At the moment this game mechanic would be difficult to implement, so please take these suggestions on the assumption that processing power will significantly improve and be reduced in costs in the coming years.
In the long run, I would like to suggest that instead of a fixed flight pricing model, players can set a range of minimum and maximum prices, as in real life. As a simplified explanation, flights booked earlier will get booked at the minimum price, and flights booked on the day of the flight will be sold at maximum price.
The current ORS seems to be capable of booking flights within a 72 hour time frame. I understand that making flights bookable for up to 2 weeks would be nearly impossible for the system to handle, so this system will be implemented on the same 72-hour basis. Players can set a minimum price that passengers will pay if they book their flights at around 72 hours before departure, and a maximum price to pay if the flight was booked 3 hours before departure. The price increases at simple linear proportion, to keep processing simple.
I believe that when combined with the new ORS, this can add a new layer of strategy. Some airlines can set a very cheap initial price, but have a very expensive maximum price. Others may consider a more consistent price model. In this case, some airlines may have the ORS advantage at 72 hours before departure, but others may have the ORS advantage at 36 hours before departure, depending on their chosen strategy.
In the future, maybe a more complex system of fare buckets can be implemented, but that would probably take a long time and may require fundamental changes to the ORS.
I’d like to hear your thoughts!
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This actually sounds brilliant, but from a computing perspective, you’re right, it will take up a lot of resources.
Perhaps this idea can be simplified further, limiting price changes to only three changes before date and time of departure, as to only constitute three changes.
However, even with just three price changes, much of the ORS is calculated using a fixed pricing model, so even if pricing was changed, I’m not so sure if the demand for the flight would also change that much for the pricing to be meaningful
Instead of shutting down ideas, maybe we can work with them. Don’t just enumerate problems, because if that’s all we think about, then we shut down the conversation. Enumerate problems, then think of ways to mitigate them.
“Shutting down conversation is the recourse of the incompetent” Anonymous
I have been playing AS for a while back in 2015. When I came back with my new account, it was great to see changes to the new ORS, it changes the level of strategic planning that was sorely needed in game.
As such, perhaps this idea may not be meant for this time (as you have said, it’s gonna take a while). It took about 8 years before a new ORS, maybe in another 8 years, we can implement something like this.
I like the idea of dynamic pricing, albeit the idea doesn’t seem to fit well into the current framework of AS. A lot of demand calculations happen for several thousand airlines offering flights. Placing price changes, even for just three times, can easily triple the processing power needed to implement it.
I do have some background in system algorithms, perhaps there can be other solutions to optimize the system to be able to handle the kind of load a consistently changing pricing model would entail.
But keep those ideas coming. There are no bad ideas, only bad ways of responding to them. Welcome to airlinesim and we hope that you have a great time here!
That’s just rude man, Not. Cool.
But anyway, this idea would actually be great but it would need to be an entirely new game, in essence.
Airlinesim’s game dynamic is really more on overall management rather than micromanagement, hence a lot of the aspects of airline management are more simplified (e.g. lack of heavy maintenance). However, perhaps this idea can be implemented as an entirely new game mode, much like the Domination game mode.
The thing about this idea is that it’s not bad, far from it.
The problem with it, however, is that the ORS is still limited to just 72 hours (more or less) worth of bookings at a time, so the strategy challenge that you probably wanted to achieve by introducing dynamic pricing would be kinda meaningless. 72 hours is simply not enough to model the real world model of price buckets in flight booking.
However, this shouldn’t stop us, in the far future, from implementing an ORS that can make that possible. Maybe one day we can have an ORS which can divide seats according to their corresponding “fare buckets,” thereby making dynamic pricing more relevant.
Well thanks for your input guys! Perhaps it is a bit too early for this kind of game mechanic to be added, but thanks for keeping open minds.
I still hope that more aspects can be played with towards formulating strategies for airlines in AS, dynamic pricing is just one of the ways I thought of in achieving that. The airline industry, being as diverse as it is, means that there are many more ways through which we can implement additional challenges in-game.
Even though it’s a farfetched idea at the moment, I would still like to hear some more of your thoughts about it, regardless
I know why I said that. It was not meant to be offensive at all. Just stating crude reality.
P.S. Why everybody who so far has replied in this thread has joined AS just a few hours ago? Is this one person responding to itself ? 
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That was actually in development and that branch of development was stopped for the (several years) time being.
Any idea what went down during that dev period?
Sorry just noticed this by the way, yeah it was a lot of work creating a bunch of fake accounts just to write essays /sarcasm
But anyway, thanks for letting me know about the whole development thing. When I thought of dynamic pricing, all I thought was that “how was this never considered for inclusion in AS?” and apparently they already did. I hope they dont bin it permanently
Topic closed for a short time…