[ok] Base airport staff costs
ucfknightryan:
I just opened a new base. On the base screen it says that the staff costs from the base are 3.3 mil/month. However my income statement shows an increase in staff costs of 6.5 mil/week. That's a ~20% increase from before I opened the base. I've only got 4 aircraft there operating 8 routes. Do bases really require that much additional management staff that's not associated with the base itself or is there a bug here?
sami:
Some of the staff actually go into the HQ when opening new base too. That's why the diff. It's a bit hard to present it clearer there at the moment.
ucfknightryan:
Quote from: sami on June 25, 2010, 09:02:11 AM
Some of the staff actually go into the HQ when opening new base too. That's why the diff. It's a bit hard to present it clearer there at the moment.
I figured that was the case, I was just a bit surprised that those staff costs were ~8x the costs that were associated directly with the base. It makes it kind of hard to figure out if you can afford to open a base.
Sigma:
It would seem to me that a LOT more than just "some" people are going to the HQ.
When I opened a 2nd base, I did so with 10 aircraft. I already had about 180, so it should have been a fairly small increase in people needed.
My weekly salaries went from ~$19M to about ~$28M. There was almost a 50% increase in my salary costs. But the "Bases" page said my salaries at my base were only about $2M extra per week -- that only accounted for about 20% of the increase. And it wasn't due to the number of routes being setup or anything -- I added another 15 aircraft there with only modest increases in my salary.
When I opened a 3rd base, I did so with 17 aircraft. I was sitting at about 200 aircraft.
My weekly salaries went from ~$30M to $41M -- a 35% increase in salary. Again the "Bases" page says I should only be paying about $1.5M/wk increase in pay -- it's really almost 10 times that figure. For every 1 person I hired at my new base, I apparently hired about 8 at my HQ to support them. That's more than a little backwards.
In both cases the planes that were added (all ~100-seat regionals) could never hope to make enough money to even cover the added salary costs I was burdened with, let alone actually make a profit for the company. I'm fine with tighter margins making the game more difficult, but let's be upfront with what the costs are of opening a new base. Because I can tell you from the people I've been running out of business this game, that a lot of people are making the mistake of expanding too early and unwittingly killing their margins. I didn't even expand into a 2nd base until a year ago -- over 35% of the way into the game.
JumboShrimp:
Good thread. It explains why I went from drowning in profits to just barely over breakeven - just by setting up a base with some ~5 planes.
I did notice increase in staff costs higher on the income screen than what is shown on the base screen. I brushed it off at the time, but only now I realize what a huge hit it was. I forgot to multiply the weekly staff cost increase by 4!
So yeah, my experience was the same as "ucfknightryan". The true staff cost increase was somewhere between 6x and 8x the amount shown on the base screen.
Had I known that, I would not have opened the base, and I think I will just close it. Opening an additional base is a suicide for a marginally profitable airline...
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