How to take it to another level :)

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
1

These are ideas I have based on real world experience that could make things more involved.

1) just like adding more FA's to an aircraft's configuration helps we should be able to hire additional ground, logistics, and customer service personel to increase passanger ratings. One of the largest differences between a legacy airline and an ultra low cost carrier is personel for the job.

2) Weather tie ins.  I'm not computer ace so I can't really tell you how to do it but on the FAA and other websites you can find airport delays etc due to weather. It'd be cool to add a little artificial intelligence to the game where your flights can be diverted, canceled (no financial hit since it's an act of God just no income), and ground delays.  To combat this you'd hire extra crew schedulers and flight dispatchers to help increase the efficiency of the operation. If you skimp on either your aircraft will take longer to get where they need to go possibly causing canceled flights later on. With more schedulers and dispatchers you could bring those probabilities down kind of like maintenance percentages.

3) New form of alliances. I think if you are in an alliance you should automatically have IL agreements with every member. Have a fee for being part of the alliance. The director can then use these funds to do things like pay for IL agreements, marketing/advertising, and pay the salaries of personel working the alliance. It would be interesting to give the alliance the ability to help establish slot swaps, routes, etc.

4) IL agreements with improved cost for creating or disabling. Right now it's a click of a button but there should be money tied to is so people are more picky when chosing someone. If someone quickly accepts then backs out they should be penalized.

5) Negotiable fees and supplies.  If an airline is going to make a hub in St. Louis then they should pay less in landing and other fees then someone doing one flight per day.  Also players in a declared hub should be able to negotiate fuel contracts. This could be a plus or minus for the player depending on how much fuel they buy and when they buy it. It would not be a requirement but a separate market to purchase large contracted quantaties of fuel could add a whole new dynamic of the game.

6) Airlines that declare a city a hub should receive a form of marketing boost or additional pax/cargo demand.

7) Slot swapping. There should be the ability to sell or swap slots to other players.  These swaps would be subject to approval just like Department of Transportation does now.

8) Airline marketing. Airlines could put up to X% of funds per week for to increase their pax demand.  Take a look at airline-empires.com to get a quick look at what they did. Basically you spend a percentage of income and it increases your ORS rating. 

9) Ability to sublease aircraft or form fixed fee contracts.  Just like United, Delta, American etc in the United States it'd be fun to buy regional aircraft and then contract that flying to maybe new or smaller players.

These are just random thoughts from my idle mind. I'm sure if you change one variable you change everything so I'm just tossing it all out there.  Have a good day :)

2

1. Pretty good idea, in general. I'd think this should go into the eventual "Marketing" area that could include personal airline lounges for "preferred customers" and the like.

2. Weather would be a huge headache. This game has enough micromanaging in it. Can you imagine having your planes not take off because of the weather, then miss the next six flights, and have them all cancelled, and have to pay back the ticket prices? Airlines would go broke overnight. Thousands of flights are cancelled every day around the world because of weather (and other reasons). I think it would drive most players absolutely insane with having to divert planes manually. If you are wanting to put it on the server to create some kind of AI to battle this, you are going to end up with huge lag times and a lot more server issues than happen currently. In theory, it's a good idea. Practically, I don't think it would ever work.

3. As for alliances, I don't automatically want ILs with my alliance partners. The current alliance I have has several in Europe. I don't fly to Europe right now. Why should I pay money every week for an IL agreement with an airline that I simply cannot connect to? I'd rather not lose the money.

4. ILs do cost money, every week. Depending on the size of the airlines that are interlining, you are paying staff to work specifically on ILs. Why should I have to pay more?

5. I like the Hub idea, but not so big on the fuel one. If you track the price of fuel over the long-term, it varies very, very slightly. Like, within $1 AS to $5 AS per flight. That's very small compared to other fees. Now the landing fees and such... I like that idea. What I don't get is why is there this big deal about paying for slots? You are paying for slots. It's called Landing Fees and ATC fees. Why is everyone wanting to pay more money when the point is to make money?

6. Another good idea, to go along with the Hub thing from #5.

7. Lots of micromanagement, and a strong possibility for bug exploiting. Not sure how the bug would work, but it just sounds like an exploitable hole.

