[ok] Long game worlds (1950-2030)

[pharmy]

I like lemonButt's idea, but would further limit it to an airline having no more then 10%-20% of the slots at the biggest airport to 30%-40% of the slots at smaller ones. The big boys would be forced to get larger and larger planes per slot and would essentially allow more new regional airlines to flourish on routes that are no longer worth it for the big boys.

The Terminal idea, rather then having private terminals, especially as runway constraints were generally the bottlenecks, could also be used for slot expansion, with each 5-10 years the slots coming in the shape of a new terminal , and with each airline restricted to using one terminal.

Or leaving the gradual slot increase model, with time locked new slots, with new slots less then a year old being up for grabs by new airlines or new entrants to the market/airport, but off limits to companies already present or older then x years

[schro]

Lemonbutt - I'm not sure I follow the rationale for using average stage length of flights to measure an airline's size. The measure would be more telling about the type of operations that an airline is running rather than its overall size or "legacyness".  For example, an airline in LAX versus ATL with the same fleet utilization and fleet will always have a higher "ASKPF" simply due to the distribution of demand and destinations.  In short, it will penalize those with bases that are geographically separated from where they fly, while promoting short haul operations (which are far more profitable anyway).

When you consider the traditional definition of a "legacy" carrier, it is defined as one that existed prior to the deregulation of the US air market. The common characteristics are those carrying a high average labor cost due to pensions, healthcare, union contracts, etc, such that they are  higher than "low cost" carriers, which usually have fewer unions and overhead costs. Legacies tend to serve far more markets than LCCs, and this contributes to their higher cost structure.

When you look at how regional airlines came to be in the US, they were contracted by the legacies for purposes of cost reduction. The contracts are typically structured on a cost per flight basis where the  operator is guarenteed a particular percentage of profit  (if they perform well) with the legacy absorbing the "risk" of lack of demand/ticket sales/etc, as they benefit from the additional feed into their hubs....

So more than anything, labor costs of existing airlines _should_ increase at a higher rate than the "market" rate if the goal is to emulate the effect of unions settling in at older carriers - a 20 year old airline that is identical to a 5  year old airline should theoretically have higher labor costs...

[LemonButt]

Lemonbutt - I'm not sure I follow the rationale for using average stage length of flights to measure an airline's size. The measure would be more telling about the type of operations that an airline is running rather than its overall size or "legacyness".  For example, an airline in LAX versus ATL with the same fleet utilization and fleet will always have a higher "ASKPF" simply due to the distribution of demand and destinations.  In short, it will penalize those with bases that are geographically separated from where they fly, while promoting short haul operations (which are far more profitable anyway).

When you consider the traditional definition of a "legacy" carrier, it is defined as one that existed prior to the deregulation of the US air market. The common characteristics are those carrying a high average labor cost due to pensions, healthcare, union contracts, etc, such that they are  higher than "low cost" carriers, which usually have fewer unions and overhead costs. Legacies tend to serve far more markets than LCCs, and this contributes to their higher cost structure.

When you look at how regional airlines came to be in the US, they were contracted by the legacies for purposes of cost reduction. The contracts are typically structured on a cost per flight basis where the  operator is guarenteed a particular percentage of profit  (if they perform well) with the legacy absorbing the "risk" of lack of demand/ticket sales/etc, as they benefit from the additional feed into their hubs....

So more than anything, labor costs of existing airlines _should_ increase at a higher rate than the "market" rate if the goal is to emulate the effect of unions settling in at older carriers - a 20 year old airline that is identical to a 5  year old airline should theoretically have higher labor costs...

You've just proved the point I'm trying to make.  Using two airlines with identical fleets with the same fleet utilization based at LAX and ATL, the guy in LAX will most likely have a higher ASKPF--this is assuming the ATL guy is flying shorter hops and has more flights per week versus the LAX guy flying longer routes with less flights per week.  The mark of legacy carriers is everything you just said, but guess what?  They also have a brand that caters to business travelers.  As a result, they move a lot of business and first class passengers.  In order to carry business and first class passengers, you usually have to fly longer distances with larger planes.  The guy flying short hops at ATL may have a lower ASKPF, but the guy at LAX is presumably making a killing in business/first class revenues compared to the ATL guy.  People are willing to pay double for a seat in business class on a 2000nm route, but for a short hop where you're only in the air for 20 minutes, you're not going to get many business class tickets sold.

