Passengers with a "mind" / Demand levels

English Boards Suggestions and Ideas
1

Hi,

long post but try to stay with me:

Passengers with a "mind":

I know this might be a little bit hard to quantify but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Right now we have only one type of passenger. It's the same passenger on a cheap flight from A to B for low prices as the one on an expensive flight with a high service level and good seatings. The passenger does not care how he get's from A to B as long as Price and Value is "fair enough".

I'd like to see a passenger that does care how he gets from A to B. There should be demand comming from very price sensitive passengers as well as demand from passengers that care about the service and comfort levels. I suggested only two types but this can be much more complex.

The overall balancing of how this is distributed is, of course, not that easy but I'm only suggesting and dont want to make the 2nd step before the first.

Something that can be resolved / regulated with this model:

1) Airline Sizes / Slots

Due to demands comming from different passenger "classes" only 1 airline cannot be able to cover each and every area. Right now we have airlines with thousands of planes because there is only 1 type of passenger. Because of that there is simply too much to go around creating those ridiculously huge companies.

With the above suggestion, as you develope an airline, you'd basically have to specialize and define the market you wish to target. The advantage of this would be different players will be competing in different markets creating a dynamic game world.

For this to work, obviously there has to be more impact from Image. I can safely assume the majority of people think of Ryan Air as a cheap airline with a rather poor image. Obviously a regular passenger looking for a good service and is willing to pay higher prices will not consider this kind of airline. So if you operate a low-cost airline your image will be poorer and you will most likely only attract price sensitive customers.

Now you might ask, what prevents a big "good image" airline from creating a fleet with "cheap seats" and special pricing for those specific routes?

In doing so they get a very mixed image and with the above described effect they will not have a clear customer base. Worst case, they cannot fill their planes anymore and would have to create a subsidary especially aimed for the other market. Something Delta Airlines tried with "Song" to attack JetBlue so they dont affect the image of the Delta Airlines brand itself

Demand:

I really wish for a game world with overall passenger demand cut by at least 40% to 50%. What we have now are airports with all slots taken and no space for a newcommer to attack an established airline. There is no fight over passengers because there is too much to go around. It is absolutely impossible to "bring down" even a badly managed airline either because there is too much demand or all slots are taken....we had a very good glance how bad airlines are managed when the AGEX was down. At this point all game worlds remain "static" except for the odd occasion some big guy quits the game.

I want fights with another airline no matter if I'm being attacked or attacking....this is what competition is about for me. 

Thanks for taking the time reading this.

2

Just a quick question, which I think is quite important before going into further details - how is AS supposed to count how many passengers are there with mindset A and mindset B in each of the hundreds of airports in AS? Last but not least, as far as I can attest, LCCs (like ryanair you mentioned) tend to create more demand in airports where under other circumstances there would be less. How would one tackle this issue?

3

I really wish for a game world with overall passenger demand cut by at least 40% to 50%. 

If this was to be implemented then the number of available slots should be cut from 1200, plus the fact that most new airlines starting up find it difficult to get an airline going on established game worlds (excluding Aspern) , cutting passenger demand is more of a torture than a nice idea. :wacko:   

4

Just a quick question, which I think is quite important before going into further details - how is AS supposed to count how many passengers are there with mindset A and mindset B in each of the hundreds of airports in AS? Last but not least, as far as I can attest, LCCs (like ryanair you mentioned) tend to create more demand in airports where under other circumstances there would be less. How would one tackle this issue?

This is a general suggestion...your talking details already. Why bother if the idea might be rejected?

5

 cutting passenger demand is more of a torture than a nice idea. :wacko:   

Thats the whole point of a hard game world....there are enough regular ones already. And how is cutting demand torture? Of course you'd have to outsmart the existing competition. Lots of ways to do that. Do you want a sandbox or try a bit harder?

 

plus the fact that most new airlines starting up find it difficult to get an airline going on established game worlds (excluding Aspern)

Why is that a reason not to have another type of game world? Only because some people struggle? You could turn it around and ask why are there only regular ones?

6

Having "individual" passengers is impossible for obvious reasons. But we do have the introduction of more passenger types than the current three on our mid- to long-term agenda. It poses quite a few technical challenges though, so at this point it's more or less a thought-experiment without any definite outcome so far.

7

Having "individual" passengers is impossible for obvious reasons. But we do have the introduction of more passenger types than the current three on our mid- to long-term agenda. It poses quite a few technical challenges though, so at this point it's more or less a thought-experiment without any definite outcome so far.

Thanks for your response though I was not talking about all passengers being individual but something like

(I'm just pulling this out of my mind to make my point clear):

Economy passengers:

40% are price sensitive and their focus is to get from A to B as cheap as possible, even if it means to take a ground connection to a nearby secondary airport.

40% are looking for value and are willing to pay for it

20% are somewhere in the middle.

This is not individual for each and every passenger but and individual customer base in the whole segment. Do you get my point?

Regards.

8

I would very much love a game world where the demand is cut by 50%. Now it's way too easy if you have a little experience with AS. 

9

Sounds like a win-win to me!

With 50% less PAX the server load should be less aswell. That means the servers can do some additional calculations like the suggested different types of passengers. A real simple implementation could even be that passengers look at things like airline image and price directly.

