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I've been confused by a lot of players doing this. How does this work?
Edit: Apparently, I can't post images... So basically I'm seeing players building lots of terminals on airports they don't even use, having 100 terminals, each with 200 gates, with 0-5% utilization rate. They make tonnes of money but how does it work?
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AE Player
Impending spamliner.
Junior Member
Ah makes sense! Also I just found out that it significantly lowers the per month cost.
Addicted Aviator
Just don't mess with me
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It's got nothing to do with gate / terminal / leasing cost. These aren't just terminals, they're hubs. There rest is magic. If you don't know the secret, you're not gonna beat that guy. If you want to know the secret, ask him, not everyone else.
I've been confused by a lot of players doing this. How does this work?
Edit: Apparently, I can't post images... So basically I'm seeing players building lots of terminals on airports they don't even use, having 100 terminals, each with 200 gates, with 0-5% utilization rate. They make tonnes of money but how does it work?
To Betty Marilyn Smith: While you are mainly correct, you mention that there is an exploit (suggesting that I am doing something not generally available to anyone else or that taking advantage of hubs and flying blue Pax passengers is contrary to game rules, which is not true).
Anyone can build terminals and hubs. anyone can capture blue pax passengers, and the Dev (Yuxi) built the game the way it is deliberatey, and thus there is no requirement to play "realistically"
Thus there is no exploit.
To Betty Marilyn Smith: While you are mainly correct, you mention that there is an exploit (suggesting that I am doing something not generally available to anyone else or that taking advantage of hubs and flying blue Pax passengers is contrary to game rules, which is not true).
Anyone can build terminals and hubs. anyone can capture blue pax passengers, and the Dev (Yuxi) built the game the way it is deliberatey, and thus there is no requirement to play "realistically"
Thus there is no exploit.
It is an ingame flaw that anyone could try and use, but most people in the game avoid and enjoy running a proper structure airline or airlines, without the need for 200 gate terminals across the whole of China to get them shinny cups under the username.
But i guess its like Trump, anything goes just to get make you feel good.
Maestro69, the game was deliberately designed to have this so-called flaw, which means that the game mechanics revolving around terminals and hubs and green vs blue passengers are designed deliberately, and not as a game flaw as you suggest.
Make no mistake - this game has absolutely nothing to do with the real world as pertains to airline management. This game is about one thing and one thing only - revenue maximization. Yuxi stated early on in the game that each player should utilize all of the tools and mechanics of the game to the maximum extent possible, and to do anything less is merely hobbling yourself unnecessarily . Translated, this means that playing "realisticlly" - while allowed - is a suboptimal strategy which AE was never intended to fulfill.
In other words, players who play as revenue- maximizing agents (but which you realists constantly denigrate as "spamliners") are exactly who this game is intended for.
Maestro69, the game was deliberately designed to have this so-called flaw, which means that the game mechanics revolving around terminals and hubs and green vs blue passengers are designed deliberately, and not as a game flaw as you suggest.
Make no mistake - this game has absolutely nothing to do with the real world as pertains to airline management. This game is about one thing and one thing only - revenue maximization. Yuxi stated early on in the game that each player should utilize all of the tools and mechanics of the game to the maximum extent possible, and to do anything less is merely hobbling yourself unnecessarily . Translated, this means that playing "realisticlly" - while allowed - is a suboptimal strategy which AE was never intended to fulfill.
In other words, players who play as revenue- maximizing agents (but which you realists constantly denigrate as "spamliners") are exactly who this game is intended for.
Deliberately designed? I think not. I know for a fact, pre yuxi and post yuxi, each alteration of this flaw has been due to the code in the game and never resolved. I hardly doubt each and everyone AE developer wanted personally to make this flaw occur and let people spam 200 gate terminals at every airport within a 1500 mile radius to make people feel nice and warm at night.
And yes, you are right, AE is a semi realistic airline management at best and while trying it hardest, does not reflect most if not all of the possible implications of running an airline and the actual micro management needed to do so in regards to route management, aircraft management, personnel, etc, etc, etc...But the difference is i dont need 200 gate terminals at 1000 airports to make a huge airline to finish #1 in any game world. Thats the point, its ruining the experience for everyone else, which just wants to have 10-20 hubs and enjoy the game.
But again, people wanting to have a fair go and enjoy the game is not really an option anymore.
