There have been many plans and ideas indeed… but I am guessing most resources are heading to PU now, purely from a financial standpoint (I am not sure where this came from, but the 4-6 credits a day (20 cents of a Euro, if using the “most popular” conversion, per player), cannot be sustainable in the way for all that team to cover their costs and still turn a profit. Sure, the private worlds are much more lucrative, but not everyone (me, for example) is willing to shell $15-25 eur+ a month for a sandbox, really. I, myself, personally prefer to use that money elsewhere, with no offence to private players. Everyone makes their own decisions in life, after all.
I know we still have a ton of “unfulfilled promises” (if that’s the term we want to use), from the 2015 and especially 2016 talks. Those, and that one note in the blog in '19, were the last true officially-announced “plans”, otherwise some small little drops but that’s it (I can’t-not point out the correlation that 2015-2016 is also around the rough time where PU went into full-gear dev’t). I can try and recap but I am sure you know what is “planned”, if you’ve been here since the early 2000s.
But hey, at least we get that A330-800neo at the end of the month… it’s not like it’s been 15-18 months or anything…
This thread, and especially some of the responses, is as good as we got to respond to the general question of Quo Vadis… Future of AirlineSim. I would highly suggest reading that… There’s also some German Forum topics on this from earlier that did get heated, but DeepL only goes so far to convey the meaning…
This is quoted from that thread above.
martin, simulogics, Apr 6th
I don’t want to go into any kind of detail, partly because we do not have finalised plans yet and partly because I don’t want to get people too excited at this point. But at the core of the current AS stagnation are essentially two issues:
Number 1 is that the current codebase of AS is around 15 years old (or “ancient” in software terms) and that many of features available today are essentially broken. The stock market, aircraft market and alliances have been mentioned above, but I could list more examples. So adding new or overhauling features is difficult both for technical and for game design reasons.
Number 2 is that the company needs more than one leg to stand on if we want to continue making (and supporting) games in the future. Keep in mind that AS has been around for almost 20 years now (post on that coming soon) and we have no plans of stopping to operate it. Prosperous Universe is our first attempt at spreading the risk, but we are a tiny team and working on more than one project at a time while one of them only just launched in Early Access is extremely tough.
So long story short: Some things (that I can’t and don’t want to discuss just yet) are planned for AS, but we are spread thin in terms of resources and everything will take some time (as usual). Meanwhile, AS is going to continue, even the old game worlds that - at this point - generate a questionable amount of revenue 
So take of that what you will, of course. I have made my opinions clear on multiple occassions, of which I am sure you will find if you dig.
I know we have suggested the idea of a Trello or similar board to track more accountable progress, and to at least know why we keep pouring $ into this game that we love, or at least offer a way for people to directly support development beyond their little “20 cents of salt”… Patreon, offering players the chance to work on things such as the guide or the handbook, those with actual experience to provide either data or full-on work on the end, or something… because it’s not like this game is stagnated because it’s community is, in fact we welcome more people everyday & that’s great.
This blog from Dec 2018 is also a good resource, and the last true “insight into plans” we got (unless someone is welcome to give me something more recent. AirlineSim Blog — Our plan for 2019 — AirlineSim
I will quote it here as well.
There’s only two weeks left in 2018, so it’s time to sum up this year and also have a glance at 2019.
We’ll be honest with you: This year hasn’t worked out as well as we had hoped and there’s been a lack of development for some time now. But why is that? As with most development studios, AirlineSim isn’t the only thing our team is working on, and work for external clients continues to be essential for the sustainability of our company. We are aware that this situation has been difficult for AirlineSim especially in 2018. We have been thinking about how to solve it and make more progress with AirlineSim both in terms of game development and support.
When we launched Hoover almost one year ago, we already discussed the dilemma of long-term game worlds: It is one of the unique features of AirlineSim to have these “endless” game worlds that allow you to manage your airlines for many, many years. But thanks to market forces, these game worlds naturally become saturated over the years and the airlines are big, but few. Therefore, player numbers drop and finally stagnate. We definitely do not want to shut down those long-term game worlds, thus undoing all the hard work players have put into their airlines. But while 100 players on a game world are still enough to pay for the server hardware and upkeep, our old long-term game worlds contribute a rather small share to AirlineSim as a whole. So we’ve decided to address this issue, and with the start of 2019, we will adjust the credit consumption on all long-term game worlds to the Hoover level. If you play on a long-term game world, your first holding will be charged with 6 credits per day and any additional holding with 4 credits per day. We are making this change to ensure that all game worlds are contributing their fair share to the development and support of AirlineSim, which we are set on improving significantly starting in January.
[Redacted for brevity, essentially the new most recent prices]
WHAT’S THE PLAN FOR 2019?
We want to increase our time budget for AirlineSim again to improve both our support and the game’s development in 2019. Here’s a preview of what’s about to come:
– An aircraft conversion feature that will enable you to convert passenger aircraft into freighters or retrofit winglets to your fleet.
– The in-game demand data for passengers and cargo will receive a global update.
– “Historic” game worlds with accelerated time advancement - so you can play through several decades of aircraft history.
– A completely new wiki will be launched to provide reliable information about AirlineSim.
– More patches to improve smaller issues in the game and fix bugs.
///
AND WHAT’S THE PLAN FOR DECEMBER?
We will launch a new long-term game world this Thursday, December 20th. This will be accompanied by a data patch for all game worlds. (note, Xiguan)
But most importantly, we’d like to say thank you to our loyal players! For the first time ever, there’ll be a discount on your credit purchases over the next two weeks! [redacted for brevity]
Thank you for your understanding, your loyalty and your support! We’ll do our best to make 2019 a great year for AirlineSim and the community. Good luck to all your airlines!
Since 2019, I do not think I am the only person who has not seen the justification of the prices, especially on those old servers, or that “the development and support of AirlineSim, which we are set on improving significantly starting in January.”. I know that is not what the price hike was meant for, but some feel that they are getting less value for money. I was not really active when the old prices were around, but some older players have expressed this discontent to me privately, and I cannot brush that aside.
The noteworthy thing for me, is the first few lines, that AS does not make enough money or resources on its own - hence why some people have wanted to help with that end.
But many silent overseers, have taken the pessimistic road and done the good old “just live with it” approach. Of course it is their choice, but I am one that doesn’t really feel the need to hold back to see change. Because I am far from the only one who wants it, judging by talks and conversations across this wonderful community which makes me feel more welcome every day, and will stay up until 4:30 AM to talk about planes and many other things. It’s that we want to see this community grow, open its doors, and realize the potential we all see within simulogics and this product.
And like I have said before, Martin or any of the AS team, whom I will assume will eventually read this, don’t take this hard upon yourselves - we know it has been a tough year, especially in your motherland with all this mess which I don’t need to name, and we understand the situation is not simple on your end either, and that you do have to run a business at the end of the day. We are simply trying to make this game and community better on all of us, by trying to make our money’s worth, and to judge the countless hours (and money at this point) we pour into this beloved game, because we want to see it flourish.
And to come full-circle to your question, MxM, I would love to see that communication as well, and those realistic plans. I think everyone would. But we will only know in the future whether I have just wasted 40 minutes of my short life writing this, or not.
To finish, I will quote a famous song: You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
which btw is cool that you are still here after all these years. I have been playing on and off since 2012. I do like this game even after all these years.