I agree that it's not perfect.  Airlines in the water hemisphere, such as Australia will be penalized for their long haul operations being so much more prominent.  However, airlines like Qantas who fly the long haul are comparable to the legacy carriers in the US.  The longer your flights, the more regulations you have and the more pilots etc. you have to have.  The only exceptions I can really think of that would penalize real life airlines would be Air Tahiti which only has a few aircraft, but flies them all on long haul routes.

Another possible metric could be passengers carried per destination?  An airline flying 70 pax regional routes would have lower costs than airlines flying jumbo jets to 400+ pax demand destinations.  A blend of the two is maybe the best solution.  Either way, something needs to be done to make regional airlines viable and throttle the out of control explosive growth of the large airlines if long game worlds are to be successful.

[schro]

Playing in LAX is already inherently more difficult because of the higher average stage length. Your suggestion will simply make it harder. Short haul flights are more profitable because revenue does not scale linearly with stage length even though costs tend to do so. Business fliers value a wide network of options, high frequency and short connections (if necessary). Time is money to business travelers - generally their time is worth more than whatever the incremental cost of airfare is, making the price and class of service moot when flying domestically.

I'm not sure I like the passengers carried per destination either as there's already extra overhead costs associated with flying to additional cities, so this would basically counterbalance that particular element and encourage airlines to go hogwild sending 1xdaily CRJ100s to cities that have multi-thousand person demand... Oh wait. There was one like that- Independence Air. Skywest tried it too.

The only thing that makes the regional model viable in the US is fixed fee per flight flying performed on behalf of the legacies. Since the game doesn't have that concept implemented, I see nothing wrong with it being nearly impossible to run a regional.

From a controlling explosive growth perspective, that is the entire point of the long running game world - if there's very limited opportunity to start with 0 competition, that will help curtail a lot of growth after the first 5-10 game years. If the difficulty level continues to get wratcheted up, it will make the game unplayable for beginners...

[alexgv1]

LemonButt: Think bigger than just USA market.

schro: Find a new base 

[LemonButt]

The whole theory is that airlines start small and grow big.  You don't start an airline by ordering an A380 and flying it from JFK to Hong Kong.  You start an airline by ordering a B737 and flying it from JFK to Boston.  By making costs scaleable based on where you're at in your growth (airlines SHOULD grow outward, not inward), we can make the short haul guys profitable and ensure that the bigger an airline gets, there is an increase in difficulty and competition.

LemonButt: Think bigger than just USA market.

schro: Find a new base 

Perhaps the "legacy costs" of an airline should be based on an airlines rank and the number of airlines in a country?  For example, if you are the #1 biggest airline in the US where there are 150 airlines, you're costs are much higher than if you are the #1 biggest airline in Qatar where there are 2 airlines and only 1 airport.  Virtually every country has a flag carrier (either officially or de facto).  The basing system already has the world broken up into countries/regions--the only debate would be whether you count the Eurozone as a single region (which you should).

To further expound on this theory that airlines grow outward, the costs should be determined also by the number of airlines in a country.  The statistical variance with 150 airlines is much greater than with 5 airlines, so the #1 airline in the population of 150 should have significantly higher costs than the #1 airline in the population of 5.  This means that the guy who is in 150th place would have training wheels and be able to catch the #1 guy one day.

[vitongwangki]

The discussion above is meaningful. I hope the long gameworld will start after Jet Age 5 ends.

[diskoerekto]

I think another thing to be addressed is a way to introduce upgrading of game engine during game or at least doing so every few months by pausing the game for a day or so. The size and scope of your project roughly calls for ~6 month long releases. An ultra-long world can go more than 3 times that. This means users will not be able to play the latest version of the engine.

If live update does not work, as I said at least backing up db, stopping game, restarting new version with restoring backed up db may work. A few hours to a few days of pausing is probably acceptable by users in exchange for new version.

About my stance, I am all for ultra long game worlds.

[Jona L.]

To revive this discussion...

It came to my mind, that we are/were talking about long term playability issues, such as, that people would get bored too soon, etc.

