With the new full featured world starting this friday, AWS will have a total of 4 full standard games running at the same time. Some of us had asked for a separate game world with experimental features and/or special rules, and sami listened ;D
Quote from: sami on January 27, 2014, 06:01:05 PM
Possible shorter scenario later on (next month) could have some special stuff then, depending on the ideas.
I'm opening this thread so everyone can post their ideas to include in a "experimental/special rules short world" that will be opened (hopefully and maybe) next month.
Everyone should consider that not every idea could be implemented in a short therm period, since some could be difficult to code into the software. Despite of that I think every idea should be posted, since you never know how hard or easy some stuff can be to code.
My ideas:
-Free market slot system.
Terminals, Airlines can build terminals, sell them, lease them, share with alliance, and each terminal comes with a fixed set of slots/gates that the airline can use.
Leasing. Possibility to lease slots/gates for a monthly fee. (lease from the airport, lease from other airlines, etc).
Unlimited slots/gates, being the only limitation the higher costs of acquiring each of the next slot.
Airlines can sell slots.
Alliances can build terminals for its members.
-Starting airports.
Every airline is restricted to start the game in small airports, and can move to bigger and bigger airports one step at a time, depending on achieving certain thresholds (IE. Can move to bigger airport when 100.000 pax transported, 20 planes in fleet and 20.000.000 revenue)
-Airports pax numbers.
Every airport starts the game with the same stats, and grows accordingly on how well the airlines there are doing. (hub building and connections)
-Unrestricted airline basing.
Airlines can open more than 3 bases.
Airlines can operate more than 100 airplanes in secondary bases.
Airlines can open bases (or focus cities) in other countries (besides Euro open skies)
Some of this ideas cannot be implemented together, but I'd like to see one or another..
Fully unrestricted aircraft production slots.
If Tu-114 or another exotic aircraft has about 200 orders, they don't simply increase output from 2 to 3 a month, they are going to build two other factories and don't gather up deliveries with dates 10+ years in the future - like it would had happened in real life.
This also should include orders from a single airline to fix the "one delivery every two month while we're doing nothing in the mean time even when there are free production slots"-thing.
Here is an idea--completely unrestricted flights.
You can depart/arrive at any airport you'd like in the game, but costs would be determined by "cross utilization". i.e. someone who flies 3 routes out of Heathrow would have significantly lower costs than someone who flies 1 route out of Heathrow, 1 route out of Stansted, and 1 route out of Gatwick.
This would open up the entire world to the entire player base where the only limit would be a "free market" system where it just gets too expensive to fly out of other cities. Most players would be using the standard "hub and spoke" model, but this would allow players to experiment with "focus cities" or "point-to-point" models.
It could get really interesting when airlines start BK'ing and leaving many major routes empty. This should be a fairly easy one to implement as well...
I still want a game with 50 players and maybe the largest 100-200 or so airports in the world
Quote from: ezzeqiel on January 28, 2014, 11:58:16 AM
My ideas:
-Free market slot system.
Terminals, Airlines can build terminals, sell them, lease them, share with alliance, and each terminal comes with a fixed set of slots/gates that the airline can use.
Leasing. Possibility to lease slots/gates for a monthly fee. (lease from the airport, lease from other airlines, etc).
Unlimited slots/gates, being the only limitation the higher costs of acquiring each of the next slot.
Airlines can sell slots.
Alliances can build terminals for its members.
+1
Not a fan of the "terminals" idea. The game is complicated enough already.
You couldn't standardize a terminal price, either. If I base in Cincinatti, for instance, I don't need a brass-n-glass palace to impress the F/C pax, all I need is a cheap cattle barn to flow pax through. If I base at LAX or JFK, do I need to spend 3/4 Billion dollars to build a Sky Palace for the ages to keep the premium pax??
In today's REAL WORLD, all of these are financed on the taxpayers backs now. Shared, pay-per-use, flexible gating is becoming the norm, as well, in new airports. The new terminals in Las Vegas are pefrect examples of this.
The test or special rules world won't have any elements that require major coding, such as the terminals thing (it's a longer term development idea). Changes to default rules, like unlimited bases for example, are possible.
Quote from: tcrlaf on January 28, 2014, 09:11:49 PM
Not a fan of the "terminals" idea. The game is complicated enough already.
Terminals would give players an exclusive slot pool versus a shared one. Currently, a single player could hoard all the available slots, leaving other players with zero. This is one of the key drivers behind the terminals system and would make the game less complicated, versus more as you would be able to preplan your routes without having to worry about slots being available or not based on other players' actions.
