(comments) AirwaySim v.1.3 news, previews & info

[Maarten Otto]

Right... $4.500.000 to get your EMB120 in the air from Glasgow. Sami, I do understand that the game is an ongoing development and I don't like to complain as I do appreciate the enormous amount of work you put into our favourite game. But I am sorry to say that you crossed the line.  For those operating larger aircraft last night changes may come at a cost, but dare flying anything under 70 seats and last night changes make one wonder if operating the airline is viable. For me it has come to the point that 1 slot is worth 1 MONTH!!! airline income. I'm sorry, but I'm simply not able to dig any deeper in my pockets to cough up for the slots.

Yes... 800K was a hell of a lot of money for a slot, but with the right tactics you could at least have a return of investment in 100 to 150 days. This will take me over a year  for a ROI for just 1 slot. My Embrears need to fly at least 8 legs a day to be financially viable.

Yes, I know 30 seater take a lot of skill to survive this game. You know Sami.... I like that. It is challenging me, just what I seek in a game. And it went well.... at least until someone uploaded some code that changed the world. For your information, I have 3 aircraft on order and I know I CANT SLOT THEM. Thanks for this destructive earthquake.

[stevecree]

* Some changes to airport slot pricings:

- The new slot fees for monopoly position (>50% of owned slots at any large airport that is slot limited) are increased.

- A new calculation to dynamic slot costs that checks how many slots your airline has acquired from this airport in the near past, scaling costs according to this (= lots of new slots in the last two months will increase the costs). This discourages airlines to get large amount of slots from airports at once batch (= when they are released) giving others better chances when they become too expensive for the one. The settings and costs are scaled so that it does not limit normal airlines opening a few new routes every week.

- Also some other minor adjustments.


UTTER NONSENSE !  I will close all my airlines and go and play airlinesim instantly, as will other players I have spoken to !  This is a step to far for me.

[Infinity]

I also want to emphasize that this change is the death warrant to any airline that has already ordered a lot of aircraft. If it is prohibitively expensive to get them in the air, they will have to sit idle with their leasing fees due anyway, thus bankrupting the airline.

I will make it plain: If this 'adjustment' stays the way it is, I am out of here.

[Aoitsuki]

A sudden injection of such change should not be happening in the middle of a game.  especially not after a discussion that is opened after 2 days. Unlike flight number collapse which is mainly cosmetic. This changes one how to play on the whole game level.

the cost for slot grabbing should be equal for all airline... smaller airline should not be exempt from this unless your plan is to allow anyone to catch up to any airline who have a lead over another regardless how they play.

I understand changes need to be made but this pretty much kills desire of anyone who wants to play a larger airline as it is not possible to maintain.

just burnt thru savings of almost 2 RL days myself, got 3 set of slot, I can fit that on a 737 and see my competition get the rest of them... at minimal cost yet they can order Wide body plane while I can't.... This is slowing turning into WoW.

[Maarten Otto]

*Samistuff


UTTER NONSENSE !  I will close all my airlines and go and play airlinesim instantly, as will other players I have spoken to !  This is a step to far for me.

Come come.... He made a mistake and by staying polite we get more done then threatening that we go and play elsewhere. Everyone can make mistakes. That's a human factor.

Think someone in Finland is already making new code.... 

[[ATA] Sunbao]

Good to se Sami finally does someting regarding to the biggest issue in the game.
As i read the change it will only be costful for the people there is slot hogging.
So that is good. But there should sure be a pricing system after aircraft type.

[stevecree]

Come come.... He made a mistake and by staying polite we get more done then threatening that we go and play elsewhere. Everyone can make mistakes. That's a human factor.

Think someone in Finland is already making new code.... 

I chose to spend money on an airline sim and I will spend it where I enjoy playing.  These ill thought out changes are not a new thing.  Just had completely and utterly enough...

[herman:)]

Such a huge change - without any heads up - is not acceptable as it drastically changes the dynamics.
This just can not be done in the middle of a game!
The slot system has been broken since long, but this is NOT the solution.

Not sure I will want to continue under such circumstances.

[Sami]

This fix is simply to control the utter slot hoarding some people have fallen to. The slots do grow over time as you know, and they appear at random times. The problem is that lately it seems that for every slot update into a major airport ONE individual airline from that airport gets ALL the slots released, several times in a row. This is a problem and should be addressed.

The change merely factors into the amount of slots your airline has taken in the near past and factors the cost according to that. Maarten for example, you've gotten some 150 new slots in the last 60 days if I looked right, hence the cost there (though I adjusted it a bit after your post to make it more reasonable). The slots gotten in the very near days have more effect on this cost calculation, so getting 300 new slots in one day will be costly, but getting 300 over let's say 6 months doesn't cost any more than before.


