Some feature questions from a new user...

[mykalberta]

Hello, second post (long time lurker, finally got fed up with another game).

I really enjoy the direction this game looks like its taking.

I have a few feature questions/requests?

(1) Hubs - are they effective for increasing passenger demand - for me personally one of the most important features, and I can only imagine what a pain to properly code this might be.
(2) Route Scheduling - Are you able to set a yearly schedule for seasonal traffic?
(3) City demand spikers - not sure what to call it, are you able to build hotels, resorts etc to boost demand to to capitalize on demand you are creating.
(4) Customs issues: Is this accounted for, example for me flying from 1/10? Canadian airports to any US airport because of preclearance.

Thanks. I apologize if these have been gone through. I went through the forum as well as search and couldnt really find anything regarding these.

I wont mention the other game I have been playing and its apparent lack of hub functionality really killed it for me. Also I like how you are taking the single player model out, as I think it just takes to many resources to properly program AI players.

Thanks again and keep up the great work.

[Sami]

1) At this point of development passenger traffic is point to point only. And also all your flights have to start and end from the home base so for example route can be JFK-SFO-LAX-SFO-JFK (but no longer, the route can go to max 3 different airports) or JFK-LAX-JFK. You can also make the stopover at SFO as a technical refuelling landing. Mutliple base/hub feature is higher on the list (so you can base your planes to many airports) but transfer passenger system is kinda complicated and takes time as I want to do it properly, not just some random stuff how the pax'es connect and so on. (for bigger airlines it may be also quite a pain to manage.. have to see)

2) Nope.

3) No. An "events" module is being planned where all important historic or random made up events create changes to the demand. For example wars or olympics.

4) Traffic rights is also being planned, and is another major feature and kinda complex too. As it needs to take into account the historical changes of each country. At the moment you can fly domestic routes inside other country, in similar manner as mentioned in point 1.


hmm.. Lot's of no's for this question.

[CX717]

3 is a good idea.
airlines like Pan am and JAL run a hotel group too.
no demand boost,but just a extra income

[mykalberta]

1) At this point of development passenger traffic is point to point only. And also all your flights have to start and end from the home base so for example route can be JFK-SFO-LAX-SFO-JFK (but no longer, the route can go to max 3 different airports) or JFK-LAX-JFK. You can also make the stopover at SFO as a technical refuelling landing. Mutliple base/hub feature is higher on the list (so you can base your planes to many airports) but transfer passenger system is kinda complicated and takes time as I want to do it properly, not just some random stuff how the pax'es connect and so on. (for bigger airlines it may be also quite a pain to manage.. have to see)

hmm.. Lot's of no's for this question.

Thanks for the quick reply. Thats what I thought, I know in other games they use the "hub" traffic as adding to the amount of source passengers available for ease of coding. That seems to work well as a temporary fix.

I figured it would be a pain to code. And then if you add in regional airlines and code shares it becomes even more hectic. Love the pricing scheme, cant wait for a beta test email On your routing, how are tickets sold handled.

Example, can a passenger buy a ticket from JFK-SFO-LAX or just JFK-SFO and then SFO to LAX?

One other question, can seating configuration on aircraft be changed?

Cheers, and thanks again.

[Seattle]

Thanks for the quick reply. Thats what I thought, I know in other games they use the "hub" traffic as adding to the amount of source passengers available for ease of coding. That seems to work well as a temporary fix.

I figured it would be a pain to code. And then if you add in regional airlines and code shares it becomes even more hectic. Love the pricing scheme, cant wait for a beta test email On your routing, how are tickets sold handled.

Example, can a passenger buy a ticket from JFK-SFO-LAX or just JFK-SFO and then SFO to LAX?

One other question, can seating configuration on aircraft be changed?

Cheers, and thanks again.

1. I dont think passengers can actually buy (ex:) SEA-ORD-LHR, but each section is shown like this: SEA-ORD, 150Y out of 150 seats, 100% LF.
The same thing for ORD-LHR, LHR-ORD, and ORD-SEA.

