Furthermore I fear that this adjustment bugged the maintenance system (on Kaitak at least and obviously in the US only): I notice that fully sold out flights, Leisure Plus economy, modern aircraft type with age below seven years, suddenly produces maintenance costs at a rate that puts the whole flight into a negative margin. A drop of nearly 30 % within a few days. My airlines in Brazil do not see such a development. Ticket is written and it would be nice to handle this soon as it’s ruining good run airlines.
hi, yes, there’s a discrepancy unfortunately - we take the prices as soon as they’re available (which is mostly around thursday or friday), but our in-game prices are always tuesday values
thanks for sending a ticket, i’ll have a look at it 
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can you say what indicators are exactly used and maybe how this is converted into AS values?
sure! we use a table of real world kerosene prices and divide them by a factor to get the AS value
Is there a cap on how high the price would be? i think the latest price just increased to the highest in the AS history…
i understand following the real-life price is great, but at one point it’s going to make most of the airline unsustainable, especially since the index is also going the downtrend. I hope no one will go under because of this as when i see people lose their airline on the old server like Kaitak, they just don’t ever come back…
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Also, the price increase of about +30% comes almost immediately. AS prices are not weeks behind RL or so, maybe days, depending on source and update time. They just seem to use latest availabe value and set it for the whole week. RL price is already down again according to daily data I found from S&P. But yes, it has the potential to keep rising significantly without prewarning if further sanctions are imposed on Russia or the situation escalates or so.
Simulogics has always said that they don’t want daily business, therefore one don’t have to worry about weather conditions, strikes, airport/airspace closures, or whatever. So I still think that such changes should at least be dampened (perhaps the average of the/some week?) or tools should be implemented to hedge them (unlikely).
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I think it would be fine if fuel prices are no longer tied to real world prices. But there should be a good decision on how to implement that.
Should there be a completely separate system like the AGEX and if that then becomes a predetermined cycle is it then okay if over time, say ten years, the real world fuel prices are 3x higher than what they are now but in-game these stayed the same? Or should they rise over time to incentivize the usage of more fuel efficient aircraft? Because over time more fuel efficient aircraft are added to the game, passenger demand is changed to reflect real world changes as do airport changes (like Berlin, Beijing and Istanbul).
Or should there be a system introduced into the game to hedge against fuel prices and how should that be done?
And I mentioned this in before. Two years ago fuel prices reached all time lows, also in-game. A lot of airlines that are now seeing problems had big advantage then. If fuel price fluctuations would be a big problem it should have also been addressed back then.
Overall profits in Airlinesim have always gone up using new aircraft. Before we had the 787s we all operated 767, 777s, A340s and A330s and had lower margins. Then we got the 787 and A350. These increased the profit margins of airlines. Same with the A321NEO. That plane brought huge improvements compared to the older generations, again it increased profit margins. All these efficiency upgrades have come as costs have never increased in AS, only our profit margins have gotten higher. Generally, it is easier to make money in AS nowadays than it was before and with the right strategy you will be making more money today than you could before. Now that changes. For the first time in forever costs are also increasing. It makes the game more dynamic. Decisions need to be made, planes need to be changed and for the first time ever profits will decrease instead of constantly increasing.
It will again make airlinesim more of a challenge, more like the days before the 787 and A321NEO. The small connecting airlinesim has to the real world are the fuel prices. Let’s keep it that way.
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Maybe with newer aircrafts you had better margins, but those new aircrafts also not that cheap and if the competition doesn’t sleep, they will pull the margins back down because they have the same advantages. (Except, of course, in the case of local untouchable monopolies, but that’s another topic).
So how challenging is not the question about high or low fuel prices but active competition like in real life.
As mentioned before i don’t have neccesary have a problem with high fuel price as it could get priced into ticket prices over time. I have a problem with to fast changes needing time to maybe adjust tousands of flights, change aircrafts and things like that. Real world airlines have financial tools and paid staff to handle to fast price changes (how much they use it’s their business decision), AS has not.
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I’m not trying to say we should recouple the fuel price with real-life completely but to be also fair to say most of us are not doing AS full time, and there is no way airlines in real life will keep the ticket while fuel price increase that signficantly, which will be a huge task to do for players on AS manually, even if they decided to do so.
