Long term playability vs. slots

[Mr.HP]

I like the idea of excessively high slot cost. So airlines won't use small/less effective A/C to block slots easily. An airline control more than, for example 3000 slots, and >50% of that airport slots, will purchase slots at 10x normal price. Like I'm paying almost 4m per set, imagine if it'll be 40m it's another story. An if an airline take like 6000 slot, and >70% slots, cost can be up to 100x

Players will be faced with opportunity cost, which is the basis of all business decisions.  Airlines will reach a point where it is cost prohibitive to expand by adding planes/routes and will be forced to open a new base and/or use bigger aircraft on existing routes.  They will reach the point where it makes more sense to spend $300 million on an A380 or opening a new base than spending $300 million on slots to schedule another A320.

[exchlbg]

Unlimited building capacity? In what world you are living in? Of course there are limits building new runways or terminals, and money isn´t the solution for everything.
Especially in Europe you can´t build anything on an airport site before you went through court for about ten years with varying success.
Congested airports are an important problem in RL, they should also be here. Space is not unlimited, neither in the sky nor down here.
Maybe price should matter more, when acquiring the last open spot of an hour would be an investment that hurts even the strongest.
Some slots should be reserved for incoming traffic though to keep some outside competition for based airlines.

[ezzeqiel]

Unlimited building capacity? In what world you are living in? Of course there are limits building new runways or terminals,

Always so aggressive...

and money isn´t the solution for everything.

"In what world you are living in?"



If you can't extend a runway, because there's a 15th century church, and the whole country turns against it, you can always build a new airport 50 miles away, where there's plenty of "nobody cares about" land... of course no airline has the money for it... but again, the limiting factor is money, not room...

The limiting factor is always money... "cost benefit" of building... opportunity costs... not "hard caps"...

[LemonButt]

Yes, the real world is unlimited with the only constraint being money.  What is the price of doubling the size of Heathrow?  I don't know, but it is less than infinity which is the cost in AWS.  This is based on economic theory that most people don't have a good understanding of, so I'd expect most players to respond this way.

Why is it CVG has so many slots?  They are a smaller city in the grand scheme of things, but Delta made it a hub due to proximity and as a result it is huge in the game.  The same thing goes for CLT.  When city based demand is implemented, being able to grow an airport will be required to compete effectively.

To further emphasize the point of things being unlimited IRL just look at places like Japan.  No room to build an airport?  Spend billions to create an artificial island and build it anyways.  ATL moved millions and millions of yards of fill dirt many miles with a custom conveyance system several miles long just so they could build an additional runway.  JFK could be expanded out into Jamaica Bay for the right price. 

[exchlbg]

Japan is indeed a very good example that only money and political will of the gouvernment determines what´s to be built and where.Like with their nuclear power plants.
At least for central Europe politics face a growing opponing population which can´t be just dealt with spending money.Maybe the US still work that way but it will change there,too.
But how can the possibilitiy of building some other airport nearby in RL have an effect on the slot situation at the airports in AWS ?

[LemonButt]

Why did ORD get built when MDW already existed?  Why is there 3 airports in NYC?  Demand is the reason.  I don't forsee sami allowing new airports that don't exist IRL to be built, so what is the solution?  You expand existing airports.  Tokyo doesn't have 2 airports because they thought it would be fun, but because the airlines needed the space to satisfy demand.  So with all of that said, what happens when we outgrow ORD in AWS?  We can't build airports so we must add capacity to existing airports.

[ezzeqiel]

At least for central Europe politics face a growing opponing population which can´t be just dealt with spending money.Maybe the US still work that way but it will change there,too.
But how can the possibilitiy of building some other airport nearby in RL have an effect on the slot situation at the airports in AWS ?

You are talking from present time, 2013, but I'm currently playing in 1956... I don't remember reading much about opponing population back in the 50s.. at least not about these issues since they had more important things to be dealt back then than where an airport is or is not built... plus aviation was seen different back then... Also, cities were not as populated as they are presently...

Just as an example... in my city, between 1930 and 1990 a main avenue was constructed, demolishing entire blocks in the middle of downtown... it was done no matter what...
Today, some trees are taken off that avenue, and a legal issue is raised which stops working for weeks...

Times changed, but don't forget JA starts in 1955...

[exchlbg]

Yes, you´re right, I was talking as of today. Jet Age slot problems don´t come from congested airports in RL, but only here, where 100+ airlines fight for 20 potential PAX (realistic?)

[LemonButt]

This variable slot pricing has been there already for ages really.. And it already takes into account pretty much everything you mentioned in price calculation.

