Fleet commonality changes - combined thread

[LemonButt]

Revisiting this as I think it's a major issue that needs addressing sooner than later.  My current fleet in Speedy Recovery maxes out at 1500nm and I added a single Sukhoi Superjet to reach the 1500-2500nm routes and this is the before/after of adding a 4th fleet type.

I've got the 7th largest fleet in the game earning $575m in profit last quarter.  Adding a single aircraft increased commonality costs by $90m++ per month overnight, which basically eats half my profit margin.  I have 565 aircraft and adding a 4th fleet type would be an expectation at this point, whether it be for expansion or transitioning an existing fleet to a new one.

My understanding of the current system is that it is based off way back when we could only have one HQ/base airport and there was no cargo.  My commonality expenses here went up by 450-550%.  Would it not be a simple fix to just change commonality penalties to be more linear than exponential (or at least least "less exponential")?  This would allow players to add fourth, fifth, and in some cases, sixth fleet types without risking their entire airline.  It wouldn't solve the commonality problem it in it's entirety, but the more I think about this the less I believe there is an actual solution (at least algorithmic one) that would solve the issues, but having linear penalties would be the best solution at this point IMO.

[sanabas]

Simply making the soft caps 4/8/12 instead of 3/6/9 would make a big difference, allow 2 core fleets to both be in transition to 2 new core fleets at the same time. Given the supply from the manufacturers of very large planes is typically 25/year, transitioning a fleet of even 250 planes can expect to take 10 years if you don't have others buying planes and supplying them to you via the UM. If you have 2 fleets of 250, and the first is in transition, then if you also need to transition the 2nd, your options are to start doing it, and see a 4-500% increase in commonality costs for the duration, or to buy brand new planes with the intention of putting them in storage for 5 or more years. If you have 2 fleets of 500 planes and the same situation, the choice can become a 900% or more increase to commonality, or storing planes all the way beyond first D-check.

[groundbum2]

commonality is 20% there to mirror real world airline operations, but is 80% there as an artificial means to stop the big boys totally dominating a gameworld.

So would you really like it when a larger airline pulls ahead, has the ccash, and has 2xsmall fleets, 2xmedium fleets, 2xlarge fleets,2xVL fleets and 2xfreighter fleets, with new and used models arriving daily from the production lines and alliance mates, and squashing you to bits? It's taken years for AWS to find a way to give good game play, and be realistic, and give new comers a chance..

Simon

[LemonButt]

I agree that penalties need to be in place in order to keep the sanity for large airlines, but my counterpoint would be my profit has gone from over 15% to less than 5% as a result of adding a fourth fleet.  Speedy Recovery is a 20 year game world, but if I had to do any fleet transitions I'd literally be risking my entire airline in order to pull off a single fleet transition and just based on lifecycles/time it takes to replace a large fleet (as sanabas outlined), it's not unreasonable to ALWAYS have 4 fleets if you are replacing 1 fleet every ~7 years (God help you if you try to do 2 at a time).  If you are flying an all Airbus/Boeing fleet with the most fuel efficient aircraft in the game, it's more than viable, but if you plan on flying anything else then forget about it.  The only reason I'm not upside down is because most of my high ticket prices.  Right now my commonality costs are +$90 million per month and my disaster plan is to just park my fourth fleet type as the monthly leases are less than $10 million, which means I'd make $80+ million/month more parking my aircraft than flying them--that's insane.

For a super simple, oversimplified system that could solve this: everyone gets 3 fleets without penalty.  You get +1 fleets when you hit 100/300/600/1000 total aircraft.  That means an airline flying 100 aircraft across 4 types is not penalized and an airline with 1000 aircraft across 7 types is not penalized.  This is not a perfect solution by far, but is a more perfect system than what we have in place based on 2007 game rules of having a single HQ with no bases and no cargo.  I should clarify that the fleet expenses still go up with more fleet types--it's just not a hockey stick.

