Author Topic: TripleA alliance thread  (Read 3180 times)

trans nations

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 58
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #15 on: October 03, 2018, 12:15:56 am »
Hi folks, if you are planning to get some traffic from China, please considering a connection to these hubs:

Urumuqi (URC) if starts from Europe/Mid-East/Africa  (this city is in north-west China)
Harbin (HRB) if starts from America/East Asia  (this city is in north-east China)
Changsha (CSX) in general.

Let's make more connection flights!

- TN
Used to be a decent airlines
Winner Winner x 1 View List

alex

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 198
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #16 on: October 03, 2018, 12:29:41 am »
Welcome!

I'm already running PVG CSX and PUS CSX, HND / ICN / PEK HRB, and XIY URC. I don't really have room to add routes unfortunately (I'm pretty much at route cap, and also soft-capped on slots at most bases.)

It looks like Rodina is already running a route to URC from Novosibirsk. I think Rodina, and to a degree BulAir from Narita, are the only other alliance members really positioned to run routes to those airports right now.

Stoich

  • Guest
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #17 on: October 07, 2018, 10:43:12 am »
A little late, but I found this thread lol.

Unfortunately I'm unable to open anymore regional or inter routes until I get base 12, I only have 4 more domestic left.

I guess even as the "enemy" can see :D I should give a few insights into my strategy.

I'm doing temp strategy right now, that will be transformed into my more permanent setup later. Basically Johannesburg and Dubai bases are used for unprofitable routes to uncovered countries for small rep bonuses with no other benefit. I'm running a bunch of those routes from Newark and Narita as well. Then there is 4 basses that are currently in the US that are there only for the route limits. I switch them between regional heavy and domestic heavy countries to maximize the route numbers for each. Eventually when it becomes unrealistic to grow the rep for an additional base I'll actually look to develop them into real basses.

My current strategy hinges on San Fran, Newark, Narita, Sofia and Amsterdam and creating a flow for the international routes. So far it has allowed me to build a few top end inter flights which ware financing my plane purchases where I still need about 60-70 billion only to expand sufficiently the routes I have right now. After that US and Japan are my targets for additional rep points, with South Africa and Dubai used to top off at the end. I'm aiming at 12 basses right now (150 rep points) and will consider if there is a viable path to 13 after that. In the meantime I've tried not to overtake Galactic in US market, but I may need to temporarily at some point for the additional rep points to get to the next base.

Long term my strategy is to develop at least 1 base in each region and sufficient feed routes within the regions for a global network. Using interconnecting international flights between the different basses and connecting the local hubs of others within the regions and with additional inter flights.

In the meantime the 4 basses in the US other then San Fran and Newark can be scrapped if someone wants to use them, just let me know.

vani56

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 59
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #18 on: October 07, 2018, 01:01:44 pm »
My biggest problem in the US is that I have a base in only 1 major airport - JFK and I am out of slots at airports like LAX, SFO etc. I don't know for how long I can keep milking New York....
I'm focusing a bit on Frankfurt right now.
P.S. We basically own the US so that's nice  ;D ;D ;D

Stoich

  • Guest
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #19 on: October 07, 2018, 01:43:44 pm »
My biggest problem in the US is that I have a base in only 1 major airport - JFK and I am out of slots at airports like LAX, SFO etc. I don't know for how long I can keep milking New York....
I'm focusing a bit on Frankfurt right now.
P.S. We basically own the US so that's nice  ;D ;D ;D

JFK can take a lot of traffic, keep adding routes to even smaller at first glance places. In the US you need just one more on the west coast or Dallas or Huston for example, I can free one of them for you. Frankfurt is good I was planing to make it my second major in Europe before you snapped it up lol.

Use this as a trick, make all your additional basses in a country where you get maximum regional vs domestic flights, then fill all those up from Frankfurt... then remove those basses and place them in US to get max domestic vs regional, then fill all domestic in US/Germany... this way you'll have a couple of dozen more routes then what you're limited to by base number. Also you'll be able to take over as #1 in Germany.

I'll expand flights from San Fran, Sofia and Amsterdam to Frankfurt to help. Unfortunately game does not allow a route from Newark to JFK, like it does in Tokyo lol.