Also, having unlimited airport capacity or unrestricted basing will not be done. Will keep at least some sense and relation to real life in things....

I've done some more thinking on this.  Sami, you mentioned having some sense/relation to things in the real life.  I live in the US and am well traveled, but just for the sake of argument I'm going to use North America.  IRL, there are only 13 airlines with 40 or more aircraft flying in the US.  In AWS in Modern Times circa 2013 there are probably at least 100 airlines with 40 aircraft or more in North America.  The actual breakdown IRL is even more discouraging with 4 airlines 600-750 aircraft, 2 airlines with ~350 aircraft, 4 airlines with 100-200 aircraft, 4 airlines with 40-70 aircraft.

In reflection, AWS is NOTHING like the airlines that exist IRL.  They are subject to a market based system where they can influence the expansion of airports and slots, whereas in AWS our hands are tied.  In 2001 ATL started building a fifth runway and served ~75-80 million pax/year from 2000-2005.  When the runway opened in 2006 it increased capacity by 40% from 184 flights/hour to 237 flights/hour.  6 years later they are serving 90 million pax instead of 80 millions with plenty of room for further growth as they just built a brand new international terminal also.  To build the runway, they piled fill dirt 11 stories high in some places, destroyed surrounding neighborhoods, and had to modify two cemeteries where dead bodies were buried at a total cost of $1.28 billion.

IRL, there are no arbitrary caps on the number of bases or available slots.  ATL needed more slots and they exhumed dead bodies to make it happen.  I think you're underestimating how great a market-based system would be as it would dramatically change the game and make it MORE realistic, not less.  Furthermore, another statistic to add to slot cost calculation would be passengers served.  This would very greatly as 100 slots with a CRJ versus 100 slots with an A380 would produce dramatically different results, so it would have to be something like "passengers served per slot used".  This would be a good scaling metric as someone flying 100 CRJ slots would have to pay considerably more to "create" slots as they should be upgrading to use larger planes versus the A380 guy who can't buy anything bigger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_airlines_in_North_America#North_America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartsfield%E2%80%93Jackson_Atlanta_International_Airport#History

[Sami]

In AWS in Modern Times circa 2013 there are probably at least 100 airlines with 40 aircraft or more in North America.

40 airlines in MT#8 in North America with fleet more than 40 (March 2010 game date).

The overall pax demand in AWS is indeed higher than in real life if you look at the numbers of pax transported in the larger airports vs. real life counterpart. And I do not see why the mega hubs should be made even bigger by better slot availability or by any other mean. (well yea, if the slots are in poor supply there is no competition etc, but what I mean that making the big hubs even bigger is a bad idea)

Anyway, this is already out of the original topic and question in my mind as my original point was to look for ideas in how to make th long term game play easier in terms of slots and route/fleet changes etc.

[ezzeqiel]

but what I mean that making the big hubs even bigger is a bad idea

The main problem with that statement is that ATL shouldn't be a big hub in the first place... ATL wouldn't be a third of what it is today without delta, and delta does not exist in AWS...

But that leads (again) to city based demand...


I would suggest, creating a new world with "special rules", and applying a free market slot system and maybe basing (since you don't want to change the current slot system under any argument)... They do that in other airline simulation games...
So the people who wants to play a "realistic" game, will play the current rules... people who wanna play a balanced game, will play the new world...


As I once suggested, all airports should start with the same pax traffic (at least all 5 airports), and then grow accordingly to how well the airlines there are doing... That, would be closer to RL (the way I see it)...

But if you start a game with the mega hub ATL is today, and let the airlines there expand it even bigger (just because they based there), of course it would be a bad bad thing...


With the current system you don't let DELTA, create what ATL is today, you let ATL, create an AWS delta replica.

[LemonButt]

40 airlines in MT#8 in North America with fleet more than 40 (March 2010 game date).

The overall pax demand in AWS is indeed higher than in real life if you look at the numbers of pax transported in the larger airports vs. real life counterpart. And I do not see why the mega hubs should be made even bigger by better slot availability or by any other mean. (well yea, if the slots are in poor supply there is no competition etc, but what I mean that making the big hubs even bigger is a bad idea)

Anyway, this is already out of the original topic and question in my mind as my original point was to look for ideas in how to make th long term game play easier in terms of slots and route/fleet changes etc.

But this IS on topic.  The idea to make the game playable long term is to allow unlimited slots throttled by exorbitant prices.

ezzequiel proved the point--ATL wouldn't be ATL if it weren't for Delta and the reason people base there in AWS is because the Delta traffic/demand/slots are modeled in AWS.

