You wanna max the profitability per plane (you can see it in "plane details").

 

7) Small airports: given how route prices are updated, you wanna go first to airports that others might forget about. Why? Because whenever a new airline joins a route and sets a price the filling of the planes is recalculated and you don't want to be updating prices over and over again. Go to airports in the middle of nowhere and just start opening hubs and scheduling routes with other small airports with insane prices and a tonn of available seats that connecting passengers will end up paying anyway. You would only need to care about those routes if someone also goes there and starts opening routes (as filling of planes will be recalculated and you will need to update the route, see point below).

 

8) Updating route prices: if everything mentioned before done properly - even in the event that someone joins your route and your fill rate for the route drops, just open it and click on "save" to "magically" fill the blue bar again. Somehow your connecting passengers will return and you will happily made insane amout of $ because, basically, they are magic

Disclaimer: This observations are made for educative purposes only and seeking to ensure that all the players are on the same page and have the same means to compete with other airlines if they want for achieving top valuation. By increasing competition the game would become more exciting and make it less boring for those sitting on the top spots in the rankins while waiting the world to end (e.g. myself in R1 or R5).

 

Any correction, further elaboration or comments are welcome

[Airplane09]

So this is basically a "how to come up first by exploiting all the game's limitations" tutorial. Fine, interesting "article" you've written here, but I have one question: if no green passengers board your aircraft, how can there be blue passengers?

[Book Siberia]

Allow me to answer your question,Airplane09:  Even if you have absolutely no green passengers in your seats, connecting passengers can (and do) come from other passengers who came in on someone else's planes.  That's what is meant by the term "connecting' passengers.

Each airport that is declared as a hub can "pool" these passengers and make them available on a first-come, first-served basis according to the following:

 

If the hub was created by you, and you or a fellow alliance member or members have other flights to other destinations from that hub, the lion's share of those connecting passenger is made available to you as well as your fellow alliance members.

 

if several alliance members in the same alliance have hubs at the same airport, the effect is magnified at that airport.

 

If someone has a hub at an airport but is not in your alliance, you can possibly still acquire a small number of purple passengers if you fly to/from that airport, but only for routes that are not flown by the "hubifyer" his- or her-self.

 

If no one has a hub at a particular airport AND the other end of the route is also not a hub , then everyone flying that route can only compete for the green passengers, and there will be no connecting passengers available.  And that means price wars.

 

And here is a question for you: Suppose both ends of a route you fly are hubs a) owned by you, 

one hub owned by you, the other hub belongs to a fellow alliance member,

c) both hubs are owned by fellow alliance members, but not by you,

d) one hub owned by you, the other owned by someone outside your alliance, 

e) both hubs owned by non-alliance members, both in the same aliance, and

f) both hubs owned by non-alliance members in different alliances.

 

Each of those particular circumstances gives a different result - but I leave it as an exercise for you to discover what exactly happens.  Enjoy! (lol)

[The Flying Cow]

Allow me to answer your question,Airplane09:  Even if you have absolutely no green passengers in your seats, connecting passengers can (and do) come from other passengers who came in on someone else's planes.  That's what is meant by the term "connecting' passengers.

Each airport that is declared as a hub can "pool" these passengers and make them available on a first-come, first-served basis according to the following:

 

If the hub was created by you, and you or a fellow alliance member or members have other flights to other destinations from that hub, the lion's share of those connecting passenger is made available to you as well as your fellow alliance members.

 

if several alliance members in the same alliance have hubs at the same airport, the effect is magnified at that airport.

 

If someone has a hub at an airport but is not in your alliance, you can possibly still acquire a small number of purple passengers if you fly to/from that airport, but only for routes that are not flown by the "hubifyer" his- or her-self.

 

If no one has a hub at a particular airport AND the other end of the route is also not a hub , then everyone flying that route can only compete for the green passengers, and there will be no connecting passengers available.  And that means price wars.

 

And here is a question for you: Suppose both ends of a route you fly are hubs a) owned by you, 

one hub owned by you, the other hub belongs to a fellow alliance member,

c) both hubs are owned by fellow alliance members, but not by you,

d) one hub owned by you, the other owned by someone outside your alliance, 

e) both hubs owned by non-alliance members, both in the same aliance, and

f) both hubs owned by non-alliance members in different alliances.

 

Each of those particular circumstances gives a different result - but I leave it as an exercise for you to discover what exactly happens.  Enjoy! (lol)

 

Great insights!

Regarding the "who owns the hub" questions - I think  there's different coefficients applied that would affect the available "connecting" passengers that would fill the seats, but unless someone is flying from a small country and most of the flights are international, then that won't be the "make or break it". At the end of the day - most of the "business" happens within local flights if one is going after valuation

[Jezza.]

"We aim to please passengers" .......

[WAZZ]

There has been many discussions going on over different strategies on how to end up on the top spot in valuation. Many discussions pointed towards the fact that at the end of the day the whole point was to "go big or go home" as bottomline the more passengers you have, the more profit you make as long as your margin is positive.

