9 replies to this topic

[glarus]

One of the things I've noticed missing from AE is the flavor of national carriers. You may think of some carriers as being Asian, European or American, but then as the game matures and multiple hubs are opened, it fades. A 'no cabotage' system would add a touch of realism. It would be fairly simple to do, though each carrier would need a flag added to indicate which "nationality" (for game purposes, area group i.e., N America, Europe, Asia and so on) they are. Each airport is already categorized. Carriers could fly within their own area group without limitation, but not between points in other areas. IOW, I as a N America carrier could fly JFK-CDG, but not CDG to MUC. In real life you could so long as no passengers boarded in CDG if the flight originated at JFK, but that would be overly complicated for the game engine I think.

This would also make alliances more realistic and meaningful.* Codeshares in real life exist largely to overcome restrictions on cabotage and foreign ownership. Why pretend I'm delivering US customers to a partner's European hub for carriage to the interior when I can just fly there and beyond?

Finally, it would sort of divide the game up and reduce the saturation problem without starting second and third games entirely. You would have an idea who your competition is, without finding all your routes buggered because a "foreign" carrier suddenly plopped 33 gates and a bunch of Airbuses at your hub.

*This is another area where the game has lots of potential, depending entirely on how much more complex the designers wish to make it. Alliance partners could be assigned a flag. If one is based and hubbed at IAD and another at FRA, then flights by either to those airports would yield hub benefits. Yet another element could be added - the codeshare. Fares could be made free-floating. That is, if USCarrier sets IAD-FRA at $500 and EuroCarrier sets it at $600, USCarrier will see a drop in pax because they can get on the exact same plane for $100 less. OR, it could be made fixed, but this would be rather complicated I imagine. A whole new element would have to be added so that when you alter fares you are shown how it affects both carriers, then the fares would be the same for both. But that isn't how it is in real life. I really can go to two codeshare carrier websites and pay different fares for the exact same seat. Free-floating would lead to some internal strife, but that would just then lead to greater cooperation and dialogue on fares.

[LOT 737-300]

Well, Miller made this game to be without regulations in place. In the EU, many carriers such as Ryanair and Easyjet don't really fly from one country but fly from multiple countries to multiple destinations.

[glarus]

That's true - there are generally no restrictions within the EEC, they function as one "country", which is what would happen with my suggestion. There would be 7 "countries": Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe, South America, North America and South Pac. Even if one wanted to, in real life no US carrier could start a network in Europe and no European carrier could do the same in the states.

[LOT 737-300]

Yes, but there is also a limited number of airports to fly to in the game as it is already. One of the biggest complaints I recall hearing in the game is that it gets too saturated. If this was to be implemented, then people would complain that they wouldn't be able to move around even more since they're only limited to certain regions. If we had every commercial airport in the US, EU, Africa, Asia, and so on, it would make sense, but since that would take forever for Miller to type up the script, thats not likely to happen.

I forgot to mention that PA at one time had flown with a European network as did TWA (I think there was a political reason for this). And I think that NW has some small domestic stuff in Japan and the Pacific and Continental has flights within Micronesia. To add, Virgin has stuff in Australia, Nigeria and recently tried to start up the US (though they are seperate airlines, they sorta are still under the control of the same company.)

[Delta]

I think making 4 or more different worlds and adding many more airports would solve the overcrowded problem.

Just my 2 cents

Delta

[LOT 737-300]

Actually, there are plenty of abandoned accounts that need to be deleted. Their planes are hogging up capacity. If that was done, it wouldn't be so bad. I think Adding more airports would simply fix things up more than different worlds (We'll still have those that are HUGE taking up all the gates and setting $15 fares to destroy all competition and set up monopolies.) Like I said before, I was able to fair out pretty well for an airline that started (Really Really) late last round, and no bug setting or gate hogging was involved. Just some small time aircraft brokering to get something that can be used to compete with other airlines.