Here is a list of metropolitan statistical areas for the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas

Once city-based demand is created, what happens?  Las Vegas is the 31st largest metro area in the US, but their airport is the 24th largest in the WORLD.  #30 and #32 are Kansas City and Columbus, OH, respectively.  Are you telling me that these airports are going to all serve ~2 million people in AWS with city-based demand?  Have you ever been to the Kansas City airport?  It is almost a ghost town.

Salt Lake City is #50 on the population list, but their airport is #15 in the US and relatively HUGE.  San Diego is #17 in population, yet their airport only has 1 runway.

So if we're really talking about long term play-ability vs slots, what happens when city-based demand kicks in?  Is SLC going to have 50 slots an hour go unused while SAN is impossible to fly into?  The real world doesn't work based on city-based demand (see Las Vegas) due to not only tourism, but also the hub and spoke model that has airlines setting up large hubs.  St Louis is the 19th largest city in the US, but they are without a hub, but the 50th largest--Salt Lake City--has more than three times the traffic (20 million pax/yr versus 6 million).

It seems to me that a market-based solution with unlimited slots throttled by pricing relative to demand factors is the only solution.  If you really want to keep some sort of realism, it doesn't get any more real than the same free market system under which every airline operates.  Right now, when it comes to slots, the market is fixed and players are reacting (see slot hogging).  In a free market, the market react to players, and players react to the market.

[ezzeqiel]

so sami, any conclusions yet ??.. apparently no more ideas are coming :S

[BD]

so sami, any conclusions yet ??.. apparently no more ideas are coming :S

This is a big issue, and seven or eight days later may not be enough time to flush this out.  There are many hardcore players who have made many contributions to these forums that have not responded here.

Looking back at some other threads on major changes, they went for months, as the discussion evolved and coalesced around some ideas and how to model them.  Not suggesting we carry on for months, but not sure the "brainstorming" phase is over yet.

With slots the obvious problem is that it is "first come, first take" which is not fully fair. But that is not going to change yet at least. One change I would plan for this, in order to limit huge monopolies, is that home based airlines combined together could not control more than 60 or 70% of the slots at the airport. All other slots would be marked for non-based airlines.

However, when we think of longer term the one big issue is that when you replace your fleets to faster ones, the arrival/dep times at outstation change and you may end up having no slots for the departure, and you have to stick with the 1955 propliner schedule to LHR all the way to 2020 even though the flight could be 5 hours faster. This isn't very realistic nor desirable.

Anyway, this is already out of the original topic and question in my mind as my original point was to look for ideas in how to make th long term game play easier in terms of slots and route/fleet changes etc.

I like the line of thought the LemonButt has provided.  

As I read Sami's request again, the essence is that to make the game playable from game time=0, the world is unpopulated with any airlines.  The model assumes high growth to make it interesting for the players in a virtually unopposed marketplace.  So there is in place various mechanisms to limit the impact of that growth to mitigate the advantages of monopoly, again to make it playable for a larger number of players (vs dominated by a hand full of "winners").

To model what LemonButt is discussing would require competition to exist right from the start (otherwise who is bidding on slots?).  That is the holy grail of most games, and may be rather complex and computing intensive to implement on this scale.  Hence these shortcuts, like the suggested cap on % of slots at home base, multi-factor step function on slot prices, limits to 3 aircraft purchases per week, etc..  

For similar reasons, there are also limits to the number of slots in the entire game world.  

Ultimately, if the game runs out of computing resources or becomes too big and complicated to support efficiently within the price that Sami charges, then it won't work.  So, I see where Sami is coming from.  We have to trust Sami on this bit.  

So, I will (perhaps presumptuously   ) attempt to ask Sami's question in different words...

"Given that we are limited to having some artificial mechanisms (let's face it, they all are, but easiest way I can think to express is...that are not a "simulated market place" as proposed by LemonButt, sorry LB   ), is there some combination of limitations or parameters that can be set that makes the game interesting to anyone, no matter when they join in the long games, while being challenging enough throughout the life of the game to maintain interest?  What should the game start 'look like' so that it doesn't give an unbalanced advantage to those who got in on day one?  And, how can these tweaks help ease the administrative aspects of the game?"

Underlying the answer to these questions are:

• What do/should players consider a "success" in this long game?
• Does it make sense in the long game to have airlines so large or with such a large cash balance early enough in the game that they no longer face an existential threat?
• Does the game reward perseverance with game mechanics (e.g. editing hundreds of routes in transition to new aircraft) or does it reward strategic thinking and planning?
• Does one strategy dominate or can "success" be found via multiple strategies?

I don't know enough (yet) to say if just a few tweaks that Sami may be looking for, or a major change, is required to meet all the above.  

