(comments) AirwaySim v.1.3 news, previews & info

[BD]

Yes, I know.  I am the 7xCRJ airline sami mentioned.  The cost of cutting the staff far outweighs the cost of paying them each week IMO.  The next few aircraft will be "free" for office staff.  I am currently paying $50k/week more for the extra staff, which is 2.5% of my weekly revenue.  If I cut the staff, my CI will take a hit and morale will drop costing me much more than $50k/week.  

LB, good analysis.  Prompted me to check mine out...

In my scenario, the weekly staff cost reduced by $1.7M, but comparing the five weeks before the layoffs and the five weeks after, revenue is off an average of $575K.  CI went from 90 to 69.7.  Net +$1.125M/week is not bad.  And, in two months, CI is up to 77, without changing marketing expenditure.

The CI hit may differ in amount (anecdotally, some in my alliance have taken a larger numeric drop than I have) and, depending on original position, percentage drop in CI may be greater even if the numerical drop were the same.  I'm not exactly sure how CI works in allocation of demand, but a higher percentage drop in CI might yield a higher percentage reduction in revenue.  If true, this would favor airlines with high starting CI.

Another factor may be the amount of competition the airline faces.  Those who dominate their HQ airport (and Bases) may have a lower impact vs those who share an airport for their HQs.

So, yes, while we are all in the same boat, it seems some of us will get impacted more than others. 

Would be interesting to hear if anyone did incremental reductions as recommended by Sami and what their results were.

[spiff23]

I still don't know why there is this CI drop thing anyways and why it can be so hard to go down more than 100 CI points. If an airline fires people in real life nobody cares and if somebody cares, that stops usually outside of the family members or at least at the borders of the country. Honestly I would not even know where to inform myself if an airline in Argentina or a US regional airline dropped staff.
What I care about is if an airline has new aircraft - but that's a thing PAX in AirwaySim don't care much about. They seem to care more about the people that were laid off to save the company but be fine flying in a 20+ year old Soviet prop with 50% condition.

I think you are off base on this one and CI hit is more than appropriate until the dust settles.  Mere contract negotiations have brought airlines to their knees as pilots, mechanics...work to the exact rules in their contract...let alone when they start firing people.  For two example of each, pre-merger United's Summer of Hell (2000) comes to mind when the pilots flew to the rule of the contracts; UNited couldn't actually fly the schedule with pilots refusing OT and planes for the slightest maintenance issue and pax suffered; deserted in droves and now fondly refer to it as Summer of Hell.  There are numerous reports now as the Continental version of United lays off all its out station ground staff and outsources their jobs of pure hell flying to stations like Toronto where its taking hours to get bags and planes turned around as the soon to be out of job ground staff gives the Continental management a collective middle finger.   While pax may not initially care, a few instances like these and  quite understandable why CI takes a big hit with layoffs.  If Continenal United was in this game, their CI would be lucky to be at about a 20 at this point

[Curse]

I think I actually like the new design and the new possibilities. The quotes for example are much nicer. Can't wait to explore it more.


Still some suggestions:
1) It's a bit brighter than the old one, so I'm gently asking if there is some kind of "dark version"? Maybe even for the game itself. It's better for the eyes when you play and surf at night.

2) Replace "[applaud]" and "[smite]" with thumb up/down or smileys.

[Sami]

karma feature is forum's default, but yea, those don't look very nice.

[Curse]

I like the concept of the Karma system of course. Is it just optical or do stars appear or whatever for high Karma and devil's faces for bad Karma? Maybe attach Karma to Credit purchase prices haha... I'd be poor soon.


I'm also not able to see achievements of other players. I tried this for example with schro, who must have some nice achievements, but they don't show up: https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=25157
Of course I can see the achievements of my own account when I click it.

[Sami]

Achievements are visible in the profile pages linked by game pages;ie. www.airwaysim.com/Profile/?u=25157

but will add a link from that page (forum profile page) too later.



edit: karma is disabled for now; doesn't look nice, will find some alternative system to it.

[Mr.HP]

In the new forum, we have karma, [applaud] and [smite]. Do they serve important roles? And what are the roles?

Thanks

[LemonButt]

In the new forum, we have karma, [applaud] and [smite]. Do they serve important roles? And what are the roles?

Thanks

It's just a reputation system.  If someone is helpful, you give them a +applaud and if they are trolls you give them a +smite.

