Hi,
First, let me say that Version 2 looks great and is clearly a labor of love. I think the new strategic investment options and events will really liven the game up and add longevity!
One suggestion I'd like to make is to reconsider how negotiating a route currently works. Right now, you select a route, pick enough delegates for a good chance of success, and then either succeed or not. In my opinion, setting up routes would benefit from having a range of possible outcomes instead of a binary pass/fail. As a new airline, it really does feel terrible to fail. You end up locking up a good portion of your delegates with nothing to show for it and there's no guarantee of success the next time either... meanwhile, that aircraft you purchased as a prerequisite is just sitting there and losing money. This is compounded by the fact that each aircraft can now serve multiple routes, so scaling flights up to achieve 100% aircraft utilization can be lengthy. Furthermore, if you've got delegates locked up running a campaign or improving relations, there are some routes that can be impossible to establish. I admit I cheated a little by declaring bankruptcy 3 times before I got my first route just because I didn't want to wait for weeks to try again.
I have some suggestions that I hope you'll consider:
- Allow negotiations without purchasing the plane first... Perhaps only the aircraft model or flights/passenger volume needs to be specified?
- Instead of outright failure, allow a range of outcomes. It seems like the current system has delegates serve as dice and their rolls add up to a score - if you roll higher than the target, you succeed, and if not, you fail. I'd propose varying the airport fees and flight slots - if you roll low, you get high fees and few slots and vice versa. This also adds a dimension of balancing between quantity and quality of your routes. As the airline gets up and running, this also allows for the possibility of renegotiating for better rates.
- Allow negotiations to be undertaken with fewer delegates but longer time commitment, or vice versa. So maybe a contract requires 12 delegate-weeks to sign - somebody could assign one delegate for 12 weeks, or three delegates for 4 weeks, etc. Or a total dice roll of 36 to achieve, and each delegate accumulates one roll a week - if you roll high, you get better terms?