Post reply

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.
Name:
Email:
Subject:
Message icon:

Verification:

shortcuts: hit alt+s to submit/post or alt+p to preview


Topic Summary

Posted by: Lukemal
« on: February 20, 2021, 02:30:13 am »

Dear all
I wish to highlight the following "roadblock" to a successfully growth IMHO:
I do not understand the principles behind the "airport upgrade". I am a small start up, just "regional"...but to improve my service, quality and more over number of flights, I have to pay more than 17M (!!!) and, if I am lucky, It will take "ages" to have those money in my account.
Why have this huge gap? Why not think to a "gradual" progression in order to help start up airlines to build new offices and facilities with a lower amount of money?
Just to understand if the is a possible way  ??? ::) :-[ :-\
Posted by: patson
« on: October 24, 2018, 11:52:02 pm »

Thanks all for the input so far!

I am going to work on Lounges first (just started some coding yesterday) and perhaps airport expansion later

For an invisible link connecting airport, yes i remember that idea and i actually did think of implementing it. I guess i just forgot about it and we have discussed many things before lol

I agree the profit margin will be thin no matter what as airlines competing for dominance, unless airlines put in some price agreement to avoid choking eachother out  :D

I wouldn't want airline to just build lounge in every hub (probably not possible as it requires being top N passenger volume before one can be built) but i will think more of how to make it more strategically fun !



Posted by: AlpineUngulate
« on: October 24, 2018, 01:27:35 pm »

The thing is almost everything ends up margin-compressing in the end.

I can think of a few things that could counteract it here or there. Loyalty programs would be one. (They also help expand margins in real life.) But for the most part, everything is margin-compressing.
Posted by: Stoich
« on: October 24, 2018, 11:15:51 am »

As for the lounges, please forgive me, but you're creating a bonsai tree to place as the main attraction in a forest. Too many rules, hurdling players into same use, too limited and with little impact means it will just become a cash dump and nothing more  - actually probably even lowering margins further rather then expanding the economy.

Essentially everyone will be building them to the highest possible level at all their basses and hubs regardless of cost with the only real benefit of generating a bit more business and first class traffic which is offset by the additional costs which might end up being higher.

Remember the "sand box" aspect of the game. don't over complicate and over regulate players into death of boredom, yes balancing is harder,  but over-structuring removes the most important part of any game player initiative.

Posted by: Stoich
« on: October 24, 2018, 11:05:21 am »

Now onto Airport expansion :D

Goals:
1. Airport expansion should be one of the "ultimate" project (hence pricey)
2. Airport expansion should require involvement of multiple airlines beyond certain scale threshold
3. Airlines that contribute to the airport expansion will be provided with some permanent slots
4. Airport expansion affects the "population radius" of an airport. Hence it will see more population coverage after the expansion, other close by airport will see a drop in population coverage

I am concerned about #4. In particular, it gives me an easy way to dump my massive (nine figure) pile of cash onto kneecapping Narita :P.

Actually #4 makes me think that a valuable and probably-easy addition to the game would be something Starlight proposed a few months ago: a recognition that some airport serve the same metro area and pooling their populations. His suggested implementation was, as I recall, invisible zero-cost infinite-capacity connecting flights between, for example, IAD and DCA. (Maybe prevent these flights from counting against the 4 hop limit?)

Actually Narita is at 7 and Haneda at 9, so it would be Haneda that gets kneecapped when both are at 10.... 3 expansions vs 1.

I would amend things at least that an airline can at a greater cost upgrade their HQ airport alone. Otherwise you're just implementing another reason not to pick any but the biggest airports as starting points as it might be impossible to get enough people to upgrade. More in general however that rule will cause problems down the line as people are able to create and run multiple airlines and fund expansions that way.

I think there should be a set cost that needs to get met and which can get met by "contributions" by any combination of airlines. After the cost is met, the project would have a set amount of time for completion, however others can contribute 5% of the cost to speed the project up by 1% of the time and still get rewards for it. Make the slot rewards a set number and award them based on share of contribution (including after initial cost is met).

For example:

Airport: level 4 to level 5
project start cost (non refundable): 800 000 000 (40% of funding cost, this cost would be non refundable and would be payed by the airline initiating the project, it will not be part of the actual funding)
Project funding (refundable - 90%): 2 000 000 000 contribution required (this is just totally hypothetical for example purposes only) (this can be funded in chunks of 5% of cost with any player able to fund from 1 to 20 of those chunks)
funding window: 5 years to raise funds (meaning after the first contribution the project remains open for further contributions until full for 5 years, if funds not contributed by then, refund and close)
project duration: 20 years ( possible to speed up by up to 20% by other airlines for contributing 5% of the cost during construction - 1% speed up per contributing airline with 20 airlines the limit)
slots distribution: 45 slots distributed based on contribution (40 slot purely representational and 5 for main contributor)

The reason for this is to guarantee the ability of airlines to "get in on expansions" while still allowing the freedom to do so alone. By adjusting the cost for expansions per tier as to make it an expensive proposition to do so alone will be enough to limit the ability of top airlines to dump a lot of cash alone. On the other hand it will prevent alliances from being able to "game" certain airports while other smaller alliances or individual players cannot find enough backers for their smaller and middle sized airports. It would actually create an incentive to start HQs in medium and smaller sized airports with the potential promise of extra slots via expansions down the line. It will also allow players to join in regardless and create a small bonus (faster completion) for collaboration, but not big enough that alliance "gaming" can disadvantage other players.

