When's the big change coming?

[schro]

Allow passengers to transfer at hub. Which would benefit players by getting passengers from routes that have no direct service. Competition will be more intense too. when serving small destinations from a small hub nearby, players will also have to compete with transfer service provided by other companies operating from a near large hub.

This also significantly increases the complexity of the game - something that you can really only do to a certain extent before the learning curve becomes too great to attract new players that decide to stick around long enough to learn it.

Specifically, from a player perspective, you go from having to price and allocate seats for 2xN routes (a flight to and from your hub to each destination) to having to price and allocate seats for (2xN)^2 routes as each destination you add could potentially connect to all other destinations that you fly to. Then you've got to consider how scheduling will be modeled as I'm sure that there will be some preference in the passengers about their connect time...

In GW3 that just ended, I flew to 394 destinations with my small regional airline. By adding in connections, it would take me from 788 route pairs to manage to 620,944 to manage. I'm not sure I'd be interested in paying to play that game...

[JumboShrimp]

Specifically, from a player perspective, you go from having to price and allocate seats for 2xN routes (a flight to and from your hub to each destination) to having to price and allocate seats for (2xN)^2 routes as each destination you add could potentially connect to all other destinations that you fly to. Then you've got to consider how scheduling will be modeled as I'm sure that there will be some preference in the passengers about their connect time...

Hopefully, there would be a pricing formula you could set for transfer flights.

And you would still be looking at N number of flights.  Only if you really wanted to dig deep, you could check where the pax are coming from (direct vs. transfer, and if transfer, where they are transferring from).

[pascaly]

, it would take me from 788 route pairs to manage to 620,944 to manage.

With 7 day scheduling

[Yarnam]

I'll add my 2 cents. I have just come back to the game after about a year gone. Nothing has changed. No new passenger allocation system, and no sign of cargo, no regional feeding system. Basically nothing has changed in a year. I found this to be disappointing but I have more personal time now so I'm going to try a gameworld. I was hoping to see some improvements to the game but it's the same including the frustration of having to do about 20 clicks to get one thing done. That said it's still an excellent game, it just needs something new.

[SP7]

Hopefully, there would be a pricing formula you could set for transfer flights.

And you would still be looking at N number of flights.  Only if you really wanted to dig deep, you could check where the pax are coming from (direct vs. transfer, and if transfer, where they are transferring from).

The deeper issue would be the amount of calculations that would need to be made to determine how a passenger gets from A to B with possible connection points and competition from airlines offering service to their bases at C,D,E,F,G,H etc. How would it trade off cheapest total fare vs. extra time traveled? How would it know that the pax would prefer a 2 hour layover vs potentially a 23 hour one and how does that relate to price and distance/time in the air?

Even if all those issues were resolved... how do you as a player even get about understanding how your pax are flowing? To use a real life example if there are 100 pax/day that want to go from CVG to LHR and no flight how do you know if those 50 are already accommodated on United's CVG-ORD-LHR flight or American's CVG-JFK-LHR or Air Canada's CVG-YYZ-LHR or Delta's CVG-ATL-LHR or Delta's CVG-CDG and then Air France from CDG-LHR? If there are multiple ORD based airlines like AA/UA now do they show different demands depending on their connections?

If you can resolve those issues then comes the truly hard part: how do you present that in an easy to understand UI that a single player can process information and operate in a reasonable/non tedious fashion?

[Talentz]

This also significantly increases the complexity of the game - something that you can really only do to a certain extent before the learning curve becomes too great to attract new players that decide to stick around long enough to learn it.

Specifically, from a player perspective, you go from having to price and allocate seats for 2xN routes (a flight to and from your hub to each destination) to having to price and allocate seats for (2xN)^2 routes as each destination you add could potentially connect to all other destinations that you fly to. Then you've got to consider how scheduling will be modeled as I'm sure that there will be some preference in the passengers about their connect time...

In GW3 that just ended, I flew to 394 destinations with my small regional airline. By adding in connections, it would take me from 788 route pairs to manage to 620,944 to manage. I'm not sure I'd be interested in paying to play that game...

Hopefully, there would be a pricing formula you could set for transfer flights.

And you would still be looking at N number of flights.  Only if you really wanted to dig deep, you could check where the pax are coming from (direct vs. transfer, and if transfer, where they are transferring from).

