Fleet commonality experiment

[Tha_Ape]

...
Does that help clear my position?

A lot. And actually makes much more sense now

I actually agree on the "don't make something twice part, more than a bit.
But also sustain that we should try to find small tweaks (that don't need a complete rework of the system) that can improve the playability until CBD-pax comes in. And select the proposals based upon this criteria.

[Cornishman]

So the first of my 787-9 fleet have arrived to replace the 403x 777s I have and I thought I'd set just one into operation to see what it would do to my figures. Here is the mind-boggling crazy result:

Before - with 3 types):
757  Fleet monthly cost: 28,283,069
777  Fleet monthly cost: 62,834,004
EMB Fleet monthly cost: 26,280,545
Cost of all Engines :       20,287,459
Total monthly cost:  $ 137,685,077

Experiment - with 4 types (just 1x new 787 added):
757  Fleet monthly cost: 409,005,440
777  Fleet monthly cost: 908,839,203
787  Fleet monthly cost: 12,326,574
EMB Fleet monthly cost: 380,029,444
Cost of all Engines :       20,323,434
Total monthly cost:  $ 1,285,780,371

= IMPOSSIBLE !  I am forced to wait to allow every one of the new 787s to arrive and do nothing with that growing fleet for about 5 or 6 years before then swapping the whole lot over in 1 go. = CRAZY

There are some great comments from folk here. Whatever happens THIS NEEDS FIXING. This above scenario leaves me feeling there is no more fun in this.  I absolutely love the idea of having a "Designated Retirement Fleet" allocation. You could even say that not a single new route may be added to that aircraft type while the switch happens. We could get a warning just like the "Route Oversupply" warning currently happens, so the punishment could be that your routes are all dropped if you infringe.  I'm not against having a measure to curtail "abuse" of fleet size and type, but this system is so restricting it kills my desire to play another GW next time... and I don't want that to be the case - the core of this game is so excellent and again I say, please don't take me as being all negative, but if something needs fixing imo, I tend to shout out about it.

[knobbygb]

Yes, I also understand Sami's "three mountainloads" of work too and that's why I rarely rant - I'm certainly not one of the monthly ones! I just wanted to clear that up, but at the same time say I'm slowly falling out of love with AWS.  This time around I really did consider just not starting another long game world.  Instead I jumped in part way into a game, at a deliberately difficult time and set myself the challenge of only using piston/turboprops for the whole of the rest of the game. 

A good  point is raised above about not fixing this now when such a big change is on the horizon with CBD. That makes sense. Does nobody agree with my suggestion of an experimental penalty-free game though? That's pretty much ZERO development time. OR what about at least dropping the penalty for the last 20 years of a regular game to keep people interested. By that time there's pretty much only big, well established airlines left anyway. An utter bloodbath could be a LOT of fun...

The talk of 'golden tickets' and the like makes sense, but it somehow seems even more contrived, unnatural and unrealistic.  Surely there is a more real-world way to allow huge companies to exist alongside small ones. Can't it just be done with a sliding scale of tax increases or something?  At least we're all understand being taxed!

After nearly 9 years it's a shame I and, it seems, a few others are considering quitting just when things should be getting "good".

EDIT: re-reading I saw I use the word 'penalty' a few times. That made me think... isn't the current fleet commonality penalty to AWS a bit like VAR is to football/soccer? Yes, it's MEANT to make things fairer but has the disconcerting side effect of spoiling the game for many.

[Zombie Slayer]

An idea I had the other day, and it's similar to GrayAnderson's, is this.

Designate a fleet as "retiring", allow commonality costs to raise a bit, but not as punitively as they currently do(5-10%?). Could even add a requirement forcing the fleet to reduce in size 1 plane a month or 12 a year or whatever. This would allow someone to phase in a new fleet, much like is done in real life, replacing old planes with new ones. As opposed to how things are done now, which DanDan and schro have already gone through, or by putting themselves at a disadvantage and playing with 2 fleets so they can phase in a fleet change without penalty.

Myself a d several others pitched ideas similar to this as long as 6 years ago. It has sadly recieved precisely zero attention from TPTB.

[Cornishman]

I'd be up for starting a new GW which is penalty-free and a potential blood-bath  as per your suggestion knobby.

[Tzal1979]

Oh dear.... This rule has nothing to do with realism. It is not anymore expensive to keep 3 fleets if you add one. The cost goes down per plane / for bigger fleet, but if i have like ATR, B777, B737 and I add a330 it does not add xpenses for the three. This sucks so bad and is the worst problem in the game.