8. Marketing has long been a goal of AS, and there are many threads on this in the forums. Take a look at them... some of them are excellent ideas, and are more in-depth than just saying, "Pay X amount of dollars, get Y boost to your ORS ratings."

9. Leasing from players can be a headache to begin with. Subleasing could create even more headaches. In the real world, subleasing works because it's in everyone's best interest, and because there are laws and regulations in place for that. On a simulation like AS, if someone decides (rightly or wrongly) that the lease/sublease is wrong, it could really mess up someone's airline. AS could put in "laws and regulations" but it would hamper the market more than allow it to be open and free choice, which is what it is now. It could use some work, I agree... but I don't know what that would be. :)

All in all, some good ideas.

3

I will address just some points

INTERLINE - make option for an airline to pay its IL partner’s fee or its portion. You want to interline with me but I already have IL partner in your country and you are too small to bring me additional benefit? Well pay my interline cost, what it costs for me to interline with you.

MARKETING - Airline empires is not a good example because your marketing is really not that important to making billions. But Airwaysim has important marketing feature. If no Marketing then no route and company image. Your company image affects the bookings you get and smaller image value is required for domestic flights, higher for medium haul, and high company image for intercontinental service. With low image you will get fewer bookings in Y and very few in C and F. Also there is route image, which affects your per route booking. If you have just opened the route you wont get more than 50% LF. As time goes on your route image grows. Route image is basically a route awareness by pax. You can accelerate route image by route specific campaign. If you stop flying the route your RI starts to drop. Also in Airwaysim frequency matters, if you have more frequencies than your competitor you get more bookings, but frequency effect is limited to 7 flights per day, also flights departing within 60 mins of each other are counted as one flight.

WEATHER - airwaysim has random weather strikes you do not get revenue but your aircraft flies the next flight. AS could do the plane appear at next departure point.

Also staff mood affects cancellation, if your staff is unhappy it will have strike and your flight will get cancelled. Here the airline should be responsible.

4

When I mention joining the alliance and automatically IL with everyone I meant no individual fees. You would just pay a fee collected by alliance. That money could in turn be used for things like terminal upgrades, etc., which could impact the ORS.

5

But wouldn't that make it unfair for people not in an alliance? 

The current fees are the wages of the staff required to run the interlining deal therefore the fee collected by the alliance in your suggestion must be equal to the wages of the staff required to interline with all of the airlines in the alliance otherwise it would be unfair to other airlines not in alliances.

Alliances should offer no advantage to airlines that join them other then a tool for communication and co-operation as they are in their current form. As soon as alliances start to have other in game economical benefits then you will end up with 100's of alliances with just 1 member so that that 1 member can also have the same advantage as the other alliances.

6

Can you imagine having your planes not take off because of the weather, then miss the next six flights, and have them all cancelled, and have to pay back the ticket prices? Airlines would go broke overnight. Thousands of flights are cancelled every day around the world because of weather (and other reasons). I think it would drive most players absolutely insane with having to divert planes manually.

We are paying staff of the flight ops every week and they should do their work B)  ;)

7

We are paying staff of the flight ops every week and they should do their work B)  ;)

Cannot. Agree. More.

:)

8

Can you imagine having your planes not take off because of the weather, then miss the next six flights, and have them all cancelled, and have to pay back the ticket prices? Airlines would go broke overnight.

I think in his idea, you don't have to pay back the ticket prices. So I think Airlines wont be affected that hard.

see:

no financial hit since it's an act of God just no income

 

9
...

2) Weather tie ins.  I'm not computer ace so I can't really tell you how to do it but on the FAA and other websites you can find airport delays etc due to weather. It'd be cool to add a little artificial intelligence to the game where your flights can be diverted, canceled (no financial hit since it's an act of God just no income), and ground delays.  To combat this you'd hire extra crew schedulers and flight dispatchers to help increase the efficiency of the operation. If you skimp on either your aircraft will take longer to get where they need to go possibly causing canceled flights later on. With more schedulers and dispatchers you could bring those probabilities down kind of like maintenance percentages.

3) New form of alliances. I think if you are in an alliance you should automatically have IL agreements with every member. Have a fee for being part of the alliance. The director can then use these funds to do things like pay for IL agreements, marketing/advertising, and pay the salaries of personel working the alliance. It would be interesting to give the alliance the ability to help establish slot swaps, routes, etc.

