BW2 new aircraft boycott, and the pricing model

[hambot]

I'm not a fan of this boycott, because now the CSeries prices are getting jacked up, and I want those. But there are some issues here and I'd like to get a bigger discussion around them.

(For those who don't know: in the current BW2, several airlines have joined a boycott, declaring they won't buy any more from the 737 or A320 families until prices go down. The 787s were just added as well.)

As far as I can tell, the pricing model is pretty simple: When demand goes up, supply is constrained and the price goes up. There's also a limited (okay, no) ability to negotiate beyond different combinations of buying/leasing, lease lengths, and number of aircraft, but these discounts don't necessarily match up with what we see in the real world. I can't tell how quickly prices drop after demand falls, though in the last BW2 the 737 MAX all reached about the same prices and never seemed to fall.

This brings to mind an issue I'm seeing with the beginner games. Even though the common wisdom seems to be "lease used, buy new," it seems to be far more advantageous to lease new aircraft. Especially for airlines that don't get an early foothold on long-haul routes from a mega-hub like LHR, JFK, or ATL, it takes too long to amass the billions of dollars needed to purchase large numbers of planes. If the beginner worlds are meant to help new players learn the game and teach better habits to players of all levels, they're failing in this significant area. I'd like to see another 5 game years (real-world month) added to try to attenuate this, but that likely won't solve the whole problem.

What do you all think? What have you seen from the pricing model, and what suggestions do you have for these issues?

[davecastro]

Hi, I started the boycott because I feel that the prices are completely unrealistic and unfair for smaller airlines. How is it possible for an A321NEO to cost 50 million more than an A330? How is it possible for a 787 to cost over 100 million more than an A380? The people who run the pricing strategy for aircraft need to question how unfair this can be for smaller airlines. The prices need to go down. Until then, those of us who are taking part in the boycott will not order the 737, A320 and 787, as these prices are insane. Sorry for going on a rant 

[hambot]

I understand that's the role-play, but what about the actual issues with the game's pricing model?

[davecastro]

Completely unrealistic, unfair and inconsistent.

[hambot]

Well, yeah.

For reference, the list prices for the 737 MAX series seem to be around $90-110 million, versus $110-160 million in BW2 right now. Sales are roughly the same in the real world and BW2; the 8 and 9 are big sellers, while nobody cares about the 7. We can agree that if any real airline is paying $2 million/month to lease a MAX 9, they're getting jobbed.

I'd like to understand better how the pricing adjustments work in the game, and compare it to other real-world data (aircraft families that have already hit EOL so we can look at how list and actual sale prices changed throughout their lifetime) to see if there's a recommendation that can be made to Sami.

[freshmore]

The important thing to remember here, is this is game. Therefore there has to be some element of game balance built in, for the MAX and NEO, those prices off the top of my head, don't seem that unusual for a full world in this period. People want aircraft and things get expensive, so this means often in a full world if you join late, looking at alternative strategies is really needed and usually is quite fun. If everyone piles in on the two Boeing and Airbus types, then prices will rise dramatically, the current BW2 era has good alternatives to challenge that duopoly. The full worlds are usually long enough that everyone is on various alternate strategies, there is the B737NG and A320's, but others have stayed with classics for a long time, MD90's and MD80's are all used by various airlines for long periods in the 21st century so the pricing pressure, is in many ways, less.

The "Lease used to start an airline" is still necessary, it requires the least capital to do, therefore you have more capital spare to fuel more growth and gain market share. When a world has been going a while, the used market is usually pretty buoyant and there are often good deals and some bargains to be had. Usually the most popular types to get new, are expensive at this point and harder to make work profitably, especially if you lease them.

When a GW is in the first few years, the transition to getting new aircraft happens much sooner, because everyone is looking at the used market and when that starts to slow and become less reliable and people start getting the money in, we all switch to leasing new within a matter of months at the start. Buying usually follows a couple of years later, depending of pricing and how you airline is doing. At that point securing delivery slots before someone else gets them is the important thing. The other thing it does is drive up prices dramatically in the early years of the game for the popular types. My Martin 4-0-4's ordered later than the earliest one's were much more costly to lease in the current GW2.

