AirwaySim Cargo

[Sami]

Cargo is here

Well, finally. The first public game world with full cargo features is now available at AirwaySim.

The mini-game Cargo Challenge USA is just opened and you can try out your skills with the new features here. This game world is limited only to USA and has a small player capacity of 150 players (since the new background calculation systems need some stress testing and at this point 600 airlines might pose problems and some performance work needs to be still done). Overall play time is a bit over two months.

Once some settings related to border crossing rules and other tweaks are done the plan is to launch also 'Cargo Challenge Europe' game world with similar specifications than the USA game. So if you find this first cargo game full, please sit tight and the next one is planned to open before the end of July.


Cargo in a nutshell

Cargo can be transported in the baggage holds of the regular passenger aircraft, together with passenger bags, but also with dedicated freighter aircraft. The belly cargo in the freight holds of normal passenger flights is the most common option.

In AirwaySim cargo has been divided into three different classes:

• Light Cargo - Small bulk packages like mail.
  
  
• Medium Cargo - Heavier and larger cargo, usually in containers.
  
  
• Heavy Cargo - Special and oversized cargo.

Cargo is an additional revenue for your airline (approximately 4-15% more income), and it by itself is not a major game changer. However cargo is using the new City Based Demand system as the basis of all calculations and this is the very important step and feature for the future.

Please read the manual page about cargo: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Routes/Cargo/


City Based Demand

This is a fully new system on how the demand values are created. The demand is no longer tied to airports but is instead generated by the areas and cities and airports serve only as the gateways.

We'll introduce this new system to you later on in more detail but you can already learn about it from the manual: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Routes/Demand/

Please note that the new system only calculates cargo's figures so far. Passenger demand systems remain in the old "static" system until further development takes place.


Release notes

There are still some things that are not fully satisfactory to us, and remain to be worked on. Here's a brief list of our notes:

• Route Planning page's "Estimated daily cargo demand" chart displays the "Potential Cargo Demand" bar for every day (mo-su), even though this is not necessary (same values). This is due to the limited options available in the charting system. Better format is being considered.
  
  
• Airport information page doesn't display any data on the airport catchment area vs. potential demand vs. City Based Demand data yet (which might be necessary for players to better understand where the demand is going)
  
  
• Overall cargo economics (including overall demand levels) will be tuned based on experiences on this first game world.
  
  
• Cargo transport is still point-to-point (like pax system), connection system is in plans (based on technical feasibility).
  
  
• More cargo aircraft will be added (only a few available right now, but once they are added they are also made available in these cargo games)
  
  
• All other updates will be also rolled into the current cargo games, based on feedback and on what's still on our to-do list.

Cargo will be later on introduced to all running major four game worlds.

The new demand system will need some getting used to and there will be probably many questions and things that you keep wondering. Please send all feedback to the game's sub-forum, and post all bug reports to the bugs forum as usual.

Join Cargo Challenge USA here: https://www.airwaysim.com/game/?gView=243#game243