AirwaySim v.1.3 news, previews & info

[Sami]

* Friend referral program has started: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,48124.0.html

* Change to Manage Routes country dropdown filter. The filter does not affect the route departure airport anymore; so in other words if you are based in Canada and choose country filter as Canada, it only shows your domestic routes - previously showed all routes (as everything departed or arrived from Canada in this example).

* New filter to Route Planning and Route Open airport selectors: ability to filter out airports where you have already routes. This is basically similar to the 'airplane icon' in the airport listing - if you have a single route (or more) to that airport this filter allows you to skip it in search results.

* Mouseover popups enhanced a bit technically.

* Alliance forum is again visible on Dashboard.

* Minor bugfixes.

[Sami]

* New feature, Manage Routes - Destination view.

This view mode groups all routes of the same route pair / destination into one row. In other words all routes from Airport1 to Airport2 are in one row.

The data is roughly similar to financial view where you have the individual seat class LF, total avg LF and other financial metrics. Profit is calculated as profit per flight (= average profit for each flight on this route pair). The View icon takes you to the manage routes listing's standard financial mode where each route is listed individually.

This feature has been added as per requests .. It will be used in the future for price management too.


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[Sami]

* Changes to maintenance price calculations, in order to make smaller aircraft more usable.

Maintenance cost has always been factored from aircraft size, but the aircraft size class itself is now also a factor there. Generally speaking the all costs for large aircraft are nearly the same as before but the checks for very large planes are a bit more expensive. For medium and small planes all checks are relatively much cheaper now, especially for the small aircraft.

Examples (all quoted as 0y / 100% planes for a 2010 game year):

Plane	Old A price	New A price	Old C price	New C price
A340-500	14k	16k	830k	897k
B717	6.5k	6.5k	390k	390k
DHC6-400	4.3k	1.7k	260k	108k

(A340 = very large, B717 = large, DHC-6 = small, sorry didn't have example of medium cat plane)

This change affects all game worlds, and should be farily unnoticable for players running large airlines since the big plane costs are relatively the same as before.


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[Sami]

* A new technical factor into daily airport calculation, airport's used capacity vs. airport costs.

A function calculates the airport slot usage and determines the true available and used capacity (same metric as shown in statistics). This value in turn is used to calculate an airport cost factor metric. This value will be used in the near future to scale airport's fixed costs (passenger fee, landing fee, handling fee) and in effect will mean that less crowded airports are cheaper to operate into on daily basis (when this change happens it will be announced separately).

The similar calculation already exists on one-time slot prices but this new value can be used more easily and more widely. It can be for example in the future used to better calculate flight delays based on how busy the airport is (naturally this value does not go into hourly details but will give a good enough overall representation; do we have 50% slots used or 90% .. whole different thing).

The standard cost factor is "1" which is between 40-55% slot usage. Above and below this the cost factor goes up/down and can be between 0.45 and 1.8 times the standard cost. What these costs actually are will be displayed later on airport info page (= how much a single pax fee is for example). For initial part of the game world the factor is always 1, and the factor changes slowly over time.

(this is just nice to know information about changes in the background; one aim of this change is to make operations into less crowded airports more appealing)


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[Sami]

* Changes to ground handling fee calculations, in order to make smaller aircraft more viable option. The handling has been one of the biggest expenses and problems for small airlines (thanks to Sanabas for documenting and experimenting earlier).

Like maintenance costs, ground handing fee has already always been a factor of aircraft size. But now it's tuned to be better and more realistic (not so expensive) towards very small aircraft which do not require almost any outside services for a turnaround. Like with the the maintenance cost change, the handling costs are also pretty much the same for large and very large planes but are now substantially lower for medium and small aircraft size classes. Update is effective immediately.

Another change is that handling costs are lower than before for smaller airports, for large airports costs are unchanged. Country's overall cost level is not yet a factor in these costs (like in salaries they are).

AWS assumes ground handling is done by the airport, but in the future separate handling contracts may be added as a new feature (similar to fuel contracts).