This I imagine is the phenomenon felt currently here, everyone has piled in when they were cheap to fuel growth because it was early in the world and the used market was getting less reliable for finding stuff and now because of demand the prices have rocketed upwards and are forcing you reconsider what options you have. If this were a full world, the used market would be well populated with cheap modern aircraft for you to use as a small new start airline as well as new aircraft would be very expensive, but your switch to getting new aircraft wouldn't come after months but more a period of years and is a very fun thing to do.

[wilian.souza2]

There were expensive Boeing and Airbus planes in last BW2 too, so expensive that I could only lease used A321s and B767s, even when I was one of the top 50 airlines. The problem of people complaining about aircraft prices is they want to lease new planes right when they start their airlines... I've seen it many times and I assure this is the dumb way of playing, the fastest way to go bankrupt. These guys should read the manual and the Begineer's Guide before starting their airlines! If they did it and had a little of good sense, profits would be easy to get, and actually it is easy!

[davecastro]

Alot of the airlines that are boycotting are major airlines, meaning that they have every right to want to expand after a few years. The fact is that the price increases are inconsistent. Surely, an A330 and A380 should cost more than a A321NEO and 787, but they dont. Its totally justifiable to want a reduction in prices when we are 2 years into the world and have almost seen prices double.

[freshmore]

Unfortunately as a mentor currently in GW2 I can't see pricing but can take a cursory look at the production stats. But the reason this has happened is probably because long haul aircraft have a huge difference in popularity compared to Narrow body short haul. Wide body orders are pretty low and therefore prices have not really risen. The reason the A330 is behind the A320, is probably because it it hasn't been that popular, which is slightly surprising because the A330Neo being in the same family makes it a good choice, given the commonality between them. The A380 is probably quite cheap because it has a very small order book and hence prices have dropped. The B787 has a huge backlog compared to other types, hence why the price has risen so much. Same with the NEO and Max, both have been very popular and that has inflated prices. The disparity of pricing is largely down to the disparity of popularity of the various types, in a full game world, they would all be popular and would all experience large price rises.

[Sami]

https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Aircraft/New/#Pricing

The prices of new aircraft are dynamic (with certain min and max levels of course), and the price of each model depends on the specifications (master price set to database which is the real world price), and of the demand generated by the players (production queue mainly).

This is completely intentional and done for game-play balance purposes. Players SHOULD be looking for alternatives to the normal "boring" A/B planes.

The same with the airports with the new demand models; JFK or LHR might end up being outnumbered by some other airport in the region if players so decide....

The same with slots too.. Popular airports, popular times etc => cost is higher. Most aspects in economics are dynamic (or will be).

 (and forgot to mention that the pricing is fleet group specific - so the system does not consider relative pricing between models of the same manudacturer)

(p.s. Leasing new aircraft is never as economical as buying those...)

[gazzz0x2z]

I agree totally with Sami and Freshmore, here.

The idea is to be more clever than others, and to achieve success that way.

Look at the C919, for example. It's slightly inferior to the A320neo or the 737MAX8. And? If it fits your market, it's still an excellent plane. Natural price is slightly inferior, so all things being equal, if you don't need to fly it beyond 2500NM(i.e. your long haul international demand is negligible), it's really a similar airplane.

But this is "all things being equal". All things are not equal, as demand is dynamic. When opponents pile up on a shiny, popular fleet type, well, it's time to be more clever than them. When the C919 price falls down to 70M$; the MAX8 costs 150M$, and the 320neo 160M$, it's suddenly getting clever to go where others are not. To think contrarian.

