396 replies to this topic

[ffxxmz]

Revise how much excess demand is available after the "shown" demand is filled. Limit the number of hubs a player can create (20 hubs worldwide I can wrap my head around. 20 hubs in EUROPE is a bit much and excessive) If a player who has established a route is challenged, leave the burden of gaining new passengers to the challenger. If I have route reputation in the green, I shouldn't have to nuke my revenue to keep my yields at 100%. A stock system is a good idea. For example, before you can purchase/lease widebody aircraft, the "investors" must approve it. To keep share prices above a certain price point, you must reach specific passenger experience goals (green IFS, green legroom, be more on-time than not). Actually enforce the congestion fees/penalties that are supposedly part of the game.

The airline with route reputation in green should keep the most of passengers no matter how much a spamline lowers its prices, or at least, a good reputation percentage should make it way harder for spamlines to take all your passengers. That should encourage realistic configs, low utilization times and good service rather than cramping up the plane and trying desperately to use up a plane in 5 different routes so as to leave no idle time for it. The great problem of this game is that when you have a good airline with good reputation. Then there comes someone with that "me-wants-to-have-teh-biggerest-airsomething-in-teh-world" attitude, offering scam IFS, maxing up the utilization times and offering double or even triple the demand, they reduce the price a few bucks and all your reputation means nothing while all the passengers flock to the other airline. They may even reduce business class prices to coach level and coach even lower making it impossible to fill at least 90 percent of your seats without equally having negative profits

[zahrul3]

The airline with route reputation in green should keep the most of passengers no matter how much a spamline lowers its prices, or at least, a good reputation percentage should make it way harder for spamlines to take all your passengers. That should encourage realistic configs, low utilization times and good service rather than cramping up the plane and trying desperately to use up a plane in 5 different routes so as to leave no idle time for it. The great problem of this game is that when you have a good airline with good reputation. Then there comes someone with that "me-wants-to-have-teh-biggerest-airsomething-in-teh-world" attitude, offering scam IFS, maxing up the utilization times and offering double or even triple the demand, they reduce the price a few bucks and all your reputation means nothing while all the passengers flock to the other airline. They may even reduce business class prices to coach level and coach even lower making it impossible to fill at least 90 percent of your seats without equally having negative profits

+1

 

I haven't played AE in a long while and now just playing it again, but since I'm currently studying urban/regional planning where demand modelling is part of my studies. We can make a model within the demand model which takes the passenger's willingness to pay for the ticket, quality, class and services into account. This willingness to pay is determined by airport pairs (eg. flights between main airports of financial hubs have wealthier passengers and flights to and from tourist destinations have budget conscious passengers) So we can't just have people making money purely off spam IFS and IFE, on a plane without toilets in a 29' pitch economy configuration. The model should be made in a way that differences in route reputation (especially IFS, legroom/seat quality and OTP) take a huge hit on passenger demand and/or their willingness to pay for stuff after they've bought awfully cheap tickets. We could also alter how seating is configured, we could instead have more detailed seat configs where we can choose configs by seat type (reclining/non-reclining), width (on widebodies) and seat pitch that count towards seat quality. This should make expansion slower as it's more difficult to go full spamline, but it's still possible and spamlines do exist in real life anyway. 

 

In addition to that, we can make incentives for people to care about replacing their fleet. One, by making plane age decrease route reputation, but one that can be remedied by installing new seats. Second, through enforcement, (eg. hush kits). Thirdly, we can have fuel prices that rise according to historic data, so people can't just keep flying a DC-9 in the 00s.

[buckeyecapsfan19]

+1

 

I haven't played AE in a long while and now just playing it again, but since I'm currently studying urban/regional planning where demand modelling is part of my studies. We can make a model within the demand model which takes the passenger's willingness to pay for the ticket, quality, class and services into account. This willingness to pay is determined by airport pairs (eg. flights between main airports of financial hubs have wealthier passengers and flights to and from tourist destinations have budget conscious passengers) So we can't just have people making money purely off spam IFS and IFE, on a plane without toilets in a 29' pitch economy configuration. The model should be made in a way that differences in route reputation (especially IFS, legroom/seat quality and OTP) take a huge hit on passenger demand and/or their willingness to pay for stuff after they've bought awfully cheap tickets. We could also alter how seating is configured, we could instead have more detailed seat configs where we can choose configs by seat type (reclining/non-reclining), width (on widebodies) and seat pitch that count towards seat quality. This should make expansion slower as it's more difficult to go full spamline, but it's still possible and spamlines do exist in real life anyway. 

 

In addition to that, we can make incentives for people to care about replacing their fleet. One, by making plane age decrease route reputation, but one that can be remedied by installing new seats. Second, through enforcement, (eg. hush kits). Thirdly, we can have fuel prices that rise according to historic data, so people can't just keep flying a DC-9 in the 00s.

Just peg in-game fuel prices to the real-life fuel prices....