The deeper issue would be the amount of calculations that would need to be made to determine how a passenger gets from A to B with possible connection points and competition from airlines offering service to their bases at C,D,E,F,G,H etc. How would it trade off cheapest total fare vs. extra time traveled? How would it know that the pax would prefer a 2 hour layover vs potentially a 23 hour one and how does that relate to price and distance/time in the air?

Even if all those issues were resolved... how do you as a player even get about understanding how your pax are flowing? To use a real life example if there are 100 pax/day that want to go from CVG to LHR and no flight how do you know if those 50 are already accommodated on United's CVG-ORD-LHR flight or American's CVG-JFK-LHR or Air Canada's CVG-YYZ-LHR or Delta's CVG-ATL-LHR or Delta's CVG-CDG and then Air France from CDG-LHR? If there are multiple ORD based airlines like AA/UA now do they show different demands depending on their connections?

If you can resolve those issues then comes the truly hard part: how do you present that in an easy to understand UI that a single player can process information and operate in a reasonable/non tedious fashion?

I think were getting ahead of the game here with the complexity. The data we all worked to input into the square data system seems to suggest a demand model where each city/economic region has its chance to be the next ATL or LHR.

After 100 years of airline service, we know who the winners are and what airport/hubs they use. Image we reset to 1952 and rewrite airline history by creating new hubs in cities that in RL didn't happen. Every city has its own demand based on economic data. Thus, the current demand logic is moot and every click that is made, writes a new chapter in airline history.

Sounds scary... true, yet doesn't that excite you as well?

Talentz

[MuzhikRB]

Allow passengers to transfer at hub. Which would benefit players by getting passengers from routes that have no direct service. Competition will be more intense too. when serving small destinations from a small hub nearby, players will also have to compete with transfer service provided by other companies operating from a near large hub.

IRL pax choose the transfer hub based on 2 major factor:
1. Price
2. connections (time spend between legs)

So one time he flies via Fra, another time via AMS.
Copy that to AWS. It means server must calculate each pax ? one pax flying from europe to west coast of usa will have the best route via AMS and then ORD (like 2 stops)
another pax flying to east coast will have best flight flying via FRA to JFK?  or to Mia ?

Pax demand must be scripted somehow to simulate this. it will be no demand between airports like now, but demand between areas/cities/countries. Moreover it will need to take consideration of best routes for pax. Like Y class have major factor is price, meaning they will ready to take route with 2-3 legs but pay less. C/F class will have time as major factor.
So each second/hour/day server will need to determine best routes for each group of pax depending on available routes/connection.
I cant imagine how it can be scripted and what server power we need for that.
From other side - it become hell and doom for CEO. because flying non-competitive route AMS-JFK, suddenly he can see LF goes down, just because someone, somewhere open better connection (like AMS-CDG-JFK with total price lower then yours) - and it will take plenty of time to find out which route is competing with yours....
welcome to real life, bro

[gazzz0x2z]

And it can be a pure reason of price. When I had my training in Cambridge, MA, last summer, I made the following travel :MPL-FCO-BOS, and BOS-JFK-AMS-MPL. That was the cheapest flight available at the time I ordered the tickets. I'm pretty sure it's different each week.

I'm not sure it's very readable for air companies. Sometimes, another colleague goes you our headquarters for a training or a big meeting, and connections may vary, though most of the time it's MPL-CDG-BOS and back.

It's both exciting and frightening. I understand well the argument of the guy who settles quietly in Orly, makes a steady domestic company, and sees, slowly but surely, the demand going down, without knowing that a newcomer in Beauvais has moved all the domestic demand.

[MuzhikRB]

Basically, IMHO
A) Cargo can become next big thing implemented on current game engine. Though it must be balanced:
1. One variant is that player must choose what he like to do - passenger or cargo company.
2. Another variant cargo fleet will have some increased commonality penalty. and surely take different fleet type while having still 3 fleet rule.

B) Changes to Alliance. Scoring and features. It was written enough in dedicated topic.

[qunow]

This also significantly increases the complexity of the game - something that you can really only do to a certain extent before the learning curve becomes too great to attract new players that decide to stick around long enough to learn it.

Specifically, from a player perspective, you go from having to price and allocate seats for 2xN routes (a flight to and from your hub to each destination) to having to price and allocate seats for (2xN)^2 routes as each destination you add could potentially connect to all other destinations that you fly to. Then you've got to consider how scheduling will be modeled as I'm sure that there will be some preference in the passengers about their connect time...

In GW3 that just ended, I flew to 394 destinations with my small regional airline. By adding in connections, it would take me from 788 route pairs to manage to 620,944 to manage. I'm not sure I'd be interested in paying to play that game...

