It’s time for a serious convo about sale leasebacks and cash transfers

[Cornishman]

I'd like to propose that A/C trading should be strictly business, meaning sellers can get the best price for popular A/Cs, and buyers get planes based on price and specs, not by who the sellers are. So, I'd like to suggest:
- No more private listing allowed
- All listed A/C go to an NPC broker, and the broker release the A/C on UM randomly in 1-7 days
- Price to be input as a range of Max and Min. Broker will release A/C on Max price +/- 1% and gradually adjust to Min price +/-1% as the plane stays on UM for a certain time. The +/- 1% is to make the price a random number, not a $100.000.000
- No name of sellers shown
- A/C history on UM got hidden, and shown only after A/C got acquired
- Add an option of sell and lease back. Sellers name the price, and the lease price got calculated from that. Lease duration is 5 years min (like ordering new A/C). This helps save 4 weeks+ of selling and leasing A/C back, also the A/C can still fly while being listed

Benefits:
- Slow down money transferring, well there's no fool proof way to prevent it anyway. Make it harder for buyers to pinpoint the A/C his mate is selling among like 30-100 other A/Cs
- Fair A/C trading chance for everyone and best profit for sellers
- Fast and simple process for sell and lease back
- ?

Drawbacks:
- Alliance will be less attractive
- ?

HP

DRAWBACKS - Part 2:    The whole blooming game becomes less attractive!

We are already completely stifled - literally throttled around the neck - by the miserable painful "3-fleet rule", which isn't actually a "rule" but when you have these big fun airlines which for many of us is what makes the game so enjoyable, trying to swap out a fleet of 300 birds would become impossible and I'm afraid if this suggestion is implemented, that would be the final straw to break this camel's back. One of the main reasons for being part of an Alliance is to help each other out with inter-alliance private sales when you quickly need to swap out 200+ planes.   So then Alliances also dies off since you removed the best reason for them.

Too many complex and complicated rules already in the game for my liking. This is a GAME = we should be having fun.  More and more stifling rules removes fun.  Anyway, I thought the worst of all these inter-company sales and buybacks shenanigans were already sorted out by Sami to his satisfaction with revised rules in 2020 ?   Do we really need more rules when this is "just the few whiskers at the very end of tail which appears to be wagging the entire dog"?  Seems to me 99% of people get on just fine and when anyone spots these relatively rare incidents - just calmly and quietly report it to Sami.  He always does get around to taking a look and then if he deems individual action is needed, he'll just do it.
Jack

[dmoose42]

Ugggh!!! This argument continues!!! I ran out of popcorn so I guess I'll add my two cents!

Fundamentally, what we are arguing about is "fairness" - a term that everyone understands yet is impossible to define in game terms.

A simple example. I buy at launch 50 737-800's for 35 million. When they arrive a new plane costs 80 million. If I sell them to my neighbor for my book cost, their adversary could argue they are getting a 45 million subsidy. If I sell them at market, my friend is at a disadvantage because his adversary could have bought the same frames at 35 million and now has a huge cost advantage.

Inherently our issue is a frame of reference issue. And while Sami has done a good job of combatting blatant cheating, it is inherently impossible to adjudicate these types of situations. I know. I have traded messages with Sami about others cheating and been on the end of it myself. But at the end, inherently it's a question about what the soul of airwaysim is. Is it a Uber-capitalistic simulation where the biggest can destroy the small at a whim? Is it inherently socialist (or communist) in that the state (Sami) protects people from harm through rules and regulations - or more!

Now obviously Sami has tried to find a balance - there's a competitive component, but it's more about others making mistakes than true unfettered capitalism. There are others that want to build a huge airline in a sandbox, unperturbed by competition, and are angry when things don't go their way. Sami has tried to chart a path between these shoals and quite honestly, no decision will make everyone happy. No game does.

I think we all underestimate the privilege we have here - a game we love, unfettered access to the developer - and are given influence in its evolution.

I think we all wish for more. I think we forget that it is not our game, nor our decision.

I call upon you as friends, Sami for his creation, to let us work together to make airwaysim what it can be!

Sami, if you will let me help, I am willing to donate 5 hours a week of time to making this game better. Just let me know what you need me to do!

I ask each of you! Join me in my pledge! Let us help Sami grow this game!

Happy Year to you all.

Best,

Ben

[The Flying Monkey]

That was extremely well written, very nice, and so polite Dmoose.

Or... Maybe... Sami could create a separate game world with no rules where we could suck the life out of our competition, buy and sell planes as we please, and feast upon the pax and cargo demand as our competition bk's into the depths of capitalism. 

