Features Question

[Terry P.]

Sorry if this is not the place to post this, but I just wanted to ask if there are any plans for the following in the future:

1) Subsidiaries
2) More accounting options, such as different methods of depreciation
3) Stock Market (including airline mergers/acquisitions)
4) Bonds

...and generally any features that focus on the finance/accounting management side of the game. Are there any being looked into/developed at the moment?
I'd really love to have them, it's an important part of a simulation in my opinion. Could even open the door to different functions within the companies, possibly allowing 2 people to run one focusing on different aspects.

It's probably a lot to ask for but I just think it would make the game even more interesting and engaging.

[Matt Elphick]

I know they are planning adding cargo and then passenger facilities such as ife and drinks. After that I'm sure they will add the features you are looking for

[Sami]

1 & 3 maybe. 2 & 4 no.

Accounting is pretty much final at the current stage. Complete and realistic. (Different depreciation methods do not really add anything meaningful in my mind.)

[Johan87]

That subsidiary sounds usefull,
Take off the buszz of the 3 fleet type.
Just have a commuter carrier around with 1 max 2 types for small/medium sized planes max would give an stimulance.
This is most realistic can gett if look to real life,and should be able to inplent in the system,right?
Either by connected inside the airliner system or like an separate entety,but connection to the parent and maybe have option to operate flights for partners inside the trading zone aswell.

Stockmarket sounds great,should be judged off course,but the possability to merger or take over an ailing carrier inside the countries trading zone should be fun.
And maybe you can buy like 1-2 airliners and maybe gett a franscise 10-25% profit would be an great option too and maybe have the extra discount in sending planes too.

[11Air]

Maintenance Provisions
Currently the fleet types penalty is to reflect the certified maintenance engineer issue.  What the sim currently lacks is a realistic staffing for maintenance, having sufficient people to provide the service actions in a week and to delay completion where staff numbers are not sufficient to do all the services required at the time.  Returning the aircraft to service would be delayed in that case.
The Real World option is to subcontract major, even all, maintenance until the number of a type can keep a core maintenance staff occupied. It will still be necessary to use outside contractors of course, where aircraft maintenance overlaps.

[JumboShrimp]

Take off the buszz of the 3 fleet type.
Just have a commuter carrier around with 1 max 2 types for small/medium sized planes max would give an stimulance.
This is most realistic can gett if look to real life,and should be able to inplent in the system,right?
Either by connected inside the airliner system or like an separate entety,but connection to the parent and maybe have option to operate flights for partners inside the trading zone aswell.

I don't think Sami means for this to be a way to bypass the fleet commonality.

The subsidiaries that Sami brought up before were:
- inhouse aircraft maintenance subsidiary (vs. outsourced)
- leasing subsidiary (for leasing out planes, to operate similarly to AI brokers)
- catering?

[fark24]

That subsidiary sounds usefull,
Take off the buszz of the 3 fleet type.
Just have a commuter carrier around with 1 max 2 types for small/medium sized planes max would give an stimulance.
This is most realistic can gett if look to real life,and should be able to inplent in the system,right?

But you also have subsidiaries in real life such as Scoot (owned by Singapore Airlines) that fly very large aircraft such as the Boeing 787-9.

Perhaps a subsidiary could be modeled such that it can only fly 2 aircraft types - one which can be 'common' to the parent airline and the other which is exclusive to the subsidiary.

That would set up some interesting scenarios:

- Subsidiary can fly one type exclusively and use the other type allowance for fleet replacement.
- Subsidiary could make use of aircraft being retired from the parent airline. Think of it as a flying storage yard.
- Subsidiary would allow an airline to experiment with certain "boutique" options such as Concorde or ultra long-haul aircraft as it wouldn't tie up an aircraft type of the parent airline.

There would probably need to be rules to limit how aggressive players can be with this. A good rule would be that the parent airline and subsidiary cannot each fly to the same airports.

There may also be a hard cap on the number of frames - say 100? Maybe even a variable cap before hitting the hard cap - like what we have with the number of aircraft allowable outside of the HQ which goes up little by little per year. Maybe have it take 10-15 years until the hard cap is reached.

There should probably be a time element to this as well. I don't think subsidiaries would make sense before 1978 (the year of the Airline Deregulation Act). Maybe they can start in late 80's as, for example, American Airlines acquired it's regional carriers to form Eagle by 1989.

[freshmore]

Yeah adding a second airline to manage isn't really the point. And personally for all the time we would be waiting I don't think it would add much to the game. Using it to bypass commonality would see all the large airlines use it purely as a fleet replacement tool to work around the system. In that sense, it would completely unbalance the commonality system, which is there to force strategic fleet decisions. It balances the airlines against each other and the production lines.