If there is a new city demand model that is on the horizon that few (if any) have knowledge/experience with, what gets proposed here ought to be seen as short term, pending the implementation of the new model, when there might be a better educated guess on the impact of any suggested tweaks.

I hope this spurs some thinking and comments from more veteran players.

[LemonButt]

"Given that we are limited to having some artificial mechanisms (let's face it, they all are, but easiest way I can think to express is...that are not a "simulated market place" as proposed by LemonButt, sorry LB   ), is there some combination of limitations or parameters that can be set that makes the game interesting to anyone, no matter when they join in the long games, while being challenging enough throughout the life of the game to maintain interest?  What should the game start 'look like' so that it doesn't give an unbalanced advantage to those who got in on day one?  And, how can these tweaks help ease the administrative aspects of the game?"

The combination of limitations/parameters is the marginal declining utility created by the increased cost of slots.  I have a degree in applied mathematics and a programming background.  Currently slot prices are calculated using an algorithm with various factors if and only if slots are available.  I'm just saying we get rid of the artificial ceiling on slots and tweak the algorithm, because IRL slots are always available for the right price.  It will reach the point of insanity where, as I mentioned in a previous post, players will be faced with the opportunity cost of spending $300 million on slots for a 737 or spending $300 million to put an A380 on a route using existing slots as well.

The business world is all about opportunity cost.  Right now, once slots are gone there is no opportunity cost--you upgrade to larger planes, period.  And whether an airline has used 0 slots or 10,000, they are subject to no slots being available.  The current system encourages slot hogging as a means to combat competition.  If slots are uncapped, this practice will disappear overnight.  Right now, players can structure their airline based on the premise that if they use all the slots, no one can compete against them.

The issue is abundance versus scarcity.  When scarce resources become abundant, people start using them differently.  Back in the 80's a guy started treating scarce computing resources as if they were abundant and started using resources to draw pictures on the computer screen.  It was the first graphical user interface.  Right now players are identifying slots as a scarce resource and responding by securing as many slots as possible, because if they don't they won't be there in the future.

So if the question is how do you make it so players can find the game interested no matter when they join then the answer is a market-based solution.  If the artificial ceiling on slots is going to remain, the only way to ensure availability is to place an artificial cap on individual players.  This is how the USSR was run in a command economy.  The government said they were going to produce 1000 bottles of vodka and each citizen can have 1 bottle.  The end result was long lines and artificial scarcity.

This also crosses over to the basing system and the artificial cap on the number of bases and number of planes at those bases.  To keep the game interesting, a player should be able to stretch themselves too thin.  Under the current system, I can go into 4 airports with 100 aircraft each, use up all the slots available and have a monopoly on those 4 airports and nearly all the routes as all the slots will be gone and no one could compete with me even if they wanted to.  In a market-based approach, I could open 10 bases with 500 planes each.  My costs would be significantly higher as the marginal cost of each base would be higher, but if slots remained available all 10 of my bases would be vulnerable to competition entering the market.  Even if I only had 4 bases, but were able to put 500 aircraft at each one instead of 100 I'd still be extremely vulnerable.

At the end of the day, what makes the game interesting to players is not necessarily being successful, but avoiding the many ways you can fail.  A market-based approach would dramatically increase the number of ways an airline can fail, making things much more challenging and interesting.

[ezzeqiel]

is there some combination of limitations or parameters that can be set that makes the game interesting to anyone, no matter when they join in the long games, while being challenging enough throughout the life of the game to maintain interest?

Yes, there's is a combination of limitation or parameters that can be set: "market based slots"... the more slots you have the more expensive they become... money is the only limitation...

What should the game start 'look like' so that it doesn't give an unbalanced advantage to those who got in on day one?  And, how can these tweaks help ease the administrative aspects of the game?"

The game start (as suggested before) should look like this: all airports have the same stats... then they grow accordingly on how well each airline is doing... just like in RL... of course, cities surrounding them are an important factor, but it's not the most important one...

This way, my AWS airline can create an ATL, an AMS, a FRA, and ORD airports just like IRL, (or who knows which.. hundreds of options) and not an artifical ATL create a DAL aws replica, an AMS create an artifical KLM replica, a FRA create an artifical DLH replica and ORD creates an artificial UAL and AAL replicas...


We all know Atlanta, Amsterdam, Frankfurt populations are largely unrelated to their airport sizes... those airports exists because some airlines decided to make a HUB there (and they succeeded at it)...

When the airport is just built expecting some airlines to come, (aws current situation), then it ends like CYMX (it almost happens with KIAD, but some regulations kicked in)... of course sami here just puts some demand in the shiny new empty hub and airlines will go and fill it, but that's not RL case...