Relaxed commonality penalties + more active brokers + no player to player plane sales. Might mean too much coding of commonality/brokers, though.
Also one that'd need more coding, but much more randomness in demand, whether for some routes, or some airports/countries suddenly growing in demand. Those sort of changes happen occasionally now. e.g. Melbourne gets new airport, Mel-Syd sudden;y jumps hugely. Athens gets new airport, lots of routes get bigger. USSR breaks up, Domodedovo, Baku, Tashkent suddenly change hugely. war starts, Baghdad becomes practically unusable. But they're all known about in advance, and most demand doesn't change. It slowly grows, but it slowly grows at the same rate everywhere. Might need to be coupled with ability to take your whole airline and move somewhere else. Because having your HQ suddenly have a Baghdad-like change would likely mean your airline & game ends thanks to RNG. Which leads me to:
Ability to move your whole airline. Either the chance to change one of your bases to HQ, while HQ becomes a secondary base, something particularly useful in a long gameworld where a major airport opens later, e.g. Farance & CDG, Saudi Arabia, Australia & Melbourne, Russia & Domodedovo. Or the chance to take your whole airline, planes, cash & all, get say 50% of slot value back as cash, and take the whole lot to a brand new airport. Could make for some interesting competition. Could also become a useful feature if limited to new airports opening, the ability to move your HQ to that airport when it arrives. I'd like to run my small plane experiment out of London City. But to do that, I'd need to BK and start over when it opens, so not so much fun. If my 20 year old small plane airline was given the chance to switch HQ to the new small plane airport, that'd be much more incentive to keep it up.
Quote from: Sanabas on January 28, 2014, 10:48:02 PM
no player to player plane sales
Incoming flame replies in 3...2...1...
To shape a game to be more directly competitive, large airport game:
- Medium game world length, era doesn't matter. - short enough to maintain interest and intensity, but long enough to allow consequences of strategies to show up.
- Restrict the number of airports that players can HQ at to half or a third of the number of players, randomly increasing as players join, and/or by some time factor.
- These HQ are randomly picked from the top 20 - 50 airports (i.e. LHR, ATL may not be available on day one).
- Available airports decrease too, if there is an empty one, if the number of players decrease , but are added back in the same order dropped (to prevent starting and stopping to game the system).
- Unlimited bases beyond the HQ - no restriction on base location world wide.
- However, bases must be at size=5 airports.
- Unlimited routes/aircraft flown at each base.
- No aircraft sales between players.
- Production lines are fairly open - i.e. each airline can get a delivery of one aircraft at a rate between one every two weeks and every month, depending on the volume of the order.
- No discounts for aircraft orders.
Not sure if this all would tax the resources of a game server, so might need to have some restriction on bases and aircraft flown at each.
Simple Aircraft Crashes modeled:
Every flight, take a random number between 1 and 10,000,000 and if it equal x, then crash the plane. Pick another random number for fatalities (only fatal crashed would be modelled).
If it crashed, execute a function to create the ripple effect. Airline in question loses 50% of their CI.
If you are based on the same continent and flying the same fleet group: -15 CI
Other continent and same fleet group: -7.5 CI
Same continent and same manufacturer: -7.5 CI
Other continent and same manufacturer: -4 CI
Instead of 10,000,000 you could change it to 10,000,000 / (condition)^2 and then the odds of a 100% condition aircraft crashing is 1 in 10 million and the odds of an 80% condition aircraft crashing is 1 in 6.4 million etc. Don't forget that the leasing company needs to get paid out, too :)
Quote from: tcrlaf on January 28, 2014, 09:11:49 PM
In today's REAL WORLD, all of these are financed on the taxpayers backs now.
I think this thread should be focused on making a fun yet challenging game rather than thinking how RL works...
Quote from: LemonButt on January 28, 2014, 10:33:38 PM
This is one of the key drivers behind the terminals system and would make the game less complicated, versus more as you would be able to preplan your routes without having to worry about slots being available or not based on other players' actions.
Not necessarily. I'm thinking airports with both, terminals and shared slot pools... Terminals should be expensive so if you want to grow fast, some operations should be based on shared pools (government or airport owned)... Also, there will be some time until airlines can gather the millions needed to build terminals...
On the other hand, the "Alliances terminals", would add a whole new social aspect to the game (and a new level of depth in route planning), since slot usage will have to be coordinated thru the alliance...