The simplest way of doing this without adding the burden onto players is to not offer special transferration allocation/discount options to players and just let players grow their route network and let transferration happen automatically within it. Players can be made to help attract transfer customers by offering flights at time conveience for transfer and offer tickets at bargin/seats with good comfort, and then let travellers to pick what they are given

And it can be a pure reason of price. When I had my training in Cambridge, MA, last summer, I made the following travel :MPL-FCO-BOS, and BOS-JFK-AMS-MPL. That was the cheapest flight available at the time I ordered the tickets. I'm pretty sure it's different each week.

I'm not sure it's very readable for air companies. Sometimes, another colleague goes you our headquarters for a training or a big meeting, and connections may vary, though most of the time it's MPL-CDG-BOS and back.

It's both exciting and frightening. I understand well the argument of the guy who settles quietly in Orly, makes a steady domestic company, and sees, slowly but surely, the demand going down, without knowing that a newcomer in Beauvais has moved all the domestic demand.

The simplest way to check for competition when your flight occupation go down would be to check the market share of any of the airport you are flying to

[forex]

Nothing has changed. No new passenger allocation system, and no sign of cargo, no regional feeding system. Basically nothing has changed in a year. I found this to be disappointing

I hear you. When my credits ran low enough for not being able to enter a new game world and having been part of the cargo beta world I thought "ok let's take a break until some new stuff comes along before I repurchase"

A year later and I'm still waiting on ANY new stuff or even just a hint about new stuff comming. I'd like to play again but I just know after 2 weeks I'll be bored by the routine and think when do we get city based demand and connections or what about those new seats/on-board services that were shown somewhere.

I flew to 394 destinations with my small regional airline. By adding in connections, it would take me from 788 route pairs to manage to 620,944 to manage. I'm not sure I'd be interested in paying to play that game...

Then what was the point with city based demand in the first place? By not adding connections we may as well scrap that altogether and keep what we have because unless we artificially raise demand there will not be enough. But then why make a realistic model and collect all that data for each square?


Off-topic:
I never got my 1 credit back for the beta cargo world even though I provided thorough feedback 

[Sami]

The cargo feature is suffering a delay due to my personal issues. I haven't been able to allocate enough time for major AWS development over the last months because of this (promotion at work, some other urgent projects superceding AWS work, and other things of personal matter), and also the day-to-day operations of AWS take their fair share... AWS work is still, and remains, my spare time business so I try to avoid setting fixed deadlines here.

I myself am not happy with this lack of time either, but first priority is to of course keep things running and working here in the current state, and after that develop new things. On my time usage front things are looking somewhat better now - as you can see there have been updates and new things after a few months of silence in winter.


Cargo itself is not a magical saviour, but adds only a small extra layer to your revenues (and expenses etc) if you operate as a regular passenger airline (like most will do). So for most players it will be a rather trivial thing, and one might wonder why all the fuss (just saying that you don't be disappointed!).... But the aim has been to make the cargo to use the new technical systems which will be then later expanded to passenger systems too (so cargo is sort of a technical testbed besides of being a new feature). This because it will make it then possible to add cargo to also existing / currently running simulations (making the same for pax systems won't be probably feasible). Cargo itself, using another (simplified) demand model, has been already running in some private simulations in 2016 (not talking of the beta testing, but real environments).

Status for it is currently (per autumn 2016 before my break) that interface is pretty much done (I think the new airport information page was the only that remains to be done?), and most of the basic background calculation things are done too. Some dynamic aspects of the city based demand are still in the works (but not much). However the changes in geopolitical and airport status have caused some headaches and those are unfinished. The first model is strictly point-to-point but with the city based demand dynamic demand model.. Many new components and it's better to drive them in bit by bit.

Here's the manual page describing the logic if you are interested: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Routes/Demand/


And by the way .. For those who think nothing is being done, please see the changelog for the updates for the last year directly from this link: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,58865.msg361006.html#msg361006  I counted a total of 87 entries marked as update and 60 items marked as fixes... I would not see that as "not any new stuff".

And besides of the new features I am also very much in favour of developing any existing system for easier usage and improving the interface. That's why the long list of smaller changes and updates too.

Oh and somebody asked about additional paid features. That's, as you might have guessed, is a no. All features will be as 'standard' and paying more to unlock something won't be an option. At least if we talk about "pay 5 Credits to receive this aircraft instantly" type of things.