For the "ultimate slot solution" in the long term, if any, please post ideas here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,49624.0.html

edit/add: Also have to say that the slot growth rate in MT#9 has been slower than before (the usual "game start slot growth"), but it seems that it's a bit too slow now even since focus on just getting any new slots has become the main point, which is not the intention. It was also slightly adjusted with these changes.

[JumboShrimp]

For the "ultimate slot solution" in the long term, if any, please post ideas here: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,49624.0.html

Could we just come up with a good solution in that thread, and roll back this stop-gap measure?

[Infinity]

I doubt anyone will be here to witness any 'ultimate solution' due to the widespread disconsent with the temporary solution you have implemented. I have told you before, and I am telling you now, implementing such major changes in running game worlds without any prior warning is bad style and unfair to a large share of players. I will not tolerate any more of this.

This change you have made is absolute crap and completely redundant.
It does not only slow players who want to run a big airline. It ultimately is the unavoidable imminent bankruptcy for an airline like mine with a lot of aircraft on order for which I will not be able to get slots. It is also completely unfair to players who want to operate smaller aircraft like Dash 8 and completely counteracts anything that was done to make smaller aircraft more playable.
There is no logic in the change and it is unfair to a large share of players, there is just no way around that.

[Maarten Otto]

Indeed... These changes CAN ONLY come into force BEFORE a world starts so we can plan ahead and change our tactics BEFORE we start playing. I stick around and hope this "Eco fundamentalistic takeover' will be reversed and be implemented in A NEW GAMEWORLD instead of a running one.

[Cev13]

Sami, your solution is underdeveloped. Calibration is a nightmare. IMHO you should spend more time on testisting it with a large group of testers (using different strategies)

[stevecree]

I am not for stopping other airlines getting slots, although I have been more than successful getting slots recently, so just keep the costs the same and release more slots and more often, that way we can all still all grow, and one airline would still find it hard to capture these more frequent slots even if priced similar to what is was.  Seriously Sami, I do not want to play a game where all I have to do is save for slots and I will honestly quit playing and as a long term user that is not good customer service !

[Aoitsuki]

burnt 100m for like 4+-1 set of slot.....(and 20m loan)  

[Maarten Otto]

Demand a refund from Sami as it clearly shows that he made some mistake and uploaded code to a running game instead of the test server.

Yes... Whoops indeed Sami 

[[SC] - King Kong]

Lol..

I ordered ATR's as that was part of my strategy. Now how should I schedule these birds if I have to pay 40mil to schedule one bird. (Got 10 coming....)

[Sami]

I do feel that you are widely now making this a bigger issue than it is, and would suggest to check again the prices you get for the slots, since as posted in bugs forum there was a wrong scaling value (affected some cases) live for about 45 mins there, but Maarten's post made me check it again. (in his case the original "new" cost was $4.5 while it should have been ~$2.0; his airline has acquired 150+ new slots during the last 60 days, which is a lot, so it falls into the extra fee's higher end there).

And also, if you read the change notifications (quoted here too), the change only affects situations where you get a lots of slots in a row. Normal scheduling of couple of planes (2-3 routes each etc) is not affected but getting hundreds+ slots in a row is the thing that is costly, and I feel that you are missing this point entirely here now.

(If you spot any "ridiculous" sums please drop a note to me so I can investigate, it should all ok and it's been tested but anything is possible like always.)


Edit: Another check out of interest: SAC who has gotten 120 new slots in last 2 months is getting a single slot from AMS on saturday at 15.50. Previous cost was ~450k, new cost is ~570k. Not a drastic change in my mind?

[stevecree]

Sami I did would not have signed up to this game anymore if I knew these changes were upcoming, so If feel I have been mis-sold too. If I quit I would like a full refund for the money I have wasted on this game so far, as I have said you have mis-sold me this product.

[JumboShrimp]

There may be some merit to the slot solution, if it was airport-wide, not player specific.  If it is going to cost me $38m to get the next set of slots (1$1m after the last update), then let the next guy be asked to pay the same price.

The way the system is implemented, a large airline will end up with an A333 siting on a tarmac, because of an unaffordable ($11m) slot cost, but the next guy will get the same slot for 100k to fly an ATR into the same airport.

The slot will still be gone, the airport will still be out of slots, but the slot will end up used the least efficiently...

If the system intends to prevent the waste of slots through very high slot cost, make it universal, airport - wide, not this Karl Marx / Barack Obama slot allocation system...