 

Nevertheless, while building an airline with thousands of planes it might still not be evident on what exactly large spamlines do to end up on the top of the ranking in valuation. Also for those that once are there, the lack of competition makes the game less intersting from the perspective that if in a world where you have about 200 or 300 airlines you end up competing always against the same top 10 or top 20, the game loses part of its challenge as the remaining 90% of the airlines are not competitive enought.

 

This post is not directed for those who are building airlines that pretend to look real but for those who would like to understand the tactics that spamlines use and at least have all the information they need to compete with them if they wish. At the end of the day it can all be summarized in some tips that proved to work and that would allow any airline to remain financially competitive and prevent them from having to bankrupt. While The Flying Cow "helps bots to bankrupt their airlines :)" , it would also be nice to make all the worlds more competitive because, as others pointed, otherwise it becomes too boring.

 

Thus, here's the short list of simple observations on what can be done to boost valuation:

 

1) Planes: For the same amount of passengers, when choosing an engine or a plane choose the one with the lowest fuel flow. Good examples are CL-44 Yukon or Tu-114. If you ever plan to fly routes longer than 500 miles you should care about it. Regarding seating, just go all Y seats as sooner or later spamlines will do, and that would be always much more profitable than having any other type of seats on the plane plus time wise you would only need to care about filling 1 type of seats when updating/reviewing routes.

 

2) Scam IFS: Min quality and Max prices for everything. Same with in-flight entertainment. 1 TV screen to be able to put ads every minute and charge max price for use.

 

3) Routes lenght: Schedule first routes below 500 miles (use the filters when browsing airports). Profitability of the route decreases with its lenght (talking about connecting PAX, as those don't care how many competitors you have on a route, they are "magic"

 

4) Hubs: Open hubs in every airport you fly - you gonna use the connecting PAX (blue bar) to make money on them by charging ridiculously high prices. You gonna get 50% of that rediculously high price which will be always way more that you would ever make with "green bar" passengers. Connectig PAX do not care how many competitors you have on the route.

 

5) How many seats to allocate: As a reference you can allocate up to 10 times the seats that you see as "route demand" (green bar). It will mainly depend on how many planes you have. Bottomline - when allocating 10 times more seats than needed you can still charge connecting passengers around $1 per mile and fill the "blue bar" of connecting passengers (e.g. for a route of 400 miles charging $400, from which you'll end up getting $200 as connecting PAX only pay 50% of the fare). This is how you can get operating profit beyond $10B on a route... and way beyond

 

6) Pricing: directly depends on how many seats you allocated. If you allocate 3 times the seats needed, ticket price = miles x 4, if you allocate 10 times the seats needed, ticket price = miles x 1. Find the sweet spot where you gonna fill the blue bar. You wanna max the profitability per plane (you can see it in "plane details").

 

7) Small airports: given how route prices are updated, you wanna go first to airports that others might forget about. Why? Because whenever a new airline joins a route and sets a price the filling of the planes is recalculated and you don't want to be updating prices over and over again. Go to airports in the middle of nowhere and just start opening hubs and scheduling routes with other small airports with insane prices and a tonn of available seats that connecting passengers will end up paying anyway. You would only need to care about those routes if someone also goes there and starts opening routes (as filling of planes will be recalculated and you will need to update the route, see point below).

 

8) Updating route prices: if everything mentioned before done properly - even in the event that someone joins your route and your fill rate for the route drops, just open it and click on "save" to "magically" fill the blue bar again. Somehow your connecting passengers will return and you will happily made insane amout of $ because, basically, they are magic

So basically what you're trying to say is to beat a spamline, you have to become a spamline.

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Great advice. 5/7

[Airboss777]

Hey Flying Cow, I appreciate the fact that you feel you need more competition & are educating the masses, but have you ever heard the expression, "a magician never reveals his secrets"? Who says I want more competition?

[The Flying Cow]

Hey Flying Cow, I appreciate the fact that you feel you need more competition & are educating the masses, but have you ever heard the expression, "a magician never reveals his secrets"? Who says I want more competition?

 

Come on, this is not magic - all these things are just a matter of being able to read the figures that the game provides to the players and enabling others to make sense out of them.

Without competition there's no incentive for innovating or trying new game strategies and then is when it becomes boring... Where's the point of having 200 or 300 airlines per world if that doesn't contribute to increase the playability of the game? If this is a multiplayer game, shouldn't the "human factor" be the main source of fun, but not because 10 players can troll 290 but because all the 300 would be challenging each other in some way?

[Jezza.]

Come on, this is not magic - all these things are just a matter of being able to read the figures that the game provides to the players and enabling others to make sense out of them.

Without competition there's no incentive for innovating or trying new game strategies and then is when it becomes boring... Where's the point of having 200 or 300 airlines per world if that doesn't contribute to increase the playability of the game? If this is a multiplayer game, shouldn't the "human factor" be the main source of fun, but not because 10 players can troll 290 but because all the 300 would be challenging each other in some way?

http://ae31.airline-...e3rd&player=255  Rekt...

[iquit]

Alright, since everyone is so eager to share their strategies, I will share something as well.