If all of you truly feel that your experiences are being ruined I am wondering why so many of you are still here, despite years and years of game change requests relating to making AE more realistic have been denied specifically by Yuxi, sometimes with explanations given (which should clearly clue you in as to the Dev's intentions regarding what he wanted AE to be.) Aside from that, Yuxi - who used to be more active in writing posts (up until the mid- to late 2000s) directly posted on the topic of so-called spamliners ( which he directly stated that he views as "revenue-maximizing agents" [his words, not mine] ), a post I used to point to in response to a largely uninformed community on that subject.
Unfortunately, when AE switched to another web server provider, only the more recent posts were archived, which resulted in that post no longer being available (or buried so deep in the archives that I can no longer find it.)
Betty, if you had messaged me and asked, I would explain how it works.
Allow me to explain some of what goes on for revenue-maximization airlines ( not really a spamliner, but okay, if you insist on labeling me a spamliner, then I will ignore that from this point forward) and how it works.
first, there are two types of passengers, full-fare passegers (denoted by the green bar) and then there are half-fare passengers (blue passengers(.
For green passengers, there is - for each airport - a daily maximum that that airport can accomodate. For blue passengers, there is NO PUBLISHED daily maximum whatsoever. Rather, the amount of blue passengers you can pick up is a function of several factors:
a) the total number of daily passengers your airline currently services,
whether or not you fly into or out of hubs other alliance members have,
c) the current number of days, weeks, or years you have been in the game.
d) there is a tradeoff between the number of passengers you can pick up and the fare price you can charge,
e) while blue passengers bring only half the revenue that green passengers bring in, there exists no competition for those passengers. Once a revenue-maximizer airline has sufficient daily passenger buildup, the amount of flights that you can place on a route increases as time goes by. Since such airlines are actively expanding routes, hubs, and terminals, the result is a large and expanding increase in the number of blue passengers that an airline can pick should it choose to do so. In order to position yourself to capture those passengers, you must create a hub, after which blue passengers start becoming available to you, slowly at first, but rapidly increasing as time goes by.
f) bulk purchase of terminals in at least 33 gate blocks or greater reduces costs going forward dramatically. The reason I purchase 200 gate blocks is not to gain some advantage that others can't enjoy, but merely because I often run out of slots or end up using all the slots, especially once I have reached the late middle to early middle game years. So yes, at first it appears that I have zero percent gate utilization, but as time goes by and I receive a sufficient quantity of planes to place on those routes, those gates will become mostly filled.
Ah makes sense! Also I just found out that it significantly lowers the per month cost.
Note that there - in the context of this game - there really isn't a "cost" when purchasing terminals.
Let me explain: when you make a cash outlay and acquire whatever number of gates you desire, you are merely exchanging one asset (cash) for another (terminal with x number of gates), In other words, since purchasing terminals are not considered an expense (again, in the context of this game), your total valuation does not suffer. Once you see this, your mindset shifts, and you become much less reserved about purchasing terminals.
Now obviously you don't want to spend down your cash too far - you do need to allow for actual costs incurred as well as operational expenses plus a safety margin. But once you have a sufficient quantity of planes flying profitable routes, your profits really start rolling in. The mistake most players make is to hoard too much cash and let it accumulate. In real life, investment professional HATE to see too much cash held at a company, as that cash should be used to acquire and put to use productive assets whenever opportunities present themselves, or returned as cash dividends to shareholders.
If you are just sitting on that cash and do nothing with it - acquiring more planes, paying off leases, acquiring terminals at strategic airports, expanding routes, etc, - you are squandering opportunity. Whether or not you operate as a "realistic" airline, a spamliner or as a revenue maximizing agent (there is a difference), you want to learn and grow for the duration of the game.
There's another much simpler reason: every time you increase the size of a hub, you have to manually 'save' all the routes from it to avoid the buggy auto-recalc. It's easier to go to 200 straight away, if you have the cash.
As stated, once you have enough cash cushion for it not to matter, terminals are free anyway.
Aside from that, it's also quicker to add routes when you have terminals everywhere - no need to mess about with gates each time, just pick planes and add them.
The first terminal or two I build will usually be at a point where money is tight enough to be building smaller terminals, but fairly shortly after that they get upgraded and then everything else is 200 gates.
It's a lot more profitable to have a 200 gate terminal than leasing gates, a 200 terminal can lower your gate payments at that airport by almost half, depending on the airport. For example, in S3A, I have a 200 terminal at ATH, and I only pay 152k for each gate compared to 217k for leased ones
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