5 replies to this topic

[ChemicalReaper]

I think this idea has been toyed around with for a while, and I know you developers are probably quite exhausted after all the work that went into making 3.1! (So maybe this will be something to look into for the future? )

The game, I think, has all of the basics set up to cope with such a system; the aircraft detail pages tell you who owns the plane, who owned it before, and what it's worth.

This would sort of act as a balance to the used plane market.

Let's say I have a nice shiny new Trident 3 (which I do, in 3.1 Realistic). I like the plane quite a lot, and it can be profitable on shorter flights. But it's currently sitting on the ground, doing nothing (because I don't really have anywhere to send it). I bought it at full price, because I vastly overestimated the number of flights I needed to run. So now, it's just sitting on the tarmac (or in an aircraft hangar) costing me $308,000 per month in maintenance fees, etc.

If I sell to the Used Plane market, the broker takes off a fee of 5%, but sells for full price. When someone else wants to buy the plane, they pay full price + 5%.

But let's say that there's a different system. Let's say I jump onto the AE3.1 forum, into a special "Looking to Buy a Plane?" forum, where I can post a topic saying, "I've got this plane, here's what I'm willing to sell it for." Then, if someone wants to buy it, they can make me an offer (or it could be first come, first serve).

Cuts out the middle man, smaller airlines can get good deals on planes that larger airlines don't need anymore, and everyone goes home happy. Well, except maybe the used plane brokerage.

[usaf2222]

My question, what's your abuse prevention mechanism? How would you prevent people from abusing the system?

[adityapratama]

yeah, this kind of system is very prone to abuse. you can virtually sell your aircraft to another airline you have or your friend at a knocked down prices. it can be considered cheating in my opinion.

well at least that's what im thinking.

[Razdawg]

Well, you could cap it off for how much they could sell it for on the market and it can't go below it.

Say A/c X was worth 45,000,000. Then the lease i could sell it for is 41mil. or something like that. Therefore It is a security measure for starters. Secondly, its not really a work around because someone had to buy the plane to start out with. So, they would have to build their second airline in order to sell them the plane at a cheaper cost. To me its a waste of time^. Finally, I wouldn't have a system to post on the forums, but rather have a live auction in the Sim itself to sale planes. Just make more since. Maybe in the future it will be implemented, however right now there is bigger fish to fry and take care of.

[ChemicalReaper]

My question, what's your abuse prevention mechanism? How would you prevent people from abusing the system?

Well in order to get access to the bigger planes, you'll need to invest a lot of time into an airline. Unless I have a particular desire to buy a load of DHC-7's cheap from my alt airline, it's kind of hard to abuse

And with the current system, what's to stop me from getting a plane on an alt airline, letting it depreciate, and then selling it to the used market, and then buying it back? Sure my alt would lose 5%, but if I have a plane that's depreciated by 40%, even buying it back from the broker, I'm still saving 35% off list price.

I guess these are my main points:
- if a player is determined to abuse the system, they'll find a way regardless of what is or isn't implemented
- it will still require a lot of time and energy to get good aircraft (esp. since your second airline can easily go bankrupt and have planes seized if you don't spend a lot of time on it); do you really think that many people would expend so much extra effort just to get a cheap 767 on their main airline?
- sometimes you just have to take risks with these sorts of things; add it into the game, make sure it isn't abused too much, and then remove it later if people can't use it responsibly

Alternatively, as it was suggested, there could be a cap. When you're selling, the lowest you can go is 10% off the value of the plane. (So, basically, you can sell for a bit less than you'd get from the broker.) The buyer gets a nice deal comparatively speaking. Perhaps there's even a 2-5% fee the buyer has to pay for 'transportation and documentation fees'? I mean, somebody has to take care of transferring the safety records, proof of ownership, etc.

[Yuxi]

We had this kind of system before, and it was rampantly abused (see below) and replaced with the current market system, which may not be the most realistic but it's certainly the most fair.

Right now we have a random delay after selling aircraft before it's available to buy. This discourage people from setting up "feeder" airlines to order aircraft for their main airline and circumvent the delivery slot limits, a practice widely used back when we had prearranged sales.

As delivery slot limits are the only thing limiting expansion for established airlines in AE, this is a huge problem. For these abusers (often overflowing with cash), price is not a problem at all. So far the random delay has been quite effective in minimizing this kind of abuse.