Christain, unfortunately, i would counterargue on point for the more efficient planes. If fuel price gets up to a point in which only the more efficient planes work, then you are pretty much forcing players to reschedule and change planes. That’s a huge task for most of the old players and also a surprise change as there is no way you are getting the fleet redo in weeks’ time. I don’t think people just foresee the price being this high just months ago, as you can see the fuel price ever got this high. Also, I thought that’s the whole reason new features like dynamics scheduling etc at not implemented on the older gameworld to avoid the whole fleet rescheduling. Sure, some of the older game worlds have players who are not as active as they would probably need to be, but that’s pretty much the dynamics of these game worlds. If the only way out is to switch to all new planes, unfortunately, I think the only thing that will happen is older players leaving the older servers and never coming back… If players want more active game dynamics, they will be on newer servers already…
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And even considering the whole question of older ORS. I’ve reviewed several internals of large successful enterprises from both ends. Old ORS is just a whole lot more profitable, and that is fact.
So yes, sure, let’s switch to more efficient models… but what about the markets that would be left behind? Saba, for one? Melilla? Bromma? and of course 3/4 of the islands between Hanoi and Hawaii… Those cannot be served by even a 290 on just purely practical purposes. I think that speaks more to the underneglectment of this market segment by the manufacturer (only ATR is making brand new <80 seat planes anymore)… but I’m not sure that just changing it all to the nice and shiny 321neo suits every kind of player. Certainly suits a Russian monopoly on old ORS… but for me it makes no sense.
I’m getting rid of a lot of my LETs, which I even have internally owned but still hemorrhage thousands per flight, but there are some markets I just have to chop, because there is no way I will ever be able to fill anything much bigger to those. Whatever happens to those demand pools then? Ground Network is somehow pushed down so far in ORS results every time it isn’t really a solution to the problem there…
Even with almost no dip in agex my margins change overnight. I can’t wait for the low season, then… 
ps. I agree, fuel reforms sure, but not tied to agex as that will just mean fuel price corresponds to season and that makes no sense. Maybe randomized projection with a range and a max slope per week, calculated a few years ahead?
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If we really wanted to keep realism 100%, how many of the airlines would have survived such a steep demand drop overnight in Mar20 even with free fuel? I don’t know of many…
And some words on hedging fuel and other things.
Hedging fuel would be an interesting mechanism to add, but it is open to a lot of exploitation (and as the senior members of this community know, if it’s up to exploit it WILL be exploited)
In my view it’s just a pampering tool for us the more experienced players, it means that any new player or market disruptor has another hurdle to beat the big guys. That in turn discourages further growth of a game with well documented issues to generate new players and keep them around and raise them to prominence… but of course due to the nature of the discourse, the natural naïvety and lack of developed opinion the newer player towards these advanced concepts, we just hear an echo chamber of the old Oligarchs (pardon the pun) wanting what is best for them…
And I’ll go into my usual shpiel about discouraging growth…
- We want dynamic world with tons of changing and adapt? How about… Competition! Also, someone with a completely different approach to the game can prove a breath of fresh air, especially in the worlds where it seems everyone uses the same cabin presets just to not upset each other in the ORS…
- Hedging fuel just means another monotony in cost and just fixing something else. Do we want this to be some sort of idle clicker? For that I would have stuck to AdVenture Capitalist… I want something to throw me a curve ball sometimes, and as much as it pains, one of the great lessons in life is adversity
- We should look at this from the business end too. The stagnation in income and rising operating costs as well as increases in CoL worldwide (especially in Germany) is known to make issues with Simulogics. The reliance on freelance work as a hindrance to further AS advances has been documented for years.
Now, for the company, does it make more sense to have more players playing in more worlds, or the bigger players paying multiple servers? I’m not sure, this math has to be sorted, but I would think in the long term it will be the former which pays off. Especially because due to the airlines being all but dormant in a lot of worlds pre Hoover (I haven’t heard of anyone in Stapleton or Nicosia for years!) not everyone will transition to ASTD or whatever is next. So that means that having a newer but more engaged playerbase will lead to more players hopefully making the hop.