Having our own maintenance is all quite interesting, adding maintenance bases or outsourcing maintenance is a very interesting prospect, as are the other JumboShrimp pointed out. Of course that in my opinion would have to be coupled with the idea of pool fleets, or whatever you call it. The idea that you set up a bunch of schedules and assign a bunch of aircraft to those schedules such that, when one aircraft is in maintenance another comes in to replace it. I feel you may have to have something like that to facilitate heavy maintenance outside your Base Airport, either through your own or outsourcing.

As for stock market, take overs nice but no! Why? Because who wants to be taken over after spending money on joining a game and playing. I wouldn't. Also you couldn't just take over any airline, most countries have a limit to outside ownership. Only within the EU can airlines be owned by other countries within the EU. Like Air France-KLM, Lufthansa Group and IAG. BA and IAG being a topical point, as to post Brexit (if/when) what the hell do they do with BA?

In that sense, I think taking a equity stake in an airline is doable, nothing majority. Maybe an IPO first, you offer say a bit of your company up to 50%. The money from the IPO goes to you on investment and people can buy and sell your shares and get dividends off those shares. I think a take over would just rub a number of people up the wrong way if it was to happen to them. Even taking over an ailing airline would potentially be stupid, because said airline would free up space for others to either join or expand in the game, which is good and healthy. It encourages players to join a long game in the middle of it.

I agree with Sami on his assessment of what we need out of your list. So much stuff really adds nothing to the game and just wastes development time from other things, but other things like the subsidiary's of airport and aircraft services and a Stock Market, if done right could add new dimensions to this game. Sami will take his time, but I never known him not deliver the goods.

[idefelipe]

Hello there,

I'm new in the game, although I have played three times the free-trial and now finally am thinking seriously to begin purchasing credits, so at this moment I am thinking about the future features that will be installed in the game.

Do you know if there is some kind of "in development" page or something like that?

If there is not any page, do you know if this features are going to be in the game in the future?

- In-Flight commodities (Food, drinks, special installations as TV-Screens or even showers for FC, etc.)

- Cargo Market (Did I see above it was being developed?)

- Special deals based in events (Humanity Help Shipments, Military Shipments, Charter Flights...)

- Business private market (for huge companies renting small jets, for example)

- If you are from a specific country getting special deals from manufacturers of that country (For example if you are based in Canada get special deals from Bombardier...)

- Getting the possibility of helping the development of a plane and get special discounts on it when it becomes available.

- Special contracts with Car-Rent and Hotels to increase the turism.

- Seasonal movements (it is not the same to fly in christmas or summer than middle of march)

- Miles Card Promo and something like that

Thanks a lot and sorry for my english (it is not my mother language )

[Johan87]

Yeah adding a second airline to manage isn't really the point. And personally for all the time we would be waiting I don't think it would add much to the game. Using it to bypass commonality would see all the large airlines use it purely as a fleet replacement tool to work around the system. In that sense, it would completely unbalance the commonality system, which is there to force strategic fleet decisions. It balances the airlines against each other and the production lines.

Having our own maintenance is all quite interesting, adding maintenance bases or outsourcing maintenance is a very interesting prospect, as are the other JumboShrimp pointed out. Of course that in my opinion would have to be coupled with the idea of pool fleets, or whatever you call it. The idea that you set up a bunch of schedules and assign a bunch of aircraft to those schedules such that, when one aircraft is in maintenance another comes in to replace it. I feel you may have to have something like that to facilitate heavy maintenance outside your Base Airport, either through your own or outsourcing.

As for stock market, take overs nice but no! Why? Because who wants to be taken over after spending money on joining a game and playing. I wouldn't. Also you couldn't just take over any airline, most countries have a limit to outside ownership. Only within the EU can airlines be owned by other countries within the EU. Like Air France-KLM, Lufthansa Group and IAG. BA and IAG being a topical point, as to post Brexit (if/when) what the hell do they do with BA?

In that sense, I think taking a equity stake in an airline is doable, nothing majority. Maybe an IPO first, you offer say a bit of your company up to 50%. The money from the IPO goes to you on investment and people can buy and sell your shares and get dividends off those shares. I think a take over would just rub a number of people up the wrong way if it was to happen to them. Even taking over an ailing airline would potentially be stupid, because said airline would free up space for others to either join or expand in the game, which is good and healthy. It encourages players to join a long game in the middle of it.

I agree with Sami on his assessment of what we need out of your list. So much stuff really adds nothing to the game and just wastes development time from other things, but other things like the subsidiary's of airport and aircraft services and a Stock Market, if done right could add new dimensions to this game. Sami will take his time, but I never known him not deliver the goods.

This could be intresting in aquiring a max of 49% in another airline.
This way you can boast capital or stay alive in the game.
certainly this would be an intresting way of work.

MRO business is lucrative same as catering.it would be making this game all round,then i would not mind the 3 plane rule as i can keep myself busy with something else.