I think this would also make "novelty" aircraft fleets more viable--the Concorde, A380, etc. where you might have 5 or 10.  I think this would also eliminate a lot of the alliance new aircraft orders to speed up fleet transitions.  If an airline is sufficiently large, they don't have to pick the A320 or the B737--they can fly both.  The only reason the inter-alliance sales happens is to speed up those transitions and keep fleet commonality tight under 4 fleets.  IRL every large airline in the world with 500+ aircraft (with the exception of Southwest being all 737s) is flying with 5+ fleet types to my knowledge.

Again, I don't think there is a good solution, just "less bad" solutions.  Big airlines need to be kept in check, but right now in HaF the largest the top 5 airlines all have over 1400 aircraft with the largest having 1930 and $40 billion in quarterly revenue and the current base limit is currently only 550 aircraft.  Can we honestly say the current fleet commonality system is doing anything to restrain these large airlines from "squashing" anyone to "bits"?  I'd argue the current system is actually helping them squash competitors as the current system makes competitors more vulnerable than they should be and easier/softer targets to take out.  The largest airline in Speedy Recovery has 10x the revenue of me ($35 billion/quarter versus my $3.5 billion) and currently has 377 aircraft based at my HQ with $38 billion in cash to my $100 million.  They're flying all Airbus/Boeing and if they wanted to add a fourth fleet type and take me out, the fleet commonality penalties would just be a rounding error on their income statement.

[groundbum2]

play the game as written..

[gazzz0x2z]

@LemonButt : the fact that you have to make choices is exactly the point of all this. When you are a big boy, you don't fly Pilatus. You leave the small demand areas to small companies. You have to make strategic choices about the niches you want to cover. That's what makes the game interesting.

I've BK'd hundreds & hundreds of opponents since 2014 (38 in last modern times alone), and less than a dozen survived to the end against me. Yet, I always limited myself to 2 fleet groups until the final transition. If you give me another fleet group to toy with, I'll be even more pityless, and leave even less opponents alive. That's exactly what the current fleet group is designed to prevent. It does its job. It does prevent you from being too strong. It allows the player with smaller fleet groups to exist.

You want to make it easier for the big boys. That's exactly what should NEVER be done. The bigger you are, the more it should be painful. Big boys don't cry. Big boys don't add Pilatus. Big boys din't pile up 50/70 seaters(CRJ plus ERJ plus SSJ??). Bigboys choose their best niches and streamline their fleet groups according to (I finished that modern times games with 787s and C919s, bar none - not even a third fleet group. Still BK'd 38 opponents in my 6 airports. And that's not such a long game).

You're complaining because you can't do everything you want. But limits are what make the game interesting. You have to make interesting choices. I went C919 for many reasons, but I had to make the choice between C919, MD90, A320, and MAX. Not an easy choice. Therefore an interesting choice. I missed a lot of 2400-4000NM destinations by bypassing the usual fleet groups. I had less seats. But I had lower purchasing costs, by far. It's a trade-over. If I could spam smaller routes with C919, bigger with A321, and same with very larges, plus spam thinner routes with an unholy mix of CRJs, ERJs & SSJS(or even Ejets), where would be the challenge?

[LemonButt]

You're complaining because you can't do everything you want. But limits are what make the game interesting.

I agree the game needs limits, but I think you're missing the point.  I am not a "big boy" airline--you've labeled me as such based on aircraft count and then basically said I'm doing it wrong because I'm flying 9 seaters.  I'm not a "big boy" airline which I illustrated by the fact that the largest airline in the game has 377 aircraft based at my HQ with 10x the revenue ($35 billion to my $3.5 billion).  For me to add a fourth fleet type means risking my entire airline whereas the legitimate "big boy" airline earned $14 billion on $34 billion in revenue last quarter.  He can afford to add a fourth, fifth, sixth, and probably eleventh fleet type without even noticing--how is the current system making it harder for them to add additional fleet types?  You said if they can have extra fleet types they'll be even more aggressive, but that doesn't happen simply because of the aircraft base limits and even if they decided to do so, nothing is stopping them today--they have the cash and it's really just a matter of how petty they are versus whether they can afford it.