At some point when I have the other ranking points secured I'll pass you in US for second spot to get the extra base, but will let you retake after.

vani56

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 59
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #20 on: October 07, 2018, 02:53:05 pm »
Sure it can, but slots are running out there too  ;D I'm not sure if I should upgrade to level 10 because the monthly costs are nuts. On the west coast I was thinking about Ontario maybe. I think it might steal some pax from the LAX area, but I'm not sure if the game works that way..
Same btw I was preparing to open a base in SFO. I saw it was free and started planning routes. And the next day BAAAM! You took it  ;D ;D ;D ;D
Yeah it's a nice trick! That's why I opened a base in San Juan. It gave me 12 regional flights  ;D
Feel free to do so! Let me know when and I will stop expanding for a bit!

alex

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 198
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #21 on: October 07, 2018, 05:56:20 pm »
Instead of upgrading to level 10, try to improve your quality a bit, either by nudging up service quality or by increasing the autorenew %.

For bases, the slot formula is basically (50 + 50 per level) * (average flight quality of all routes from that base, passenger-weighted). So anything that improves quality will give you slots, potentially a LOT of slots for a high-level base.

The three ways to increase quality: star rating of the specific route, service funding, and airplane condition.

Star Rating

Always have this at 5 stars. Just do it, I promise you, this is by far the cheapest way to increase quality. At 5 stars you are getting 30 route quality base.

Airplane Condition

This is a little complicated. Airplane condition's contribution to quality runs from 0 (at 0% condition) to 20 (at 100% condition). Your average condition is (100 - autorenew) / 2 %, i.e. 70% at a 40% autorenew. So every 10% you increase autorenew adds 5% to your average condition and adds 1 to your average quality. Note: when I say "average" I mean it, your quality will actually continuously decline and then jump up on any given route when the plane is renewed, and this means slots will appear and vanish over time.

The cost of a 10% increase in autorenew % is based on how much extra "adjusted" depreciation you will pay. The idea of "adjusted" depreciation is that if you are renewing at, say, 40%, then you are taking a 20% * 40% = 8% loss on the purchase price of the plane when you renew. If we re-amortize that 8% over the owned lifetime of the plane (i.e from condition = 100 to condition = 40), then that represents a 13.33% addition to the straight-line depreciation.

If you increase that autorenew to 50%, the addition is 20% of the straight-line deprecation. So the cost of increasing autorenew from 40% to 50% is equal to 6.67% of the straight-line depreciation listed on the income statement.

At 60% autorenew the adjustment is 30% of straight-line depreciation, which means the cost of increasing from 50% to 60% is 10% of the income statement's depreciation line item. i.e. the cost goes up as the autorenew goes higher. (At 100%, obviously, the cost would be infinite as you'd be constantly renewing every plane.)

Increasing airplane condition also provides some rewards in the form of reduced delays, although I won't really go into the formula for evaluating that here.

Service Funding

Every point of global service quality adds 0.5 points of quality to your individual flights. The cost of service funding is based purely on total passenger volume, not adjusted for mileage or anything. The cost is also quadratic. At service funding of $50 per passenger you will have a service quality of 50; at a funding of $200 per passenger you will have a service quality of 100. Note that this means that at a service quality of 100, you should be mentally adjusting your profits on any given route down by $200 per passenger which is almost never worth it unless the only routes you run are big moneymaking international routes. (And at today's margins, probably not even then.)

alex

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 198
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #22 on: October 07, 2018, 06:03:39 pm »
By the way, if you are tempted to read all of the above and conclude "wow alex put so much work into understanding this game and optimizing things, no wonder ALEX is a top airline" then nah, it's just

  • Haneda is an AMAZING HQ location
  • I realized service funding is a fuckin scam and ran lean on it (mid 50s to low 60s for most of my airline's life, now mid 60s), massively juicing my profits

Stoich

  • Guest
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #23 on: October 07, 2018, 08:22:33 pm »
I'm not sure about service quality as much though. Initially I was running it at 50% but noticed that whenever it went up a little further it would boost significantly passengers on all routes. I now keep it exclusively at 100% all the time and as soon as it goes below that I get a dip of about 10 mil profits on my routes.

Now some of that might be just routes that are very thin line calibrated and as soon as the line dips a bit the yo-yo starts and that is causing the loss of profits, but I've found it more profitable that way overall. In addition it pushes loyalty in airports which helps with extra slots as well as whenever there is competition from others.

Right now my service investment is at 126 mil and my cash flow is at 140-150 mil (that is excluding plane depreciation), not sure how that stacks up but I may run a lower service level test later on to see.

And yes Tokyo is probably the best HQ position in the game though I would argue that the better one is Narita, because everyone looks up Haneda first and in the game there is almost no difference between the two.

