What if The Game Had A "Hard" Difficulty World?

[tungstennedge]

I'm not sure how other experienced players feel at this point in the games life, but I would think that most would probably agree that making a competitive and profitable airline in any "normal" difficult worlds is really easy for most experienced players. Knowing just a a couple tricks, like sticking to three fleets, seven day scheduling, and charging +4% pricing basically guarantees any airlines survival, and due to knowledge of events, like the 2008 fuel spike, 911, ect make the game really extremely survivable, and basically not a big challenge for most veteran players. Anyways, there are easy and normal difficult works, so why not hard?

While I think there are many reasons for this, I feel like a new "hard" game mode with lower and more realistic margins, un-scripted/ randomized event like fuel spikes and demand decreasing events could definitely spice up the game a ton, and I think there should be certain gameplay changed as well to encourage more competition.

Here a list of gameplay changes which I think could be made for fun gameplay:

-Margins Decreased, 5% for pax, and 8% for cargo, higher average fuel price by 15-20%.

This should attack airline who choose planes with are too big for the routes and fly half empty planes all the time and that are unprofitable.

-More expensive planes

Planes prices should go even higher when the demand is high. This could make less efficient models still relevant despite higher fuel costs.

-Unscripted, randomized events, and events causing more long term pax/cargo decreases.

For example, currently there are event like railroads strikes or bird flu outbreaks which place modifiers on demand, it would be nice to see some long terms ones added into the games, that could potentially take years instead of months, which can happen randomly as well. Maybe civil unrest/sanctions (lowered cargo demand), or the obvious global pandemic(lowered pax demand) could be randomized event that test airline adaptability and punish airlines without diversified incomes.

-No OOB limit/base limits.

The OOB limit is a very artificial way of limiting airlines ability to compete with each-other, especially with large markets like the US, and EU. Without OOB restrictions, airlines could truly compete with each-other over all demand available without worrying about running out of aircraft to use. Obviously this hurts smaller, and less established airlines, which is exactly why I think it would be only appropriate in a "Hard" world. It ain't easy to establish a new airline in real life either.

-Slot upkeep cost

With no OOB restrictions, slots would be HIGHLY contested to in major airports, so to combat this (slightly) slots should be given a upkeep cost that is uniform to matter what airplanes is flown, to discourage medium spamming in the worlds most major airports. (this shouldn't make larger medium aircraft unplayable at larger airports, but just not a great value proposition compared to large). Also, this cost should be exceedingly small outside slot restricted airports.

-Faster plane delivery/higher slot multiplier, for same given demand.

While this one sounds counter intuitive, I think these changed would make the game harder, not easier as demand would be far more contested with high plane and slot availability, meaning that players would really have to fight for marketshare, and run more optimal setups. Without OOB restrictions, and more aircrafts available, there would be far less players running un-optimal fleets who are immune to competition because players don't have the plane or slot volume to properly compete with them. For example, I'm almost up to 2billion/week net revenue in MT, flying 800 777F's. If players had no OOB restrictions they could actually compete for the demand I'm moving, with perhaps an attack of 1800 757f's. That is currently completely infeasible since nobody has 1800 OOB, and acquiring that many 757f's would take about the length of the entire gameworld. Obviously, 3000+ aircraft airline are completely unrealistic, but keep in mind that pax demand seems to be about double real life and cargo is who knows how many times higher, so it makes since that bigger airlines exist in this game.

Anyways, in conclusion, I personally feel like these changed would make an awesome "Hard" difficultly world. Many of the changes are a bit unnecessary, only the lower margins and no OOB restrictions would be necessary to facilitate more competitive games with less players cruising to the finish line untouched every game. Also, these two changes would require almost no effort to implement either. I'd love to hear what other players think about a potential game mode like this

[Amelie090904]

Sounds interesting. I would give it a try.

[LemonButt]

No OOB limit and force airlines to base at airports with established competition.