I never BK'd. Never. Most players did, even those who are the best in current GWs. I did never. There is indeed a part of luck in it, but there also a part of contrarian thinking. Before I entered my first real GW(a GW3 a few years ago, beginning in Glasgow in 1995), I blindly followed advice of the elders : choose a medium starting point, go for old flying crap(jurassics in my case), be careful with pricing. And then I started to expand. Big bases were insane to go in, I was sure to be slaughtered against best players. So I went for smaller airports, Prestwick, Beauvais, Reus, etc.....

And I went regional. In those airports, there is only a handful of destinations worth flying a 737. CRJs were available, so I went the CRJ route. Everyone went the CRJ route. I then reached a point where my growth stalled. CRJ prices went insane, 25M$ for a CRJ100, 37M$ for a CRJ700. Long waiting times to get them. And suddenly, there was this message : "the production of Antonov A148 is about to end". Mmmmmh, let's have a look at this A148.
_10% more consuption than an equivalent CRJ700, even normalizing for speed. Annoying, but not a killer.
_double maintenance costs, nearly. Annoying, but in the 2010s, maintenance costs are not such a killer. Manageable
_15M$ to purchase new.

15M$ to purchase new. In those conditions, who cares about efficiency? I was doing 8-10M$ per week, pretax. Just enough to buy A148s at their max rythm of 30 per year. I then began a looooong process of replacing my leased CRJs by owned A148s. And went down from 120k$ per week of leasing cash bleed, to 7k$ per week of depreciation - already uncashed, therefore painless. It was rather painful as a fleet transition, as it had not been planned before(pro-tip : always plan your transitions looong before you do them), but it did wonders. Even paying 5k$ more in maintenance and 10-15 k$ more in fuel was painless. I was still saving 80-100k$ per regional jet. Kickass. Absolute Kickass.

Of course, it worked only because I was the only one to do that. Hapless opponents in all my bases stuck to CRJs, or Ejets, or later MRJs, which were all very costly in those times. I think both Ejets & MRJs were up to 60M$ per airframe. Good machines, but no match for 15M$ A148s. Most opponents collapsed or stalled. I thrived.

Don't complain against the excessive cost of state-of-the-art machines. Use it against opposition.

(That being said, i shall make a tutorial about fleet choice, one day).

(and leasing planes is efficient when you need to grow fast - but don't stick to it for a long-term plan)

EDIT : just looked at current GW3 : 320neo costs around 160M$, 737MAX8 160M$, C919 72M$. I was nearly spot-on with my guesstimates. I don't know in BWs, but if you have similar differences, surf on them. Boycott is actually the right thing to do - but not go public and do that. When I switched to A148s, I didn't want to attract attention. I bought a few frames on the UM, mostly made a few purchases, but made no official publication. Generally, in this game, you want to keep a low profile, in terms of communications. there are only 3 situations where I can see communications be useful :

• You're looking for an alliance(or for alliance members) - not relevant to BW
• You're hunting for the "public relations" achievement - not relevant to BW either
• you're active on the used market, trying to sell or buy

in 4 years of gameplay, I've done exactly once number one(and it paid off only 18 months later, with ATeam & Elite fighting for having me in their alliance), and once number three(50 Q400 back from lease at once with their customer's BK - plus 20 additional in order I suddenly had to get rid of). Number two has to be done intelligently : with no real information given to your opposition. All the rest is distraction. Posts on the "I cleverly opened a route between Naha and Long Beach in SW3 with 7 tech stops" are just a way to paint a target on you. Airwaysim is a competitive game, and numerous are the players wanting to kill you for taking the place. Myself, I didn't reach position 3 in company valmue in current GW3 by sheer luck(well, I had some, but it's far from enough to explain my success) : I had to actively hunt and kill several companies in CDG, 2 in ALC, 2 in ORY, and 1 in WAW(never was able to kill the other one in WAW, that's why I'm not first).

So don't communicate anything that might have you look weak. Don't attract attention. Dont be the mouse that makes noise in front of the cat. I am the cat and I'll eat you. Unless another cat is quicker than me.