An entire alliance can (for example) gather some money to fund a big terminal on LHR, and their members will decide how to use it (this is a multiplayer game after all, but there's always little talking between people playing it)...
Anyway, terminals seems to be a major code thing, so we'll have to wait on that...
The next small world will be in Europe. But in reference to this thread, anything special you'd like to see? (that requires minimal coding efforts; most of the things talked here earlier are major system changes that won't be built for a single scenario)
I have an idea with small codechanges:
Calls to the used market depending to your staff or the fleet size. Default 3 calls a week to max 21 a week.
If you use the fleetsize: 1 call for 2 planes after the 2nd plane. If you have a fleetsize of 4 you have 4 calls, 6 planes 5 calls, 8 planes 6 calls and so on to a max of 21 calls at 36 planes.
This would help if you join later because the early birds cant grow too fast at the begining.
2nd idea:
If you lease a plane you have to pay the 3 month rate, add it to the income statement. In the real world you add it to your running costs and you dont have to pay taxes for this.
Something that actually should be easy:
a) modern demand with Jet Age planes
or vice versa
b) modern planes with Jet Age demand
Quote from: Xflash on March 01, 2014, 10:19:46 AM
If you lease a plane you have to pay the 3 month rate, add it to the income statement. In the real world you add it to your running costs and you dont have to pay taxes for this.
The current (new) accounting system works EXACTLY how it works in real life in regards to leases etc.
Quote from: chiveicrook on March 01, 2014, 10:34:02 AM
b) modern planes with Jet Age demand
Not enough demand except Heathrow and 3-4 other airports. The skies will be ruled by whatever is the most efficient prop aircraft, probably Fokker 50 and Dash 8s.
The modern demand with Jet Age prop aircraft only sounds interesting. However, it's a scheduling nightmare because they are so small and, another big problem, due to the same or very similar ticket income all over the world but extremely different staff salaries big airlines aren't really possible yet. Dimishing returns begins at about 130 aircraft in the US.
Games with few tough aircraft types. 4 small, 3 medium, 2 large, 1 very large and supersonic
Eg:
CASA 235
Shorts 330
DHC7
BN2
AW650
VFW64
DO328
TU154
Merure
IL96
TU144
Concorde
Fuel prices up to 800-900 or so
Game from 2010-2020 or so
Cheers
AW650 is actually an exceptional good aircraft.
Was not aware of that. Replace with something else and same idea ;D
Restrict number of HQs to a fixed number.
My dream world would be called 'Greed...Build the biggest Monopoly airline.' It would be full world from 2005-2025, there would 50 players, everyone starts off with a loan of 100 million, fuel prices never go beyond $100, immediately base out of 6 airports with unlimited aircraft, and there's a limit of 3 airlines allowed to based at any particular airport.
Ahhhh...a dude can dream! ;D
I had been playing Game World #4 The Jet Age and discovered something interesting.
One thing I noticed is there are some awesome, very interesting prop planes (Vanguard, late Brittania, DC-7C, Starliner, Electra, etc) that come out in the late 50's and early to mid 60's that receive little to no orders because the jets have already arrived (everyone wants those 707s and Caravelles!). It would be interesting to have a game that delays the arrival of the introduction of jets for 1 - 2 decades (e.g. instead of Comet coming out in '58ish, it arrives in '68ish or later). These prop planes offer myriad choices, even on long haul 4K nm+!! Without jets, players would have to look at these interesting choices of prop planes.
It would be interesting to see the use of these planes in an early game without the benefit of switching over to jets until early 70s (first deliveries).
There are some minor new rules and features that will be tried out in the new Euro World: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,52618.0.html
Quote from: sami on March 15, 2014, 12:08:23 PM
There are some minor new rules and features that will be tried out in the new Euro World: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,52618.0.html
On the rule changes, it would make more sense IMO to change the basing rules to have a maximum of 300 aircraft at unlimited additional bases with no more than 100 aircraft at each base. This would mean a small airline could have 10 additional bases with 30 aircraft each. There would have to be additional tweaks made to staffing etc, but the net result would be the same for large airlines and give smaller airlines more options.
This is amazing...
We say slot system needs to be a free market one; sami says it's unreal.
We say terminals would be a nice addition to the game; sami says it's unreal.
We say airports numbers are related to RL airlines that don't exist here so we should change it; sami says it's unreal
Now, we say let's make a Special Rules World with all those things changed; sami says too much coding.
It'd be easier to just close the forum...