4) IL agreements with improved cost for creating or disabling. Right now it's a click of a button but there should be money tied to is so people are more picky when chosing someone. If someone quickly accepts then backs out they should be penalized.

5) Negotiable fees and supplies.  If an airline is going to make a hub in St. Louis then they should pay less in landing and other fees then someone doing one flight per day.  Also players in a declared hub should be able to negotiate fuel contracts. This could be a plus or minus for the player depending on how much fuel they buy and when they buy it. It would not be a requirement but a separate market to purchase large contracted quantaties of fuel could add a whole new dynamic of the game.

6) Airlines that declare a city a hub should receive a form of marketing boost or additional pax/cargo demand.

7) Slot swapping. There should be the ability to sell or swap slots to other players.  These swaps would be subject to approval just like Department of Transportation does now.

8) Airline marketing. Airlines could put up to X% of funds per week for to increase their pax demand.  Take a look at airline-empires.com to get a quick look at what they did. Basically you spend a percentage of income and it increases your ORS rating. 

9) Ability to sublease aircraft or form fixed fee contracts.  Just like United, Delta, American etc in the United States it'd be fun to buy regional aircraft and then contract that flying to maybe new or smaller players.

…

Your ideas are interesting, but I doubt the positive effect would justify the work that needs to be done to implement them.

With the following I disagree:

2) and 8): Both of your suggestions will have the same outcome. The more you pay, the higher your benefits. In consequence, the effects of such features are zero as everyone can and will do it.

Marketing as you describe it is useless for the same reasons. The real marketing (better say advertizing) has a lot to do with perception, emotion etc. Scaling the effect of advertizing simply based on the dollars spent is pointless. There needs to be other effects to determine the success of advertizing, but such effects can hardly be simulated. We already have the airlines overall image factors - that should do as far as advertizing goes.

3): IMO, alliances are the legalized form of multi-accounting. Giving more power to alliances doesn't help the game - unless the team really wants to put single players off. Personally, I'm working in and leading a team in my daily work, hence I don't need and don't want this kind of interaction after work - at least as far as computer-games go...

10

One I would like to see is being able to mark hubs and focus cities, and then being able to transfer at them!

For instance, when running an airline out of PER, I wanted connecting flights from BME, and make BME a slightly secondary hub, with connecting flights to KNX, DRW and a few others. Since it is a small airport (though demand is there) you cannot transfer there. But the airport is not what effects transfers, it's the airline. If an airline wants to invest money into facilities (even if it is a terminal) it should be able to hub out of that airport.

11

One I would like to see is being able to mark hubs and focus cities, and then being able to transfer at them!

For instance, when running an airline out of PER, I wanted connecting flights from BME, and make BME a slightly secondary hub, with connecting flights to KNX, DRW and a few others. Since it is a small airport (though demand is there) you cannot transfer there. But the airport is not what effects transfers, it's the airline. If an airline wants to invest money into facilities (even if it is a terminal) it should be able to hub out of that airport.

I made a post similar : http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/5318-terminal-transfers-and-slots/

12

9) Ability to sublease aircraft or form fixed fee contracts.  Just like United, Delta, American etc in the United States it'd be fun to buy regional aircraft and then contract that flying to maybe new or smaller players.

This alredy exists. I have done it not that long time ago whit CBE Airways flying as Air Geneva Regional in France and Spain. Most aircraft were on lease from Air Geneva and having a Air Geneva style configuration and I had some restrictions on route choices (do not fly were the main airline flies and be willing to change routes if asked to) but otherwise it was really fun and great cooperation. Together we managed to be France´s and Spain´s numbre 1 airline and offering the most destinations and transporting most passagers. 

But this is only possible in a larger country were there are necesairly not much competition like in my case were I had my main buisness and operated regular service in Scandinavia (both regional and A320s) and then just flying regional in France and Spain whit (Saabs and CRJs) on restricted routes. 

We were both flying in UINITY and were the only airlines whit EU rights in UNITY.

Well and I will say bye again soon my flight leaves for Iceland, I will be gone for a week then I have nothing unitil September.

13

I think the IL automatically formed in an alliance is not possible because an alliance may have airlines under multi-holdings player. It is illegal to have IL between those airlines.