Quick beta available

[Jona L.]

Seems that narrowbody vs widebody problem is still not solved  

At least you get 40% Market Share, in former game engine it would have been in the <30% area.

Have you checked the CI of both, yours and his company? maybe he gets a boost through that Or he offers a lower price. As per what sami said, that impact should be bigger than in former games. I'd like to test that somehow. If anyone wants to try on a LH route to/from LHR we can discuss price settings through PMs

[Boot]

My thoughts about frequency rape and solving it AWS-way...

1. In AWS crew requirements are a bit unrealistic, salaries for Very Large airplane pilots are about 50% higher than for Large AC (that's realistic I guess), but for each Very Large AC there needs to be about 85% more sets of pilots than for each Large AC (based on my data from MT6, each AC has 2 pilot crew). That means that flying wide-bodies will get you a really dramatic pilot + all the overhead staff salary increase (this means that Very Large AC also need more sets of cabin crew). If this is sorted out in a more realistic manner then Very Large AC = wide-body will get a bit more competitive. One option is to increase pilot-set requirements for smaller AC, other option is to calculate crew requirements realistically based on scheduled flights (if I understand correctly currently it's done so that each AC class has it's static crew requirement which is absolutely not dependent on if it flies 1 or 18 hours per day).

2. 05-00 flight window and other time-related stuff. Who the hell wants to fly at 05 in the morning anyway??? IRL you need to be at the airport like 1:30 before the flight and add at least 30 mins for commute and 30 mins for waking up. That means you'll be looking at waking up at 02:30. This flight window needs to be decreased somewhat. Currently it seems to be that demand is quite evenly spread out between 05-00, but it should be more precisely concentrated on rush hours. That way people could schedule bigger airplanes for rush hours and smaller AC for other times. This will also favor bigger aircraft.

3. Does average Joe really care about what AC is he flying on? I think that most of the people do not check before buying the tickets what AC will they fly on. Even I as aviation enthusiast will check the AC AFTER I have already bought the tickets. And I'm pretty sure that average Joe will not even do that. At best they will know the AC type when they board. I think that after the WOW-factor has gone (which is after couple of flights) even aviation enthusiast does not really care if AC is new E195 or B777. After all - with smaller AC you get less waiting for boarding and de-boarding. Time and price are what matter, not AC size.
If I understand correctly your current new formula favors A321 over A318, why is that? Why should A321 sell more seats than A318 when there is oversupply and there are not enough pax to fill the A318(-s)? I think that A318 and A319 (and 736 and 737) are already in disadvantage (see their production number in MT6), why make them even worse?

4. Penalty for tech-stopping when there are non-tech-stop flights available - this is really good and realistic!

5. Slot fees. Maybe in addition to cost of acquiring slots there should be also a fee for using it daily. I know that there are route fees but AFAIK those are based mostly on the weight of AC. Maybe you could change it so that there is a flat fee for using the slot and it would not depend on the weight or class of airplane (if the fee already exists then make it bigger) and also a portion of fee that is based on weight or class (like probably now). Also a small step to favor bigger airplanes.

To sum it up - I think you need to create economic factors for players to prefer bigger planes on certain routes not some silly formulas like "if route has demand X and length Y then ideal plane size would be Z" and if it's smaller or bigger then it gets penalized...

Probably not the best thread for the purpose but
my 2 cents behind the glass of wine

[ezzeqiel]

If I understand correctly your current new formula favors A321 over A318, why is that?

that's not all... A318 will sell more than a 777/767/744 on short routes with heavy demand...

5. Slot fees. Maybe in addition to cost of acquiring slots there should be also a fee for using it daily.

I sayed this on the other thread, but doing some forum search I've found it has been suggested several times, and all of them has been answered "it's not realistic"...

apparently making paxs select the aircraft acording to the seats it has is more realistic than leasing slots...

[Troxartas86]

I just wanted to announce that I bought the oldest plane on the used market because why not? It's an 18-year old Tu-154M I rescued from the scrap heap. I'm going to fly it from Dulles to LAX in a ridiculous 50C/60Y configuration provided it doesn't crash on the delivery flight.

As for relevant discussion, looks like everyone crossing the pond into Dulles is flying narrow body except for Cream Airways with their 777s. I will look into getting some jumbos on those routes tomorrow to see how it runs. There's no competition right now.

[Sami]

Uh, no, he probably didn't. At least looking at my credit history, the refund was never applied and I did play to the end.

It is not visible in the history, just in the balance.

[Sami]

that's not all... A318 will sell more than a 777/767/744 on short routes with heavy demand...

Incorrect.

On short routes they are equal.

[Sami]

To sum it up - I think you need to create economic factors for players to prefer bigger planes on certain routes not some silly formulas like "if route has demand X and length Y then ideal plane size would be Z" and if it's smaller or bigger then it gets penalized...