Don't put words in my mouth, I have never said any of that. >:( I have posted two messages to this thread and said nothing even remotely like that, so stop spreading these pure lies, thank you.
It seems that you obviously have no idea about the magnitude of development and especially testing required for some of the ideas posted here (like terminals, which is planned). I said like this earlier:
Quote from: sami on March 01, 2014, 09:15:11 AM
The next small world will be in Europe. But in reference to this thread, anything special you'd like to see? (that requires minimal coding efforts; most of the things talked here earlier are major system changes that won't be built for a single scenario)
And, like posted in news the euro world will have one special new feature first exclusive only to it. But it is still under works (got one other very urgent task which needs to be done first, non-aws stuff..), so more about it later.
I have another idea.
A Speedworld. 10 min a day from 1970-2020. No baselimit open a base whereever you want. Baselimit to keep the base 10 planes.
10 cr to join and 2 cr a week for this :)
Quote from: Xflash on March 21, 2014, 01:22:22 PM
I have another idea.
A Speedworld. 10 min a day from 1970-2020. No baselimit open a base whereever you want. Baselimit to keep the base 10 planes.
10 cr to join and 2 cr a week for this :)
That means 6 months go by every day. It also means you'd have to be online nearly 24/7 to have anywhere near a remote chance of success as if you decide to sleep for 8 hours, an aircraft can remain idle for 2 months and you'd be losing a ton of money/opportunity (you'd have to be away from AWS for more than a full day IRL in normal game worlds to do this). IMO 35 minutes is the perfect day length.
The server/system is not designed for that kind of speed, and it most likely won't cope with it..
Quote from: LemonButt on March 21, 2014, 01:33:09 PM
That means 6 months go by every day. It also means you'd have to be online nearly 24/7 to have anywhere near a remote chance of success as if you decide to sleep for 8 hours, an aircraft can remain idle for 2 months and you'd be losing a ton of money/opportunity (you'd have to be away from AWS for more than a full day IRL in normal game worlds to do this). IMO 35 minutes is the perfect day length.
I have no problem with this. AWS is more timefriendly then the most other Browsergames.
Quote from: sami on March 21, 2014, 01:38:43 PM
The server/system is not designed for that kind of speed, and it most likely won't cope with it..
Too bad.. what about 20 min? Would the system work with this speed?
Quote from: sami on March 21, 2014, 10:22:39 AM
Don't put words in my mouth, I have never said any of that. >:( I have posted two messages to this thread and said nothing even remotely like that, so stop spreading these pure lies, thank you.
You should really check your posts before calling me a "liar"...
https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,10508.msg51479.html#msg51479
https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,24394.msg126263.html#msg126263
QuoteBuilding new terminals would have no effect on slot numbers (if that was your concern there). Runway capacity (etc) is usually what is the restricting factor...
...Sorry, but I suppose if you are so confident that the current system is bad, then perhaps you could try to dig up all the info on let's say how 50-100 largest airports in the world were developed (runways, aprons, terminals) in the past 50 years to determine the true capacity for each year. Remember also to take into account the atc and flying procedures, local rules etc. I think you can easily understand that obtaining such data is simply not possible... Well, that was a bit of sarcasm there...
...But AWS is not going to be "unrealistic" either by allowing airlines to build runways or anything like that either. It's a balance between various factors.
I'm sorry but my understand of airport development, is that they develop if they have a strong airline pushing for capacity... I'm pretty sure FEDEX came BEFORE Superhub in Memphis and UPS also came BEFORE Worldport in Louisville...
Also your "sarcasm" in that post is totally wrong... You don't have to fetch that data from the 50-100 biggest airports over the past 50 years, because that data correlates with RL airlines which DO NOT EXIST in AWS...
Maybe you changed your mind since... I have no way to know since the development road map is "secret"...
Nice way to dig FIVE year old threads that have absolutely NOTHING to do with this thread or anything what has been discussed here.
(or nothing to do with the latest discussion about the possible new terminals feature, of which an open recent thread exists in the feature forums.)
So won't even bother with the rest what you said.
How about a "This Regulated World" game?
For instance, a North American game, reflecting the regulated US and Canadian markets prior to 1981, then a free-for-all afterwards, to say 2005?
Under the CAA, you had to bid to receive the rights to fly between point A and Point B. To maintain the rights, you had to start and maintain daily service within 6 months. Days not served could be awarded to other companies. If you dropped the line, or failed to maintain minimum service levels, it could be immediately re-awarded.
Only ONE airline was allowed to fly any given "small" route. You could tie any two, and sometimes 3 awards into a single flight, as well.
