Fleet commonality changes - combined thread

[Tha_Ape]

Well, about the 4th fleet penalty I think one of the "easy" solution would be to tweak the curve of penalty that applies.

Currently, the penalty consists of roughly 2 points of margin for every 100 planes you operate. Which means that at 500 a/c, you need roughly a 10% margin to just break even during your renewal, and 30% if you're at 1500 a/c.

As Talentz pointed out, cargo provided a relief that came roughly at the same time than the increase of the OOB from 600 to 1000, as cargo allows to gather cash in an unprecedented manner (for a reference, in GW#4 / The Age of Flight, there are 9 airlines with more than 100 billions in the bank, and Oh! surprise! all of them operate cargo).
This huge pile of cash can be used as a mattress to absorb losses during a renewal, but that said, the whole principle is rather silly / illogical: "hey, I need to be ultra-profitable for a few years, so I can cover for my losses" -> far, faaar from the real world as well.

Plus (again Talentz), cargo demand has seemingly been adjusted downwards, which means getting this mattress could become harder to achieve.

So, back to the problem of the penalty: couldn't the curve be changed so that at some point, instead of being rather linear and incremental? At some point it would reach a value and plateaus out, wouldn't increase anymore and keep the same penalty whatever the size of your airline is.

This would surely stay punitive and would prevent people from adding fleets, but wouldn't force the players to hoard cash in a crazy manner. And, as long as you'd have a correct margin beforehand, you could even have your renewal more or less peacefully, rather than overnight after 10 years of plane-gathering.

I'm not sure, but this stable value could be set at what it is today around 800 a/c (16 points of margin). This is obviously to be discussed.

[Cornishman]

A different approach:

All this concern that we need a penalty applied to a 4th fleet is based upon the aim to prevent any airline growing so big they swallow out all competition. So how about allowing any airline to have as many aircraft of as many different types as you like without any penalty costs being applied (IE - just the normal natural additional costs of adding another fleet type) - AND instead, you make a limit on the "TRAFFIC LEVEL" Base Size number of airports you can open - based on what size the airport becomes in its final decade of the GW. (for example we know both LHR and CDG become Level 10, so not permitted at any stage of the game to have a base at both.)

So for example, Acme Airlines can only ever open 1x a (Traffic Level 10 base) + (1x Level 9) + (1x Level 8 ) + (1x Level 7) + (6x Level 6 or under). That way no airline can swallow up all the best bases, can freely operate sensible airlines with a great range of different aircraft types.... and lots and lots of opportunity of everyone.  Plus then allow areas of the world which are deprived of any real use these days, (like most of Africa) to have an "African Open Skies" agreement (excluding say: South Africa, Egypt and Algeria which are able to function well without that) and on the same basis a "South Pacific Open Skies", "South East Asian" and a "South American", a "Central American Open Skies"...    WOW  this game begins to open up huge new potential enjoyment without all the "penalties".

Just an idea 

[chwatuva]

Not a fan of the small bonus/prestige fleet or whatever you call it. For a big airline, this would just become a tool to make targeted strikes at smaller competitors. Have a small competitor trying to break even with thin routes while you focus on medium to very large planes?  Why not acquire a bunch of small or medium aircraft that you can use to spam your competitor’s handful of profitable routes?  It’s sure as heck what I would do....

[Cornishman]

I hear your point chwatuva - but in reality what is happening these days (I have a constant history of it happening to me in GW4) is that folk are moving into the Category 9 and 10 airports - like CDG and running fleets of 400 to 500x things like Saab 2000s so that they totally bomb-out all the regional routes. This done deliberately to completely overwhelm anyone wanting to run their airline with the RL expected fleet types such as A320s or 737s.  One of them (the worst) has gone now.... but for decades I had two such airlines both doing this at the same time at both CDG and ORY. Now I'd have nothing to say about this if they'd tried to compete fairly with me with similar aircraft and act like we would see in RL but I mean... what airline in RL is going to try to bomb out routes like CDG - FRA with 40 flights a day on Saab 2000s in the years around 2010 ?   But this game facilitates this type of behaviour so I was being slowly forced out of profitability and had to resort to putting in a 3rd fleet of EMB-170s and 190s which just kept things going and fended that attack off.

