A good reason for ETOPS; Misuse of frequency feature;

[Sanabas]

Im gunna be honest and blunt here. I think that this add on will make the game more complicated and cause more problems than are already there. Im very sure that members will come out and whine about the added difficulty.

What you guys are proposing seems extremly complicated... I cant eaven read through this thread because its so long and confusing 

idk my 2 cents

Which one? This thread has multiple ideas proposed. I don't think removing the 100 aircraft limit would change the complexity at all.

I think my proposal for fixing the frequency issue will add to the complexity for someone who wants to really optimise things, but anybody going to that effort should already be building successful airlines, and so won't have major issues. For someone who is new/doesn't understand or pay attention to game mechanics, I don't think it will be harder. The same rules of thumb as now will still apply, i.e. don't put flights closer together than 1 hour, if possible spread them out evenly, such as 1 morning, 1 evening, pick an airport with minimal competition, don't try and jump in at LHR or similar unless you know what you're doing.

No problem, will do.

Thanks for that. And the numbers are indeed interesting. With 372 planes, you had a uniform 255% increase. With 680 planes, you've got a uniform 576% increase. The commonality penalty is apparently growing exponentially with fleet size, rather than linearly. I wonder is that's working as intended? I think we should add this one to bug reports and/or feature requests.

If the commonality penalty is going to be simple, I think it should be that if given fleets cost a, b, c, d, e, f per month, then having 1 fleet will cost $a. 2 fleets cost $1.5a, $1.5b. 3 fleets cost $2a, 2b, 2c. 4 fleets cost $2.5a, 2.5b, 2.5c, 2.5d, etc. Could tweak those numbers if necessary, to increase the jump at certain points. But the important thing is that if the jump from 3 fleets to 4 adds 25%, or 50%, or doubles costs with 100 overall planes, then the jump from 3 to 4 should do the same when you have 300, 500, 1000 planes. It shouldn't be a case of doubling at 100 planes, more than tripling at 372 planes, and jumping to nearly 7 times the price at 680 planes. It looks like each new plane adds ~1% to the penalty. With 372 planes, you paid 355% of the 3 fleet price for 4 fleets. With 680 planes, you paid 676% of the 3 fleet price for 4 fleets. Which would mean with 60 planes, I paid ~160%, which seems consistent with my figures for 2 & 4 fleets.

I also think it's time to start a thread to collect more data from anyone willing to provide it.

[dmoose42]

A while back in JA #5, I decided to cancel the leases on my 3 DC-4s, partly to see what the impact on the commonality costs was going to be, but mostly because I was going to do it anyway and transferred the routes to planes that better fit with my near-term (1-2 year) plans.

So the numbers (note they exclude the impact on the engines, as it is likely minimal given that the DC-4 and DC-6 are on the same type) ...My 3 DC-4s were costing me 165,903 a month before I killed them.  At the time, I had 12 DC-6, 13 Nord, 8 Viscounts, who's commonality expenses dropped from 777,804 to 646,185 for a savings of 131,619 in addition to the 165,903 direct savings.

In this case, with about 30 aircraft, going from 3 fleet types to 4 fleet types bumps up the commonality across all fleets by 20%.  I have the raw numbers, but the increase percentage was largely uniform across the three types.

As an aside, I am soon to be expanding back to 4 types and will post the change as soon as that happens (with 12 hours real time).

[Sanabas]

Another thing is that this is new to v1.3.  There was a jump to 4th fleet in 1.2, but it was much smaller than in 1.3

I just dismantled my airline in DotM. As I dropped down from 542 planes across 5 fleets, every ~30 planes was reducing all fleets by a couple of percent. The drop from 5 to 4, at 470 planes, made about 3.5% difference.

From 4 to 3, at 316 planes, was a huge drop. The 4 fleet costs were 287% of the 3 fleet costs, also near-identical for each fleet. That's in line with 1.3, assuming the % increase grows as the overall fleet does. One new a320 or f100 would add $9 million a week to maintaining my ATR, 757 & 767 fleets.

I didn't have enough cash on hand to terminate all the leases and get down to 2 fleets.