My two cents


Monkey

[Cornishman]

Ugggh!!! This argument continues!!! I ran out of popcorn so I guess I'll add my two cents!

Fundamentally, what we are arguing about is "fairness" - a term that everyone understands yet is impossible to define in game terms.

A simple example. I buy at launch 50 737-800's for 35 million. When they arrive a new plane costs 80 million. If I sell them to my neighbor for my book cost, their adversary could argue they are getting a 45 million subsidy. If I sell them at market, my friend is at a disadvantage because his adversary could have bought the same frames at 35 million and now has a huge cost advantage.

Inherently our issue is a frame of reference issue. And while Sami has done a good job of combatting blatant cheating, it is inherently impossible to adjudicate these types of situations. I know. I have traded messages with Sami about others cheating and been on the end of it myself. But at the end, inherently it's a question about what the soul of airwaysim is. Is it a Uber-capitalistic simulation where the biggest can destroy the small at a whim? Is it inherently socialist (or communist) in that the state (Sami) protects people from harm through rules and regulations - or more!

Now obviously Sami has tried to find a balance - there's a competitive component, but it's more about others making mistakes than true unfettered capitalism. There are others that want to build a huge airline in a sandbox, unperturbed by competition, and are angry when things don't go their way. Sami has tried to chart a path between these shoals and quite honestly, no decision will make everyone happy. No game does.

I think we all underestimate the privilege we have here - a game we love, unfettered access to the developer - and are given influence in its evolution.

I think we all wish for more. I think we forget that it is not our game, nor our decision.

I call upon you as friends, Sami for his creation, to let us work together to make airwaysim what it can be!

Sami, if you will let me help, I am willing to donate 5 hours a week of time to making this game better. Just let me know what you need me to do!

I ask each of you! Join me in my pledge! Let us help Sami grow this game!

Happy Year to you all.

Best,

Ben

Couldn't have written it better - Says it all!

[Jetonski]

It looks like we are getting somewhere!

Fully joining DMoose's idea; We should be happy with what we have and realise nothing will or can ever be perfect and content everyone.
It is also not our game and honestly; there is a reason why it is not - the people having thought it out are simply better at this so we should have faith in why something is or is not adjusted, keeping in mind there should be a 'worthwhile' balance between effort and result (not always possible) and also if you want a process to work, you should try to keep it as simple and objective as possible.
Nonetheless everyone's ideas are always welcome and you never know what comes out of it...

So, just sharing with you my half-conscious half-awake thoughts overnight due to too much obligatory food yesterday 
Personally I would not change much to (alliance) plane trades or nr of UM buys weekly, this all goes relatively well and under normal circumstances this does not seem to cause a problem to anyone. Where we seem to cross the line and get into fair/unfair discussions (keeping in mind this is very subjective or judgemental so human referees do or will not have an easy assigment...), is when plane trades are continuing or initiated when one of the parties involved is thoroughly struggling to survive or flirting with BK. Right?

If so, we want to avoid these discussions (hence taking the human / judgemental part out of the process?) but still we want struggling airlines with just (what looks like) a liquidity problem and still having assets to have the chance to somehow 'survive' a little difficulty and convert their owned planes to cash whilst not losing the ability to use them.

Then maybe just thinking too far but what if in the 'my aircraft - view aircraft - Basic summary' overview of every plane, in the 'manage aircraft section' there would be an action like 'request a  lease plan' for this plane? - To keep it (relatively) simple for coding the logic could be similar to requesting a loan; initially it could route to only the AI players and the human requestor would get a proposal saying aircraft broker X is willing to buy your plane for amount Y (value defined by a certain logic similar to how planes are brought upon the UM by AI brokers – so nothing extreme) and your ownership will be converted into a lease plan for a certain nr of years (maybe the requestor can still choose this number with a minimum of 5 (similar to when ordering new planes) and then the lease amount would differ a bit depending on term of the lease)...
That way we would still leave the option to sell/lease back for players who need it, but it would be automatic so fair and we would have (hopefully) no more of these discussions...
Plus a bonus the requestor would be freed from having to beg others for help, or from having to miss your plane for a number of weeks while the sell/leaseback is being executed, and for the other side it would remove the hassle of buying the plane, wait until arrived and then repost privately (which I'm sure is not the most fun activity for anyone - especially not if the receiving airline name starts down the alphabet)... - Also it would prevent people sending back their leased plane to the human owner just to fund an expensive D-check etc, which now also happens and can also be felt 'unfair'. This idea *could* be developed a little further; as with loans there could also be the right for brokers to refuse the financial lease plan -ex. when too much are being requested at once or the financial state is too bad-, when people have 'overcome' their little crisis they can buy their plane back, or they can end the lease prematurely (read: to avoid D-checks or when they are transitioning to a new plane type) but against payment of a fee, and I would not go that way but you *could* think about including the possibility for human players to take over the lease instead of AI within the same automated feature, I assume at slightly better terms then AI but this will also get more complex for coding and we need to be careful not to end up in what we are trying to solve now...
Maybe a bit of programming work but the most important parts are already available somewhere in other parts of the game so somehow feasable?
Anyways, following DMoose's idea; happy to donate a few hours as well.