Examples (large airport [5], year 2010):

Plane	Old cost	New cost
B777 (v.large)	$1850	$2000
A320 (large)	$1200	$1200
ATR (med)	$790	$560
DHC6 (small)	$550	$150

Examples (middlesize airport [3], year 2010):

Plane	Old cost	New cost
B777 (v.large)	$1750	$1850
A320 (large)	$1100	$1000
ATR (med)	$690	$420
DHC6 (small)	$450	$94

Examples (tiny airport [1], year 2010):

Plane	Old cost	New cost
ATR (med)	$480	$300
DHC6 (small)	$240	$50

(aircraft types mentioned above are rough examples and the actual cost varies between each type of plane, so costs above are approximations)

As noted by the previous post, another change is coming later which takes better into account how busy the airport is with these costs.


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[Sami]

* Some changes to the 'seat blocking' feature (the one where you can change the capacity you offer for a route to less than the seats your plane has).

The blocked amount must be more than 25% of the average seat count for that fleet group and more than 5 (so for example for 757 fleet this figure is 53). Also the amount cannot be higher than the 2x the same mentioned average value. Both are added to avoid large scale errors, and also to reduce possibilities in let's say flying a 757 on a 10 pax / day demand routes. The boundaries for the accepted value aren't shown but in any normal case you will not hit this checker anyway so there's no need for it to be visible.


* Also added some automated checkers in order to prevent slot hogging by "copy pasting" routes. You can now have only a certain amount of unassigned routes/slots at each given time for each base (= route with slots but no plane scheduled). This number depends on how slot limited the airport is (for non-limited airports there are no restrictions), and in any case you are still able to always create 4x 7 days a week routes before you hit the "hogging limiter" which is standard short/medium haul schedule's worth of routes per plane. The rules state players are not allowed to create more routes (get more slots) than their operation requires and this is now partly enforced automatically. If you hit this limit simply schedule the unassigned routes and then you can continue creating rest of the routes.


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[Sami]

* Airport information page has been renewed a bit and it now includes the data for airport fees. The default view shows the data for globally two most popular aircraft models for handling fee, and for landing fee the calculation formula. You can choose from the dropdown the desired model / MTOW combination to view the true costs. Hover the mouse over the (?) icon to view details.

* Also the feature where fees are now variable according to airport traffic levels is now live (see post from yesterday for details). Please do note that all airports start at the cost level "1" with the launch of the feature (and with the start of a new game world) and the costs will scale up or down slowly depending on the airport traffic from now on. So at the beginning for large airports the costs are the same but will start to differ in some game years.


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[Sami]

* New feature will be added next week, aircraft upgrades.

This new feature allows you to upgrade your aircraft by installing for example a hushkit to the engines which raises the noise certification level, and in turn allows you to operate the aircraft longer into the future (we shall also introduce noise level limitations soon as a new feature - this means that you cannot fly a B707 in year 2000 for example anymore unless you equip it with the hushkit).

First the upgrades shall only include the hushkits (to enable the noise level feature) but in the future more data can be added and for example winglets retrofit installations can be possible for some mores. Changes of engine types or MTOW will not be modelled, at least yet. Each upgrade may also change the range, fuel consumption or runway requirement.

Upgrades are only retrofit items that can be installed to existing aircraft and not related to new aircraft orders. Each aircraft can have a single upgrade item installed (due technical simplicity).

The interface is simple. You can upgrade multiple planes at once from My Aircraft page (must be of the same model) or one by one from the detailed aircraft view. If there are no upgrades available the buttons / selections for this are hidden. Plane cannot be in maintenance while being upgraded, but can be listed for sale.

New available upgrades are listed on Dashboard news too.


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[Sami]

The staff systems has had some issues when it comes to multiple bases. The main thing has been the background process that tries to automatically balance staff between bases (when you move planes from base A to base B the staff moves automatically on background too). This has been removed and staff of each base is managed individually now.

At the same time the rather unnecessary sliders have been removed and you can either use the quick management tools or key in the desired values.

For now the salary levels are the same for each base, even if they are in different countries, but this may change in the future.


At the same time all salary update requests have been also reset, so if you just got a message about staff requesting new salaries and do not see it at the staff page, never mind and wait for the next request.


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[Sami]

Further updates to the Personnel Office.

