Author Topic: Route Negotiation and Delegates  (Read 320 times)

Underwhelmed

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Route Negotiation and Delegates
« on: February 22, 2021, 03:25:23 pm »
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?
« Last Edit: February 22, 2021, 03:30:07 pm by Underwhelmed »

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patson

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Re: Route Negotiation and Delegates
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2021, 10:52:58 pm »
Many thanks for the <3 of the game and all the suggestions!

>Allow negotiations without purchasing the plane first... Perhaps only the aircraft model or flights/passenger volume needs to be specified?
I think this is a neat idea, unfortunately it will be quite hard to implement at this stage. Maybe in the next version if we revisit the whole flow of things :)

>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.

In fact, I have considered doing a "progress" things in the very initial design stage, but I ruled that out because I want 3 categories:
1. Negotiation that is outright impossible with the given situation
2. Negotiation that has a chance to succeed, but success is never guaranteed
3. Negotiation that can have 100% success rate

The problem with having a progress is that it essentially eliminates point 2 above cause as far as u try enough, u will be guaranteed a successful outcome. (also a little bit because of 1. , but later on I added cap of delegates assigned, hence it's irrelevant now)

Though I understand and agree with your concerns that:
1. Failed outcome is discouraging
2. The outcome seems a bit binary - actually that's exactly why I added "Great success" to add a bit of spice to the outcome

Having a partial success which affect airport fees/freq is possible but probably hard to implement also the outcome might actually be worse than failure in some edge cases (for example an airplane gets very low util rate due to reduced freq, that increases the depreciation rate per flight)

I am proposing adding a new "progress" modifier, that failed negotiation will add certain modifier to negotiation difficulty in next negotiation. The catch is, it will have certain expiration timer. For example it only lasts for 20 weeks. So that would fix the issue with trying enough might eventually give u a 100% (it might for some lower difficulty one, but im okay with that. As far as something in the 6+ range will not reach a guaranteed success stage im kinda okay with that

>Allow negotiations to be undertaken with fewer delegates but longer time commitment, or vice versa.
A bit too hard to implement and explain. Might cause confusion, so let's keep the system simple for now :)


Not sure if we can get the proposal in, i have some rough idea of how to do it, but it's not a super trivial piece of work neither...

Cheers!  ;D






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?
« Last Edit: February 23, 2021, 10:55:51 pm by patson »

Wine Air

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Re: Route Negotiation and Delegates
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2021, 04:00:23 pm »
What if in point "2 Negotiation that has a chance to succeed, but success is never guaranteed"  you could get an awareness boost or a loyalty boost in that airport for a few weeks. So if you failed, you still had something for the next negotiation. Maybe too complex?

Channel Airways

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Re: Route Negotiation and Delegates
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2021, 02:19:15 pm »
In fact, I have considered doing a "progress" things in the very initial design stage, but I ruled that out because I want 3 categories:
1. Negotiation that is outright impossible with the given situation
2. Negotiation that has a chance to succeed, but success is never guaranteed
3. Negotiation that can have 100% success rate

I don't agree with this. I think you unfairly ruled it out and you should rule it back in again.

In the real world partial success is the most common outcome. Both parties go into the negotiation with a certain standpoint and they find each other in the middle. Sometimes the negotiation turns a little more left, sometimes a little more right. Total success and total failure are both extremely rare.

In my opinion it can actually be very simple by replacing the chance of success with the actual success rate. Let's say you enter the negotiations with 60% chance of success, the outcome will be you get 60% of the slots you applied for. You can operate your flights at 60% of the planned frequency. The more delegates you use, the higher your success rate.

If that requires some code to be re-written, then so be it. Such is life.