Allow combi/freight conversions on planes that are not RL based

[sanabas]

This would increase the utility and thus playability/desirability of quite a few fleets. If could the same payload/range charts and volume, fuel, etc calculations. e.g. Take a VC10, rip out halfg the seats and stick a cargo door in. Or take a VC10F and install 50 seats, remove that much volume, but still allow CH. Or take IL-62 and remove the seats, add a door. etc. Could cost D-check + 20% or something similar, plus maybe some sort of upfront fee to do the planning. Could have the planning part even involve taking 1 frame out of operation for 6 months for the engineers to work on, with normal 100 day (or 80 for large) conversion time after that.

I know it's not RL based, but I'm sure it was very doable to RL planes if the economics made sense.


Also, CS for small freighters and medium combis would make a huge difference to both those types, which currently don't really have a usable niche.

[LemonButt]

I've made comments in other requests/threads about the freighter issue.  I think all pax aircraft should be light cargo only except very large being light+standard.  All freighters should be able to carry light+standard with medium and up capable of handling heavy cargo (including combis).

Right now the 737 combi is largely useless because 1) it can only carry light+standard which is the same as a pax only 737 and 2) only a small fraction of the payload can be used because cargo is volume limited.  A combi by definition is using part of it's main deck for cargo which by default should mean it can handle heavy cargo (except small aircraft).  The 9 seater Pilatus PC-12NG has a cargo door big enough for pallets (https://www.pilatus-aircraft.com/en/image/59634725b3894), so it would seem reasonable for small freighters to carry standard.  Having pax aircraft only capable of light cargo (except very large capable of standard) leaves the cargo game to cargo airlines.  Right now I'm trying to turn Gary - Chicago in HaF into a cargo airport and it's not going so well--the frequency of standard cargo on pax aircraft at ORD and MDW makes it nearly impossible to shift that cargo away.

I'm all for most aircraft being capable of freight--those A380s would be much more viable in a combi config and a potential replacement for the MD-11C and/or competing head-to-head against 787 on routes with cargo.

[sanabas]

Only CL for pax planes is a bad idea, because there are so many routes with a bit of CS, but nowhere near enough for a freighter. If connecting cargo was a thing, if there was the ability to fly routes between non-base airports, then it might be playable. But as is, it's not. CS+CL v CL only is a major point of difference when it comes to choosing between say a 70 seat BAC vs 2 x 40 seat F27s.

Large combis are not hugely useful, sure. But a 733 pax plane in default seating has 13.1m^3, enough for 330kg CL + 2450kg CS. A 733 combi is limited by weight, not volume. It has 60m^3, enough for 12,000kg of CS. But max payload restricts it to 9100, so the same 25/75 split will give 2270/6830kg, vs 330/2450 (the fact 25/75 gives 330/2450 is an entirely different issue, with an easy fix). 3 times as much cargo is a significant difference, if you have some routes that are light on pax but with plenty of cargo, which you do have from secondary airports in major cities. Large combis aren't anything you'd want 200+ of, but there's certainly a role for them. Allowing them to carry CH would expand that role significantly. Medium combis OTOH are currently near useless, because any route with that much CL to make them better than a pax version will also have CS, and is almost certainly better served by a pax flight + a medium freight flight. Allowing them to carry both CL + CS would allow them to fill the same role as the large combis do currently, but on smaller routes.

But any change that expands the role of medium/large combis in particular needs to be wary of the fact that so few medium/large aircraft have a combi variant. Wanting to include cargo as part of your airline shouldn't force you to fly f27 + boeing fleets. Allowing us to do our own fictional combi/freight programs would go a long way to making a wider range of fleets viable for a wider range of airlines.

[LemonButt]

Only CL for pax planes is a bad idea, because there are so many routes with a bit of CS, but nowhere near enough for a freighter.

I get this completely, but if an airport is established with huge pax demand (i.e. ORD) then it's nearly impossible to pull any cargo away.  Even with the same catchment area, flying 1x daily with a cargo flight with CL+CS is only going to capture 10% of the demand when pax flights are 9x daily out of ORD (based on my testing).  If medium freighters can take CH it would be a game changer, but the status quo of being restricted to CL+CS for medium aircraft at medium airports makes it nearly impossible.  I know cargo "doesn't care", but if the algorithm skewed cargo in favor of flying on combi/freighter flights this would also solve it.  IRL pax aircraft might not carry any belly cargo due to being overweight with pax/baggage, so it wouldn't be completely unreasonable for 9x pax + 1x cargo to have more of an 80/20 split versus 90/10 since you know that cargo aircraft is going to fly cargo that day whereas the pax could be a wild card.

Either way any of the tweaks in this thread is a step in the right direction based on my experience with cargo.

[sanabas]

I get this completely, but if an airport is established with huge pax demand (i.e. ORD) then it's nearly impossible to pull any cargo away.  Even with the same catchment area, flying 1x daily with a cargo flight with CL+CS is only going to capture 10% of the demand when pax flights are 9x daily out of ORD (based on my testing).