* More powerful quick management tools for the staff. You can adjust quickly staff numbers and salaries only for selected bases or staff groups or for everyone at once.

* Also new quick buttons for airlines with multiple bases which allows you to set salaries / staff numbers for all of certain staff group.

* Updated interface that is a bit more simple now. It's also a bit different if you have base airports or not.

* New function to balance staff between bases. This is useful when on manual staff settings and you have to move staff between bases. Simply click on the icon and the extra staff from one base is allocated to bases with less than required staff. Relocating staff does have a small morale penalty but no costs or company image penalties. Please remember to press save right after this, since if you manually adjust the staff numbers after using this balancer you will lose the "free relocation" benefit and it will lead the system to think you are simply firing / hiring staff instead of relocating. (for automatic staff management this function is automated; it does the same by moving staff from a base of excess staffing to base with lack of staff but does not fire anybody)


First image shows airline with 4 bases, lower an airline with only HQ (no additional bases).


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[Sami]

* The aircraft upgrades feature is now online. (see a few posts up for details)

The first release includes only hushkit upgrades that allow you to lower the noise emissions for the planes. Included models are currently BAC 1-11, B707 (later models), B727, B737-100/-200, Fokker 28, DC-8 (later models), DC-9, MD-80. (all from stage 2 to 3, apart MD-80 which is 3 to 4).


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[Sami]

* New development into pax demand calculation has been added: better country relations (political, historical etc).

The feature of long-term country relationships affecting demand has been part of AWS since first versions but now we finally have a pretty complete dataset on this (thanks to Julien, ARASKA, ReedME and dmoose42 for adding some info). The data takes into account the historical relations between two countries, for example North Korea to South Korea air traffic is non-existant, and this is affects in turn to the passenger demand numbers between airports of those countries. Relations can vary from icy cold (zero) to a high traffic boost. The actual "relationship index" data is not visible to players as such.

Do note that this feature covers only the long term relations and any short term issues like wars are not part of this feature (short term events is a separate module that is technically built already earlier but pending data).

All new game worlds will use this data.


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[Sami]

* Bugfixes.

* Added dashboard notification in case of route oversupply warning is active.

* Added manage routes page filter "Show only routes with no slots".

* Added a clear warning to route information page in case route does not have slots.

* Manage routes / notification view shows now routes with active oversupply warning.

[Sami]

* New / update feature; better base airport finder.

Choosing your home base when you start an airline is always an important task and now the updated base finder tool includes more information than before. The airport browsing search tool is still the same as before but the airport details page has been renewed. The page includes now more details about the based airlines (number of planes, age of airline/base), the airport slot information is in a more compact format (showing number of available slots for two different time periods) and some unnecessary information for this step has been removed.

The biggest change however is the display of the estimated passenger demand on the base finder. The tool shows the estimated demand together with actual supply by existing airlines for the 20 highest demanded routes (routes with most passenger demand globally from this chosen airport). Also a ratio of supply vs. demand is shown (and appropriately color-coded).

There are also handy tooltips ("?" icon) that describes the data a bit more.

Using this information the new player can now more easily determine the possibilities for opening an airline to this airport.


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[Sami]

* Not related to v.1.3 but for information:

- many third-party provided background modules and scripts have been just updated

- this is sort of maintenance update where all charting, mapping, scripting etc. applications/scripts were updated to the latest versions (to ensure bugfixes and latest compatibility)

- the upgrade caused some changes to airwaysim's own scripts too, and there may be some issues here and there although things have been tested (as usual). There are some minor visual changes but functionality should remain mostly the same.


* Also added back the 'back button' functionality on pages with background server loading calls (eg. ajax). These pages are currently manage routes, airport info, airport slots and base finder. In other words when you filter, order and browse the data you can now (again) use the back button and it automatically fetches the previous filter / page. There are other pages that should have this functionality (like My aircraft) but it has not been implemented yet, will be added a bit later once it's checked that this new system works (should work for mobile clients now as well, previous didn't).
(works also on pages with 'tabs'; ie. income sheet, settings, airline info ..etc)

[Sami]

* New feature: Base airport wizard.