The discussion keeps coming back over city based demand... but as lemon butt sayed... if we talk long term, and if we think in the future city based demand, then we should be thinking in a market based slot system and airport building and growing, which, I think, will solve current playability problems...

[Sami]

As I read Sami's request again, the essence is that to make the game playable from game time=0, the world is unpopulated with any airlines

No, exactly the opposite. The purpose of this thread is to seek ideas on how to make the slots a "non issue" when you are running a 500 plane strong airline for 60 game years, and transitioning between fleets and planes with different speeds etc. Naturally if the slots are out of the airport and you want to get new planes, then so be it - it will eventually happen at some point. But the point is to seek ideas on how to make life and playing easier in the longer run.

That in mind I will probably implement the "free edit" thing what I mentioned earlier. In other words you can freely move the outstation slot every 5 years to any place you wish. This could bring semi-automated fleet transitioning feature for example (= just click to mass move all routes from DC-6 to B707 and the system hangs only on curfews or runway errors or other such things). The slot at the outstation will just move to the new time then (some hours could go over capacity but that's not really only a minor issue as the playability is the main focus here). This naturally requires you to change the fleet type and as said you could do it only every 5 years per each slot (route), the system already stores when you last edited each route/slot.

[LemonButt]

No, exactly the opposite. The purpose of this thread is to seek ideas on how to make the slots a "non issue" when you are running a 500 plane strong airline for 60 game years, and transitioning between fleets and planes with different speeds etc. Naturally if the slots are out of the airport and you want to get new planes, then so be it - it will eventually happen at some point. But the point is to seek ideas on how to make life and playing easier in the longer run.

That in mind I will probably implement the "free edit" thing what I mentioned earlier. In other words you can freely move the outstation slot every 5 years to any place you wish. This could bring semi-automated fleet transitioning feature for example (= just click to mass move all routes from DC-6 to B707 and the system hangs only on curfews or runway errors or other such things). The slot at the outstation will just move to the new time then (some hours could go over capacity but that's not really only a minor issue as the playability is the main focus here). This naturally requires you to change the fleet type and as said you could do it only every 5 years per each slot (route), the system already stores when you last edited each route/slot.

I can see this being abused.  For example, it would advantageous for an airline to fly into Heathrow and fly out just before the evening curfew.  A player could eat up 35 slots if they fly 5x daily, for example.  If they then upgrade to a bigger aircraft with a longer turnaround, they will be forced to fly out in the morning and the morning hours would be overcapacity.  However, there will now be evening slots opening up and since they are only open after the player reschedules their existing flight, they have a distinct advantage to grab those extra slots and essentially create 35 slots out of thin air for themselves.  Especially since they could use those 5 planes with empty schedules to rebook those slots, switch to a larger aircraft, and create morning slots ad infinitum.

Even if you force the slots to be allocated to the original time period, there will be players scheduling small aircraft with a 45 minute turnaround to use 3am slots at places like JFK and then upgrading to something big, such as a 747 with a 3 hour turnaround which would put the new "adjusted" slot time at 5:15, which is a peak hour and usually the first hour where all the slots get used up.

So if players can change the outstation slot time and go overcapacity, there will need to be a lot of babysitting because it will be abused.  This goes back to the core issue of artificial scarcity though--the only reason people would do either one of these scenarios at Heathrow or JFK is because available slots are finite, so players are going to react and use up as many slots as they can as quick as they can, because if they don't they'll be out of luck.

[Sami]

If some hour goes to >100% due to this, the whole airport capacity cannot increase (will not be open slot elsewhere). Though have to see how the time allocation work there technically. (= how to make the slot take still the original time slot)

[dmoose42]

Yes, Sami, I agree with LemonButt here.  I think there is a great risk of abuse here.  As people, knowing they can do this can fly their props to airports, landing in the middle of the night because there are no slots during the day and then POOF! they magically get a slot at an ideal time when they change planes...

Another potentially cheat is to fly a route like that with a jet (lands and takes-off at outbound station in the middle of the night), and then using your 'free edit' change the origination departure time so that it lands and takes-off at the outbound station during the day...

The other thing that people could switch planes - getting their 'free edit' at the slot constrained airport and then switching back to the original airplane type, keeping the slot time at the outbound airport, but moving the slot time at the origination airport to take advantage of the 'free edit' slot.

While many players will obviously not abuse this feature, the fact that players still get fined for violated slot hoarding rules demonstrates that abuse does and will occur.  

I'm happy to provide more examples (or more detailed examples).  

That being said, an easy way to switch between fleet types would be a big help and save a lot of time so we appreciate your efforts on this.