[SirGresley]

I like the system of aircraft scheduling as is, so what I'd want is:

 

1. Product managing fun. Stuff like playing with seat types, adding basic and/or premium economy, etc.

2. More fluidity in the demand window. Read: pax changing the class they choose based on how low/high costs are

3. Airport infrastructure expansion. I like terminals already, but I'd like to see us be able to lobby (or even pay for) runway improvements.

4. Labor relations. I want to see a strike every now and then.

[Book Siberia]

Just about every single feature change mentioned in this thread has been asked for before, and they have all previously been rejected by the dev for various reasons.

 

This game does not cater to realism in any way save for political restrictions.

 

Because the dev wants to keep this game free (and pays for the web server out of his own pocket) this game is almost guaranteed to remain as is.

 

It bears mentioning that AE was not built for the realists, but for the so-called spamliners, and has served its' target market brilliantly.   While those who choose to play realistically can do so, you have no reasonable right to expect others to play that way!

 

There is nothing preventing someone from coding up an AE-like game but with coded restrictions and barriers to better conform and cater to realism, however you define that to be.  Or, failing that, to simply find another airline game which better corresponds to your expectations.

[highland]

yaa,

             what book said...

[bos142]

What about adding consequences to having older A/C such as drop in performances or possible crashes that affect airlines reputations and profits? Seems like one possible  way to penalize airlines for having older A/C. Add to that some kid of simple maintenance system. I also think that real airline seriously take into account their reputations and I think the game needs to do this as well. For example if your competing on a route with another airline and your reputation rating is lower than the other guy then it should affect how many passengers  choose to which airline to fly. This doesn't seem to be really evident in game, same with ISE/IFS. In the real world if your not as profitable because of the thing mentioned above amongst other then you would have less cash flow to purchase thousands of A?C or build hubs or have tons of routes to major cities. I do also like the idea of seasonal flocculation's.

[Scythe]

What about an exponentially-scaling "luxury tax" that increases as airlines grow? So there is an underlying "maintenance" cost of running an airline that gets bigger as the airline gets bigger that keeps you making a more linear profit curve rather than making money exponentially as the airline gets bigger.

 

Basically, at year 5, you can afford 10 A320s per year. In the current landscape, at year 10, you could afford 25,000 A320s per year. With a scaling airline-overhead cost, maybe you could only actually afford 20 A320s in year 10.

[Tesla]

What about an exponentially-scaling "luxury tax" that increases as airlines grow? So there is an underlying "maintenance" cost of running an airline that gets bigger as the airline gets bigger that keeps you making a more linear profit curve rather than making money exponentially as the airline gets bigger.

 

Basically, at year 5, you can afford 10 A320s per year. In the current landscape, at year 10, you could afford 25,000 A320s per year. With a scaling airline-overhead cost, maybe you could only actually afford 20 A320s in year 10.

Brilliant suggestion, but AE is not in development anymore until this community gets it's own developer team together to build AE4 itself

[SUJETO]

Brilliant suggestion, but AE is not in development anymore until this community gets it's own developer team together to build AE4 itself

please help me with a link, for this topic.. New versions are WORST than before ones... 

[Talamare]

Customer Preference

Introduce Customers that prefer Lower Prices and Customers that prefer Higher Reputation, make them each at most about 5-20% of any given Airport.

 

Reputation having a larger impact on Prices

If company A has 80% reputation

company B has 40% reputation

 

company B would need to lower their prices significantly to be able to compete, and even then they wouldn't get every passenger. They would be on equal footing.

 

IFS/IFE Reputation Affects Sales

No Minimal Sales. If an IFS/IFE is bad enough, then it will not sell.

 

Airplane Storage Requirements

Every Airplane you own must be stored, thus creating a new facility players must purchase to be able to expand. As well as punishing excessive spamming. 

Storage will be based on Plane Size, since we don't want to make the game become just Huge Planes.

[Marb1]

Hard drugs are the answer

NO.

[Marb1]

Hard drugs are the answer

NO.

 

Customer Preference

Introduce Customers that prefer Lower Prices and Customers that prefer Higher Reputation, make them each at most about 5-20% of any given Airport.

 

Reputation having a larger impact on Prices

If company A has 80% reputation

company B has 40% reputation

 

company B would need to lower their prices significantly to be able to compete, and even then they wouldn't get every passenger. They would be on equal footing.

 

IFS/IFE Reputation Affects Sales

No Minimal Sales. If an IFS/IFE is bad enough, then it will not sell.

 

Airplane Storage Requirements

Every Airplane you own must be stored, thus creating a new facility players must purchase to be able to expand. As well as punishing excessive spamming. 

Storage will be based on Plane Size, since we don't want to make the game become just Huge Planes.

YES

[Alleron airways]

induce this after i reach top `10 please

[Marb1]

induce this after i reach top `10 please

LOL! Good news for you (but not for many!), it may never be implemented because AE isn't getting regular updates AT ALL! Yuxi and the other devs don't seem to care!

[windairlines2018]

I love this game Yuxi; no matter what changes are made, I will be here enjoying it all the same.

