Feature request for Change

[DanDan]

Dear Game Admins,

my two AWS worlds are nearing an end, and here are some things that I would like to mention that are bothering:

1) Cargo. Cargo is a nice idea. Cargo is very unrealistic. 30% LF on cargo is bringing the same profits as 90% on a passenger plane? Sure it works as gameplay, but it seems weird that in real life cargo-airlines are going BK a lot and in AWS the biggest companies fly hundreds of cargo aircraft and make gigantic profits (one company in GW2 actually has more than 1000 B757PF operating from HKG... great achievement, but wtf?). This ends in the fact that some planes are not even selling, even though they aer very economical, just because they do not have a cargo variant (and no, please dont add ficticious cargo variants to fleet groups please).

2) Mid-game-changes: quite annoying when they basically change the whole gameplay, like the cargo-changes in GW2. and it doesnt help either, that the initial system is "fixed" to include even bigger bugs, to be just fixed again and again, until at some point admin is happy and users upset.

3) The used market: its been a mess since before I have started playing, it seems. It got way worse lately with the pricing changes. And it is not a big thing, it would be such a quick win to fix that.

4) Passenger & Cargo distribution amongst flights. Instead of making passengers choose planes by evenly distributing them over all flights, why not have them choose economically. That would also limit the obsession of people on certain aircraft types. And more importantly: why not have the choose flights transparently. Give us the information how attractive a flight is to a customer/cargo.

5) which brings me to the next one: Transparency. Airlines fail lots. Thats the same in the real world. But in the real world, you see usually why you fail. In AWS, fresh airlines start without a clue, and without knowing it and without realizing it, they get excessive "staff training" costs, "too small" penalties etc. -  why not make things transparent and tell people about rules and when they are in effect? So instead of making the game a game, you create a "secretive cult" that is understood by some and that excludes most. I have been in an alliance that had no clue about any of the mechanisms in place. Open the game to people by having the people understand how AWS works. Dont close it by hiding them.

6) Lots of information seems to be hidden, even when they are having an impact: like those performance updates: would be helpful if users could get some info on the aircrafts performance, because at the moment, it seems like a lot of performance information is somewhere in the background and we only see "speed" and "fuel consumption" as figures without any reference.

6) Automatization features: All the airlines in AWS have a lot of staff. Staff that is very much overpaid in my opinion (except the CEO of course). But after all, you have to care for every tiny detail with thousands of clicks. How about some automatic 7 day scheduling? Or an easier overview of demand and supply? Or things that focus more on tactics & strategy, than investing time on doing those repetitive works all the time.

7) and the really big one: Feature requests. I know that AWS is basically a one man show. And it is great for what it is. But if you give the community a possibility to demand change, you will also have to live with the expectation of change and of inclusion in the thought process. There are things that are broken in the game (UM, fleet-type-penalties, ...) since ages. There are lots of proposals for how to fix it, and usually the worst one is being selected: nothing happening. Nothing at all. For years, some of the painful things in AWS are not being mended. Instead, the updates to the game are many times about things that dont matter to anyone. The "Performance update of the Let 410" is certainly not the big issue, when the flight time on certain routes is changed by 5 minutes and consumption is now 5% more or less during takeoff; when on the other hand, there is loads of threads in the forum about how there is really annoying bugs and game-concepts.

Please forgive me if some of what I write sound cynically, but I try to just put into words how I feel about AWS right now, and maybe some others can also understand my frustration. And hopefully things will change in the future, not just in the game, but also in the thought process how change is happening in the game. I do not follow it closely, but it seems that player numbers are dropping. Which on one hand i can understand, because the game is really just stuck in development it seems, and that is a shame, because I think this game is a great project, but projects need to move and develop.

[LemonButt]

1. Cargo is a simplified simulation of real life and IMO it works fine.  IRL you don't have 757 frequency bombs and you have complex routing, such as Hanoi to the US with a stop over in Hong Kong to top off.  There are 10+ classes of cargo IRL and AWS simplifies it to 3--I have complained in the past about small aircraft being unable to carry standard/heavy cargo because based on the numbers, a can of tomato soup is too dense for a Cessna to carry when IRL Cargomasters are doing final mile delivery of full pallets.

You noted profitability--below are my two most profitable aircraft in Speed World (I have the most profitable airline in the game).  The first being an ERJ145 (pax) and the second being a MD11F.  If you crunch the numbers, the pax aircraft is clearing 65% of revenue as gross profit and the freighter is clearing 70%.  This is also just after 9/11 hit and you can see the low load factors.  The bottom line is both of these aircraft have approximately the same yield in spite of one being one of the smallest in the game with 50 seats and the other being one of the largest in the game with 45 tons of cargo capacity.

I have the largest cargo airline in AG and my profitability isn't anything special--I have purposely targeted the world's largest cargo airports and with competition, am middle of the pack on profitability.  I consider myself an advanced player and one of the top players when it comes to understanding how cargo works, and if I can't generate an above average profit at competitive airports, I'd say cargo is working as it should as the average player would be breaking even at best.







2. We have the luxury of knowing 9/11 is coming etc--the real world is unpredictable and mid-game changes keep it interesting

3. Used market is a mess--this goes back to "fair market values" being dynamic for used just like new.  This fixes many other things too like secured loans.