[Luperco]

The new forum is nice.

Anyway it still is lacking of "prev topic" and "next topic" button.

After reading thread, it is needed to go back to the thread list to read the other topics. Not a big deal, but annoying. Maybe it can be configured to have the two button?

Furthermore I cannot see where to vote for a topic.

[Mr.HP]

It's just a reputation system.  If someone is helpful, you give them a +applaud and if they are trolls you give them a +smite.

It got removed. Not an important feature, I guess?

[NovemberCharlie]

Does the new random events thing also include crashes or other actions that might require players to up their insurance? Not in euroworld but would be nice to know

[Sami]

No, it includes general emergiencies (ie. "an aircraft collided with a fuel truck -> airport closed for few hours, expect delays") but the player-generated emergencies (so to say) are a different thing.

[LemonButt]

IMO shutting down air travel in an entire continent for 5 days for a volcano eruption is too extreme.  The only place this could ever happen is Europe.  Russia alone is so disgustingly huge that you couldn't even shutdown Russia with a volcano, much less all of Asia.  Australia might be the only other continent it could happen because it is smaller.

If you are looking to shutdown entire continents with random events, a 9/11 type terrorist attack would do it for 2 days, but 5 days?  That could drive a newly created airline to bankruptcy pretty easily if they are stuck paying for staff/leases/etc. and realizing zero revenue.

[Curse]

@ LemonButt

How about you wait a bit before you turn down a feature you don't know yet in general and detail?


If a huge vulcaon like the Yellowstone one would break out the whole US would be shut down for much longer. Not just because there is ashes everywhere but also because the air space is needed for emergency flights and many civilians in pilot positions etc. would be called to National Guard or Reservists or whatever.

And even if some thing might look a bit unrealistic at first, it's intended to add immersion to the game! You want realism? Stop playing your CRJ airlines because in real world they don't work, they BK and put many hard working people in unemployment. However, AWS is about fun and an experience, so your CRJ airlines work as well as some events that maybe need a bit of imagination.



Also none of the events is gamebreaking. If an airline fails due to such an event (and, to be honest, I don't think think the one that sami named is the worst one) it was a very ill airline before, barely kept alive by day to day business.
Also if a very new airline is affected people can start over if they want. It's what happens in real life... you have a good business idea and two days after a fire destroys your whole business and you are done. However, don't be so negative. The huge negative events won't fire week for week, I guess sami has implemented them in a style where they may trigger 1-3 times in a _long time gameworld_ and of course less in the shorter ones.


There are also many positive events, some of them increasing pax demand noticable (up to 40% or so I guess?) for weeks!



And at the end, don't forget, features like this are always a bit unbalanced at first. Constructive feedback is what is needed and that, of course, can only be given after people have made several experiences with a feature.

[LemonButt]

I'm not in Euroworld and can't see the results and the announcement made it sounds as if every event was negative (which we now know they are not).  My comments were that 5 days is unrealistic for shutting down an entire continent, at least for continents that aren't Europe.

You have inside knowledge as to what exactly the events are since it sounds like most came from your input.  The rest of us are flying blind right now.

caon like the Yellowstone one would break out the whole US would be shut down for much longer. Not just because there is ashes everywhere but also because the air space is needed for emergency flights and many civilians in pilot positions etc. would be called to National Guard or Reservists or whatever.

Mt Saint Helens erupted in 1980 in the US in Washington State and was the largest eruption in 100 years.  It only covered 11 states in the US, had a negligible effect on Canada, and didn't even touch the rest of the North American countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens#Aftermath  I'm not pulling these facts out of my butt--shutting down all of North America for even a single day would require way more than a volcano eruption.

And even if some thing might look a bit unrealistic at first, it's intended to add immersion to the game! You want realism? Stop playing your CRJ airlines because in real world they don't work, they BK and put many hard working people in unemployment. However, AWS is about fun and an experience, so your CRJ airlines work as well as some events that maybe need a bit of imagination.

Yes, we want realism but shutting down North America or Asia for 5 days is not realism.  I think you're taking my comment to the extreme as I have no problem with random events that are negative, but shutting down a continent for 5 days, to my knowledge, has never happened in the history of air travel with the one isolated case of Europe and the Iceland volcano, but even then it only shut down parts of Europe and not the entire continent.