2. As of now, each aircraft is in an all economy class layout. Eventually, you will bea able to order planes with First, Biz, and Economy. (possibly Economy Plus aswell). Obviously, there will have to be a limit to the customization of the a/c's configuration, because we would need enginers to determine exact weight, range, and feasibility of the configuration. This means you'll probably have some set choices from the manufacturer.

Hope this helped, nicholas.

[Sami]

Thanks for the quick reply. Thats what I thought, I know in other games they use the "hub" traffic as adding to the amount of source passengers available for ease of coding. That seems to work well as a temporary fix.

The idea on transfer flights / hubs would be that the player should be able to fully manage the prices of the transfer flights too and so on. Otherwise it's kinda useless if it just works on the background and player cannot do anything about it.

(so for example if I have LHR-HEL and HEL-BKK flights, then I should be able to set the pricing for LHR-BKK via HEL transfer too. And naturally only if the transfer time at HEL is at least let's say 40 minutes and less than 4 hours. .. and if you have 300 planes and 2000 routes, that might be a bit tricky ... so needs careful planning)     And the other thing to think is that how the daily calculation module takes this. As this game is not static or random in determining the seats you sell but the true seats sold is calculated on every day change and it takes into account all the latest results and data. So adding a million more transfer flight routes there wouldn't really work, so have to do that some other way.


The changeable a/c config is technically there with all the three travel classes but a proper interface to change the seats is missing. The features have been now frozen before the beta so the config module will be added during or after beta. It's high priority anyway.

[waerth]

Instead of having people give prizes for transfer flights why not percantages.

Say LHR<>HEL is 100
HEL<>BKK is 900

Together they would be 1000
But the airline has a standard 5% discount on transferroutes so it would become 950. Saves a lot of time.

Waerth

[Sami]

Keep the ideas rolling in

[mykalberta]

No I totally agree on the difficulties of hubbing.

Your example of LHR-HEL-BKK

You would have to price LHR-BKK likely at least 10% below a competing LHR-BKK or even say 3% below LHR-DXB-BKK given the more direct routing and how close the flight connect times are.

Also agree that there is no point in putting in the system unless it actually works.

Also on seat counts, I would assume you could get the weight of the seats and then deduct that from the total allowable gross weight - cargo. I would love to see some people try all biz class say LHR-SYD example.

Cheers - MYK.

[Seattle]

No I totally agree on the difficulties of hubbing.

Your example of LHR-HEL-BKK

You would have to price LHR-BKK likely at least 10% below a competing LHR-BKK or even say 3% below LHR-DXB-BKK given the more direct routing and how close the flight connect times are.

Also agree that there is no point in putting in the system unless it actually works.

Also on seat counts, I would assume you could get the weight of the seats and then deduct that from the total allowable gross weight - cargo. I would love to see some people try all biz class say LHR-SYD example.

Cheers - MYK.

No.... you wouldnt have to price 10% lower on LHR-BKK.... or LHR-HEL-BKK or HEL-BKK.....

[Sami]

No.... you wouldnt have to price 10% lower on LHR-BKK.... or LHR-HEL-BKK or HEL-BKK.....

??  He's talking about the transfer concept...

[Lamantijn84]

I think the idea of transfer passengers and tickets is nice!

But to make it realistic: if you have flights from EGBB (Birmingham) to EHAM (Amsterdam) and from EHAM to KLAX, than you actually can sell seats on the route EGBB - KLAX. Also if there is demand from EGBB to KLAX, than this should increase your airlines load factor on flight from EGBB to EHAM if you also fly from EHAM to KLAX. Because the passengers from EGBB to KLAX can now travel, but will go via EHAM. I can imagine this is quite complicated to implement in the game.

[Shimo]

I'm not sure, but I think that on some rudimentary level this is already implemented.
i.e. I doubt that between Newark and Atlantic City (KEWR-KACY) the actual demand of pax is 70/day -I for one would rather take a cab or even walk when faced with the prospect of travelling between these to cities (75NM/141km).

So, in my mind at least,the numbers include transfer pax. Questimated of course, but still kinda included

[toyotaboy95]

3 is a good idea.
airlines like Pan am and JAL run a hotel group too.
no demand boost,but just a extra income

Is this HotelSim or AirwaySim?