[dagwood]

Sami, Gazzz and Freshmore have it right.  When the prices of certain aircraft go up, find an alternative. It really is a matter of supply and demand. That is what the game is all about.

[freshmore]

Gazz is right, be very careful about what you put out there to other players. If this was a full gameworld, I would smell an opportunity at what you have put out there with the boycott. You have a low margin and 5 fleets, so high commonality costs. What you have said is you plan to bring a six and increase those costs dramatically, therefore to another airline, big or small, looking for an opportunity you have put a target on your head.

As for A320 and B737NG's, one thing I forgot to say is when most players buy these, we accept that any we order years later are going to be much more expensive and cost us more. If we choose to go to on of these in the mid to early 90's the payoff is the fact the NEO and Max and the same fleet type, therefore requiring no new fleet. Now, if I was to join anytime from the 90's onwards, it's arguable that a different alternate strategy is a very good if not the best option. For example the B737 Classics have been running long enough to be easily available and the MD90 and MD80 are usually less popular and available as well. DC-9's, original B737's etc are also potential options, but are more short term in outlook. These offer cheap and available options to expand your airline and you can transfer everything to another type in the 2010's when you have a multitude of options to transfer to, which because you've used cheap aircraft to expand with, are now all achievable options. You might get the opportunity to place an early order for these aircraft and therefore get the best prices, but in the end you have the Max, NEO, C Series, E-2's, Comac and MC-21 if we had it. Plenty of options to choose from to maximise the usage of the capital you have, plus you should have market share, which means going expensive isn't such a burden or indeed hurdle to surmount.

As for long haul, DC-10's and Tristars in the 90's, B744's can also be surprisingly good value at this point. B767's are becoming good value used as are A310's. 2000's B767 and A310's along with B744's and by the 2010's everything is usually readily available for cheap aircraft to gain a foothold in the long haul market.

[hambot]

This I imagine is the phenomenon felt currently here, everyone has piled in when they were cheap to fuel growth because it was early in the world and the used market was getting less reliable for finding stuff and now because of demand the prices have rocketed upwards and are forcing you reconsider what options you have. If this were a full world, the used market would be well populated with cheap modern aircraft for you to use as a small new start airline as well as new aircraft would be very expensive, but your switch to getting new aircraft wouldn't come after months but more a period of years and is a very fun thing to do.

This is exactly what's happening, for those who started with used 737 NGs in particular (a strategy I've tried and ran into this issue with before, as that used market dries up very quickly).

https://www.airwaysim.com/game/Manual/Aircraft/New/#Pricing

The prices of new aircraft are dynamic (with certain min and max levels of course), and the price of each model depends on the specifications (master price set to database which is the real world price), and of the demand generated by the players (production queue mainly).

This is completely intentional and done for game-play balance purposes. Players SHOULD be looking for alternatives to the normal "boring" A/B planes.

 (and forgot to mention that the pricing is fleet group specific - so the system does not consider relative pricing between models of the same manudacturer)

(p.s. Leasing new aircraft is never as economical as buying those...)

Production slots are a way important nerf than pricing, though, especially in BWs where the first 5 years are way more important than the last 5. Again, that's why players ignore that advice and lease new aircraft, because they need the early production slots, the bottom drops out of the used market quickly, and the long-term budget consequences of leasing new metal are irrelevant over such a short time. Wouldn't extending them by another 5 years allow players to learn better planning and budgeting habits, and better serve them in the full worlds, even if pricing continues to be so strongly nerfed?

Not to mention, there are no real alternatives to the duopoly for long-haul aircraft in the modern era. I don't see tons of old IL-96s flying around the Americas and I wouldn't expect to see that in a simulation.

[freshmore]

This is exactly what's happening, for those who started with used 737 NGs in particular (a strategy I've tried and ran into this issue with before, as that used market dries up very quickly).

Yep, you just have to learn to deal with it, it happens, everything popular gets expensive.