The fact of the matter is if you are flying all Airbus/Boeing it's not a problem (i.e. the big boys)--the fleets come with so many flavors including freighters at high enough volume that you can make it happen.  The top airline is flying 34 different variants of the A320, A330/340, and B767 fleets including freighter variants of every fleet.  If you play anything but Airbus/Boeing (where the challenge is since you asked) it's much more complicated.  People think there is only one way to play this game and it's to grow as large as possible flying the most efficient aircraft in the world--anyone can do that (which I find extremely boring) and when people like myself and others do otherwise and make valid points that parts of the game are broken outside of the Airbus/Boeing bubble it's always the same response--those aircraft aren't meant to be viable/playable so you should be picking something else (i.e Airbus/Boeing).  It was only in the past few years that small/medium aircraft for pax became economically viable and small/medium freighters in most case still aren't viable--why do these aircraft even exist in the game if the response is always going to be you shouldn't even be able to fly them profitably?

My airline is flying 945,000 pax per week to 1,149 airports with 27,398 weekly flights.  Those numbers average out to an average of 35 pax per flight and 59 pax each way per route pair.  My average load factor is 80%, so that means the average aircraft has 44 seats per flight.  I fly to a lot of airports with a single flight, but of course there are high density routes with frequency but my average frequency is 1.67 daily flights to each airport--I'm flying all the routes no one else wants (i.e. my niche).  I currently have 623 aircraft including my fourth fleet type across 10 bases for an average of 62 aircraft per base.  I think based on most definitions of a "big boy" airline, I'm not one--I'm a small/medium airline that just happens to have a large fleet (i.e. SkyWest).  I also think I've pretty clearly illustrated the point that the current fleet commonality system isn't doing anything to restrain the big boys from adding 4+ fleet types (the rationale behind the penalties) and doing whatever they want because they have the cash to do pretty much whatever they want with 3 fleet types due to having so many variants at their disposal and if they want to add a fourth fleet type it just ends up being rounding error on their income statement because they are printing money.  I have a "more big boy" airline in HaF flying MD11 (ER, F, and C), Tu204, and MD90/B717 and added a fourth fleet type with Il114 (the only medium freighter in the game) in order to expand a level 1 infra airport and it cost me approximately $6 billion in extra fleet commonality costs until it expanded, but I still made hundreds of millions each week and had billions to burn.  That right there is perfect example of how the fourth fleet type is doing absolutely nothing to restrain large airlines from adding a fourth fleet type--I've been on both sides of this coin.

This is ultimately where the issue is--the most popular aircraft fleets have so many variants that one Airbus or Boeing fleet is not equal to one Pilatus or Sukhoi or Tupolev fleet and that's why the penalties designed to help small airlines and hurt big ones are actually doing the exact opposite (they were designed with Airbus/Boeing in mind), hurting small airlines and helping big ones.  It can actually be boiled down further to size class--3 large/very large fleet types are nowhere near the same as 3 small/medium fleet types in terms of versatility.  It is expounded by the fact that the less popular models are much more difficult to get as far less are available on the used market and the production lines have much lower production rates. 

So the bottom line is if the commonality penalties are in place to limit the "big boys", the current penalties are actually doing more to help than hurt them.

[sanabas]

For me to add a fourth fleet type means risking my entire airline whereas the legitimate "big boy" airline earned $14 billion on $34 billion in revenue last quarter.  He can afford to add a fourth, fifth, sixth, and probably eleventh fleet type without even noticing--how is the current system making it harder for them to add additional fleet types?

I have a big airline in AoF. I comfortably make ~125 mill/week in 1970, and have enough in the bank to contact Douglas about building my own manufacturing facility and building DC-8s under licence, just so I don't have to wait 10 years for planes. (there's one for the feature requests. ). Adding a 4th fleet would cost me 40-50 mill/week. So I can certainly afford it, if I did it I'd still be the most profitable airline in the GW, but equally certainly, I'd notice. If I was allowed to have 12 different fleets without paying any extra, I wouldn't have to decide much of anything. I'd fly every route possible, I'd order at least 50 of anything I might fly. My only constraint would be the OOB limit and just how many planes HQ could support via demand and slots. Right now, instead of 1200 planes, I'd have closer to 1500, with smaller planes on domestic routes than I currently do, more mediums and adding 737s, thus freeing up even more bristols to convert to cargo, and I'd have more ability to keep my HQ slot-locked at popular times, making it harder for comp to get started as well.