Now, actually, we never tested AWS' long term playability.... So I'd like to make a little suggestion:


Why don't you, Sami, consider to run a "long-game-test" with 20 minute days (would speed up real time vs. game time ratio a lot), and actually make a game world from 1950-2050, at normal cost rate, or maybe, considering the faster time-elapse, at a slightly higher cost, to cover the server-load and running cost.
One could let number of players rise over time, to also allow more competition once more demand opens up ingame.

We could then collect player responses, and thoughts, without having to come up with new features, that would eventually be hard to program, and see, if it works out without these. Of course they can be added in later versions, but just to see if the game actually works for the long times already.


As an Idea for the billing: make it 10cr to join, and then 7cr/real life month (versus 4.2/mth) to make up for the higher workload, and also to finance the extra capacity, that may be needed.

cheers for considering,
Jona L.

P.S. with the increased pace, the world would probably not even be as long as one and a half real years... actually: 508 real days, including the 24hr start. -just asides

[Talentz]

That sounds good. A fast long game test would be a good first step.

Jona is right, the discussion is mainly about long term playability issues so, whats the best way to figure it out? Test it of course.

20min days are quick and times flies. Which is good for the 1950s~1960s stage as aircraft limitations hinder growth world wide. But 20mins worlds get tougher to manage after a number of years. So slowing the game down over time would be great.

Start with 100 players in 1950 and increase by 20 each year till 1960 (300). Then change it to 10 players per yr from 1960s onward.
1950 - 100
1960 - 300
1970 - 400
1980 - 500
1990 - 600

Perhaps you could then change the time for each days.

1950s-1970s - 20mins
1970s-1990s - 25mins
1990s+ - 30mins

Disable basing within 18months. Change to once per 10yrs? (not sure if you could do that though.) Prevent airlines from being impossible to compete against.

After 10 yrs, have everyone submit a report on playability from there point of view so we can collect results and tackle problems that arise.

Credit wise. Start big then reduce over time. We want more people to join as the game grows.

1950 ~ 10cr
1951-1959 ~ 9cr
1960 ~ 8cr
1961-1969 ~ 7cr
1970 ~ 6cr
1971 -1979 ~ 5cr
1980 ~ 4cr
1981+ 3cr

Would it be possible to add theses changes?

We can discuss issues till were banned from the internet. Only real way to figure out problems is by testing and analyzing results from player input. 


- Talentz

[Curse]

I support Talentz' (and Jona's) idea. In fact it's the same I thought over several times.

Dynamic days, dynamic credit cots and this as a test world is the only thing that's able to show you, sami, if it works.


I'm sure you have some spare hardware around to make such a testworld work, so why don't give it a try?


At the end of the day you could cancel it every second, so no risk on your side. You are the one who can only win in this szenario - when it worked, you have a new feature, if it failed, you earned some credits and learned about what went wrong.

[Sami]

Have to give some thoughts next week on these after holidays.

[omaster]

I would say one thing I would like is the ability to have an alternate plane for D checks for such a long world. Because a good airline will have to do many D checks. It should obs have to be an extra plane purchased but being able to schedule a flowed D Check/C Check schedule with spare planes would be good. I was doing this myself but it takes up too much time. Would virtually have to live in the game to be able to do it successfully. And in the real world a CEO would have staff allocated to do this menial task anyway

[Glob-Al]

For me the essential things for a longer gameworld would be:

(1) Lower profit margins
Growth needs to be slower to stop airlines from getting ridiculously big over the period of the GW. I prefer lower default ticket prices to higher average fuel prices, because the latter would create an unfair balance towards having the most fuel efficient aircraft possible.

(2) Faster game days
I agree with those who say this needs bringing in to stop the gameworld lasting forever. And with lower profit margins, growth will be slower, meaning I don't think there will be an issue with everything happening too quickly so people can't keep up.

(3) More randomness
To keep people on their toes and stop big airlines from never having to do anything there should be more random events - wars, fuel spikes, trade embargoes that mean you can't fly between two countries, safety concerns over certain fleets that means everyone with them has to have them grounded for a while, etc. I'm sure the list of ideas is endless. Would add a bit more uniqueness to each world and keep people interested.