Ex. Hughes Airwest DC-9 LAX-Eugene-Medford-Redmond. They could run pax to any point on the route, or between them. Another example was United running a 727 LAX-Spokane-Calgary/Edmonton, because they didn't have direct rights. Two further examples would be TWA's IND-DAY-DCA trips. The examples are numerous,such as Eastern's DAB-JAX-LGA, because Delta controlled DAB-LGA, etc. The downline stops would have the appropriate penalties, of course.
"Medium" routes were allowed two, one from each city. For example, TWA held the MCI-LGA rights, while American held the LGA-MCI rights. Per the law, this was the max allowed to fly this route. Branniff wanted to establish MCI-LGA, and the slots, prior to deregulation, so they applied for and were awarded MCI-Terre Haute-LGA with two 727's per day.
"Large" or "Trunk" routes, such as JFK-MIA, LGA-ORD, or LAX-SFO, could have as may as four carriers, but capacity was tightly controlled. You couldn't just throw a ton of seats on the runs. If the capacity was already maxed out, you couldn't add more seats, or another flight.
International flights were just as tightly controlled, with only ONE airline allowed to fly any given route, with the notable exception of LHR, which allowed two from JFK and Boston. You could string together destinations to medium cities with a max of two stops, such as TWA's Athens-Tel Aviv, or the several South American routes. Small international cities could be strung together, like Pan Am's several 3 stoppers in Africa, or Continental's 4 stopper's in Oceana, or Branniff's Central American runs.
You could do away with the "Flag Carrier" designation.
You could even add the element of the 5th Freedom hubs in Berlin, Tokyo, or Monrovia to the game.
And if you REALLY wanted to make things strange, you could "force" another carrier to pick up a route from a bankrupt airline, in their hubs.
Just my two cents...
I'd be interested to hear what others think??
And I realize this would likely be a coding nightmare.
I should have added that for Medium routes, capacity limited to 75% for each carrier, or 125% if only one on the route.
If you are at 125%, and someone else begins flying it, you have to downsize to 75%. If you can't, it's your tough luck.
How hard would it be to randomize demand for a world? It would change strategy entirley if, say LHR's demand was randomly assigned to Moscow (or Attu).
How about a special rules world without randomization?
7 day pattern: maybe
Randomization of demand: no
Quote from: JumboShrimp on June 22, 2014, 05:07:09 PM
Randomization of demand: no
What did you mean with this exactly, not sure?
Quote from: sami on June 22, 2014, 06:48:15 PM
What did you mean with this exactly, not sure?
Meaning taking out the randomness of the demand (and pax allocation if any).
So if I am flying a route, and my aircraft gets 75 pax allocated to it on Monday, it will get exactly 75 pax allocated every Monday, until something changes on the route.
The same system as the Test Server, when the randomization was turned off.
Quote from: JumboShrimp on June 22, 2014, 07:28:55 PM
Meaning taking out the randomness of the demand (and pax allocation if any).
So if I am flying a route, and my aircraft gets 75 pax allocated to it on Monday, it will get exactly 75 pax allocated every Monday, until something changes on the route.
The same system as the Test Server, when the randomization was turned off.
The intent of my suggestion was a single randomization, at the beginning of the scenario, changing which airports are high-demand airports for the duration of the game, not randomizing demand throughout the game. A game that changes conventional wisdom as to where to make money.
Random Idea:
A game world starting in the 70/80's, with the scenario that the USSR became the world's big power.... Boeing, MD, Lockheed, and Airbus no longer exist, and the Russian airplane types are dominant. You can still get second hand older Boeing, Lockheed and MD models but all the rest is Russian or small makers. Demand is heavily USSR/Eurasia-centric.
Quote from: isuzu777 on June 26, 2014, 08:33:17 PM
Random Idea:
A game world starting in the 70/80's, with the scenario that the USSR became the world's big power.... Boeing, MD, Lockheed, and Airbus no longer exist, and the Russian airplane types are dominant. You can still get second hand older Boeing, Lockheed and MD models but all the rest is Russian or small makers. Demand is heavily USSR/Eurasia-centric.
dystopia game world :o
I would like the ability to pick up passengers in multiple cities and fly them back to my base.
For example, I have 90 passenger demand to Madrid, and 80 to London.
I would like the ability to stop in MAD first and then continue to LHR and be able to combine the passenger loads.
Obviously, no passengers would be transported between MAD and LHR as that would be Cabotage