When you see this type of airline:

1. Find out all his hubs and routes.
2. Fly 1x with small aircraft on all his routes, profit doesn't matter.
3. Find out his online time and wait for him to log out.
4. Go to your flight page, select all flights.
5. Perform match lowest price or reset price.
6. After server recalculates all the routes, you can see his DOP plunge by comparing his valuation with previous day.

Have fun!

Be warned, this stresses the server a lot.

[Airboss777]

Alright, since everyone is so eager to share their strategies, I will share something as well.

When you see this type of airline:

1. Find out all his hubs and routes.
2. Fly 1x with small aircraft on all his routes, profit doesn't matter.
3. Find out his online time and wait for him to log out.
4. Go to your flight page, select all flights.
5. Perform match lowest price or reset price.
6. After server recalculates all the routes, you can see his DOP plunge by comparing his valuation with previous day.

Have fun!

Be warned, this stresses the server a lot.

 

Oh great, now you're educating the trolls!

[The Flying Cow]

Alright, since everyone is so eager to share their strategies, I will share something as well.

When you see this type of airline:

1. Find out all his hubs and routes.
2. Fly 1x with small aircraft on all his routes, profit doesn't matter.
3. Find out his online time and wait for him to log out.
4. Go to your flight page, select all flights.
5. Perform match lowest price or reset price.
6. After server recalculates all the routes, you can see his DOP plunge by comparing his valuation with previous day.

Have fun!

Be warned, this stresses the server a lot.

 

it's not about how you can screw up others, but how to compete upderstanding the game mechanics. Let's try to be constructive rather than destructive

[Book Siberia]

Sadly, iquit, for a few spamliners that doesn't actually work - you can put $1 single-frequency on every single route  I fly and it will not affect me one bit once I have reached a certain stage of development. 

 

For example, in R1, Flying Cow and I are in the same US home country, and he/she had or has many $1 routes, and it made absolutely no difference to my profitability whatsoever when I put aircraft on any of those routes, whether I was first-on-the-route or the last to establish the route.

 

The reasons for that have to do with the essential differences between green and purple passengers and how one positions oneself to take advantage of the disparity.

 

Having said that, however, admittedly the fact remains  that anyone who has not glommed onto how it all works and put it into practice will still be affected by your $1 single-frequency tactic.   Just don't expect it to work on any so-called spamliner worth his/her salt.

[Stevphfeniey]

Can one win what amounts to a sandbox game?

[Book Siberia]

Ah fenley, fenley, fenley!  Perhaps not, but you can most definitely lose. lol

[Stevphfeniey]

I think that you only truly win the game if you build an airline that makes you happy

[The Flying Cow]

Surprised how this completely went off topic... Let's try to get back to it

[bAnderson]

Why exactly are we teaching this to the community? Shouldn't we encourage them to play this airline simulator as a, well, simulator, and not a game? Please take note of the title of Airline Empires, the Multiplayer Online Airline Simulator? Therefore, this should not be treated as a game to win. This should be treated as test your (good) business model against other (good) business models. Not run an airline that would be shut down within a week in real life.

 

So to all players here reading through this. Remember this is a simulator. Come up with a real business model to play with, and if you insist on this being a game, go ahead and stay in Sandbox and Open worlds where realistic players will be absent. Run yourselves into the ground. Just stay out of the Realistic worlds.

[Book Siberia]

bAnderson, this simulator wasn't created to test business models - the trophies are for valuation plus one for reputation.

 

Nor do any of the worlds cater to any sort of realism other than the enforcement of political boundaries in the R- and S- worlds.

 

Nor are we required to play realistically.

 

There exists no mandatory restrictions as to which worlds to play nor are we confined to a specific number of worlds to play in. 

 

And make no mistake - this IS a game, no question about it.  The explicit goal in the use of the simulator is to compete and vie for highest valuation.  Period.

 

It's been that way ever since AE has been in existence.

 

Like it or not, this game caters to the so-called spamliner.   I say so-called because although the community has coined a certain type of airline as spamliners, there is no spamming whatsoever as for how any airline operates, because there are no restrictions as to how to operate an airline dictated - neither by the dev in the forums nor in any of the documentation.

 

The choice of what planes to fly and where to fly them? Up to you.

How planes should be configured? Up to you.

How many seats to place on a route.  Totally up to you.

How many planes to have in your fleet? Up to you.

What prices to charge on your routes? totally up to you.

etc, etc

 

In other words, the implied purpose of this simulator is to compete in a pure laisse-faire free-market environment with pretty much no restrictions on how the various players choose to compete.

 

If that's unacceptable to you, there exist many other games that might be more to your liking elsewhere should you decide to leave.

Not that I am advocating that anyone leave just because they wish this game catered to realism. 

 

If you play, then you should use every tool and scrap of knowledge that you can gleam to vie for the number 1 spot in the rankings.

 

The fact that Flying Cow freely is providing info that might help players to compete better is to his/her credit.  After all, he/she could have hoarded that info and kept it from the community.

 

Flying Cow has already in his/her very starting post told you exactly why he/she is providing the info to the community. Because he/she wanted more competition from as many players as he/she can get to make the game more competitive.

[Stevphfeniey]

Why don't we just make happy little airlines?