So as you see, it works both ways here.  I'd be more in favour of some "penalty" that stops this tactic of route-bombing at the big bases, running hundreds and hundreds of little prop planes out of the Cat 9 and 10 bases.  If folk want to run smaller airlines that's brilliant - but run them out of the smaller bases - OR - if they must run things like Saab 2000s out of places like CDG why not run them on the small uncontested routes that befit that size plane.

I think the whole penalty thing is a desperate attempt to get away from real life where it is absolutely natural to compete and drive out competition. There is this aim at a Utopia where everyone tolerates everyone else in this dreamy world of minimal competitiveness. Why?

[DanDan]

Not a fan of the small bonus/prestige fleet or whatever you call it. For a big airline, this would just become a tool to make targeted strikes at smaller competitors. Have a small competitor trying to break even with thin routes while you focus on medium to very large planes?  Why not acquire a bunch of small or medium aircraft that you can use to spam your competitor’s handful of profitable routes?  It’s sure as heck what I would do....

now i know, theoretically every airline has to start at some point, but if you consider any major airport, there are so many routes that can be flown usually, that 14 aircraft are not really going to spam anyone out. and since most major airlines are useing more than one base, they would have to spread those 14 aircraft over all those different bases.

[DanDan]

There is this aim at a Utopia where everyone tolerates everyone else in this dreamy world of minimal competitiveness. Why?

well... yes, i guess its because they dont want the gameworld down to single digit player numbers? but i agree with you, that the economic model on competition is currently very unrealistic and should go slightly into the direction of price sensitive customers. that would eliminate the need for the too-small-penalty as well.

[groundbum2]

I think the route algorithm has been tweaked under the covers. A year ago I suggested that the route algo simply took number of flights day (say 1000) and number of flights (say 20) and gave every flight an equal share (so 50 pax each). yes with some slight nod to CI, price,alliance score,plane attractiveness,bigish nod to RI.

In newer gameworlds I've noticed that bigger planes on a route get a bigger market share, so a 727 vs Viscount will see the 727 with 70% market share whereas before it would have been 50/50. Fellow alliance players also think there is a benefit to having just one flight a day on a route, that AWS gives the newbie a leg up but I've not seen that. Nothings been said in the changelog.

Slightly off the topic, sorry.

Simon

[DanDan]

I think the route algorithm has been tweaked under the covers. A year ago I suggested that the route algo simply took number of flights day (say 1000) and number of flights (say 20) and gave every flight an equal share (so 50 pax each). yes with some slight nod to CI, price,alliance score,plane attractiveness,bigish nod to RI.

In newer gameworlds I've noticed that bigger planes on a route get a bigger market share, so a 727 vs Viscount will see the 727 with 70% market share whereas before it would have been 50/50. Fellow alliance players also think there is a benefit to having just one flight a day on a route, that AWS gives the newbie a leg up but I've not seen that. Nothings been said in the changelog.

Slightly off the topic, sorry.

Simon

have noticed similar behaviour. jets are more preferred to props, and also big jets to small jets it seems. and yes, the first flight is certainly taking more share than 2, 3...

[gazzz0x2z]

The reason why I nearly stopped my growth in ARN, in GW3. When you have 4 MD80s on a 700 demand route, adding a 5th one won't do any harm to your opposition, unlike what was before. It will harm your own bottom line, OTOH. As long as my local opposition does not do big mistakes - and they didn't, for now, I cannot kill them. I can prevent them from growing by occupying all the place, but kill them? Nope. You don't kill healthy, well-managed companies. My 2 opponents in my base in PMI did give up, but they both made strategic mistakes(bad choice of planes for one, likely pricing problems for the other one, though I'm not sure). And PMI is far less forgiving than ARN(demand is spread out in more thinner routes).

I also did the S2000 bombing thing last GW3, but more in order to get the 800 mediums achievements(and the 1000 European planes). In MAD, I had insane numbers of them(around 240, iirc), and was still dwarfed in terms of market share by the local master. Who was only slightly negatively affected by my presence in his realm.

S2000s are more guerilla warfare things, at least in big airports. In smaller airports, well used, they can kill off any opposition, but in MAD? against a well established company flying larges? No way. New wind rules make them even harder to use, no more red eyes with them. Even in NCE, they couldn't kill the local, only a huge blunder on his side(leasing brand new A350s) did seal his fate. More generally, medium airplanes are ankle biters. They'll put you down only if you're already weak. And they can't compete on longer distances.