Production slots are a way important nerf than pricing, though, especially in BWs where the first 5 years are way more important than the last 5. Again, that's why players ignore that advice and lease new aircraft, because they need the early production slots, the bottom drops out of the used market quickly, and the long-term budget consequences of leasing new metal are irrelevant over such a short time. Wouldn't extending them by another 5 years allow players to learn better planning and budgeting habits, and better serve them in the full worlds, even if pricing continues to be so strongly nerfed?

Not to mention, there are no real alternatives to the duopoly for long-haul aircraft in the modern era. I don't see tons of old IL-96s flying around the Americas and I wouldn't expect to see that in a simulation.

Sort of, it's one of the important nerfs needed, like I said, getting on production slots in the early game is important, however in GW beginning you are usually looking at New and Used. If you join mid world, which is very fun and a great way to learn and observe, you will rely way more on the Used market. It depends on the circumstances. Pricing is there to react to supply and demand and slow down growth, if everything popular remained cheap then everything would get out of hand very quickly, everyone would just order A320's or B737's cheaply. In the end it affects everyone's bottom line and is less effective at making money when expensive, however if you've committed to a type and have large amounts, it's better to stay with it, rather than rush a fleet change. However, if you are a newer smaller airline competing against a large airline that has already committed to an expensive type early on, going alternate is a good idea because in the end, it will likely keep your cost base, lower than theirs because your costs of Leasing/Ownership and by extension Cost Per ASK will be much much lower.

With long haul, yes there is a duopoly, but there is more than one type to pick from. B747, B767, B777, A330/A340 and MD-11 are all available from the 90's onward's and people will usually commit to just one compromise type, because of the 4th fleet penalty. Therefore, prices can be good or bad, B744's are commonly overlooked a can often be got cheap compared to B777 or A340. MD-11's, again usually not so used and therefore often a good value alternative. With good management, you could probably run all of these mentioned past 2020, there is choice, just because it has the lowest fuel burn doesn't mean that when you take leasing/capital costs and others into account, it will be the cheapest aircraft to operate.

I think the answer to worlds getting longer is, they aren't really designed to allow people to get big, they are aimed a giving people an environment that keeps refreshing as frequently as possible, where mistakes aren't punished so bad and experienced players can point out basic mistakes. We tell you the leasing advice because it's true, however at the start of a GW, as I've said, you kind of have to lease new to get aircraft and more importantly slots. If this was an ongoing world in 2000 or something, you'd be completely mad to lease new, however because this world is fresh, everyone is in the same boat, therefore leasing expensive new aircraft is just the way everyone will have to go.

What the beginners world does, in affect is show you what the first 10 years is like in a full GW, used aircraft can be a bit of a problem, new aircraft get expensive, production slots are important and how to manage other things going on in your airline. Probably misses out that airport slots can be a big constraint. But, all these problems you are going to face. The most important thing for new players is to learn from others, learn from your own mistakes and pick yourself up afterwards.

[hambot]

I get the sense that you feel like you're helping new players learn the ropes, but to me it feels like you're so committed to only seeing things from that point of view that you're not really acknowledging legitimate critiques.

I can only speak for myself that I understand the strategies and tactics you're discussing, having read the forums to soak in as much as possible and watching other players to learn from them, but knowing all the ways to cope with the game as it stands doesn't change the state of the game.

[gazzz0x2z]

I get the sense that you feel like you're helping new players learn the ropes, but to me it feels like you're so committed to only seeing things from that point of view that you're not really acknowledging legitimate critiques.

I can only speak for myself that I understand the strategies and tactics you're discussing, having read the forums to soak in as much as possible and watching other players to learn from them, but knowing all the ways to cope with the game as it stands doesn't change the state of the game.

Well; fixed prices were the norm before. It's been changed soon after I joined the game. And it's something I like : it adds a strategic layer to the game. You have to think more.It makes the game hardest to predict, as it should be. In some GWs, MRJs end up costing 60M$. In others, 30M$. You can't know. And it's more fun like that.