In AG, I have ~300 turboprops, make about 14 mill/week, around 24% margin. There, adding a 4th fleet would cost me 4-5 million, again affordable but again, quite impactful, especially because there, my profit doesn't generate enough cash reserves to just place 100% upfront purchase orderss on anything I feel like flying. If I'd been actively expanding the past 10 years, if I was up to 700 turboprops, then adding a 4th fleet would eat most of my profit.

Fact is, it's a planning ahead issue, not a 'big boy' issue. If you want 565 planes of any type, you need to plan ahead. You need to know how you're going to do a transition. If you choose two fleets doing the same job, e.g. CRJ and ERJ, get a couple of hundred of each, you make it harder to do a transition, or to add a fleet like SSJ to fill an extra role. With my 300, I have planned ahead. 21 ATRs I acquired sort of by mistake will be retired en masse once I have ~20 Q400s arrive, I'll grab as many as I can from multiple suppliers, start retiring as many f27s as I can, leave the medium freighters (which are viable, despite making less than the pax planes) until Q400 freight is available, and when I get my first medium jets, whatever one I decide on, any remaining f27s will also be dumped en masse. Then I fly e120, Q400, and a medium jet until the end of the world, maybe dumping the e120s at some point for a more modern jet. Either way, I end up with over 1000 medium planes.

If I didn't think ahead, if, instead of just acquiring more & more f27s I got 300 ATRs and 300 f27s to fill the same role, I'd have much less flexibility.

Allowing 1 additional fleet per 100 planes makes things even easier for those running a cookie-cutter huge airline. Yeah, it means running a small fleet of concordes or whatever is suddenly doable, but that could also be done by flagging certain underused/specialist fleets as not counting towards the soft cap. It could be done by assigning fleets a number towards a soft cap, though that becomes less intuitive. Say the soft cap is 9. DC6/Connie/DC8/727/737/DC10/a320/a330 all count as 3. f27/NAMC/ATR/CRJ/E-jet count as 2, as do less popular bigger planes like Tridents/tristars/IL-18/TU-204. Most small planes, the second tier turboprops like HS748/ATR/etc, russian LH planes, they count as 1. Stuff like concorde/yak40/baade/TU-144 count as 0. Have the multiplier be explicit. Say for up to 5 points, you pay the actual base commonality charges, no penalty. 5-9 points, there's a linear penalty, 8 points you pay 8/5 = 1.6 times the default. 10+ points, you pay both the linear penalty, and a fleet size penalty similar to what we have now, so 10 points and 600 planes, you'd pay 200% for the points x 600/200 (lower cap of 1) for the planes = 6 times the default. 20 points and 1200 planes from flying everything, 20/5 x 1200/200 = 24 times the default.

A little complicated, but would be interesting to run in an experimental world, see what happens to people's choices. I think it could work. Would certainly be a push towards flying less popular fleets, something I'd like to see more of.

Either way, I think it whatever is in place needs to be more transparent, more explicit. To know, in advance, that if I have 500 planes flying and add a 4th fleet, my commonality will jump by 300%. I know it, because I've experimented before. But my biggest AoF competitor died because he had about 500 planes, connies and bristols and viscounts, and he added in both 707s and DC8s, and had expensive commitments to both. His profit went from ok to 0, 0 profit means not enough cashflow to pay for the arriving purchased planes, and while he certainly could have saved it, it would have taken a fair bit of effort and a drastic restructure (immediately dump all viscounts, fly the leased 707s and sell the owned DC8s without flying them). That sort of counter-intuitive 'gotcha' moment shouldn't happen

And any change to commonality that drastic will obviously have some teething problems, balancing issues, etc. So again, the simple change I think we should have is to up the soft cap to 4, even if the 2nd soft cap remains at 6, as it is now. And I'd be happy to see the penalty for exceeding the soft cap even bigger than it is now. But make it explicit in the manual that the soft cap of 4 is intended to allow you to fly 2 core fleets, and transition to 2 new core fleets, without workarounds like keeping 200 planes on the tarmac until enough arrive to do a mass changeover. That if you choose to fly 4 fleets, e.g. viscount/bristol/DC8/707, that when the time comes to transition, you're going to face big costs. The existing system means even if you're disciplined enough to only fly 2 core fleets, you'll get stuck paying millions per week in penalties during fleet transitions, because of the time required to carry them out, and so you end up leaving planes sitting idle for years as a potential workaround.