[MuzhikRB]

Glad to see we are returning to major questions.
I will just repeat my old proposals:

1. AC Purchasing limits.
most critical is to increase the limit of UM market purchases in later stages.

this limit is mostly needed at the start of the game. maybe first 2-3 years. then the market already dried to 0 till companies become rich enough and start flying own fleets.

this limit is the most problem for big fleet changes and therefore limiting player strategy and push them to decrease the number of fleet changes to a minimum.

My proposal -
A) save UM limit for first 5 years for medium GWs (1997-2037) and first 10 years of long GWs.
B) Then increase this limit gradually. add surplus limit for inside-ally trading (may be depending on ally tax)
C) Fully support the idea of migrating from weekly limit to monthly limit. that will benefit to most players.
Having this larger limits for long period games players may consider to replace some fleets just to have fun.... therefore increasing usage of more rare-to-see fleets

2. Commonality.

Penalty for multiple fleets must be. it does not only serve anti-monopoly god, but also penalize ineffectiveness.
Secondly - the system should be easy to understand and transparent.
Therefore I come down to the idea of FI. Fleet Commonality Image.
What it is.
Company has to pay for its fleet service. More fleets, more different people should be invited. More ACs in fleet - more you pay.
How it can work:
FI - works the same like Route image. You need to pay to raise it. Each fleet has its own FI.
Why you need this? Because the lower is FI for your fleet  - the more you pay for commonality.
FI=100, then commonality cost for your fleet is equal to what we have now if you have 1-3 fleets.
FI=0 - then commonality for this fleet will be like you have 4 fleets.

Every company has 3 slots for FI to pay.

Every company  will get newcomer bonus:
1st fleet that player will open - will receive 100FI.
2nd fleet that player will open - will receive 75FI
3rd fleet that player will open - will receive 50FI.

Futhermore:
To keep FI at 100 or raise it to 100 you need to organize training. the more ACs this fleet has - more you need to pay to keep FI at 100. So if you are small company you will pay less then big guys. it can be done the same way like Company Image (Base city->country->worldwide marketing campaign -> depending on fleet size) or another - doesn't matter,
But as in CI - every next fleet (2nd or 3rd) will require to pay more for the same amount of ACs. so 100 ACs in 2nd fleet will require more money to keep FI=100 then 100Acs at 1st fleet.

Stop to pay:
If you stop to pay for your fleet - FI will drop gradually by time. in my view it should be like 1 point per week. and therefore - commonality will increase gradually.

Fleet transitions:
You need to stop paying for fleet you are removing and start to pay for new one.
it means you will start flying fleet with 0 FI (you will pay the hell of money for that fleet) from one side and will see the decrease of FI of current fleet from other.
Gradually decrease will allow you to avoid massive penalty at start for retiring fleet, but will penalize you if not well planned long term. at this rate of decrease, you will have around 2 years before you see a significant increase in this fleet expenses. at the same time, your new fleet should already get some relief because you pay for it.

If player is using only 2 fleets and planning adding 3rd one for transition - when AC line lunches it can immediately start using his 3rd slot for this line in advance. therefore upon receiving first plane player will already have raised FI.

Fleets from the same producer should get guaranteed bonus.
If you have Boeing 747 fleet with FI=100. so any other new fleet from Boeing for the same type (Very large) should get, let imagine, guaranteed FI=60. and it cannot go less then 50 until 747 FI will decrease below that. if you open Boeing 737 - the guaranteed Bonus is FI=40 or 50(because other fleet size). it will force to stick with producer and help during fleet transitions like 733->737 or 777->at one hand, but still will limit player choices as well.

Rare feet bonus proposals
To attract players to use rare fleets or fleets with low order AI can be programmed to offer special deal before closing production lines.
Like: Producer XXX offers special 1 year deal to new customers:  free training, so ordering planes by this offer player will get 75FI for this fleet (numbers are just example).

Special fleets cases

Supporting the idea for special fleets (380, Concorde) system can be programmed that this fleet will always has FI=100.