4+5. Attractiveness is measured by load factor, right?  IMO there is plenty of transparency/warnings shown when you fly routes with aircraft too small etc.  I don't think real life has the transparency you think it does--the only way to analyze that in most cases is post mortem.  I get annoyed with the number of warnings I get--aircraft too small, routes too thin, etc.  I think you might be just missing these warnings/advisor messages throughout?

6. Speed and fuel consumption--these are benchmarks.  I don't understand what this means?  If you flush a toilet, it fills up with a different amount of water each time.  It might be a small variance, but it's always different.  Likewise with fuel burn--there are variables with taxi time, MTOW, etc. that effect everything so the actual numbers, over time, converge on a mean value that is provided.  What am I missing?

7. AWS is 15+ years old now and so is much of the code.  I know Sami has been working on some big features, but development is always going to be slow because he's only one man, but also because changes can create lots of knock on effects that need to be considered (see used market price minimum/maximums lol).

I don't want to disagree with you here, but provide some additional perspective.  Many things you're spot on such as the used market/pricing getting fixed, but part of the reason it's broken is because fixes were put in place to fix a different problem (players gaming the system).  I think the big thing though is cargo isn't any different than pax in terms of profitability--it's just more complicated with more variables and most players don't understand it or how to manipulate those variables to their advantage.

[JumboShrimp]

1) Cargo. Cargo is a nice idea. Cargo is very unrealistic. 30% LF on cargo is bringing the same profits as 90% on a passenger plane? Sure it works as gameplay, but it seems weird that in real life cargo-airlines are going BK a lot and in AWS the biggest companies fly hundreds of cargo aircraft and make gigantic profits (one company in GW2 actually has more than 1000 B757PF operating from HKG... great achievement, but wtf?). This ends in the fact that some planes are not even selling, even though they aer very economical, just because they do not have a cargo variant (and no, please dont add ficticious cargo variants to fleet groups please).

It could be a lot worse than HaF, say last MT world, where the Cargo demand was miniscule, and the Cargo Fix was not applied.

There are some oddities with the cargo, but at least it works, as intended.  When cargo transfers are enabled, maybe some of the oddities will be addressed.

For example,
- HKG is a cargo hub i RW, and simulated to be so in AWS.  With transfers, HKG does not have to be boosted artificially
- with transfers between your own flights, you can deploy a 777-F instead of 3-4 757-F, and do it safely.  Currently, if you fly a 777 on a competitive route, some competitor will fly 3-4 757-F against the 777-F and will empty the 777-F

2) Mid-game-changes: quite annoying when they basically change the whole gameplay, like the cargo-changes in GW2. and it doesnt help either, that the initial system is "fixed" to include even bigger bugs, to be just fixed again and again, until at some point admin is happy and users upset.

Cargo had bugs from the beginning, and the first fix introduced an exploit, which had to be fixed.  We have a much better system now, no need to dwell on how we got here.

4) Passenger & Cargo distribution amongst flights. Instead of making passengers choose planes by evenly distributing them over all flights, why not have them choose economically. That would also limit the obsession of people on certain aircraft types. And more importantly: why not have the choose flights transparently. Give us the information how attractive a flight is to a customer/cargo.

That might be interesting.  But suppose you have turbo prop flight with 50 pax capacity.  Suppose the system rates your flight as:
"Bad flight, you are a very bad flight, so unlike the 737, to which I will allocate 90 passengers, I will allocate you only 60 passengers, because you are a bad flight"

[LemonButt]

That might be interesting.  But suppose you have turbo prop flight with 50 pax capacity.  Suppose the system rates your flight as:
"Bad flight, you are a very bad flight, so unlike the 737, to which I will allocate 90 passengers, I will allocate you only 60 passengers, because you are a bad flight"

After thinking about this, I think what he's asking for is a continuous instead of a discrete value--instead of saying it's bad, tell us how bad.  For example, scheduling a flight at 455 is bad, but 500 is good--in reality the former is not bad, it's just less good and no one knows how "less bad" it is.

CI, plane type, and departure time are all inputs in the function that determines load factor, so perhaps this just need to be a display value that shows the effect of changing a departure from 500 to 455 or a CRJ vs. an A330.

[DanDan]

i am trying to say, when you have a flightplan, you see your flight

and it says:
overall flight attractiveness: 84%

flight equipment: 95%
seating: 80%
departure time: 40%
arrival time: 90%
flight duration: 70%
route image: 85%
company image: 100%
price: 75%

what else should those route strategy people be doing all day that i pay for!?

[gazzz0x2z]

flight equipment: 95%

mmmmh, that is not my IL18Ds.....

[JumboShrimp]

All these are nice, I am just pointing to the fact that frequency rules.

Let me rephrase my example:
- 734 flight, 160 capacity overall rating: 90
- Turbo prop, 50 capacity overall rating: 60

So when the system goes on to allocate the demand of 150 passengers, it tries to allocate 90 (out of 160) to 734, 60 (out of 50) to a turbo prop.

So the TP is full with much worse rating, 734 is half empty with much better rating...

[DanDan]

All these are nice, I am just pointing to the fact that frequency rules.

...

So the TP is full with much worse rating, 734 is half empty with much better rating...

exactly. and that is the most unrealistic assumption in all of aws.