Once again, do not focus on the techical aspects and what is happening at background but focus on the results.


And since people seem to misunderstand most of the concepts, I shall not (as already mentioned) discuss any more of the technical matters or formulas behind the system at the forum. The data on what is needed to know will be available in the manual once completed.

[Sami]

Seems that narrowbody vs widebody problem is still not solved

Cannot be judged alone from that image at all...  What is route image, what are the prices etc.

[Sami]

Still sitting at 100%, although flights with competition are suffering a bit. Time to increase by another 20%!!!

Forgot to mention yesterday. You are probably able to increase the prices a bit too much without hurting the sales. The effect of very high prices vs route overall demand may still be too small, but let me know when your sales start to decrease.

[Glob-Al]

To continue my earlier experiment, I'm now running 2x tech-stopping 737 and 1x 772-ER on PVG > DUB.

YRD073/075 (737-700) averaging 76 pax per flight, average profit per return trip $31,292.
YRD037/037 (777-200ER) averaging 97 pax per flight, average loss per return trip $24,200.
YRD057/059 (737-700) averaging 76 pax per flight, average profit per return trip $31,292.

So despite the tech-stopping penalty and smaller aircraft penalty, an airline flying two 737s would be able to claim a 61% market share, whilst the airline flying the 772 would take 39% and be losing money hand over fist. And since the leasing cost for 2x 737s is less than for 1x 772ER I'm afraid the above figures would look even worse if you factored in all the other costs that aren't included on the route screen. So I don't think we've quite cracked this yet.

RI is 100. All this has been done with prices at default (or rather at what default was when I first set up the route, so probably now more like default minus 3 or 4%). I'm now going to experiment with cutting the price of tickets on the 772 to see how big a difference that makes.

UPDATE: 10% price cut led to 772 pax increasing by about 4, and each of the other two flights dropping by a couple. So a small change but not very sensitive to price. I'm going to try another 20% now to see if that has any impact.

[Pukeko]

Still sitting at 100%, although flights with competition are suffering a bit. Time to increase by another 20%!!!

Increasing to approx 180% of standard price was a bit too much... so i dropped price 20% and Lfs back to 100. Routes still have no competition and under served. Seems to work quite well.

[esquireflyer]

3. Does average Joe really care about what AC is he flying on? I think that most of the people do not check before buying the tickets what AC will they fly on. Even I as aviation enthusiast will check the AC AFTER I have already bought the tickets. And I'm pretty sure that average Joe will not even do that. At best they will know the AC type when they board. I think that after the WOW-factor has gone (which is after couple of flights) even aviation enthusiast does not really care if AC is new E195 or B777. After all - with smaller AC you get less waiting for boarding and de-boarding. Time and price are what matter, not AC size.

1. Specifically to your "aviation enthusiast" point: I check the AC before I buy the tickets; after, it's too late if I don't like the aircraft choice. This is especially important on either very long routes (because you will be on the plane for a long time) or on short routes (because airlines' increasing use of RJs means that you will not be able to roll a rollaboard aboard if it's an RJ, and on many routes, such as BOS-NYC, RJs are mixed in with standard narrowbodies so you have to be careful to check the fleet type).

2. Also to the aviation enthusiast point, FlyerTalk members frequently complain about airlines' use of narrowbodies across oceans.

3. To the Average Joe point, I think most probably won't know the name of an aircraft model, but will notice such things as whether it's an RJ (using high density seating which is standard on RJs), or whether the overhead bins are tiny. And more importantly, if they don't know the operational difference between an RJ and a standard narrowbody, they will get a bad impression of the whole airline, thinking "this airline has bad seats!"

4. In the specific context of narrowbodies across oceans, aircraft type obviously matters to Average Joes in this real-life situation, hurting the airline's CI and RI:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577152974098241982.html

[meiru]

That's it! The regulation of the market should work with price, passenger satisfaction, quality... all those factors... not artificial penalties.

[Boot]

Good idea - if you use RJ-s (or narrowbodies) on very long routes then your RI (and CI somewhat too) will suffer and that means you'll be able to sell less seats (if there is a competition with better planes and RI/CI). This way player will know that he is doing something wrong (sees that his RI is not climbing to 100).

[Boot]

1. In AWS crew requirements are a bit unrealistic, salaries for Very Large airplane pilots are about 50% higher than for Large AC (that's realistic I guess), but for each Very Large AC there needs to be about 85% more sets of pilots than for each Large AC (based on my data from MT6, each AC has 2 pilot crew). That means that flying wide-bodies will get you a really dramatic pilot + all the overhead staff salary increase (this means that Very Large AC also need more sets of cabin crew). If this is sorted out in a more realistic manner then Very Large AC = wide-body will get a bit more competitive. One option is to increase pilot-set requirements for smaller AC, other option is to calculate crew requirements realistically based on scheduled flights (if I understand correctly currently it's done so that each AC class has it's static crew requirement which is absolutely not dependent on if it flies 1 or 18 hours per day).