To conclude on a different note; following Monkey's idea the difficulty level of game worlds (excl. beginner's world) is usually 'normal' and that is perfectly fine, but if once in a while there would be a special challenging 'killer' game filled with unexpected events and/or heavy dirty competition... I'm in! 

[Pittsboy]

Thumbs up! Not a bad idea at all.  I'm all for any implementation that can help to root out these unrealistic and tremendously dodgy deals.  Airwaysim claims to be a highly realistic airline management simulation... This could further help to cement that claim.

[Binary11]

So, just sharing with you my half-conscious half-awake thoughts overnight due to too much obligatory food yesterday 
Personally I would not change much to (alliance) plane trades or nr of UM buys weekly, this all goes relatively well and under normal circumstances this does not seem to cause a problem to anyone. Where we seem to cross the line and get into fair/unfair discussions (keeping in mind this is very subjective or judgemental so human referees do or will not have an easy assigment...), is when plane trades are continuing or initiated when one of the parties involved is thoroughly struggling to survive or flirting with BK. Right?

If so, we want to avoid these discussions (hence taking the human / judgemental part out of the process?) but still we want struggling airlines with just (what looks like) a liquidity problem and still having assets to have the chance to somehow 'survive' a little difficulty and convert their owned planes to cash whilst not losing the ability to use them.

Then maybe just thinking too far but what if in the 'my aircraft - view aircraft - Basic summary' overview of every plane, in the 'manage aircraft section' there would be an action like 'request a  lease plan' for this plane? - To keep it (relatively) simple for coding the logic could be similar to requesting a loan; initially it could route to only the AI players and the human requestor would get a proposal saying aircraft broker X is willing to buy your plane for amount Y (value defined by a certain logic similar to how planes are brought upon the UM by AI brokers – so nothing extreme) and your ownership will be converted into a lease plan for a certain nr of years (maybe the requestor can still choose this number with a minimum of 5 (similar to when ordering new planes) and then the lease amount would differ a bit depending on term of the lease)...
That way we would still leave the option to sell/lease back for players who need it, but it would be automatic so fair and we would have (hopefully) no more of these discussions...
Plus a bonus the requestor would be freed from having to beg others for help, or from having to miss your plane for a number of weeks while the sell/leaseback is being executed, and for the other side it would remove the hassle of buying the plane, wait until arrived and then repost privately (which I'm sure is not the most fun activity for anyone - especially not if the receiving airline name starts down the alphabet)... - Also it would prevent people sending back their leased plane to the human owner just to fund an expensive D-check etc, which now also happens and can also be felt 'unfair'. This idea *could* be developed a little further; as with loans there could also be the right for brokers to refuse the financial lease plan -ex. when too much are being requested at once or the financial state is too bad-, when people have 'overcome' their little crisis they can buy their plane back, or they can end the lease prematurely (read: to avoid D-checks or when they are transitioning to a new plane type) but against payment of a fee, and I would not go that way but you *could* think about including the possibility for human players to take over the lease instead of AI within the same automated feature, I assume at slightly better terms then AI but this will also get more complex for coding and we need to be careful not to end up in what we are trying to solve now...
Maybe a bit of programming work but the most important parts are already available somewhere in other parts of the game so somehow feasable?

Now this is a good idea. 

[Wreck]

Also happy to donate a few hours a week per DMoose.

[Cornishman]

It looks like we are getting somewhere!

Fully joining DMoose's idea; We should be happy with what we have and realise nothing will or can ever be perfect and content everyone.
It is also not our game and honestly; there is a reason why it is not - the people having thought it out are simply better at this so we should have faith in why something is or is not adjusted, keeping in mind there should be a 'worthwhile' balance between effort and result (not always possible) and also if you want a process to work, you should try to keep it as simple and objective as possible.
Nonetheless everyone's ideas are always welcome and you never know what comes out of it...