Anyways, long story short, been busy. But would expect a bit more from myself now, and will keep you posted a bit better. 

[MidWorld]

Oh and somebody asked about additional paid features. That's, as you might have guessed, is a no. All features will be as 'standard' and paying more to unlock something won't be an option. At least if we talk about "pay 5 Credits to receive this aircraft instantly" type of things.

I did ask, but of a different set of paid features. Offline access to static data and features like offline route planning were my examples. This is in line with fair-game approach. Online and offline users would have had the same [static] data access.

Booking cheats is obviously a no-go.

[ezzeqiel]

As for city based demand, while it seems like an interesting concept, I'm not convinced that most players will enjoy it as it turns nearly all "conventional wisdom" of knowing the world's traffic patterns on its head.

The few 100 players that played this game continously for the last 5 years are not "most players".


That can be fun for you, but it's not fun for "most players"...

People tend to get bored and leave this game after a few games, and only you and few other players keep playing in a regular basis over the years.



City based demand would make it a dinamic world making every game to be different. Now, it's just a copy paste from the previous one in a static world.




Sure, you don't like any changes, because you enjoy the game as it is, and you can win everytime since you know every piece of code by memory.

That's no fun, and no challenge for me, and I'm sure "most players" think as I do... that's why only very few people like you can keep playing this repetitive game over and over again and the rest of us just leaves, or returns just once in a while.

[freshmore]

I did ask, but of a different set of paid features. Offline access to static data and features like offline route planning were my examples. This is in line with fair-game approach. Online and offline users would have had the same [static] data access.

Booking cheats is obviously a no-go.

I think Sami has put this idea down before, offline data would be an Intellectual Property Issue for him. Essentially giving away downloadable copies of game data.

The few 100 players that played this game continously for the last 5 years are not "most players".


That can be fun for you, but it's not fun for "most players"...

People tend to get bored and leave this game after a few games, and only you and few other players keep playing in a regular basis over the years.



City based demand would make it a dinamic world making every game to be different. Now, it's just a copy paste from the previous one in a static world.




Sure, you don't like any changes, because you enjoy the game as it is, and you can win everytime since you know every piece of code by memory.

That's no fun, and no challenge for me, and I'm sure "most players" think as I do... that's why only very few people like you can keep playing this repetitive game over and over again and the rest of us just leaves, or returns just once in a while.

Well, for those of us who have stuck around, the game has changed a lot over the years and continues to have lots of little updates. There are tonnes of different permutations of how to run an airline and enjoy the dynamic of competition from other players. There is plenty of interest to be had running an airline in the Big Places if you have the experience to make the right decisions and equally good fun to be had at other less major airports in far flung places of the world.

To be fair what you've just said, to me at least, rather sums up all games. There are a few who stick around for what seems like forever, a few that stick around for a bit and come back every now and then and the few who stick around for a while and never come back.

However, I think schro's point, rather than being a huge concern for him personally, it is more pointing at the players, who we might call the more "casual gamer", might find the huge challenge of going against conventional wisdom a bit off putting or daunting. I for one am not in that group, I appreciate both systems for what they are and will hopefully be.

Also as a note, please, please, stop saying nothing get's added, or being impatient about the new system. City Based Demand is essentially to my mind a whole new Game Engine, not an update. We had this years ago with v1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. It does get done. From years ago to now the game is much better. I for one can remember the Beta test when we were all wanting to have Configurations and Business and First added. Stuff does get done, but it is never quick or necessarily huge (because the game doesn't exactly need to have huge updates), because of how Sami runs this, but when it does get done, it will be a very good system that will likely work very well. Better a job done properly than rush and mess it up, or not deliver.

*Cough* No Man's Sky!

Be patient, be thankful for the game we have, it's still a very dynamic game (take a look at fuel prices, or indeed the recent size reclassification's which will likely lead to whole new strategies through the Jet age), winning in this game, for me, isn't always about Scores on the Door. Sometimes it's the challenge of an airline in Africa or an airport with less demand or starting later and finding those little bits of demand that haven't yet been fulfilled, of which there is often plenty if you look hard enough. Having played a competitor years ago and visited the site since, there really isn't anything that comes close to this as a full featured Airline Sim.

[cunim58]

I would just like to echo one request mentioned a number of times in these posts - the ability to buy slots for multiple flights with a single click from the 'Manage routes' menu would be a huge timesaver and a very very welcome change.Great game, great value, great fun, from people who are interested in feedback from the playing community. Thank you.