Or even make it a hard cap, the way OOB numbers are. You can designate your 4 main fleets, you can fly up to 35 planes OOF (out of fleet. ) just to allow those concordes, etc. Still need to pay commonality for the extra planes, but not getting a 700% or 1000% penalty to commonality for everything else.

[Cornishman]

       and here...years later, the same debate lingers on.  I always said, if the current situation were perfect then there would not be so much ongoing discussion. So many great ideas on this topic (specifically swapping out of an old fleet for a new model) have been submitted over the last year or so on this topic - why not dedicate one of the shorter GWs to trying out a few new changes?  If they don't meet with approval or if they produce the unwanted effects that some fear, well - at least we all got the chance to see if improvements were possible!

[LemonButt]

I think sanabas hit several points on the head.  I'm not sure I follow the entire commonality scheme he proposed, but based on my current 4 fleet small/medium airline in question I think I'd be able to add a 5th and possibly 6th fleet type without penalty depending on what fleet it is?

The biggest thing that resonated with me is his note on transparency.  My process for adding a fourth fleet type was purchasing outright a used example of the fourth fleet type and scheduling it to fly to "see what happened".  That is why I have the before/after screenshots of fleet commonality.  "Planning" is always a recurring theme when it comes to fleet choices, slots, and pretty much every other aspect of the game, but currently we can't plan for anything when it comes to commonality expenses and that's where transparency is an issue--I  have no idea what my expenses will be adding a fleet type and that's a problem.

So whether ANYTHING changes with fleet commonality, I think there could easily be improvements with transparency TODAY without changing anything on the calculations by simply adding a fleet commonality simulator.  I don't know what banks do in other countries, but in the US many here offering credit cards with free credit score monitoring etc. have a credit score simulator on "what if" where you can see the impact of getting a new credit card, paying off a loan, etc.  We basically need that same calculator so that instead of purchasing a used aircraft and scheduling it to see what the costs would be (purchasing so you can sell it versus being stuck with a lease), we can just plug in the extra fleet type and see the simulated expenses.  It should be an abstracted function in the code base you can throw fake data at to get outputs that shouldn't be terribly complicated to implement.

Back to the "point" system and transparency.  AWS has been shifting away from a static to more dynamic model and my fear is a point system will be "too static" and arguably that's the problem with the current system today.  The reason AWS is getting better instead of worse is because the static parts based on arbitrary values have become more dynamic based on player actions (CBD, dynamic new aircraft prices, etc).  Additionally there have been a bunch of benchmarks added to help airlines understand how they're doing versus everyone else--fuel burn per seat mile, airline score, etc.  To help airlines better understand how they stack up and create transparency, I think we could kill two birds with one stone by just implementing a "fleet complexity" value assigned to each airline that is simply a multiplier to commonality costs.  This also creates another layer of transparency for players.

Every fleet would have a complexity score that simply gets multiplied to determine commonality expenses.  So if you have 4 fleets with scores of 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 you can multiply that out and get 4.84 and your commonality costs are the base value already in the system multiplied by 4.84.

Fleet complexity score would be dynamic based on the game world--you could have four fleet types with a score of 4.0 and 20 years later have the same exact fleet with a score of 2.0.  The way fleet complexity scores would be assigned to a fleet would be based on the popularity/usage by players in the game world.  You take the four size classes small/medium/large/very large and basically spread them out across a range.  Note that all these numbers I'm about to use are arbitrary and would need actual testing for sanity.  For small aircraft, the range would be 1.0 to 1.25, for medium 1.0 to 1.75, for large 1.0 to 2.5, and very large 1.0 to 3.25.