That makes more sense to me. Encouraging new player growth should be, and I believe it is, a goal. I understand that the nature of such forums as this means that the voices heard are of the “elite” and that we’ll advocate for things that benefit us, but what about the airlines just looking to start out? Do we wanna discourage players from joining this wonderful community, and I think more important, breaking into these advanced topics? I would hope not…
Plus hedging fuel could lead to an overdependence of new players on old players for a hand in starting out. While doing this in old ORS is pretty much the only way to go to stay alive, due to mentorship of concept and cheap leases, why do we want to encourage such motives further? I don’t wanna have to take the brunt of training people in order to grow the base, and then we have schools of thought running around like we’re a bunch of psychologists that can’t agree on stuff…
I want new players to be able to make it without a handout and on their work alone. While that might be a fantastical dream, I want to encourage dreaming and hope. I hope some others want to do likewise as well.
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I am not against trying realistic demand, even vouched for it in brainstormings back in the day. Although, it will almost be impossible to model. The data is not there real time. Even in the unlikelihood that AS gets good data it will already be 1 year old at that point, reliable data was always a problem when implementing new aircraft or looking at demand. It’s just impossible. Even with the pandemic. Some markets and market segments fared better than others. With fuel it’s the same for all of us, we are all challenged by the same thing.
There is a reason why nobody except for ATR even make those small planes anymore. Not even real world airlines want them.
AS is a hard game, I didn’t get it at first. I had a great mentor who thought me the game. I have also mentored many players. Although, your suggestion has some merit. Maybe a Gameworld for beginners should be made with loads of demand, what Quimby 1 used to be. A game world to learn the basics. But no need to push this free for all on all of us. Some worlds are just very hard. You cant do much about it. On a world like Idlewild it’s impossible as a newbie to start an airline in one of the big markets (EU, US, China, etc) and survive. Old players with countless billions will immediately take all your pax regardless of fuel price. Even if fuel was completely free, a completely new player wouldn’t survive in those markets. I promise you that. Active players wont magically appear because the game is super easy, it just doesn’t work that way.
P.S In real life I have many times flown A319s and E190s to Bromma. Don’t see why you cant fly time in AS too.
I think the high fuel prices are a more of a blessing to new players than a burden. The high fuel prices can cause these old airlines to either go bankrupt, or don’t have the money to compete for example because you find a corner of the market where the big airline(s) need another aircraft for that require a for them expensive new maintenance category or because the new player can use a very fuel efficient aircraft the big airline can’t find within the already used maintenance categories.
This is also the reason why IRL situations with adversity lead to more successful startups.
These players sit on so many billions that they can loose money for years and still stay alive, nothing can touch them.
I have to call bullshit on this one. Sure, they’re a burden to the old players but so they are to the new player. Especially in a market where they may be only able to fill 190s, the 190 with that fuel price leads to an incredibly low or no growth rate due to tiny margin, so they can only fantasize about ever growing to a position to challenge, much less win that battle.
That means that everyone has to start with big fuel efficient planes to get any growth and it’s damn hard to fill big planes (and make them turn a profit at 100% lease) if you don’t know what you’re doing.
And as christian said, hope the giant has little cash reserves and/or has been bleeding for years.
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Tell that to the payload performance tools…
The core question is: what does AS want to be?
The game mechanics work in a way that you put in a real effort to find a good working strategy on a specific market. Once found you really do not need to monitor all your flights continuously. I knew my airlines work this I don’t need to look at them every day. Yes, this is possibly endangered by some new player that finds the niche he may be threaten my airline. And that’s fine.
I have never experienced a dramatic change like this and I’ve been here since 2008. Speaking for myself, I really haven’t seen this price explosion coming although I closely watch news and follow world politics. I have been caught by surprise. My freshly started airline in the US, that runs successfully with MDs. almos overnight lost most of it’s liquidity and will soon perish as I’, not able to get new planes that fast (for monetary reasons) and I’m not able to plan all the flights (for time reasons).
So, back to the core question: does AS want their game to suddenly change gaming approach toward “quick responses are urgent”, though this has never been the case before? The question is NOT: does AS want to be realistic? (!)
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