AWS is not a basic management game, where you just apply a standard recipe, and win. It's a competitive game, where you have to be more clever and efficient than your opposition. There are several strategic layers to take in account, and dynamic airframe pricing is one of them. If you want an unrealistic simulation where everyone wins easily, go play *********. AWS is far more realistic(up to a point, of course), and gives the player several parameters to take in account. It's hard. And that's why it's interesting.

A game where "A320 is the best plane, so I'll spam A320s everywhere and win, and that's it" is not deep enough for my tastes. Side note : I always played the 737NG-MAX family, despite its excessive cost. Because it suited my strategy. And I smallowed the heavy costs without complaining. But it does not mean you have to follow my example. Look at your situation, your opposition, your opportunities, your risks, and make a decision. If you play an airport with a central position in the USA, you won't need as much range as playing the coasts. But you'll need better cos efficiency, as night flights won't be common, and your airframes are going to fly less hours. So your fleet choice is going to be different. And, depending on your opposition, you might be tempted to go big, or smaller. F100s against hordes of 737s work wonders. Against CRJs, not so well - unless there are not enough slots.

In other words, you have to take in account a large, complex world. Not as complex as the real world. But still, in the real world, Bombardier could not sell its wonderful CS, and had to lower its prices a lot to make a decent sale to Delta(with the consequences we all know). OTOH, Airbus or Boeing on't lower their prices that much, as long as they have 5 years of production backlog. That's the real world we live in. The effect is increased in AWS for gameplay purposes, but it's not Sami's invention. Offer and demand laws are something rather common.

[freshmore]

I've been playing this game long enough to remember many things that have changed, like when 5th freedom rights got out of hand, when we only had economy seats and I've stayed aware of the reasoning behind things like Dynamic pricing and I tend to agree with most of the game play changes that have been made. I remain open to new ideas, but on this, I am fully behind the current system because it improves game play and overall game balance. The game is much better for it, rather than wholly static prices or less extreme dynamic ones. So while they may be critiques, I don't feel that changing anything would make anything better, in fact, I'd say it would make it a lot worse.

I've tried to avoid giving an rebuttle/opinion without some sort of example or explanation to back it up. Dynamic pricing is there to force some strategic thinking and to slow down growth of airlines, by making things more expensive. I did point out, leasing new is needed in a New GW because the Used market becomes less reliable, but most people don't go wholly to getting new, mixing it with whatever used they can find. All the problems you are experiencing in BW are there at the beginning of a new GW and all of them, whether it be slots, prices etc, help slow the development of airlines down and that is important for overall game balance. Dynamic pricing can seem a bit extreme, but what I am also sure of, is that if it weren't so extreme it would result in some players really running away with the game before it had really begun. So without dynamic pricing slowing growth and causing strategic thinking, we would probably have a whole load of other worse problems with the game and it's balance.

As for established worlds, I did point out the Used market is usually rich pickings. The reason many of us are at pains to point stuff out like leasing used is I've seen so many new airlines come into a full halfway through GW, maybe get a few used aircraft and then order brand new, expensive leases for 3-5 years down the line. Which is stupid! It's frustrating to see because we all want to see new players and new competition. As always, getting market share with the cheapest aircraft is the most important thing to do, especially if you are joining mid game.

[hambot]

If you want an unrealistic simulation where everyone wins easily, go play *********.

I don't want a game that easy! It wouldn't be much of a simulation.

BTW, if you're referring to the "imperial" game, it's so old and broken I couldn't even set up my first routes. If you're referring to the one with "line" instead of "way" in the title...well, to be honest, what made me stumble upon this genre was wanting to find a seat configuration tool, and instead I found that game. I really, really love the deeper configuration and service customization it offers, plus its scheduler, its support for connecting flights, holding companies, and a bunch of other items—but it's real-time, and it's such a slog to get through. Accelerated time on AirwaySim is much more playable, so even though it's not as in-depth it's a lot more engaging and easier to lose a bunch of hours to.