For the large fleet complexity values from 1.0 to 2.5, if there are 16 in service large aircraft fleets in the game that means you're going to have 0.1 increments from {1.0, 1.1...2.5}.  The fleet group with the most "in service" aircraft gets the 2.5 value.  The second most gets 2.4 etc. and the least popular large fleet gets the coveted 1.0 (it would be logical that the last operator of any fleet ever would be paying 1.0 at the end).  This assumes that the most popular fleets are popular for a reason--they have the most variants, are the most fuel efficient, etc.  As a result of the higher value, their commonality costs are higher--no one is scrapping those aircraft which means less salvage/used parts and higher expenses buying new parts and since everyone is flying it, there aren't any type rated pilots or experience mechanics available and you have to train your own.  As a fleet falls out of favor and gets replaced, the commonality expenses are cheaper--there is about to be an abundance of A380 parts from retired aircraft and more type rated pilots than you can shake a stick at.  You can argue to the contrary that new aircraft should have lower complexity values, but as technology progresses over time with fly-by-wire and more complex parts made from composites and lithium batteries, the complexity goes up as fabricating a carbon fiber part for a new aircraft is much more difficult and complex than fabricating some steel.  There is a reason there are still DC3 flying today and it's not because the systems are complicated and hard to fix.

What you end up with is that you can have one fleet of each size and you'd have a complexity score of 1.0.  You'll also be flying the least popular aircraft that are the most difficult to acquire because they're out of production (or easiest to acquire because the used market is flooded if it was ever popular in the past) etc. but your expenses would be really low.  We would assume the Concorde would be a 1.0 as the least popular very large aircraft--likewise for the A380.  If you're flying the most popular everything--i.e. large and very large Airbus/Boeing plus the most popular small/medium fleets then you'd max out the score at 1.25 * 1.75 * 2.5 * 3.25 = 17.8.  This might be more extreme than it should be in terms of a multiplier (again, these are all fake numbers that would need testing), but if you have all but small and add the small fleet, your expenses go up by 25%.  If you're flying all but very large and add the very large, your expenses go up 225%--much more palatable than the 600% or whatever we have now, but still substantial.  If you add a fifth fleet type at ~3.0 you'll be at where we are now with a fourth fleet type.  The new/used aircraft pages would display all these current values for transparency.

So under this multiplier system if you're flying B737, A320, and A340 you'd be somewhere around a 12x multiplier.  When it comes to fleet transitions, the longer you wait and hold off, the cheaper it ends up being as going from the most popular fleet to the second most popular fleet is expensive, but as time goes by the most popular fleet ends up being the least popular fleet and going from the least popular to the most popular fleet is your cheapest option--instead of paying 2.5 * 2.4 for the former, you'd be paying 2.5 * 1.0 for the latter.  This also means the cookie cutter airlines will be more challenging--right now there really aren't any tradeoffs to consider as it's virtually ALWAYS better to fly Airbus/Boeing since 3 fleets of Airbus/Boeing is going to cost you just as much as 3 fleets of Russian metal, but if you can fly 6 fleets of Russian metal (or other empirically unpopular fleets) for the same cost as 3 fleets of Airbus/Boeing then I would call that progress.

This would be an "algorithmic" solution where player actions affect the inputs--I think this responsiveness to player actions would be a requirement to replace the current system to make it dynamic instead of arbitrary as the arbitrary values/systems are the ones that end up getting exploited and/or breaking in the game.  To make this system even impactful, you could eliminate the groupings by aircraft size--that means if there are 500 Cessna Grand Caravans in service then the multiplier would be higher than 50 Il-96.  This would also create more "steps" in the range where a fleet would go from 1.5 to 1.52 instead of 1.5 to 1.6.

[DanDan]

hey guys, quick question: who of you thinks that this combined thread was created so that sami doesnt have to read our complaints anymore? 

[Cornishman]

hey guys, quick question: who of you thinks that this combined thread was created so that sami doesnt have to read our complaints anymore? 

haha, probably right Dani !  Just solve this debate once and for all and allow a "niche" fleet, with limits, but without the massive cost penalty. Limits maybe on what type of aircraft is in the niche fleet... Concorde / Tu144 or other aircraft that Sami has so painstakingly added all the data to this game, but which rarely ever see a single aircraft order taken up.  And of course, a limit to the number of the special aircraft in a niche fleet - say about 21?