Finding the base airport is now even more easier thanks to this new airport finder wizard tool. Simply choose your desired continent and type of airline (regional, mediumhaul, longhaul) and the wizard will go through each and every airport picking some suggestions for you to choose from.

The wizard checks the actual demand and supply levels of the most popular routes for each airport filling the criteria and also the overall airport slot availability (note; during whole airport opening period (so for example slots at 06-09 may be all out). Also slots are checked only for the route departure airport.). The route demand is checked according to the type of operation you choose (regional ops is limited to 450 nm, and mediumhaul to 2300 nm) and it is compared to the actual seats offered by existing airlines (system will calculate potential unfilled demand and also potential demand under competitor's supply already; both are considered).

There are various other factors considered too (such as number of available routes, demand per route etc) and the type of airline you choose will set the limiting values and settings on the calculations, so each type of airline chosen for the wizard will yield different results (naturally for longhaul airline for example only longhaul destinations are considered etc). The results list is sorted (loosely) by the airport having most of unfilled demand based on the search criteria; click on the airport to view the details (see details two posts up in this thread).

This feature should be considered as experimental (feedback is appreciated). We hope that this will help players to find new airports and 'spread out' more. (wizard is only available for new airlines, not for airlines choosing to open an another base)

(and also; before you ask. No, similar feature is not coming to the general airline route planning area since this is quite server-heavy and also one of the game play concepts is the 'route research' made by players themselves)


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[Sami]

* Two new livery templates, B787 and DC-9 added, thanks to our user "Laama".

Can be found under settings page: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Info/Settings#SettingsAirline    (click on the (?) next to livery)

[Sami]

* Flight delay and cancellation calculation is improved a bit. The system now takes into account different pilot groups and also different bases (since all bases and groups can be now managed individually).

In other words if you have full staffing at base #1 but lack staff at base #2, the delays will only hit flights operated from base #2. Or if you have lack of small aircraft pilots but everything else is OK, only those small aircraft routes are affected.



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[Sami]

* Route image (RI) related effects on passenger demand calculation have been updated / adjusted. The RI effect is now more clearly visible, and works properly in case of multiple flights. (as always you can attract about 20-40% of the potential demand with 0 RI (depending on the demand) if all other variables remain "standard". Lowering ticket prices may attract more demand even with low RI)

* Some adjustments has been made on how airport slots are randomly released.

* Also some adjustments has been made to demand at the start of new game. It is a slow growth globally as usual, but another calculation has been added there making very high demand routes smaller at the beginning of the game.

* Route image growth rate is adjusted to be a bit slower when going up and faster when going down (12 months 0 -> 100, and 8 months 100 -> 0).

* Marketing adjusted so that it's not possible to achieve high (>50) company image values if you have a very small airline (fleet size).

* Dashboard items "alliance forum" and "press releases" moved a bit higher on the page.


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[Sami]

* Based on user feedback we have decided to add another new feature that will help players joining a game world. This is the 15 minute free preview mode.

When you join a game world it will cost you (usually) the regular 5 Credits. With the new free preview mode you can fully use, view and play the game world but if you decide to leave it within 15 minutes of your joining the 5 Credits are automatically returned to your account. This is useful for checking out the opportunities in that particular game world without having to make a commitment of purchase. Also there are occasions where users have mistakenly selected the wrong game world to join, and here too this is helpful.

(The new base finder tool should still give you the information you need to make the game world joining decision, but you can also create a new airline in this preview mode - if there are a lot of "spam" airlines that disappear within minutes then we will have to reconsider this part)



* Adjustment to game start up money calculation.

The start money and loan have already been inflation adjusted (based on game inflation index), so that new players will always have the same relative amount of money no matter when they join.

However now a change has been made that the start money increases (relatively too) over time. If you join near the end of the game world you will have up to 175% of the original start up money (inflation adjusted too of course) - this helps you to get started in the competitive environment.

Practical example: DotM scenario (1975-2019) start up money is set to $2.2 million, this is what airlines on day 1 get. Inflation runs so that in 10 years (1985) the $2.2 mil equals $3.6 million. However this new feature will increase the money by an additional $0.6 million at this point, so you will have $4.2 mil to start with now.


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