 

There are a lot of great suggestions made already by people much more knowledgeable than I in regards to airline stuff. All I wanted to say was that if there are ways to slow or stop unrealistic airlines that would or could not actually exist in real life, I am all for it. Spamlines being monitored and/or dealt with in a way that doesn't turn the game into Database Empires or Spreadsheet Empires would be cool too.

 

No matter what, I would hope that if a small, regional airline that works hard to serve the small cities that other airlines don't care about or can't fly their widebody 300+ seat airplanes to are rewarded for their loyalty and willingness to serve those small airports. 

 

Keep up the great work and thanks for a great game!

[FlippRtheReaL]

Did anything from here even make it onto the game?

[buckeyecapsfan19]

Did anything from here even make it onto the game?

I definitely noticed, at least in the one hub world, that the lease prices have been adjusted upwards. A 757 that you could lease for about $888,000 a month (not sure of exact price) is now $1.1 million a month.

[KMRobinson318]

While I welcome efforts to curb constant expansion to megalomaniacal proportions, I'm finding the changes that have actually been implemented actually make it almost impossible to even get started - at least if one is playing realistically. Hiking lease prices and maintenance costs seems to actually discourage playing realistically, and just allows further domination by spamliners, using unrealistically dense seating layouts and unrealistically stingy IFS (for example, I've seen 8F 40C 315Y on an A340-300 more than once; in the real world you'd be lucky to get away with that even on an A340-600). Reputation seems to have very little effect on actual gameplay, as these spamliners still manage to win passengers away from competing airlines with realistic settings far too easily.

 

Sadly, the game has lost a lot of its fun for me as a result, as I can't even see a way of getting started playing with realistic settings.

 

So what should have been done instead? Here are a few of my suggestions:

 

1) Make legroom and IFS have more of an impact on competition. An airline running with seats crammed in as tightly as possible and offering a scam IFS should not successfully compete with an airline offering a proper IFS and reasonable density of seating, especially when the latter charges exactly the same price as the former!

 

2) Change the IFS configuration options to something a bit more like that of AirlineSim, with options for snacks, hot/cold meals, additional meals/snacks. Amenities such as pillows, headphones etc could be left as they are. This could be as detailed or as simple as the player chooses to make it.

 

3) No discounts for extending leases. That would make it a bit harder to continue to run older aircraft into the ground and would therefore encourage replacing aircraft rather than just continually expanding fleets.

 

4) Instead of having the maximum number of seats set as a default, make every player go through the aircraft configuration stage. Then we might see just a bit less of the lazy 0F 0C 660Y going on!

 

Feel free to disregard/debate any of the above.

[mistertrasher]

Definitely agree with AE Dev's point on transitioning away from a game model involving constant expansion of airlines. 

 

In a way, it will not be possible for AE Devs to make AE fully realistic in this respect though. In the real world we have many multitudes of airlines; there are over 5000 airlines with ICAO codes. At this moment, no single server in AE allows for more than 300 airlines or so. So without the competition that airlines face in real life, airlines in AE are able to make unrealistically high profits because most routes are simply run by one airline. This in turn means that airlines in AE virtually always turn a profit and can therefore buy additional aircraft ad infinitum. 

 

One way to solve this issue is by creating servers which allow for 5000+ AE airlines. I doubt this is feasible though as it could crash the server.

 

Another option would be for AE Devs to put upper limit caps on the number of aircraft that can be purchased from each series. For example, no airline would be allowed to purchase more than 70 from the B757s series, 50 from the A330s series, etc. To avoid disadvantaging those airlines who wish to operate as a RyanAir style European budget airline exclusively with B737s or A320s, the B737, A320 and any analogous class of narrow-body aircraft could be exempt from the caps. In this instance, geography and range limits on the B737 would constrict the size of the airline. Also to stop airlines from simply buying up to the cap for each aircraft series in the game and thus in effect building huge fleets of 600+ aircraft, AE Devs might consider increasing the base maintenance costs for each series of aircraft using a variable formula in line with the number of series of aircraft which an airline has. For instance, if an airline has B737s, A330s, B757s and B777s, the base maintenance costs for each of these aircraft series would be far higher than an airline which only operates aircraft in the A320 series. Indeed, in real life it costs airlines far more in maintenance the more aircraft the airline has from different series because they each require different maintenance practices and expertise. Perhaps AE Devs could also further increase the number of maintenance employees required by the AE airline. Not sure if all this is feasible though from a programming perspective - might require consequential changes to other things and this could be time consuming for AE Devs. Just some ideas. 

 

Also a more user-friendly way to replace older aircraft in need of retirement with newer ones purchased/leased using a 'click the box on the left hand side to replace all the selected aircraft at the same time' type function would be brilliant rather than having to click into each one individually. It becomes a HUGE hassle when you have large numbers of aircraft.    

 

Otherwise this is a great game. Brilliant attention to detail with all the different aircraft types. I love being able to buy my favourite commercial aircraft and set them on my favourite routes around the world.

 

Can’t wait to see a potential inclusion of the B777X when more information becomes publicly available to allow for this, or even the rumoured B797 several years from now. 

 

 

Thanks AE Devs!