[Andre090904]

Oh dear.... This rule has nothing to do with realism. It is not anymore expensive to keep 3 fleets if you add one. The cost goes down per plane / for bigger fleet, but if i have like ATR, B777, B737 and I add a330 it does not add xpenses for the three. This sucks so bad and is the worst problem in the game.

Disagree. There needs to be a balance mechanism in the game to keep people from "flying all the things" and that forces them to think for a moment about their fleets. If everyone could just fly as many fleet types as they want, the "big boys" would dominate the game even more and there would be no niches anymore for unexperienced players like you to be successful in. Let's assume you want to play in ORD, but there is a huge airline already. You would analzye their fleet and see that they fly A321s and A330s as an example. What does that tell you? They cover both domestic demand as well as international demand and even cargo. What you also see is that they operate quite big planes and probably neglect the regional demand. Even if not, that airline would be very vulnerable to the ankle biting technique where you compete with some regional planes vs their large A321s. If that huge airline had no commonality restrictions, they would probably fly regional jets themselves to avoid being attacked/being vulnerable.

Another example. You join in 1975 and see that the local airline at your airport flies a mix of Caravelles, Comets and DC6. What does that tell you? They have 3 fleet types which are all getting more and more obsolete in this era. This again means there will need to be transitions soon if the airline wants to stay relevant. If you can grow at the airport and compete with this airline, you may reduce their profits just enough so they cannot afford the transition (going 4 fleets while paying for new planes as well). Suddenly you bankrupted your competitor and have a monopoly.

Short: You don't know what you are asking for. The limit is in place:

1) To limit experienced players/big airlines from being overly dominant (even more so than they are now)
2) To give new/unexperienced players like you a chance to analyze the market and find a niche
3) To give the game some more strategical gameplay where you have to think about your actions and their consequences where the most efficient airline profits

Don't see it is a restriction, but as a chance.

[MikeS]

...if only this rule was made public in the manual.


I tested it the other day in Modern Times. My fleet of >600 aircraft: Adding a 4th type: Commonality cost increase SEVEN FOLD for the entire fleet. That is not written anywhere in any shape or way. Only forum posts like these shed light on the mechanism.

Mike

[groundbum2]

I think the assumption is by the time a player gets to running 600 planes they're fairly well up on the nuances if AWS,written and unwritten!

Simon

[Mort]

Thought I might as well add another data point for fun reference.

Before - with 3 types [Fleet Count 1751]:
A320/321 * 536 = $46m
A330/340 * 611 = $98.4m
B757        * 604 = $14.9m
Total monthly cost:  $159.3m

Experiment - with 4 types [Fleet Count 1752]:
A320/321 * 536 = $857.7m
A330/340 * 611 = $1836.5m
B757        * 604 = $278.5m
B787        * 1     = $13.6m
Total monthly cost:  $2986.3m (just under $3 billion per month)

That's an increase of just under 19-fold.   

[dmoose42]

That’s a lot.

[MikeS]

I think the assumption is by the time a player gets to running 600 planes they're fairly well up on the nuances if AWS,written and unwritten!

Simon

no doubt, but it is a clear advantage for seasoned players or better said a stumbling block for newbies... why is it kept so ambiguous?

[groundbum2]

no doubt, but it is a clear advantage for seasoned players or better said a stumbling block for newbies... why is it kept so ambiguous?

Commonality is discovered by players the same way as other features (not too many types for small planes, winds aloft limiting ranges, not buying or leasing new planes at the beginning, OOB, choosing bases carefully,tech stops killing demand, old planes turning into maintenance and fuel disasters) are also discovered - by keeping an eye on forum by seeing what others are struggling with, experimenting with your airline to test out a theory whilst being able to cut your losses,chatting with alliance mates, having a mentor etc etc.

So far as I can see, empirically, commonality matters not a lot until having a fleet of 450ish aircraft. After that the penalty goes up massively to serve as a huge deterrrent.

The Quality of Life related to the Used Market is much much better now with the tweaks made. Time for a similar tweak for QOL for large fleet transitions. I like the "retiring" fleet idea which means there is no 4th fleet penalty, but also that after 2 years something similar to route oversupply kicks in on all routes on the retiring fleet. The mechnisms are already coded in, small tweak, big QOL improvement for people with large airlines.

Simon