[galapagapop]

I think making 4 or more different worlds and adding many more airports would solve the overcrowded problem.

Just my 2 cents

Delta

That is just retarded at that point boy!

4 or more?
I maybe once in AE saw a need for maybe 2 and right now ain't that time, game ain't half as competitive as before. More airports fixes any problem. But more worlds doesn't, would there be strict IP blocking? Or will the same airlines just dominate both worlds? I say this rule would work as I myself hate the movement of some airlines to all areas of the world overnight and would stop gate hoarding ten fold overnight as the Europeans cannot hog American gates and Americans can't get the European gates.

[LOT 737-300]

I should also add on the point of IP Blocking. Assuming of all the airlines that play, maybe at least 200 have a dynamic IP. So the comptuer would record all these IPs and then lock everyone who has that type of IP out of the game practically. But there has to be other ways of stopping gate hoarding, more airports could help, but that would also encourage hoarding at airports once concidered remote (for example, gate hoarding out of Kiev or Moskow would become very easy if you had Minsk, and Minsk would be a great target for hoarders if Kalingrad was put in and Warsaw if Krakow or Katowice was put in it.) Maybe a limit on how many gates someone can aquire at a airport in X amount of time could help. Something sorta like the 2 planes per month per customer limit the manufactures have in the game, but maybe done differnt way, like 5 gates for every other month per customer for each airport?

Also, alot of those airlines are ones that bought super cheap Beeches and J-31s earlier and set them loose on all parts of the world. So maybe a rule that all your routes must be connected can be implied to slow this down. This way, we won't have airlines that start out in MCO, and then get some planes to start out in GVA, but they won't go trans-Atlantic for at least 2 more AE years. I recall alot of the top 25 did that, and it totally derailed my plans for MCO. If we imply a rule that all the routes must connect, then this would help alot.

[glarus]

I wasn't around at the beginning of AE, but wasn't one of the goals to evaluate the ways passengers might fly in real life? You can't do that in a system that's completely oblivious to political realities. You can, however, install things that at least attempt to approximate them.

Speaking of politics, where the heck is Jose Marti Int'l in this game? Would be easy enough to add it with a flag that blocks flights from the U.S.

[LOT 737-300]

There are chartered flights (though they sorta are schedualed) from the US to Cuba. They are only open to people who have family in Cuba though. But passengers might fly in the airline that gives them the best valued deal, despite who the carrier might be. Like I said earlier, if we had our Rockfords and Orlando-Sanfords around, maybe I might support it. But right now, I'm thinking that a rule such as your network must have all the routes connecting from at least 1 point might be helpful. I was looking through some airlines lately and I noticed there are many that have flights in the US and the EU plus Asia, but there is no way to connect the two or three parts of their system. If airlines were required to fly something to connect their European Systems of the network to the American Systems of their network, then this would help out greatly, and would prevent some guy just dumping a bunch of Q400s on routes in another continent because before he can connect the rest of the system.

And if you want realism, why don't we get the a rule that requires DOTs of each country approve our routes before we can fly them, and only X amount of airlines can fly to country X from Country Y. Remember, thats how things are done in reality. Oh and some countries are still regulated, so why don't we have a price floor and cieling for some airports too, since the regulations make sure you charge a certain amount for fares? And why not we enforce the ETOPS rules too and pay extra to have our planes with the proper ETOPS certifications? Remember, Miller made the game to be in a mostly deregulated society.

HAV possibly isn't in the game because perhaps Miller and TW had trouble finding the numbers or the numbers were just too small to make it into the game. Its as simple as that. The same possibly goes for Ponyang, Bahgdad and Tehran (though it would be nice to see them in the game.) I don't think miller wants to be spending a large amount of time trying to figure out who has a embargo on who so he can type up who can fly there and who can't.

I should also add that Martinair (they're Dutch) fly a Latin American System from San Jose, Costa Rica. I know that they fly to both MIA and MCO from there as well as other cities.