You're still coming out ahead. Let's say ORD has 20 flights to the destination. If you put your medium freighter on the same route out of ORD, you'd get 5% of the demand. This way, you get 10. You are getting an advantage on the big routes. In reality, the CS on ORD-wherever is hugely oversupplied, with more than 20 flights, so you're even further ahead. If we just look at say ORD-JFK + Gary-JFK, and no other flights exist, then if there is 20,000kg daily CS demand, there is more than 20,000kg supply on ORD-JFK, and you supply 4,000kg on Gary-JFK, the end result should be demand showing 3000-4000 on Gary-JFK, 16-17,000 on ORD-JFK. I think the end result will be in a 4:20 ratio, 3,333kg for you, 16,667kg split between all the ORD flights, if the algorithm works how I think it does. If you put 5 daily freighters on there, supply 20,000 yourself, it will almost certainly end up split 10/10. 2,000 per flight for you, significantly less for them. There's a clear advantage to using the secondary airports, I don't think there's a need to make it even bigger.

[LemonButt]

That all makes sense if it is based purely on supply volume, but from what I am seeing it's based on supply frequency.  If there is equal supply volume and one airport has 9 flights and the other has 1 flight, the cargo is split 90/10 and not 50/50.  Again, based on my experience and could be wrong, but that was why I mention the frequency issue with big pax airports vs secondary cargo airports and why cargo aircraft frequency should get more preference.  I'm mobile now but will double check my Gary flights later and share what I'm seeing on those.

[sanabas]

Frequency matters on a single route, what's there is split relatively evenly, same as pax are. But it's just volume for shifting demand. Basically add up what % of total potential is being supplied, capped at 100. They get split in that ratio. CL/CS/CH are independent. So if gary-JFK supplies 20% of potential chicago-NY CS, ORD-JFK and ORD-LGA supply 150% each, ORD-EWR supplies 50%, then gary-JFK will end up with 20/270 = 7.4% of the total, the two oversupplied routes have 100/270 = 37% each, ord-ewr gets 18.5%. Extra squares that some airports don't touch complicate it, but that's certainly how it seems to shake out on routes I've looked at.

Looking in AG gameworld, CL & CS on Charlotte-Chicago.
CLT-ORD has 11.9/22.6 potential, 7.8/46 supply by 19 daily flights.
CLT-GYY has 4.2/8.0, 2.1/4.0 (a single medium freighter of mine)

GYY reaches only one square, so 4.2/8.0 is the correct amount for that square only from all 4 squares of CLT. There are competing airports at the CLT end, and MDW at the ORD end, so hard to dig out the numbers for just that square for other routes. But by supplying 50% of potential vs just one oversupplied route, I'd expect to get 50 out of 150, 33% of potential as actual demand. If it was frequency based, I could expect 5% at best, 1 out of 20. Add in the other routes, and I'd obviously expect less than 33%, but none have a lot of supply. CAE-ORD and GSP-ORD both have significantly more CS than CL, and 11 combined flights, CLT-MDW has more CL but only enough for total CL to be slightly oversupplied, and just a single large plane carrying CS. So I'd expect my CS to pull a little less than my CL.

The actual demand for me and my single freighter, competing with over 30 flights, is 1350kg CL, 2150 CS. That's 32% of potential CL, 26.5% of potential CS.
On the return leg, potential is 8.7/17.9, I supply the same 2150/4000, so now 25%/22% supply, which means I'd expect 25/125 and 22/122, 20% and 18% of potential being pulled into actual, again, less a bit on CS for the CAE/GSP/MDW routes, more for CL because it might be slightly undersupplied. My actual is 2140/2750, so I've pulled my entire supply of CL away (Route as a whole is indeed undersupplied in that direction) and 15% of CS. In both directions, my CS pull is about 80% of what I'd expect if the CAE/GSP/MDW routes didn't exist. The rest is going to those 12 flights.


I'm clearly pulling demand away from ORD based on volume, not on frequency. If it was frequency, I'd be getting about 3% of the total at best, 1/10 of what I actually get.

[LemonButt]

As you mentioned, it's hard to isolate things but everything you posted appears to be consistent with what I've been able to deduce.  Cargo being allocated by volume makes sense and actually explains what I've been seeing--ORD to ATL has 52 daily flights and being stuck with medium freighters (due to airport size), it's 52 pax flights against 1 cargo flight and my little medium freighter with 7 tons of supply vs. the 150+ tons of belly cargo can't compete (MDW has another 20 daily pax flights to make it worse), but it appears after demand has normalized and "fully shifted" that it's being allocated to the airport based on cargo volume and to some extent, square distance from the airport although it appears that this may just be a result of overlapping catchment areas (i.e. ORD capturing part of Milwaukee).

[sanabas]

it's 52 pax flights against 1 cargo flight and my little medium freighter with 7 tons of supply vs. the 150+ tons of belly cargo can't compete

you'll be getting far more cargo on your 1 flight than any of the 52 get on theirs. If you were only competing against one oversupplied pairing, you'd pull anywhere from 5-6.5t. If you're competing against 4 different pairings between those squares, all 4 oversupplied, you'll pull about 1.65-1.75t. If you supplied 100% of potential on your own pair with 7t freighters, you'd pull more, but you'd still be sitting at 1.6t per flight. If you put a single large freighter with 21t of CL/CS, you'd pull ~5t. The problem you've got in later years is that if you're competing against a lot of route pairs, no individual flight will get big cargo loads. With at least 3 airports in Chicago, and at least 4 overlapping ATL, that's 14 possible routes minimum you're sharing Gary-ATL with. But you're still getting an advantage over all of the bigger ones, because you have CS on your route to yourself, maybe CL too.