So, just sharing with you my half-conscious half-awake thoughts overnight due to too much obligatory food yesterday 
Personally I would not change much to (alliance) plane trades or nr of UM buys weekly, this all goes relatively well and under normal circumstances this does not seem to cause a problem to anyone. Where we seem to cross the line and get into fair/unfair discussions (keeping in mind this is very subjective or judgemental so human referees do or will not have an easy assigment...), is when plane trades are continuing or initiated when one of the parties involved is thoroughly struggling to survive or flirting with BK. Right?

If so, we want to avoid these discussions (hence taking the human / judgemental part out of the process?) but still we want struggling airlines with just (what looks like) a liquidity problem and still having assets to have the chance to somehow 'survive' a little difficulty and convert their owned planes to cash whilst not losing the ability to use them.

Then maybe just thinking too far but what if in the 'my aircraft - view aircraft - Basic summary' overview of every plane, in the 'manage aircraft section' there would be an action like 'request a  lease plan' for this plane? - To keep it (relatively) simple for coding the logic could be similar to requesting a loan; initially it could route to only the AI players and the human requestor would get a proposal saying aircraft broker X is willing to buy your plane for amount Y (value defined by a certain logic similar to how planes are brought upon the UM by AI brokers – so nothing extreme) and your ownership will be converted into a lease plan for a certain nr of years (maybe the requestor can still choose this number with a minimum of 5 (similar to when ordering new planes) and then the lease amount would differ a bit depending on term of the lease)...
That way we would still leave the option to sell/lease back for players who need it, but it would be automatic so fair and we would have (hopefully) no more of these discussions...
Plus a bonus the requestor would be freed from having to beg others for help, or from having to miss your plane for a number of weeks while the sell/leaseback is being executed, and for the other side it would remove the hassle of buying the plane, wait until arrived and then repost privately (which I'm sure is not the most fun activity for anyone - especially not if the receiving airline name starts down the alphabet)... - Also it would prevent people sending back their leased plane to the human owner just to fund an expensive D-check etc, which now also happens and can also be felt 'unfair'. This idea *could* be developed a little further; as with loans there could also be the right for brokers to refuse the financial lease plan -ex. when too much are being requested at once or the financial state is too bad-, when people have 'overcome' their little crisis they can buy their plane back, or they can end the lease prematurely (read: to avoid D-checks or when they are transitioning to a new plane type) but against payment of a fee, and I would not go that way but you *could* think about including the possibility for human players to take over the lease instead of AI within the same automated feature, I assume at slightly better terms then AI but this will also get more complex for coding and we need to be careful not to end up in what we are trying to solve now...
Maybe a bit of programming work but the most important parts are already available somewhere in other parts of the game so somehow feasable?
Anyways, following DMoose's idea; happy to donate a few hours as well.

To conclude on a different note; following Monkey's idea the difficulty level of game worlds (excl. beginner's world) is usually 'normal' and that is perfectly fine, but if once in a while there would be a special challenging 'killer' game filled with unexpected events and/or heavy dirty competition... I'm in! 

Hi Wendy - love this suggestion.  It could actually fix two things at the same time, this and another that I and many others have long asked for:-

Lets say there are two identical planes on the UM, one of then is owned by an AI reseller and the other is owned by a real airline. If I lease both aircraft, as long as I passed the minimal lease period, I have the option to instantly buy-out the plane from the AI but the insane painful way to own the other plane is off-hire it (so losing the routes it runs for 2 weeks (or more if the owner doesn't relist it right away) then bring it right back where it was.  All that's needed is a tick-box in the same location as your suggestion, for the plane owner to permit the lessee to buy the plane ... then both planes have the same sensible procedures.

With your enhanced idea Wendy, your suggestion fits right in at the same time and place as that fix perhaps?  This one needs to go onto the Feature Requests list imo.
PS:- I'm also in on the suggested reduced-rules "cut-throat" GW 

[DanDan]

With your enhanced idea Wendy, your suggestion fits right in at the same time and place as that fix perhaps?  This one needs to go onto the Feature Requests list imo.

oh, yeah, because there isnt yet about 5 features requests for this...



seriously. i absolutely agree:

- many players are happy with the game and enjoy playing it.
- i love the project, even though lately i dont find the time to join a gw, but maybe sooner or later again.