Also somewhere there should be a space where players can see what airport expansions have been initiated and where.
Posted by: alex
« on: October 23, 2018, 12:52:31 pm »

Yeah, the easy answer there is to just apply the usual connecting flight penalty (i.e. ~$25 off the ticket price).
Posted by: AlpineUngulate
« on: October 23, 2018, 12:08:18 pm »

I said near-zero cost: as in the critical thing is that it's not quite perceived as zero to the passengers.

There should be some folks with a built-in preference for Newark over Kennedy and vice versa, but not such a strong preference that they'll bounce around the world rather than take a direct out of the neighboring airport.
Posted by: alex
« on: October 23, 2018, 08:15:36 am »

Now onto Airport expansion :D

Goals:
1. Airport expansion should be one of the "ultimate" project (hence pricey)
2. Airport expansion should require involvement of multiple airlines beyond certain scale threshold
3. Airlines that contribute to the airport expansion will be provided with some permanent slots
4. Airport expansion affects the "population radius" of an airport. Hence it will see more population coverage after the expansion, other close by airport will see a drop in population coverage

I am concerned about #4. In particular, it gives me an easy way to dump my massive (nine figure) pile of cash onto kneecapping Narita :P.

Actually #4 makes me think that a valuable and probably-easy addition to the game would be something Starlight proposed a few months ago: a recognition that some airport serve the same metro area and pooling their populations. His suggested implementation was, as I recall, invisible zero-cost infinite-capacity connecting flights between, for example, IAD and DCA. (Maybe prevent these flights from counting against the 4 hop limit?)
Posted by: patson
« on: October 23, 2018, 12:45:26 am »

I am going to post a draft here about the design of the upcoming airport lounges and expansion projects to gather inputs and ideas, keep in mind that these are only "drafts" and suggestions are welcome as always:D

Airport lounges:

Goals:
1. Provide airlines a strategic option that is unique to existing game mechanics, it should NOT be something that gives similar impact as other existing options such as service investment/service quality etc
2. It should be restrictive in a sense to stimulate "competition" with other rival airlines and collaboration among alliance airlines. Yet it should not be overly restrictive that only benefits established airlines
3. It should NOT adversely impact the existing demand - ie, most airlines should NOT see a big drop of passengers once this is released - it might see "some" impact if rival airlines builds high grade airport lounges though

Design:
1. Airline can only build lounge in an airport when:
  1. The airline has a base/HQ in an airport with base size 4 - Lounge Lvl 1, size 6 - Lounge Lvl 2 and size 8 - Lounge Lvl 3
  2. The airline has to be the top "N" airline in passenger volume of that airport - which N is the airport scale - 4. Ie if it's a scale 5 airport, only the 1st top airline can build Lounge there. For a scale 9 airport - top 5
airlines.  If the airline falls out of the top "N" after building the lounge. The lounge will not be bulldozed, however, it will no longer have any effect (nor incur any costs) until the airline re-acquires the top N spot
  3. Lounges have a fixed construction cost based on scale, the maintenance cost is based on the Lounge level and airport country income + volume of business and first class passengers (including alliance members) * a flat rate
  4. Alliance members share lounges. However, when using a lounge that is not owned by current airline (ie owned by other alliance member), the airline would need to pay extra money per passenger to the other alliance member that operates the lounge. This rate will be slightly higher than the flat rate in point 3. Which means a really popular lounge can actually create some profit.
  5. Existing group of business and first class passengers would have a rather randomized preference of the importance of lounge service (ie it will have varying effect to the "perceived price".
  6. New group of business and first class passengers (extra passengers for those classes) will be introduced. This new group will ONLY pick an airline with lounge service for ALL airports along their route

Now onto Airport expansion :D

Goals:
1. Airport expansion should be one of the "ultimate" project (hence pricey)
2. Airport expansion should require involvement of multiple airlines beyond certain scale threshold
3. Airlines that contribute to the airport expansion will be provided with some permanent slots
4. Airport expansion affects the "population radius" of an airport. Hence it will see more population coverage after the expansion, other close by airport will see a drop in population coverage


Design:
1. Have not decided on pricing yet. But the expansion cost is going to be exponential to the current scale and cap at scale 10. It should be relatively cheaper if the airport is close to fully utilized (so the city will probably be more willing to fund more of it - will probably show a % of how much the city willing to pay for the upgrade)
2. Airport expansion would require N airlines to participate before it can start. For airport scale >= 4 : N = current airport scale - 2 ; otherwise N = 1
3. Any airline might "initiate" the airline expansion proposal if it's not already initiated. Other airlines can participate in the project after it's initiated. Once the amount of participants have reached. The airport expansion will start. If after a LONG time - maybe ingame 20 years - that's around 10 days real time, the project still have not gathered enough support, half of the money will be returned to all the participants. This is to prevent some super rich airline from participating in all airports
4. Airport expansion would require some time to finish - the duration is also likely relate to the scale
5. The construction cost is evenly split among the participating airline and must be fully paid when an airline decide to initiate/participate in the project
6. Airline that participates in the expansion will receive 10 extra permanent slots from that airport once the upgrade is finished



kekeke. Just some really quick ideas that, could definitely use more brains here  :D

Development is still kinda slow lately as I have been quite tired (probably too many activities and traveling in the last few months). Hopefully I can get back on track in Nov/Dec - I do have some paid vacation days that i need to burn before year-end so I might spend some of them coding  ;D

Thanks for your support again!