[-] Correct Closure of A/C
sami:
Quote from: ucfknightryan on January 19, 2011, 06:33:36 AM
First B737-6/7/8/900 delivery was in December 1997, last order for B737-3/4/500 (a single 737-300) was December of 1999.
I think you all are missing the point here.
It would be like this:
- Boeing launches 737NG in for example 1995.
- 737oldgen is still produced and available for orders.
- 737NG is certified in let's say 1997. And since the new model overlaps it a notice is put that you have still ~2 years time to place an order for these models and after that only orders for NG are accepted.
- After ~2 years the new orders for OG close and outstanding orders are produced/delivered according to normal rate.
- After that only NG can be ordered, year at that point would be about 2000.
So it won't be instant closure. And as mentioned it would only affect those models that are direct replacements of the previous line.
Sanabas:
Quote from: Sanabas on January 18, 2011, 04:51:53 PM
I've paid attention to it since starting up in DOTM. Adding a 2nd fleet caused almost no difference to my first fleet's fixed maintenance. Adding a 3rd fleet roughly doubled the first fleet's costs. I'm phasing out the first fleet, since there are no slots available, and a 727 on a 1500 NM route makes more out of a slot than an F27 on a 300 NM route. I expect when I get rid of the last one I'll see my fixed maintenance be roughly halved for the other two fleets.
I also agree that commonality should get fixed before worrying about the realism or not of a company running 2 production lines for similar planes. If the planes are so similar that they come off the same production line, then they shouldn't be causing the same cost increase as adding F27s to go with 2 bigger planes would.
Just got rid of my last F27, to drop from 3 fleets to 2, and my commonality costs basically halved, though the engine cost remained identical.
Before:
727: 4855257, 1054079 engine
DC10: 2914649, 453884 engine
after
727: 2415658, 1054079 engine
DC10: 1451382, 453884 engine
That's the problem I can see with commonality. Say I was running 727s & 747-300s. 747-400 gets released, and I can't upgrade my entire 747-300 fleet in one week, it's going to take a couple of years to get enough planes delivered. I can't just order more 747-300s, because the production line has changed to the newer model. I'm now going to be paying double the fixed maintenance costs for my entire fleet, simply because Boeing has upgraded my preferred plane slightly.
Trying to force upgraded models to remove old models from sale makes no sense as long as the current commonality model exists. Why would I want to order some shiny new 747-400s instead of just buying more 747-300s when it means I'm going to pay many millions a month in extra maintenance? Why would Boeing jeopardise me buying/leasing a few billion dollars worth of planes by trying to force me to get the newest model?
swiftus27:
Quote from: sami on January 19, 2011, 08:37:42 AM
I think you all are missing the point here.
It would be like this:
- Boeing launches 737NG in for example 1995.
- 737oldgen is still produced and available for orders.
- 737NG is certified in let's say 1997. And since the new model overlaps it a notice is put that you have still ~2 years time to place an order for these models and after that only orders for NG are accepted.
- After ~2 years the new orders for OG close and outstanding orders are produced/delivered according to normal rate.
- After that only NG can be ordered, year at that point would be about 2000.
So it won't be instant closure. And as mentioned it would only affect those models that are direct replacements of the previous line.
Thank you, Sami. I don't know why I can't say it as well as you can.
To the people above who are relatively new posters, please feel free to add to my Commonality Points thought. That along with this will make airline modeling something that can actually happen. So moving from a 742 to a 744 won't have as much of an impact versus going from a DC10 to a 744.
Sigma:
Quote from: sami on January 19, 2011, 08:37:42 AM
I think you all are missing the point here.
It would be like this:
- Boeing launches 737NG in for example 1995.
- 737oldgen is still produced and available for orders.
- 737NG is certified in let's say 1997. And since the new model overlaps it a notice is put that you have still ~2 years time to place an order for these models and after that only orders for NG are accepted.
- After ~2 years the new orders for OG close and outstanding orders are produced/delivered according to normal rate.