(4) A tool for transferring flights from one fleet type to another
I know it'd be really hard to code, but I think it's an essential, because when it comes to changing over your short-haul fleet for the 4th time, people are going to get bored!

(5) A way of creating challenges for older airlines.
I like the idea of legacy retirement costs, although as others have noted they would have to be worked out carefully.

(6) A way to buy out other airlines and build an empire.
Creates a new challenge and a new dimension to gameplay to keep people interested. Some good ideas in this thread https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,17132.0.html Have a few more myself that I might post there when I get time.

With those things in place I think we'd be good to go for longer GWs 

[Sanabas]

In your view what are the most urgent updates / changes needed to get the long 1950s - 2020s game worlds working? The 1950s test world helped to discover some issues in the early days but when thinking on how things develop and continue for decades, what are your ideas and thoughts.

Something else I think is needed is an update to how new plane launches are handled. The idea of orders only being able to get every 10th plane is so that people don't get locked out of the production line quickly. However, when it comes to unpopular lines, all that means is the player who wants to use them has to wait needlessly. Concorde's an extreme example. If you want to try and run 7 of them, you'll be looking at well over a year between 1st & 7th, a long time to wait before you can get your 7 day schedule running.

But for popular models, the gaps don't actually make a difference. The 737-300 just launched in DOTM. I don't plan to use them, so I can just sit and watch. I logged in 1 hour after the plane launched, and the production line was already full for 2 years. As I type this, it's less than 2 hours after launch, and it's full for 3 years. So, miss being online at the right time by just 2 hours, and when you can get your first plane, one airline will have already received their 70th. Being away from the computer for 10 hours is perfectly normal, it's hard to log in when you're asleep. 10 hours after the launch, I expect it will be full for even longer.

Similar things happened with the 757, 767, (I got in close to launch on both those), and the MD-81 (it launched just after I went to bed. My direct competitor gets a 20 plane headstart on me), same thing will no doubt happen with the other popular planes.

In a long gameworld, more airlines will be rolling in cash, more airlines will need to make big orders to replace their old & thirsty fleets, the problem will be even worse. A huge advantage like getting 70 of your replacement planes before your competitor gets 1, purely through being lucky enough to be online at the right time, shouldn't happen. (I think that applies to the used market and slots, too, but they'd be more complicated fixes).

There's a nearly 4 year gap between the current date and the first 737-300 being delivered. Same for every other plane, there's always at least 1 year between announcement and delivery. So the simple way to do it would simply to give everybody 2 game months (36 RL hours) to place orders, and only then generate the production lists. So everybody who ordered at least one gets their first before anybody gets their 2nd, and so on. The production line will be just as full as it will be now after 36 hours, but the distribution of orders will be fair, rather than hugely dependent on luck.

[Andre]

I haven't read all three pages, but if there's going to be an 80 year long game world there's going to be almost always one fleet type that's being phased out in favor of another one. Three fleet types before gigantic leap in commonality is not going to be enough. I'm hoping for a more linear raise in commonality costs, or postponing the big bump until fleet type 5.

1. Short haul fleet (turboprops/regional jets)
2. Medium haul fleet (100-200 seat jets)
3. Long haul fleet (200+ seats, long range)

Well.. you get the picture.

[npercy1]

Back in the pre-deregulation days, airlines didn't operate the hub and spoke flight system (except for Delta). Flights were point to point, and some were flights that stopped in multiple cities, picking up passengers and moving on to the next city (ex Atlanta to Charlotte, pickup and drop of more passengers, then go to Washington, same drill as before, then to Newark.) These kinds of systems should be implemented into a game this long since it is a change from the olden days into the future, and airlines should chose from which system they want to operate. It would add to the game and make a game that long less boring, since you would be over time innovating your airline, just as the real airlines did over that time period.

[swiftus27]

I used to go CLE to FLL via CLT or ATL on the same plane.    Continuing Service doesn't exist any more.

[exchlbg]

Sami turned down requests for ABCBA traffic system repeatedly, it was widely overused when still possible to bomb competition out of the way. Multiple bases were implemented instead.
You can´t have both systems.

[ReedME]

Will we ever see an 80 year game world ?