[11Air]

Idefilipe

My comment on your
Forthcoming features:

- In-Flight commodities (Food, drinks, special installations as TV-Screens or even showers for FC, etc.) Covered under the 'Change Seating' menu where additional knee room can be provided for what should be an increase in Pax Fare (if the Route will pay it!)

- Cargo Market (Did I see above it was being developed?)  A trial has been done with Level 1 = mail and level 2 = bagged parcels.  Worked well but still much to do in the programming and in getting the data for each aircraft type.  Level 1 and 2 were carried on seats or in baggage so treated as passengers in all but fares.
I hope these will come soon for my regional airlines so I can make some profit on night flights. Hope cargo pay is biased for night flights too. It's less than Pax (1/2?).
Level 3 - pallets and 4 - big units have yet to show in any game.  The issue here is data for a/c.

- Special deals based in events (Humanity Help Shipments, Military Shipments, Charter Flights...)  There are special events now providing extra demand for limited periods.

- Business private market (for huge companies renting small jets, for example)  Not what the XgameX SIM is about. Currently it is only necessary to monitor a good airline weekly, a poor one (like mine) 2 or 3 times a day to tweak and meddle, usually to no good effect.

- If you are from a specific country getting special deals from manufacturers of that country (For example if you are based in Canada get special deals from Bombardier...)  Interesting idea but the damn Yanks have a lot of demand and a lot of good aircraft over the normal game period (1950/70 through to 2010/2030).

- Getting the possibility of helping the development of a plane and get special discounts on it when it becomes available.  Purchasing a type earlier gives a reduced price (I think). no need to do more than that though it might be worth jiggling the discounts for the first buyers, but that helps frequent players too much.

- Special contracts with Car-Rent and Hotels to increase the tourism.  A whole new game where the airline becomes a tour operator, leasing aircraft. not for me.

- Seasonal movements (it is not the same to fly in christmas or summer than middle of march).    Covered by 'Special Events' now providing extra demand for limited periods.

- Miles Card Promo and something like that.  A small detail which would get us into Tour or Discount Holiday fares.

Thanks a lot and sorry for my english (it is not my mother language )  Your English is good.

[Vpacific]

- Seasonal movements (it is not the same to fly in christmas or summer than middle of march)

I like the idea of this as well.. It would certainly add a bit more complexity into managing the airline..  also maybe not penalising the cost for short leases... ie if you want to lease an aircraft for 6 months in the peak only etc but I think the game needs some new challenges/features as it does get a bit boring in the long game worlds.

[George Bush]

I would settle for a filter that tells me what routes dont have 7 days of schedule and be happy as punch lol.

[Cammellodacorsa]

If I could ask for a development right now I would ask for much more choice when selecting routes or aircrafts.
More dropdown menus to select what we're looking for in a much more efficient way not to waste time to scroll down pages when we have thousands of panes and routes.
Tha would help a lot. Selling coca-Cola in the airplane could wait IMHO! :-)

[chwatuva]

Other useful additions to the game would be:

1. The ability to design in-flight magazines.  I especially would like to be able to select a city to be the focus of an issue and then the next month have a small boost (say 0.01%) in the number of people I have flying to that city, much like the impact of these things IRL.  You know, "never thought about Houston in August?  You should!" type of thing.

2. The ability to run frequent flyer program.  It will, of course, be essential that you start with a miles based program and once your program is up and running you can change it to a money-based program which will make a lot of people angry with you (drop your image rating), but will remarkably have no meaningful impact on the bottom line.

3. Winglets.  All airplanes should have the option to have winglets installed!  Never seen a DC-3 with winglets?  Concorde with winglets?  Now you will.  This will also solve the age-old problem of inefficient Soviet/Russian planes.  With winglets, they can compete!

4. We need airships.  Rigid airships like the Hindenburg would be great, but the game should also include the ability to purchase blimps that you can fly over sporting events, parades, etc.

5. We should have the ability to run an in-house flight school to train pilots for other airlines.  I don't know why or how this would work in the game, but it happens IRL.

6. Coke or Pepsi.  Going to have to decide for the beverage service on your plane. This would pretty much work like that scene in Indiana Jones where he has to select the proper Holy Grail.  Chose wisely and you win!  Choose unwisely and you are not allowed to have winglets!  Sorry airlines based in the Soviet Union, no Pepsi for you!

7. More loading screens.  This game responds to my commands too damn fast!  We need some good loading/buffering videos.  Donald Trump vs. Angela Merkel fighting to the death in claymation.  Would be like Celebrity Deathmatch, if you remember that.  If you don't or aren't American (don't know why you wouldn't be American, but whatever) go look at it on the YouTube.

8. Tu-144, but only as it functioned later in life as a cargo ship.  Who doesn't want a wildly inefficient, crash-prone, supersonic package delivery van?

I am sure I will come up with more, but that will do for now.  I expect all of this implemented today or at the LATEST tomorrow.  That is all.