The best way to compete against spamlines is to run a spamline.

since the only way to flood a route is to compete for green (full-fare) passengers, technically there is no such thing as a spamliner in AE.  [see my 1st post in this topic for the details]

While that seems counter-intuitive, it is true - and something that one needs to wrap their mind around in order to play well.  Pursuing a maximally-attainable valuation strategy is the only way to achieve the higher cumulative valuations needed to consistently attain valuation trophies in AE

How would you compete with a spamline? Especially when they flood routes with 6000+ demand and charge $1 fares.

 

Any tips would be appreciated! 

>> How would you compete with a spamline? Especially when they flood routes with 6000+ demand and charge $1 fares.

 

Dc Pilot - There are 2 distinct types of passengers - green passengers and blue passengers.  The mechanics underlying gathering and keeping green passengers (a.k.a full-fare passengers) are completely different than the mechanics underlying gathering and keeping blue passengers (a.k.a. half-fare passengers).

 

So let's discuss some of these mechanics.  Let's start with the green passengers.  For greens, there is a fixed number that exist and must be competed for amongst all airlines that have the same routes.   If you are the only airline on a route and you capture all of them, you will get the stated price per passenger.  However, if/when a 2nd airline competes for some or all the fixed number of passengers on that route, in order for them to attain those passengers, they must lower their price.  If each of the airlines vying for  route jockey for position the price to obtain those passengers rapidly decreases, possibly to the point where the route becomes nonprofitable.  then this would mea n that If only green passengers were available , the game would definitely become a race to the bottom because airlines would have no choice.

 

Hence, there exist blue passengers, which are not fixed in number although there always exist a maximum number of blue passengers currently available to an airline for a particular route, and this number generally increases as time elapses over the course of a game.  In addition, there is no direct competition per se for blue passengers, thus lowering your prices has little to no effect on how many blue passengers you can have or retain.  On the other hand, lowering prices does effect how many green passengers you can obtain, but notice that what started out as full-fare passengers are now discounted-fare passengers.

 

Now, when a game starts out, no one has ANY blue passengers available to them.  But as time goes by, that changes based on several factors, such as 1) total passengers you currently have, 2) How many hubs you have and fly to/from, 3) The hubs your alliance has and flies to/from, and possibly a couple of other minor factors.

 

If you think about it, the above game mechanics together suggest that competing for the trophies (which are ranked by total airline valuation) means that gamers should pursue a maximally attainable valuation strategy that leverages the available mechanics.

 

 

How would you compete with a spamline? Especially when they flood routes with 6000+ demand and charge $1 fares.

 

Any tips would be appreciated! 

>> How would you compete with a spamline? Especially when they flood routes with 6000+ demand and charge $1 fares.

 

Dc Pilot - There are 2 distinct types of passengers - green passengers and blue passengers.  The mechanics underlying gathering and keeping green passengers (a.k.a full-fare passengers) are completely different than the mechanics underlying gathering and keeping blue passengers (a.k.a. half-fare passengers).

 

So let's discuss some of these mechanics.  Let's start with the green passengers.  For greens, there is a fixed number that exist and must be competed for amongst all airlines that have the same routes.   If you are the only airline on a route and you capture all of them, you will get the stated price per passenger.  However, if/when a 2nd airline competes for some or all the fixed number of passengers on that route, in order for them to attain those passengers, they must lower their price.  If each of the airlines vying for a route jockey for position based on price in order to obtain those passengers results in rapidly decreasing profits, possibly to the point where the route becomes nonprofitable.  If only green passengers were available , the game would definitely become a race to the bottom because airlines would have no choice.

 

Hence, there exist blue passengers, which are not fixed in number although there always exist a maximum number of blue passengers currently available to an airline for a particular route, and this number generally increases as time elapses over the course of a game.  In addition, there is no direct competition per se for blue passengers, thus lowering your prices has little to no effect on how many blue passengers you can have or retain.  On the other hand, lowering prices does effect how many green passengers you can obtain, but notice that what started out as full-fare passengers are now discounted-fare passengers.

 

Now, when a game starts out, no one has ANY blue passengers available to them.  But as time goes by, that changes based on several factors, such as 1) total passengers you currently have, 2) How many hubs you have and fly to/from, 3) The hubs your alliance has and flies to/from, and possibly a couple of other minor factors.

 

If you think about it, the above game mechanics together suggest that competing for the trophies (which are ranked by total airline valuation) means that gamers should pursue a maximally attainable valuation strategy that leverages the available mechanics.