Just to be clear, this isn’t a fuck this, fuck that post. I’ve been playing Airlinesim for a few years now and have gotten a ton of enjoyment out of it. I will say however, that AS in its current form still feels like the exact same game I started playing in 2018. looking back through the blog, the last gameplay mechanic that was added was cargo conversions over a year ago.
I get that it’s a small team and that it’s not going completely undeveloped (looking at the ASTD), but I do feel like the game could use a round of gameplay improvements:
- Making it easier to see waves in flight scheduling.
Even when I’ve had an airline for a few months I’ll ask myself “is this plane supposed to arrive at 1600 or 1800?”. This feature could be particularly helpful when starting out as well when players aren’t as familiar with their wave times. It could be implemented by having a “add wave” button somewhere in the scheduling page. Clicking on it would bring up a box and you could select the airport and arrival/departure times, making a wave with arrival/departure times below the MCT would give an error. You could also name the wave like “Toronto Morning” or Montreal Redeye". You could make it so that the wave only appears on the scheduling page when you are actively scheduling a flight to/from the airport tied to the wave.
- Make drafts of aircraft schedules.
Right now, when I’m trying to plan the schedule of an aircraft entering my fleet I basically have to delete the schedule of an existing aircraft then build the proposed schedule. This is the only way to see what the schedule’s aircraft’s maintenance ratio is. If you don’t already own the type of aircraft you’re trying to plan for, you’re out of luck. I know you can technically make flight numbers and add speeds to them to sort of achieve this, but it’s not a complete feature. You could make it by adding it to the scheduling page “draft a schedule” you would add the type of aircraft, it’s cabin configuration (if you’ve made one) and then make a hypothetical schedule of a aircraft you don’t own (yet).
- Allow for custom cabin configurations with the “aircraft type evaluation” tool.
Being able to compare two different aircraft with two different seating configurations would be greatly useful. As of right now the tool makes the player do mental math to determine true flight income. Furthermore this would take advantage of the existing ability to create cabin configurations for aircraft the player doesn’t own.
- More options for scheduling flights
Right now when the player wants to create a flight, they get one option, the departure time, in terms of scheduling. When players are making flights that are arriving at a hub, they don’t care about the departure time, all that matters is what time the flights arrives at. Instead of having to give the departure time by default, give the player a chance to give the arrival time from the start. you could even build hub waves into this feature, giving the player the ability to “bookmark” specific times on the scheduling page making it easier to schedule flights at regular times.
- expand the statistics page
I absolutely love comparing my airline to others around me. The competitive factor of AS is a significant part of what makes it fun to me. Adding more statistical information to see about the competition would enhance this even further. Adding other airline load factors in 5% increments (ie:%95-%100, %90-%95) would help new players to see how they stack up. It’s not like the load factors of other airlines is hard to calculate, just divide weekly pax by weekly pax capacity for a close but not exact number. This method might not be intuitive for new players (it wasn’t for me). It would be good to be able to compare airlines directly as well.
These are just a few suggestions that I’ve had rattling around my head for the past few years. Who else feels like AS has had a drought of new gameplay features?