Registration workaround(s)

[JumboShrimp]

Looks like Hong Kong only supports 2 letters for registration.   That makes coming up with reasonable registration numbers extremely challenging.

Since the registration numbers of aircraft are only visible to the player himself, could we get rid of the international registration schemes (or have them only as automatic (secondary) and let player pick his own aircraft name (nickname).

Or, as an alternative, could we have, in setting, a switch what the primary sorting mechanism will be in scheduling, either registration or nickname.  Then, we could just use nicknames, if we chose to...

[JumboShrimp]

Here is how this could work.

First of all, there is a wrong concept that AWS has retained from its origin.  It is that aircraft = schedule of an aircraft.  These really need to be separated in the long run, something along the line of this:
https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,54631.0.html

While I would really like to see these 2 being separated (aircraft and a schedule), there may be a workaround to achieve perhaps 1/3 of what is needed.

Just let us use the nickname.  3 things needed to let us be free of the restrictive registrations:

Step 1.  Add a flag in settings whether we want to see sorting by aircraft registration (while also showing nickname) or just use nickname.

Step 2.  We would just fill in nickname and ignore registration

[JumboShrimp]

Step 3: Sort the scheduling screen by nickname, hide the registration:

[JumboShrimp]

One of the reason I brought it up is that registration format has 2 effects:

1. at the beginning of the game a player realizes for a second: "Oh that's what it is in country XYZ"
2. for the following year - hundreds of hours - suffers from the limitations.

2 letters in HKG allow 676 if player uses absolutely no pattern to registering and sorting aircraft (26x26)

When using 7 day scheduling where the first character (set) determines the schedule, the last determines the sequential number (ABCDEF, 1234567), Honk Kong allows only 182 (!!!) aircraft to be registered using a human friendly pattern.  (26x7)

Even a 3 letter registration is no picnic, but 2 letter is pretty much unusable.

[raptorva]

As an airline based in HK in GW2, I can confirm. I've around 400 aircraft and registrations are all over the place, made even more of a mess if you don't remove the registration from an aircraft that is listed for sale or stored, then the auto system skips that option to find the next available. If you have a lot of planes stored, it can be a heck of a mess.

[JumboShrimp]

It appears that the AWS does not have the registrations correctly.

There are 3 groups: B-H, B-K, B-L
Not just one, B-H group.  So this is a bug report.

So could we expand HKG to 3 digits for all of the HKG players, and prefix the first available letter to "H"

[spiff23]

Can I ask why bother?  I rarely even use the feauture.  It's fun / realistic if you have the time, but it's not a requirement.  I only use it when I have a very diffent seating configuration.  I.e. I might registering Y only configured planes so When I,m moving schedules I have a flag not to move a premium seating plane to an open Y during D check season.

One improvement for those who like the feature would be to consider an option to lock in the airline code for US planes or similar countries where airline code is part of the registration...right now if you start at N-001NW and use the auto register feature, your next registration is N-001NX vs. N-002NW. Obviously you run into a problem for those doing more than 1000 planes, but you can then always switch to something like N-0001N

[gazzz0x2z]

it's very important when you begin to do 7-7 schedules. helps you having the blocks of 7 grouped.

If you make only daily schedules, of course, you don't care. Not all players play like that, though.

[spiff23]

I see your point, but I always have spares for D checks.  So once I started moving schedules, even with 7 days, you quickly lose track of them and what planes they are on.

I find the easiest way to move to new planes is just do it from the airport page and click on the flight number.

[JumboShrimp]

it's very important when you begin to do 7-7 schedules. helps you having the blocks of 7 grouped.

If you make only daily schedules, of course, you don't care. Not all players play like that, though.

Yes, without ability to assign IDs to 7-day schedules, everything turns into a complete, unmanageable mess.

It also just happens that majority of demand from HKG is LH demand, that calls for 7 day schedules.  SH demand may be 20%, LH+Cargo 80% of demand.

[JumboShrimp]

So the scheduling screen could have the sorting on following calculated field:

If Registration is empty
    If Nickname is empty
        MSN #
    else
        Nickname
else
    Registration

As far as Display sort field

If Registration is empty
    If Nickname is empty
        show MSN # only
    else
        show Nickname only (!!!, this will make the screen more neat than what we have)
else
    show Registration and Nickname (as the system currently does