C/mon guys, could we not do with a touch of tabasco to the game ? 

[MuzhikRB]

Pop up again

Please - we need to reconsider UM market purchasing process of private listed ACs.
It is really very important for time consuming god of wasted souls

[groundbum2]

Pop up again

Please - we need to reconsider UM market purchasing process of private listed ACs.
It is really very important for time consuming god of wasted souls

yes yes yes. I'm sick of setting alarm for 130am and 515am to buy some dratted 737s to replace the x700 I have.

An easy option, let us tick aircraft privately listed to us, and at noon AWS buys these aircraft automatically. Why noon? Cos that way if we want to grab a different aircraft we can do so manually between midnight and noon on the day buy slots become available. Best of both.

Or allow a CEO to maintain a list of  trusted airline partners where these people can sell planes to us without any buying effort. This would still use our 3xweekly buy slots. FIFO.

I really don't think the AWS developers have played a large airline and don't appreciate the QoL issues involved with 500+ aircraft. I think they have small test airlines to test new features and that's it. It's a major black hole in the link between the user base and the developers imho.

Simon

[groundbum2]

just a quickie - and zero development time.

Allow a player A to nominate one other player B who can log in as A and buy planes off the used market. Nothing else. The two players would have to notify admin of the arrangement.

This way for me in the UK I could find a tag buddy in the US/Oz who could buy used planes when I'm in the nod. And I could reciprocate for him/her.

Simon

[meledine]

One reflection upon reading this -- and one point is valid that "three is the magic number" isn't really clear from the sentence "To make your company as economical as possible try to keep the number of different aircraft types to a minimum.". So one suggestion is please tell me "three is the magic number" on the fleet commonality page. That'd be pretty sweet.

Another question I have then is maybe one way to handle both the commonality and fleet upgrade in a cool way is if each base has one "penalty-free" fleet. Not +1 per base, but each base gets one that doesn't get penalised. I'm reminded of what SAS did a while back, placing 737s in one base and A320s in another base. So as a company you still can't go crazy and eat all markets from all airports, but you can get creative fleet migrations.

[JumboShrimp]

Pop up again

Please - we need to reconsider UM market purchasing process of private listed ACs.
It is really very important for time consuming god of wasted souls

Agreed.

For a game that can last 18 months, we should be able to play when we have time available, without being chained to a desk or a phone, and definitely, without ALARM CLOCK.

[Flying_ace65]

Is there something on a short to medium time frame being done about this?

There are great ideas here and common agreement that something needs to be done, but I haven't seen anything about it since this was being discussed and this common threat was created to address the issue.

[DanDan]

Please move here for the fleet commonality talk, there's already the basic plan in place based on earlier user request/ideation: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,82188.0.html

i guess i was right...

hey guys, quick question: who of you thinks that this combined thread was created so that sami doesnt have to read our complaints anymore? 

[Cornishman]

END THE HUGE FLEET COMMONALITY PENALTIES NOW !

And to counter the few folk who vehemently resist any change on this and declare that those of us calling for the end to this unrealistic miserable system don't offer any alternative solutions - well here's one:-
a). As bases advance on their "Infrastructure Level" and their "Traffic Level" scores, so too do they incrementally limit the number of "small" and "medium" aircraft that any one airline can operate out of such bases. (1) That then limits airlines thinking they can grow into all-consuming mega-giants at any one base, (2) It adds reality to the game as in reality we are not going to find any airline with hundreds of Saab 2000s based at ORD or JFK or LHR are we?  (3) It also helps to limit the slot-hogs who absolutely screw the game currently at some major bases by doing what I mention in (2)  - competing with sensible airlines using 737 / A320 types at ORD / JFK etc by trying to swamp them out with hundreds and hundreds of Saab 2000 flights with which the game currently rewards them with better pax share that way. Madness!  Maybe this could be a TRIPLE-WIN solution?

We now have so many great suggestions from so many different folk over the years - something better surely can be done!