As for the US, just keep growing, don't worry about me, when the time comes I'll dump the planes in and increase the passengers by 50-60% overnight :D... first things first though, time to take 2nd in Japan and get the first 30 mil route in the game!

patson

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 915
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #24 on: October 07, 2018, 09:03:45 pm »
I'm not sure about service quality as much though. Initially I was running it at 50% but noticed that whenever it went up a little further it would boost significantly passengers on all routes. I now keep it exclusively at 100% all the time and as soon as it goes below that I get a dip of about 10 mil profits on my routes.

Now some of that might be just routes that are very thin line calibrated and as soon as the line dips a bit the yo-yo starts and that is causing the loss of profits, but I've found it more profitable that way overall. In addition it pushes loyalty in airports which helps with extra slots as well as whenever there is competition from others.

Right now my service investment is at 126 mil and my cash flow is at 140-150 mil (that is excluding plane depreciation), not sure how that stacks up but I may run a lower service level test later on to see.

And yes Tokyo is probably the best HQ position in the game though I would argue that the better one is Narita, because everyone looks up Haneda first and in the game there is almost no difference between the two.

As for the US, just keep growing, don't worry about me, when the time comes I'll dump the planes in and increase the passengers by 50-60% overnight :D... first things first though, time to take 2nd in Japan and get the first 30 mil route in the game!

That means i need to tweak the code lol
Sad Sad x 1 View List

vani56

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 59
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #25 on: October 07, 2018, 10:36:08 pm »
Well I hope you won't make it so the cheapest airline gets the passengers like in other similar games. And I hope you're not doing it to hurt his airline and help yours ;D ;D ;D
My service is 90 with plane renewal set at 70%. Maybe I should try to take it to 100?
I was considering upgrading some of the domestic 787 to a bigger plane.

Stoich

  • Guest
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #26 on: October 07, 2018, 11:14:19 pm »
Well I hope you won't make it so the cheapest airline gets the passengers like in other similar games. And I hope you're not doing it to hurt his airline and help yours ;D ;D ;D
My service is 90 with plane renewal set at 70%. Maybe I should try to take it to 100?
I was considering upgrading some of the domestic 787 to a bigger plane.

I keep at 60% the planes right now, it leads to some yo-yo effects from time to time on some routes, but it still only increases plane replacement costs by 33% only, while at 70% it would be 40%.

In terms of planes don't feel shy to use jumbos, especially between big airports. Even if you need to lower the prices to fill them up, they deliver a lot more "cattle" to the cash cow routes where the real profits are at anyway. Top 4 routes for me, generate half my profits.

alex

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 198
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #27 on: October 08, 2018, 12:39:35 am »
I'm not sure about service quality as much though. Initially I was running it at 50% but noticed that whenever it went up a little further it would boost significantly passengers on all routes. I now keep it exclusively at 100% all the time and as soon as it goes below that I get a dip of about 10 mil profits on my routes.

Now some of that might be just routes that are very thin line calibrated and as soon as the line dips a bit the yo-yo starts and that is causing the loss of profits, but I've found it more profitable that way overall. In addition it pushes loyalty in airports which helps with extra slots as well as whenever there is competition from others.

Right now my service investment is at 126 mil and my cash flow is at 140-150 mil (that is excluding plane depreciation), not sure how that stacks up but I may run a lower service level test later on to see.

My service investment is at $96 million and I run recurring profits in the $50-$60 million. If you cut service investment you will have to cut prices, but if you're currently losing $200 out of every ticket purchased it'll probably be worth it.

(Profits used to be in the $80s or $90s before a lot more competition came onto the scene.)

vani56

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 59
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #28 on: October 09, 2018, 01:07:17 pm »
Okay I need some advice on what to do. Now I make 18-20 mil a month( Before it was 60-70 ;D) And I'm worried its not gonna be enough for the replacement of airplanes overtime. I have the renewal set at 60%. I'm afraid my reserve is gonna melt with the next renewals and might even lead to bankruptcy. I have 4 billions now.  Also I don't know what to do with the service investment. It's at 74 now and I'm paying 120 mil for it.
My hands are tied in New York as my slots are negative 55 because of the low service quality. I was thinking of maybe upgrading some domestic JFK routes to 777 from 787 to reduce the frequency but I don't now if I should spend so much money on planes right now..
So yeah, I'm open for suggestions. ;D
« Last Edit: October 09, 2018, 01:13:10 pm by vani56 »

AlpineUngulate

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 50
    • View Profile
Re: TripleA alliance thread
« Reply #29 on: October 09, 2018, 01:48:03 pm »
I doubt that renewals will cost enough to push your long-run profits into the negatives given those stats FWIW