Conclusion:
- Numbers are to be simulated.
- New system is transparent and easy to understand (I hope).
- New system is scalable, configurable and easy to manage=adapt to different GWs environment.
May be for short GW we can set up only 2 slots for fleet and for long GWs 4. Or may be decrease rate of FI will be faster in short GWs and slower in long…But it will be clear what to be done in each case. and it will be easy for Admin to preconfig GW without recoding tons of code.

Sorry for big post.

[DanDan]

Penalty for multiple fleets must be. it does not only serve anti-monopoly god, but also penalize ineffectiveness.

1. yes, it is anti-monopoly but it does not penalize ineffectiveness. using two or five or ten fleet types is not ineffective, as long as they are not redundant or substitutable.

2. not sure i completely understand the fleet commonality image idea, sorry. but from what i understand, one should be penalized already for a second fleet? i dont think that should be the idea. otherwise sami should rename the game "RyanairSim" - yes, it certainly is a valid gaming style, but it has nothing to do with reality and certainly will just lead to players being annoyed.

but in general, the idea of a FI sounds interesting, but more like in a way of: as long as you have 3 fleet types, FI stays at 100 or goes up; once you have more than 3, the FI goes down (slowly for a small 4th fleet, faster for bigger fleet or additional (5th, 6th) fleets, and once it hits 0, the commonality charges have to be paid. so if you switch fleets quickly, you are safe, if you switch fleets slowly with a lot of extra fleets, you are paying sooner.

[MuzhikRB]

2. not sure i completely understand the fleet commonality image idea, sorry. but from what i understand, one should be penalized already for a second fleet? i dont think that should be the idea. otherwise sami should rename the game "RyanairSim" - yes, it certainly is a valid gaming style, but it has nothing to do with reality and certainly will just lead to players being annoyed.

for 2nd fleet FI will start at 75. and if player starts to pay for that fleet - can easily reach 100. But like IRL: for every new fleet - company needs time to adjust all its processes.

but surely - all numbers are just for discussion

[MuzhikRB]

but in general, the idea of a FI sounds interesting, but more like in a way of: as long as you have 3 fleet types, FI stays at 100 or goes up; once you have more than 3, the FI goes down (slowly for a small 4th fleet, faster for bigger fleet or additional (5th, 6th) fleets, and once it hits 0, the commonality charges have to be paid. so if you switch fleets quickly, you are safe, if you switch fleets slowly with a lot of extra fleets, you are paying sooner.

each fleet has its own FI like you have RI now.
SO FI for fleet 1 will stay 100 as long as you pay for it (not just because it is one of 3 fleets). And if your 737NG fleet will enlarge from let say 50 ACs to 550 Acs - you will need to pay more to keep FI 100.

[DanDan]

each fleet has its own FI like you have RI now.
SO FI for fleet 1 will stay 100 as long as you pay for it (not just because it is one of 3 fleets). And if your 737NG fleet will enlarge from let say 50 ACs to 550 Acs - you will need to pay more to keep FI 100.

but as long as you are at 100, you pay the regular fleet commonality as it is now?

[MuzhikRB]

sure. for that fleet that has FI=100
we may come to situation when even having 2 fleets you can pay extraordinary commonality cost if player forgot to pay for FI.
so - this is issue to be taken into mind

[DanDan]

forget to pay for FI? now it starts to sound awfully complicated for something that is meant as a measure against dominating position in the market

[Cedric3108]

I like the idea of some kind of FI, but I would execute it completely differently. Say, the other way around.
To me, it would be a "Fleet Index", a single number that describes your fleet commonality costs. Your company gets one FI, not one per fleet. You cannot pay to make it go up or down, it's simply an indication of how well organized your fleet choices are.

FI 100 means perfect, basically single fleet. FI 0 means horrible, like a 40 airplane airline operating 12 fleets.

If Sami now does all the work and introduces "intra-type commonality" (and I really hope he does) than this would mean we could finally get away from this static and unrealistic "4 fleets are bad" rule. Commonality costs would be gradual and depending on how close the airplanes are that an airline operates. One airline flying B737classics, B737NG, B757 and B767 could have a higher FI (and thus pay less) than a company running MD80s, A310s and B777, dispite having more types by the old rules. With this new FI rule, we could completely forget counting fleets, you would look at your FI and that would tell you your commonality costs, no matter if you run 2, 3, 4 or 8 fleets.
For airplanes very similar to each other the FI would only take a slight hit. For example DC9s and MD80s in the same airline would only make the FI go down by like 3 points, where as DC9s and B737classics would cause a 12 point hit, or something like that.
The resultant factor could then be multiplied with the total number of aircraft, so that it still has the kind of damping effect on uber-big airlines.

