I’m a casual player of this game, and I’m in a server that’s barely a month old (Yeager II). I’m getting crushed at my home hub STL by the main airline there. The airline already has a fleet of 43 planes. He’s got almost every potential market around me flooded with 2 daily flights that never fill, and his growth just won’t stop accelerating. He added 100 departures from our main hub in just a week. I’m worried that not only am I getting locked out of pretty much every market he has (which is the vast majority of cities on either coast of the USA) but it won’t be long before he enters into markets I already have a foothold in. I’m already getting pushed out of some cities I managed to set up shop in early, and I’m wondering what’s going to happen when the empty markets run out and he comes for where I’m operating next.
So I guess what I’m trying to get at here is, what even is the point of playing when a 5-year vet who started on the server’s day 1 will almost undoubtedly crush you? I’m just trying to slowly but surely build up an enterprise and this guy is moving at breakneck speed. Short of copying his prices (which defeats a lot of the game’s purpose) I feel like continuing to play is a pointless venture. Has anyone felt like this before and if so how do you work around it?
STL isn’t the best choice for a connecting hub due to the 90min transfer time.
He’s surely taking direct pax from you as sooner or later his connecting pax will be taken by faster and better connections.
Those can be yours if you pick a faster transfer hub and schedule in well timed waves.
I tried playing on Yeager for a few days. It was a few days after launch, and it was my first time seeing a lot of used aircraft available at server launch. My personal opinion is that the large availability of used aircraft presents incredible opportunity to players (1) with a lot of time to monitor the market for bargains, (2) a knowledge of “sweet spot” aircraft, and (3) an ability to schedule all of these aircraft. I spent a few hours examining the dynamics of (1) and (2), but found myself feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities of camping the market for cheap, large single-bodied aircraft for just a few hundred thousand AS$ and scheduling them.
Anyways, that’s a long way of saying that I would wait until a new gameworld launches without used aircraft at start, since it’s less likely that a competitor can move at “breakneck speed.”
AK does have some decent advice if you want to stay on the server. Lambert is not a fantastic hub, history aside. If you can build a successful transfer operation (you’ll need more than 4 planes), I’d up sticks completely and move to another airport.
edit: Nashville (BNA) is a pretty good hub with some decent O/D to boot. I just checked for you on Yeager, and there’s no airline based there at this time. Looks like one went bankrupt recently.
Yes guys, I can understand, but…
I’ve been playing on Xiguan since day 4, started on SEA, after 4 months I’ve got 1 A321, 2 A320 and 7 others regional airliners (avg. value of 21M AS$).
There is another player that already has: 34 A320, 45 A321, 40 A350 and 59 B787.
How is that even nearly possible???
I mean…there were no used aircraft at the beginning of Xiguan.
Just how??
Please, someone explain me this, I’ve been playing this sim for 9 months now.
Proper business model makes growth exponential, not linear. You have 21M assets after 4 months, while your competitor most likely had 21M assets after the end of week 1, or 10 days after the start at the latest. BTW 9 months is long enough playtime for you to have gained experience to be at 10x your current assets as a minimum. You definitely need to observe more and analyze more what you see. Critical thinking and structured business analysis is the key. I’ll give you a hint: it’s all about maximizing revenue while keeping relatively least possible cost. Note that I say relatively least possible cost, not the lowest cost.
no, my asset value is 260M AS$, I was saying that the average cost of each of my 7 regional airliners is 21M AS$ (excluding Airbuses).
And btw, my earnings are somewhat 1,5M AS$ a week and my revenues are at +23% circa per week.
So I don’t think is bad, considering my experience.
BTW, my question is partially answered, I’ll look more into the others business, there have been long periods of time in which I couldn’t dedicate more than half an hour per day to AS.
How do you have 260M AS$ yet only have two narrowbodies and 7 regional carriers? That makes no sense unless you’re buying rather than leasing the planes, which at game start is something you definitely shouldn’t do.
actually, I thought that assets means: sum of total aircraft values (like, if you buy them). I only leased them, actually where can i see my total assets value?
First of all, “only” starting at day 4 of a new server already gives you quite a disadvantage, because that means your competitors had 4 days more to generate some money.
You have to understand that growth is exponential, this is even more true in the first few months of a server, where the demand far exceeds the capacity. So while he probably only made just about 1 or 2 millions during that 4 days this enabled him to buy more aircraft quicker which will in return generate even more revenue.
Then, you really need to get all things right during the initial phase and adjust all settings at the very best time. (E.g. service/seating/ORS rating, prices etc. because in the beginning you can charge huge prices because customers have no options for travel.) So you have to hit the sweet spot when it makes sense to adjust those things to constantly generate the maximum profit possible.
This is exactly what I’ve done. Just like this is my first ever more-than-a-month company I’ve ever had (before I had almost no time to set it correctly).
21 Mio after 4 months… In which market?
I would say that you should have 20 Mio after 2 weeks on a new server in a normal competitive market. There might and will be other reasons why your competitors are performing better than you are.
crushing your competitors is part of it. Oh yeah if course having fun too