23 replies to this topic

[Russ]

What is everybody's opinion (and no flaming, please) on the need of the game to impose some real market force that makes profitability hard, and makes expansion past some certain size more difficult? In the game, the faster an airline grows, the faster it can expand. In real life, the opposite holds true in most cases. Opinions? Thoughts?

Yes and No.

There should be some scaling related to airline size. This is a problem with open ended economic games, size matters too much. There are always natural limits in RL which reduce growth rate. For game purposes, this should be set up not as punishment for success but rather the better you get, the harder each level of improvement should be. You often see that in RPGs.

A couple logical limitations would be aircraft deliveries and gates (terminals). With a limitation on aircraft deliveries, growth is constrained. I have no idea what the optimal delivery rate would be, but I would suggest that it vary by size, so that it is harder to get large planes. (as it is in RL). Gates have been a limit in this round and I think it should be tweaked a little, for example, the suggestion on aircraft size in an airport. I am not sure that runway length will do it alone, because many airports have runways built for military or commercial emergency reasons, which don't refelct the ability of the airport infrastructure to handle large aircraft. Also, if terminals were limited to airports where the airline already has say 5 gates, that would prevent the big airlines from just spending $150M and building a presence.

But it is also very very important to allow all the layers to have a good time playing. It shouldn't be a dodgeball game where if you don't suceed in the first game year come back later. 200 airlines in RL don't fly in the US or Europe. But if you want 700 - 900 players, then you have to accomidate some unrealistic conditions. Worry less about the top 20, who in RL would have cleared the board, worry about making or keeping it fun for numbers 200-400.

So in conclusion, I think that there are some things which can be imposed to make the game more challenging but doing anything should be done cautiously so that it soesn't ruin it for the vast majority.

[Calum]

agree with everything above ,

but i voted to restart for the fun of it anyway. Just if we could implement a way to keep the game less saturated for longer , that'd be great while waiting for V3

Calum

[galapagapop]

You also have to remember in real life, aircraft manufactors alternate who the next aircraft off the factory will go to. Not just working on one airline and shipping them, and then moving on to the next order...

Well actually WN can at time get 7 line numbers in a row of 73G's. The reason they space them out if they don't earn the kind of money to accept so many planes so quick. In this game competition is still low, thus high prices, which equals high profits and now with that huge profits to support lots of A/C. But there are still limits. I can only amass so many orders in a day. Smaller airlines may have to wait a while, but so does any other airline, thats the point. They and others could easily space deliveries out using defer option. But in this game you want A/C as fast a possible. Slowing it down does nothing as all airlines can order only so much, so in essence you'll be having tons of airlines just wasting their potential 2 slots per month, and tell me guys, does Boeing just leave potential slots open?

[Calum]

But in this game you want A/C as fast a possible. Slowing it down does nothing as all airlines can order only so much, so in essence you'll be having tons of airlines just wasting their potential 2 slots per month, and tell me guys, does Boeing just leave potential slots open?

hm , thats all true but maybe there could be another way to base it on for V3 , i dunno how but it could become ( just like real-life ) the number of aircraft you own / have access to. Like i say , it would probably be too much programming or something , but , in R/L it depends on the airline providing a STABLE network of flights / operations ( wheather its freight / pax / ad-hoc ). A good basis of flights and careful , slow-but-sure , expansion covering all the possible bases that you could fall down , and seting up proper hubs / bases and learning to compete with them before going out eslewhere. I mean , there probably is one or two airlines out there that have just jumped right in and have went for everything they can , as quick as they can. But there is either very few of them , or they didnt last long.

Calum