P.S. CRJ airlines are realistic--that's why they exist IRL.  And this is only the second time ever I've ever tried to run a CRJ airline so I'm not a habitual CRJ airline builder.

However, don't be so negative. The huge negative events won't fire week for week, I guess sami has implemented them in a style where they may trigger 1-3 times in a _long time gameworld_ and of course less in the shorter ones.

As I stated, we're all flying blind here except for you because the details are sparse right now.  This is a simulation--not an arcade game, so sorry if I have negative feelings towards a completely unrealistic event with seemingly too extreme consequences at first blush.  If an entire continent can be shutdown for 5 days, I'm assuming there are other events that can shut it down for 1 to 4 days.

[Curse]

It's not unrealistic, it's not gamebreaking.


You can't compare historical events with random events. A volcano eruption not on one end of the US (Washington State) but more in the middle or a different time of the year and therefore different air streams or whatever may change the whole picture. You just say it yourself: One event in the history of game travel. That's 70 years. So 1-3 of these events during a longtime gameworld (that lasts longer than the 70 years) are absolutely ok.


Yes, you fly blind there. Welcome to the real world, to the full realism. You know so many things in AirwaySim - you know what aircraft will be released and what those aircraft can (because you have my Excel spreadsheet!), you know the airports that will be in service and when and you know how demand will change.

Now there's something people can't predict. Nobody (including me) can tell what event will be fired when and where. And nobody except sami does exactly know what the events do (he altered some of the values and of course I don't tell anything, neither here nor somewhere else). That's actually awesome! The first time in AWS you have to face something you can't control absolutely.




I just can promise you those things:
No healthy airline will get in trouble due to the events.
No badly managed airline will BK just due to the events.
Positive events give airlines the chance to get some extra profit to make it possible to recover the airline from a bad state.

[[SC] - King Kong]

I'm not in Euroworld and can't see the results and the announcement made it sounds as if every event was negative (which we now know they are not).  My comments were that 5 days is unrealistic for shutting down an entire continent, at least for continents that aren't Europe.

You have inside knowledge as to what exactly the events are since it sounds like most came from your input.  The rest of us are flying blind right now.

Mt Saint Helens erupted in 1980 in the US in Washington State and was the largest eruption in 100 years.  It only covered 11 states in the US, had a negligible effect on Canada, and didn't even touch the rest of the North American countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens#Aftermath  I'm not pulling these facts out of my butt--shutting down all of North America for even a single day would require way more than a volcano eruption.

Yes, we want realism but shutting down North America or Asia for 5 days is not realism.  I think you're taking my comment to the extreme as I have no problem with random events that are negative, but shutting down a continent for 5 days, to my knowledge, has never happened in the history of air travel with the one isolated case of Europe and the Iceland volcano, but even then it only shut down parts of Europe and not the entire continent.

P.S. CRJ airlines are realistic--that's why they exist IRL.  And this is only the second time ever I've ever tried to run a CRJ airline so I'm not a habitual CRJ airline builder.

As I stated, we're all flying blind here except for you because the details are sparse right now.  This is a simulation--not an arcade game, so sorry if I have negative feelings towards a completely unrealistic event with seemingly too extreme consequences at first blush.  If an entire continent can be shutdown for 5 days, I'm assuming there are other events that can shut it down for 1 to 4 days.

You have absolutely no clue why CRJ airlines exist in real life, they don't work. Not from an airline management perspective. Yes, they fly but do you really think your cheap Y fare pays off the costs for those? nah

[LemonButt]

You have absolutely no clue why CRJ airlines exist in real life, they don't work. Not from an airline management perspective. Yes, they fly but do you really think your cheap Y fare pays off the costs for those? nah

I can make outrageous claims stating you have no idea how something works with absolutely no basis also.  I know most CRJ carriers are contract/fixed fee carriers for the mainline operators and feed the hub/spoke model.  I believe all of Delta's CRJ fleet (and many for other carriers) has business class and isn't in an all-Y config (nor are mine in the game).  Let's not turn this into a CRJ thread

[Curse]

The amounts of Skype-Messages I received about the birdflew shows me it brings lots of fun to EuroChallenge. Oversupply + low cash reserves = bad idea.

[Cardinal]

I see in the attachment in Sami's latest post in the other thread that the "event demand" is higher. Does this mean it's possible for events to not shut down everything but to create a temporary spike in demand (i.e. Olympics)?