I've pitched this before, but remove the political base restrictions and make it so players can only open bases at the HQ of players with a higher score.  That means if you are in first place the you can't open any new bases.  If you are in second place your choice of bases is only the HQ of the first place player.  If you are in 100th place that means you have the choice of HQ's of players 1-99.  Whoever finishes the gameworld in first place will have done so because they were actually in first place--not because they started in the year 1950 and bent over backwards to BK any competitors that dared try to to compete.  Instead they'll be forced to deal with a never ending onslaught of competitors eating away their margins.

[tungstennedge]

No OOB limit and force airlines to base at airports with established competition.

I've pitched this before, but remove the political base restrictions and make it so players can only open bases at the HQ of players with a higher score.  That means if you are in first place the you can't open any new bases.  If you are in second place your choice of bases is only the HQ of the first place player.  If you are in 100th place that means you have the choice of HQ's of players 1-99.  Whoever finishes the gameworld in first place will have done so because they were actually in first place--not because they started in the year 1950 and bent over backwards to BK any competitors that dared try to to compete.  Instead they'll be forced to deal with a never ending onslaught of competitors eating away their margins.

Sounds like an interesting idea, but what happens to empty bases? Also, I would kind of feel like these restrictions ruin the feeling of a free market, its nice to have the choice to slink between under-utilized bases or to compete for the biggest. Anyways I like the idea but I dont see how having unlimited OOB aircraft wouldn't gaurentee competition bar one player owning all the slots at a certain airport.

[NovemberCharlie]

A while back I posted a feature request for random events to aircraft/engines.
(I.e. random types get grounded every once in awhile, with gradations obviously)

That might suit this hard mode as well.

I like the idea!

[LemonButt]

Sounds like an interesting idea, but what happens to empty bases? Also, I would kind of feel like these restrictions ruin the feeling of a free market, its nice to have the choice to slink between under-utilized bases or to compete for the biggest. Anyways I like the idea but I dont see how having unlimited OOB aircraft wouldn't gaurentee competition bar one player owning all the slots at a certain airport.

That's the point though.  Hard isn't going to come from a game setting--it will come from other players.  Right now in a free market you can either base at an airport with competition or pick an empty base with a monopoly.  Few people are picking the competitive base...

[NovemberCharlie]

Limit basing choices to top tier airports?

[MuzhikRB]

in current HaF and DoM GWs its already set to hard because slots were limited to 10 years ago set up.

Now you cannot open even 2nd tier base cause you will not be able to buy slots there

[tungstennedge]

in current HaF and DoM GWs its already set to hard because slots were limited to 10 years ago set up.

Now you cannot open even 2nd tier base cause you will not be able to buy slots there

These worlds are not hard. They are boring. All slots fill, demand is not even filled or competition levels are pitifully low and players become immune to loosing money. High slot modifiers are key to competition so that common routes become unprofitable due to heavy oversupply.

A while back I posted a feature request for random events to aircraft/engines.
(I.e. random types get grounded every once in awhile, with gradations obviously)

That might suit this hard mode as well.

I like the idea!

This also looks like a great idea, could be even better if the airlines could choose how much to invest in maintenance, effecting the change of crashes!

That's the point though.  Hard isn't going to come from a game setting--it will come from other players.  Right now in a free market you can either base at an airport with competition or pick an empty base with a monopoly.  Few people are picking the competitive base...

Good point, players would normally gravitate to less utilized airports. However, since there would be no OOB restrictions, players could fill more of the demand, making there less open bases. For example, in my most profitable airlines i deliberately have never touched pax outside of my main base to conserve OOB. Instead I do only cargo, and there is still infinitely more demand than I can fill with 1000OOB aircraft, and many airlines I don't bother to fight- since I know i cant kill them with the OOB I have remaining. I think there are enough players struggling with OOB, so that current demand levels would be contested enough to only increase difficulty. Without this restriction, I'm pretty sure the only way to avoid competition would be to hide into smaller less popular countries, if political restrictions were left unchanged. If they were lifted, even though the demand pool would increase, I think open demand would still decrease as players could feel free to expand far greater than they ever could today. Imagine players like Concept Bright with infinite oob filling every short-medium haul market or Andre medium spamming every large airport in the world. It could be glorious.