I'll post some more detailed ideas later today, but my first impressions are that there are some really important things missing.
New aircraft pages - I can look at the production lists, and I can use compare aircraft to check capacity/range/etc. So that's not too bad. But being unable to see prices is a bit of an issue, as is not knowing when a new model is going to be introduced. The 736 & 739 are both available to order in BW, but none are in service yet. So I don't think they've actually been certified yet. When are they due to be certified? I have no idea, unless I want to mouseover each order until the first one appears.
Used Market - This is even more important. I can infer availability based on the global stats. But I have no idea of plane age, plane price, other than simply guesswork based on my knowledge from other gameworlds, or looking at my mentored airlines existing leases.
Available loans - An airline has no existing loans, a few million cash, and a B rating. I think they can get a loan, but how much? 2 million or 20 million? Using loans to fund growth is pretty fundamental, but I can't give advice if I don't know what they have available.
The open route page - This is the most important of all IMO. Not the ability to actually open routes, but the ability to move to the route opening page, and set them up without actually clicking 'open route'. There is really important info only available on this page.
-Slot costs. Do I recommend to my mentee that it's safe to go right down to near 0 cash grabbing used planes, because slots will only cost ~50k per plane to schedule? Or do I recommend that they don't drop below 3 million, because each plane costs $1 million? I can't tell, because I can't see slot costs, and my guesswork could easily be out by a factor of 5.
-Delay chance for turn times. Depending on the plane, I can do this almost from memory. Compare aircraft gives me the minimum. 25 minute minimum, 45 minutes for 1%, 40 minutes is 2.8%. 40 minute minimum, 60 minutes 8%, 65 1.4, 70 for 1%. 80 minute minimum, 130 1.4, 135 1%. But a tiny plane with a 20 minute default? A 55 or 60 minute default? No idea. A 70 minute default like the a300? I *think* it's 115 for 1%. Of course, I can check these by going to my own MT airline, and trying to create routes with the same plane. But that doesn't work if I don't have an active airline, or if I only have a JA airline, and so can't look at more modern planes. Since short turnarounds at HQ looks like the #1 mistake new players make, this is important.
-Flight time. This one's huge. Again, poor, inefficient scheduling is the #1 thing that hurts new players based on what I've seen so far, even more so than fleet commonality. I'd love to be able to give them a step-by-step walkthrough of how I'd create a schedule with their airline, using 1% turn times at each end, with minimal gaps, and using redeyes where possible rather than dead of night flights. I'd love to show them the way I do my basic planning, generating a list of round-trip times for a particular plane, which lets me pick & choose from the list later for maximum efficiency. For more advanced people, I'd like to walk them through creating their first 7 day schedule, again with minimal gaps. I'd like to show them how to find a good tech stop, and decide which out of 2 or 3 is best, or how to use a techstop with a curfew. To me, those are the skills that really make a big difference in someone's ability to build a profitable airline. But I can't do that, because I can't see flight times. For this one, I can't even fudge it based on my own airline, because I won't necessarily have routes of the same length, with the same timezone changes, to the same sized airports with similar taxi times.
The ability to see these things, if it could be done without letting the mentor actually take out loans, buy planes, create routes, would make a big big difference. If it could only be done by allowing full access, then there's a trust issue, as it becomes easy for a mentor to vandalise, or even accidentally stuff up, an airline. There are also the technical issues with mentoring in a gameworld someone plays in, or mentoring more than 1 airline. I think those need to be doable, as it's highly likely all active mentors might already be playing MT, for instance. Plus the fact that at least two BW requests went unanswered for over 3 months. I have some potential ideas for that, will post later today.
Topic: Mentoring feedback/ideas/important stuff not viewable (Read 1876 times)