I also really like the idea of "manufacturer sponsored training and/or maintenance". Because overall this kind of FI rule would of course make the big manufacturers only even more attractive. So maybe Sami could introduce this kind of counter measure. If - for example - MD sells only 200 MD80s while Boeing sells 1500+ B737s; MD could offer "Manufacturer sponsored Crew Training" for 5 years, which would give an overall FI boost of 5 points for the given time. Or they offer to maintain your airplanes for you, reducing your costs and also giving you +5 FI points. If some manufacturer gets really desperate, they may even offer both and thus give you a + 10 FI points advantage. That might even get airlines to jump ship and consider types they previously didn't think about.

Of course all of this will help certain airplanes more than others, I think the MD80/90 would see a good boost, the DHC-8/Q400 probably as well. But that's not the main point. For me the main points are:
1.) the FI gets displayed on the Dashboard, once you worked with it for a bit of time it should be easy to understand and not work its magic behind closed doors, like the rules now do.
2.) it would be way closer to real life; and I think the reason most of us joined this game, is because they love real world aviation. So we should strive to emulate it as closely as possible while still preserving good game-play.

I hope all of this was easily understandable 

Cheers,
Cedric

[Tha_Ape]

The issues of the penultimate paragraph would need a sorting, but I otherwise find this proposal very, very interesting. It offers a brand new approach to the commonality, suggests quite a few possibilities while remaining for the most part quite straightforward.

[SP7]

i will propose a fairly simple solution: Create an inverse relationship of fleet groups to aircraft outside the HQ. The more fleet groups you fly, the less overall aircraft you can operate. B

It would be like:

• 3 Fleets, 700 planes outside of HQ
• 4 Fleets, 500 planes outside of HQ
• 5 Fleets, 300 planes outside of HQ

And so on.

I think this would be a way continue to address the issues the fleet penalty is trying to solve and at the same time open up gameplay.

• For those who build huge airlines this removes a huge headache, but it keeps the limits currently in place from letting them become too monopolistic
• Medium and small airlines can play however they want without really any penalties at all.
• This would be especially nice for people playing in smaller countries/single international airport countries.

You could alsobuild commonality matrices, so running 737NGs and Classics will be 1.5 groups instead of the current 2 etc etc. I think that would be a solve to the partial commonality issues around 757/767, 737 Jurassic/Classic/NG/MAX etc.

[Tha_Ape]

i will propose a fairly simple solution: Create an inverse relationship of fleet groups to aircraft outside the HQ. The more fleet groups you fly, the less overall aircraft you can operate. B

It would be like:

• 3 Fleets, 700 planes outside of HQ
• 4 Fleets, 500 planes outside of HQ
• 5 Fleets, 300 planes outside of HQ

And so on.

I think this would be a way continue to address the issues the fleet penalty is trying to solve and at the same time open up gameplay.

• For those who build huge airlines this removes a huge headache, but it keeps the limits currently in place from letting them become too monopolistic
• Medium and small airlines can play however they want without really any penalties at all.
• This would be especially nice for people playing in smaller countries/single international airport countries.

You could alsobuild commonality matrices, so running 737NGs and Classics will be 1.5 groups instead of the current 2 etc etc. I think that would be a solve to the partial commonality issues around 757/767, 737 Jurassic/Classic/NG/MAX etc.

I'm currently playing in SIN. The problem of such a proposal is that with such limits, city-states have none (or almost).
-> I'm currently operating A32x for SH and cargo, 767 for MH and cargo, 777 for LH and cargo.

But if you allow me, I'd gladly...
1°) get rid of the 767 pax, have 787 instead
2°) re-introduce the 757PF (to avoid A321-F double tech-stops to Europe)
3°) get some E-Jets or A220 to spam real short haul.

Being limited to 3 fleets forced me to make some both strategic and tactical choices, even with a single airport. I want to fly cargo? Sure, but thus I won't be the most efficient on long MH (767 vs 787). And so on.