Sami, I'd want to come back to this AC class vs crew requirements topic.

I made excel sheet based on my company in MT6:
http://www.orionis.net/~boot/pilot_costs.html

some comments:
1. planes column shows total number of planes of that type
2. pilots column is taken from "Personnel office" page
3. pilots per plane = pilots / planes
4. total pilot salary column is from "Personnel office" page
5. pilot cost per ac = total pilot salary / planes
6. cabin crew is from ac data page
7. total CC needed = cabin crew * planes * (pilots per plane / 2 = how many sets of pilots and CC are needed, every AC in my livery has 2-pilot crew)
8. CC cost per plane = total CC salary from Personnel page / total number of CC * total CC needed / planes
9. pilot + CC cost per plane = 5. + 8.
10. overhead to pilot + cabin crew cost ratio = for every dollar that is paid to pilot or CC $1.58 is paid to CEO/HR/whatever.

So this shows that direct salary costs for A330 are about 3.29 times bigger than for MD90 (which is roughly 2.3 times smaller than A330).
Additionally there are some really huge overhead costs but it's hard to guess how exactly are they distributed between different AC classes... Probably some portion of it is based on number of AC (which favors bigger AC) and some portion is based on number of pilots + CC associated with AC-s (which favors smaller AC).

Some easy questions:
1. Are my calculations correct?
2. If yes then do you think that numbers marked with red are reflecting real life situation?
3. If yes then do you plan to correct them?

Thanks!

[Sami]

To continue my earlier experiment, I'm now running 2x tech-stopping 737 and 1x 772-ER on PVG > DUB.

Settings tuning need some work still I see. Have to check closer later on.

[Sami]

Sami, I'd want to come back to this AC class vs crew requirements topic.

Staff numbers are not under work here, they will be revisited perhaps for next version. So sorry, no time to check these any closer now. (The crew numbers are loosely based on real numbers though)

[Boot]

doh... is it so hard to understand that I have to spell it out for you?
You are trying to fix a problem - smaller aircraft beating bigger.
My calculated staff numbers show that this is one of the reasons why narrow-body AC are more profitable than WB - salary costs for 1 WB are higher than for 2 NB. IMO this is quite unrealistic.
If this is changed to more realistic numbers then it will make WB-s more competitive. Add tech-stop penalty (which you have already done as I understand) and maybe some additional little tweak and the problem is basically solved...

As I'm not participating in this beta and don't have credits to join it and not planning to buy any credits soon, can somebody test out the following scenario (or can you answer yourself Sami):
1. Demand 1000 pax/day.
2. 2 companies, one flying 5x A318 = 5*120 = 600 seats, other flying 5x A321 = 5*192 = 960 seats (so default configurations for both planes)
3. CI and RI for both companies = 100.

Will they sell same amount of tickets or will new system favor one of the planes/companies?
How does it depend on the route length (lets take for example 200, 500, 1000, 2000NM routes).

[Sami]

My calculated staff numbers show that this is one of the reasons why narrow-body AC are more profitable than WB - salary costs for 1 WB are higher than for 2 NB. IMO this is quite unrealistic.

You seem to forgot completely that longhaul pilots are much less "efficient" than shorthaul pilots due to rest requirements etc. (and they actually use often 3 pilots in flights too, even with modern planes. ... not on most Trans-Atlantics though ..but let's say roughly, when flight time is over 8-9hrs, you need one more guy there, depending on company too)

So as already mentioned, staff is not an item on this update round. (But for example regional airline staff levels do need fixing and it is planned in future versions)


To your question. Both airlines should sell as much on the route, if all factors apart from plane type are the same. Regardless of route distance or any such thing. (seats sold is not a proxy of seats available)

[Boot]

Thanks for answers!

I know that LH pilots are less efficient but isn't 80% difference a bit too much?
And do LH flights IRL have also extra cabin crew members with them (in AWS it certainly seems to be modelled so).

I didn't have time to read all the other threads but now I found this:

I will also make a few changes to the calculations later today, by adding a factor if the route is dom/intl/longhaul which should improve this (and allowing "longhaul domestics" with narrowbodies) , and also adding a fleet group factor so 752 and 753 will be then equal (which they in pax'es eyes are). And it also makes the A321 worse since it's "comparable size" goes down since it will be similar to 320-319.

Does this mean that before this change A321 would have sold more tickets than A318 and after the change the numbers are equal?