BUT

- player numbers are down (subjective view of what was there ~5 years ago
- not much VISIBLE changes were done (yes, Sami explained how in the background lots was done and new changes are going to be done soon, if timeschedules are working according to plan)

AND YES

- i would be happy to help with what i can (i cant code, but maybe some specifications/reviews or data-collection or ...)
- actually this discussion here seems motivating, because it seems there is still some passion left in the players

[MuzhikRB]

one quick thing can be done right away in a second

low down the max price to the recommended price within alliance trades.

[JumboShrimp]

one quick thing can be done right away in a second

low down the max price to the recommended price within alliance trades.

We have been there, done that, and there were so many valid exceptions to that rule that the limits had to be relaxed.

[Mr.HP]

We have been there, done that, and there were so many valid exceptions to that rule that the limits had to be relaxed.

What are some of the valid exceptions?
From my understanding, selling within alliance is more about helping with fleet transition than making profit as a pro broker. So:
- If yes, then why needs to set high price?
- If no, then why not remove the private listing option, and let the sellers make the most profit out of their ACs, as I suggested (and was told it's a bad idea)

[Zombie Slayer]

What are some of the valid exceptions?
From my understanding, selling within alliance is more about helping with fleet transition than making profit as a pro broker. So:
- If yes, then why needs to set high price?
- If no, then why not remove the private listing option, and let the sellers make the most profit out of their ACs, as I suggested (and was told it's a bad idea)

More often than not it had to do with the intra alliance price range not including the price the buying airline paid for the plane. For example, I buy 100 737-800 at launch for a 36% discount. Over the next 5 years the price of a new order jumps by 50%. Now the plane I paid $40m for sells new for $105m and the lowest intra alliance price is $95m. Also can go the other way. I once ordered 747 for someone for something like $100m a piece and by the time they were delivered the Max intra alliance price was $70m.

[DanDan]

it would be much easier, if there were a market price, that reflects how much the aircraft is worth. thats the price an aircraft should cost on the used market and it should reflect the price the manufacturer asks for (since in my experience 99% of sales are for planes when they are brandnew and to a predetermined customer). anything else should be auctioned off openly - downwards.

[JumboShrimp]

What are some of the valid exceptions?
From my understanding, selling within alliance is more about helping with fleet transition than making profit as a pro broker. So:
- If yes, then why needs to set high price?

It is typically the low price that can be a problem withing alliance.  Someone described a scenario where a player orders aircraft at launch discount and then, years later, when aircraft is delivered, the "market" price can be double the book value

- If no, then why not remove the private listing option, and let the sellers make the most profit out of their ACs, as I suggested (and was told it's a bad idea)

This one particular would completely destroy the Quality of Life.  We have been there.  The 2 players would have to coordinate every single sale with Discord or something, because publicly listing a highly desirable aircraft at half of the market price would result in aircraft being stolen...

Chesterton's fence for you:

[Binary11]

Half the problem here is that people are adding to the initial problem.

The original post is about sale and leaseback cash transfers, or just selling. Both are at high prices, and usually a cash transfer to stop one member going bust. Would it be difficult to code in that when you sell to an Alliance member you can only do it at up-to 20% more than you paid for it or market value whichever is lowest.

For instance the initial post came about, after a player paid 50mill for a plane, and sold it years later for 150mill. This is what needs to be resolved FIRST

The issue of buying planes for alliance members and selling them on is to be fair a separate issue.

[groundbum2]

I still like the idea of no changes, but adding an SQL lookup so that players can look at all aircraft transactions going back a year. That way we can police ourselves. Time to implement, 30 minutes I'd say to create a view and a read-only account.

Simon

[JumboShrimp]

I still like the idea of no changes, but adding an SQL lookup so that players can look at all aircraft transactions going back a year. That way we can police ourselves. Time to implement, 30 minutes I'd say to create a view and a read-only account.

Simon

I agree.

Some of it can already be done, by looking at player's history, but some of it is not easily found, such as when aircraft was already scrapped.  Without having the MSN saved, it is hard to look it up.

[Cornishman]

I still like the idea of no changes, but adding an SQL lookup so that players can look at all aircraft transactions going back a year. That way we can police ourselves. Time to implement, 30 minutes I'd say to create a view and a read-only account.

Simon

Also agree with this. Sami already addressed this when it was a serious issue some 18 months ago with the best "moderate" fix that works whilst still leaving enough reason for playing the game as part of an Alliance. Just because there is 1 case now and again of someone pushing the rule to it's extremes or even a "loophole", does not mean we need to change everything for everyone. Agree with the great suggestion, we have some "moderators" to watch this and if now and again a case needs escalating to Sami by those Mods, then that's the best way forward.