Company Image

[TPMP]

Just wanted to ask about my company image. I started an airline a few days ago and the company image was 30. Its still 30 now and I'm spending nearly 300k on marketing, which seems very steep. I've been away from this for a year and was wondering was there any changes to this or am I doing something wrong?

[Orion]

I had the same thing and backed off my marketing.  Strangely it went up after I did that to 32%.  I think they might have adjusted starting image and cash for late arrivals to the game world.  Someone else will have to verify though as I haven't looked into it and am off to bed.

[Cardinal]

From the Announcements forum, AirwaySim v.1.3 news, previews & info thread:

New Airline Boosts

- A set of features has been created to help new airlines to get their operations started in existing/established game worlds. These 'new airline boosts' consist of operational discounts and small boosts to airline image values.

- These small 'helpers' are done in a way that are related to real-life, as well as adding a small gaming element from other MMO games. All the boosts are available to all players, regardless how experienced the player itself is or how old his user account it - only the age of the airline itself matters.


- There are four different modifiers:

  * Route Image boost: The first four destinations of a new airline will receive a boost to their initial route image. Normally the RI starts at 0 pts but with this system the first destination receives an RI of 50 pts, second 35 pts, third 20 pts and fourth 10 pts. All destinations opened after these start at the normal 0 pts.

  * Airport operation fee discounts: The first four destinations of a new airline will receive 12 month discounts on the airport fees (passenger fee, landing fee, handling fee, navigation fee). The amount of discount is shown at the route opening page (airport listing), and can be also browsed from the Office -> Route Image page. The discount applies to all routes to that destination (discounts are not available in base airports, only at outstations).

  * Company image boost: There is a mild boost for the initial company image of a new airline. The initial image can be about 2.5x of the normal initial image, depending on the game settings (but not more than 30 pts).

  * Starting cash boost: This has been implemented already previously. The starting cash increases if you join a game world later on.

- All of the boosts are relative to game age. When a game world is less than 180 game days old there are no boosts, and the boosts will slowly grow from there to reach their full potential around 1.5 years of game time. (for example; opening the first new destination when a game is 200 days old will set the initial RI to only about 10 pts, instead of 50 pts - so the growth of all these boosts is gradual and linear)

- All boosts to destinations are checked from route image data. So opening a route to new destination will count as one action, regardless if it's flown or not. So for example opening a new route, then closing it, and opening another to different destination will not give the same discount again. Airline must be also less than 730 days (2 years) old for any discounts to apply.

If you CI starts at 5 (the start-of-game default) you can spend peanuts to get it to 10-15, but then have to start spending more to get it beyond that. With it starting at 30, you have to spend quite a bit more more in advertising to get past that plateau.