For example:

Economy:

- 50% Cheap = never considers tickets more then 120% default price.

- 50% Service = never considers connections with with less then 25 rating or by airlines with less then 40 rating

Bussiness:

- 50% Cheap = never considers tickets more then 100% default price.

- 50% Service = never considers connections with with less then 30 rating or by airlines with less then 50 rating

First:

- 50% Service = never considers connections with with less then 35 rating or by airlines with less then 60 rating

  • 50% Time = never considers connections with more waiting time then 3 hours and always book fastest flights first
10

To get back to your Ryan Air example and an image matter - you would probably need a separate image factor for each pax type. Ryan Air would actually have a very good image amongst those "cheap, no frills" pax while at the same time a very bad one for those more sophisticated/with higher budget. And vice versa for say BA. As far as bookings go those two groups would probably be separated quite a lot, ones won't book with another's line.

11

Too bad this part of the forum never has a real statement or discussion to any suggestions.....I dont mean this in a rude or mean way but there is not even a "no cant do" or "we'll look into it and try if it's possible". When something comes up it's always "in planning" or "has been thought of" and "comming somewhen"....meaning what?

I read very often about some "new performance system". However, what it is, does and when it comes I dont know. What I do know is, it's comming "sometime in the future".....

Dont even know how AS is evolving over the short-/medium term. I miss something like "this is our plan for the next 3-6 months and we try to implement this, this and this". Nothing fancy just a simple outlook.

12

Too bad this part of the forum never has a real statement or discussion to any suggestions.....I dont mean this in a rude or mean way but there is not even a "no cant do" or "we'll look into it and try if it's possible". When something comes up it's always "in planning" or "has been thought of" and "comming somewhen"....meaning what?

I read very often about some "new performance system". However, what it is, does and when it comes I dont know. What I do know is, it's comming "sometime in the future".....

Dont even know how AS is evolving over the short-/medium term. I miss something like "this is our plan for the next 3-6 months and we try to implement this, this and this". Nothing fancy just a simple outlook.

I totally agree!

They should use the Dev. Logbook much more, so players don't get the feeling nothing is changing.

In the Dev. Logbook I would like to have a monthly report about what was changed (including small things like new data on some airports), what is currently in progress and what (of that) will be changed the 1-3 months. I don't expect much to be changed each month, but a update of the "work-in-progress" features would be great.

13

Too bad this part of the forum never has a real statement or discussion to any suggestions.....I dont mean this in a rude or mean way but there is not even a "no cant do" or "we'll look into it and try if it's possible". When something comes up it's always "in planning" or "has been thought of" and "comming somewhen"....meaning what?

I read very often about some "new performance system". However, what it is, does and when it comes I dont know. What I do know is, it's comming "sometime in the future".....

Dont even know how AS is evolving over the short-/medium term. I miss something like "this is our plan for the next 3-6 months and we try to implement this, this and this". Nothing fancy just a simple outlook.

Of course the Team is looking in this Forum quite often and if there are Ideas that are good we will discuss them. On the other hand you can find the same suggestions comming up every now and then. You have to remember Martin is the one and only developer for the game! And the Game setup is so delicate that you can not that simply fullfill every community whish right away. Usually we are collecting them .... group them and put them together in an new evolution tool. The Performance System is one of them. It is planned and was announced but unfortunatly it is not that easy to implement since a lot of other parts in the game will be affected . For the Moment it is not of the table but we need to find ways of how it can be done. For the moment the plan is to have 2 maybe 3 bigger Projects coming per Year from the size of the Seat Editor. Some fixes can be done quickly and will be implemented when possible. 

14

We have learned our lesson over the past years when it comes to feature announcement and release dates: We are a very small operation and we almost always operate under tight resource constraints. At the same time, due to the complexity of AirlineSim, even things that look "easy to implement" have far-reaching implications that make an implementation everything but easy (the seating editor is a great example: the feature itself is rather easy to explain and implement, but the consequences are keeping us busy for weeks now). So what happens a lot of times is that we start working on a feature internally and notice during development that there are obstacles that are hard or impossible to overcome. This can be of conceptional nature (like the new performance system) or a matter of workload (like the time-shift features). Both were announces before we were 100% certain they could be realized in a timely manner which now causes disappointment and constant nagging among the community for understandable reason.

So to cut things short: We avoid premature announcements of planned features when possible. Not because we want to be non-transparent or secretive, but because we don't want to fuel expectations and cause disappointment among the community. And as Benjamin already has stated: We are able to pull about 2 to 3 features of the size of the new seating editor per year. This should give you a rough estimate on what's possible...sadly, it's not as much as we'd like it to be.

15

 Now it's way too easy if you have a little experience with AS. 

I wish I could say that was my experience during the year or so that I have been playing! It is definitely not "way too easy" for me, although I do seem to be experiencing some success with my latest ventures. 

16

...So to cut things short: We avoid premature announcements of planned features when possible. Not because we want to be non-transparent or secretive, but because we don't want to fuel expectations and cause disappointment among the community. And as Benjamin already has stated: We are able to pull about 2 to 3 features of the size of the new seating editor per year. This should give you a rough estimate on what's possible...sadly, it's not as much as we'd like it to be.

If the game stayed exactly as it is now, I would still play it. Thanks for all the hard work that you do!