- After that only NG can be ordered, year at that point would be about 2000.
So it won't be instant closure. And as mentioned it would only affect those models that are direct replacements of the previous line.
Sami, I'm quite sure we all knew exactly what you were talking about and that no one was missing the point. But you're talking about a completely different thing. You're talking about how it would work while others are discussing why it should even exist at all.
You are missing the point if you think that you should model that reality while ignoring the reality of what allowed Boeing to make that change in the first place -- and that is that its customers weren't faced with a random illogical multiplication of their maintenance costs of every plane they fly when they decided to upgrade to a 737NG. Most airlines wouldn't have touched the NG if that happened in real-life. Customers upgraded to the NG because it made sense. By a wide margin. Here it does not. Because AWS is not reality. We have completely different market and cost forces at play than existed in real-life.
The realism between reality and AWS when it comes to aircraft is largely limited to Fuel Usage and Configuration. Every other factor for why a model is chosen you can throw out the window in many cases, Maintenance first and foremost. Airlines choose newer, successor models on the entire basis that they're newer (i.e. less prone to breakdowns), usually easier/cheaper to maintain (or at least purported to be), and most importantly that they share much commonality with outgoing models. We don't have that here. If I'm an all-737 airline I have absolutely zero reason to take the new Boeing model over the new Airbus model. In reality though I'd have a whole bunch of reasons to not only stick with Boeing, but to stick with a 737, and not only that but to get the latest model of it. In AWS, when my highly-successful model is dropped from production, it's simply a question of who I want to get screwed by -- because one way or the other I'm taking an identical commonality hit -- a potentially huge one depending on which fleet number this will be for me (also a stupid mechanic -- the 4th is worth exponentially more of a penalty than the 5th? Yeah, that makes sense)
If you want realism, great, that's your prerogative. But you need to either do it across the board or don't do it at all, at least when we're talking about game mechanics as minor as phasing out older models. Make commonality work like it should and there's no downside to this. It loses the really cool player-driven aspect of product success or failure that you put into place when you got rid of real-life launch/cancellation dates, but that's only a fairly minor point. I do think it flies in the face of a lot of the player-driven, "unrealistic" changes you've made or plan on making though (aircraft success, production rates, airport growth, demand mobility, etc), but that's your prerogative if for some reason you want to latch on this this as somehow being worthwhile to remove.
I shudder to think what you're going to do the first time someone complains enough about it being completely impossible for Fokker to ever produce the amount of F28s that they produce in AWS (because it absolutely would be unless they *gasp* built another production line). Or when someone complains that Dassault or Hawker-Siddeley are still making large airliners in AWS into the '80s which one could argue would be impossible after the formation of Airbus -- or that one could argue that Airbus most certainly would not have been formed at all if the European aerospace industry had the production queue that they get in AWS. Or when someone complains that it's impossible for some certain airport to grow because of its geographical constraints or whatever because some once-small airport nearby their larger one is now competing with them for demand and they don't like it. Or when someone complains that DAL would never be able to handle the traffic that DFW gets because of infrastructure around them making it "impossible" for DAL to compete with DFW for marketshare in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
You've got your work cut out for you if you want to make everything "realistic". Or, you could do like you have been, and let the players decide what products succeed or fail in perfectly realistic fashion. We already have a perfectly functional mechanic for the phasing out of predecessor models that works exactly like real-life. There's no value in forcing reality onto the players at this point aside for purposes of game balancing. And if the point really is to limit 'farming' of the lineup (so you're not taking deliveries of 3 x 737s in a single manufacturing cycle) then, as I mentioned, simply use, again, the existing mechanic of not allowing simultaneous delivery and/or delivery prior to existing orders, and make it apply to an entire line not just a fleet-type. That's a win-win all around. People who want to upgrade, can. People who want to remain with the predecessor model can. The predecessor or even the successor can still fail based on market demand. And the game gets to keep its player-driven aspect.
sami:
Based on replies, I am voting in keeping the prodlines fully dynamic, according to demand set by players.
=> no changes.
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