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

[Cardinal]

Although the 717 was based of the MD-90 family, they have no commonality in real life.

I thought they had a common cockpit, or at least the 717 cockpit was an option on the MD90?

[Andre]

The 717 has some commonality with the MD-90, but not nearly as much as the MD-90 does with MD-80. The MD-90 is an MD-88 with new engines. The MD-90 was supposed to be delivered with an updated glass cockpit, but the various US based airlines wanted cockpit commonality with their MD-88s and chose to have their MD-90s delivered with the MD-88 cockpits. The only airline that had their MD-90s delivered with glass cockpits was Saudi. The 717 is a great aircraft, but it remains the oddball. It shares cockpit commonality with the MD-11, but some systems and parts commonality with the MD-90. The optimal way to do this in Airwaysim (in my opinion) would be to merge DC-9/MD-80/MD-90 fleets, and then give other incentives to the 717 to make it a viable option for us. One such thing could be putting it in the Medium aircraft category (like with the Fokker 100 and Embraer 190).

But that being said, having the MD-90 and MD-95/717 fleets merged is a great thing to make them a more viable option against the 737/A320 hegemony. I'm not complaining at all, and I really do NOT wish to see it reversed! Especially when the different MD-95 prototypes will be added.

[LotusAirways]

I have been playing this game since September 2013 and the evolution since then its obvious. My congrats to Sami and his team on the great work.

The only thing that hasn't improved at all is (1) slots, and the (2) abnormal first-business class mix of total passengers at Heathrow.
Heathrow is than the perfect airport to be based from day one if:

- You are a terrible player always going bust without knowing why, as whatever routes set-up will make money due to 50% demand on premium classes; you can even have 4 fleets of Tupolevs and more, happy times ahead...

- You are a good player motivated to be number one in company value; have you noticed the top airline is always from Heathrow? And please, if you are going to reply with a grandfather story "I remember..." give facts. I haven't seen any since September 2013. 

- You are a good player motivated to make your airline look like it is playing in another game as the number 2 is five times smaller than you & have a software that can detect color change in the slot page, software that I am told is impossible to detect by AWS admin, you will be grabbing most slots.

And what to change? I also don't know. Suggestions welcome. 
LA (not based at Heathrow)

[Yarnam]

I agree and I have noticed too that if you can join early and get your Heathrow flight set up first from anywhere in the world your set. It appears to automatically be profitable. If you join when all the slots at Heathrow are full well then your on your own to find that first profitable route or two. I have one slot at Heathrow in GW2 and have been watching for another slot with no luck. Think I just got lucky finding a Saturday one.

[Elladan]

Assuming you're not based at Heathrow you don't need to have a single LHR slot to be successful. In fact, there are many places around where getting that slot might actually make your situation worse (like when you're exclusively regional airline and obtain a wide-body just to serve LHR route). So my advice to you is not to bother too much, find a bit less popular place then YYZ and try to build a smaller but efficient airline. It's much easier to fine tune your play when you don't have hundreds of planes and thousands of routes to look at.

[Mr Yoda]

Good point LA

If you are a good and experienced player and you are based in LHR then you are almost guaranteed they you'll end up being 1st in the game no matter what. It's ridiculous that LHR is like the "Mecca of Airwaysim" with almost unlimited demand from anywhere in the globe.

[Andre]

Good points by LA... but I suspect this issue will sort itself out when City Based Demand goes live. The demand from the London region (which is very premium heavy in the real world), will be spread across the various London airports.

[ekaneti]

Allowing players to open more than 4 hubs has ruined the game. Id prefer going back to A-B-C scheduling with 2 hubs allowed

[Jps]

Allowing players to open more than 4 hubs has ruined the game. Id prefer going back to A-B-C scheduling with 2 hubs allowed

How has it ruined the game, exactly?

[gazzz0x2z]

Allowing players to open more than 4 hubs has ruined the game. Id prefer going back to A-B-C scheduling with 2 hubs allowed

Well, it allows for other strategies. I'm present on 7 smaller airports, which would be impossible with the old system. Players would focus on bigger airports or be damned to non-existence in just 3 smaller airports. I'm not messing with the biggies, I'm offering another kind of service to smaller airports(Like my daily Bari-Damascus).

[Mr.HP]

With the new ranking system, I'd like to know how Alliance score gets distributed for airlines with the same rank? For example, in GW3
- 17 airlines got rank 1 in CI (each has average of total score (1+2+...+17)/17?)
- What about airline rank 26? There are 35 of them, and the Alliance score counts up to top 10% only, meaning top 27 airlines

[Sami]

It's distributed now so that each with the same rank gets the same points now. So if we have the following stats...
#1 - airline1 - 100
#1 - airline2 - 100
#1 - airline3 - 100
#4 - airline4 - 99
..then airlines 1-3 get the same max points, and then airline 4 gets second place's points. In case there are 200 airlines, the top 10% is then 20 airlines and 20 points, so the alliance score points would be then airlines 1-3 20 pts each and airline 4 19 points.

A few other changes too, will be posted in the changelog soon.

(note; I just changed this since noticed that the stats were not updating properly yet, but now it should be all ok)

[chris.abrams67]

"Lies, damned lies and statistics" as Winston Churchill once said.

Everyone will have a view on the new stat from their own perspective and how it would suit them more, but I guess a simple sum, without weighting is as good as any.

My only comment on the numbers used in the calculation is that if the score is to reflect an airlines performance at a given point in time:
Operating margin is a much better measure than pre-tax, as op rev just reflects performance as an airline whereas the current measure also gets skewed by aircraft sales. A smaller airline that transports pax profitably should rate higher than a larger airline that's not as good but bailed out by aircraft sales.

And doesn't pax to date cover up recent poor performance by a larger airline, whereas pax cyr reflects current performance . The longevity of the airline is reflected in the age of the airline already.

But I think, as a smaller airline , that it's a great idea to try to even up a scoring system to measure different types of airlines.

Now. If we can just expense slots we'd really be getting there!

[spiff23]

Hi SAMI, great improvements.  I came here to ask about maintenance but will also comment on scoring since you asked.

Scoring
Overall I like the new improvements.  for alliance scoring the only issue is ties and especially the CI category.  I always assumed the number shown was rounding and the game engine ranked us to some decimal place...I.e., #1 position was 99.896, #2 was 99.892, etc.  if that s the case then I like the variability in ranking/scoring us on that (and for the record I'm on the lower end of 100 .  Otherwise this sort of becomes a gimme category for all experienced players and your giving out 20points to 20-25 players.

In terms of ties, not sure how hard to program, but maybe a sports scoring system where ties score the points for that number, but then skip to the next logical place based on how many tied.  This is same in Olympic medals were a gold medal tie, mean no silver medal is issued and the next place is the bronze.  To illustrate, #1=20; tie #2 means both players get 19 points, no #3 is awarded because of the tie so next player =#4 and gets 17 points.

Just thoughts.

Maintenace
This is the reason I followed the post.  I'm noticing a trend in which my new planes and especially any that I've bought from the UM are  having terrible maintenance problems and my 20-25 year old planes are all 90-100%. I noticed this about 2-3 weeks ago and now instead of retiring 24 year old planes, I'm keeping those so I can do extra maintenance checks on 4-5 year old planes at 60%. 

Before someone chimes in about UM plane condition, I've generally been looking at age/condition and willing to pay more for those at 90-100%...so entirely possible I spaced out and bought a clunker...but not at the volume I now have in my fleets.  IN GW1 a couple ship numbers if you want to look are A320-200s.  10552, 10574, 10874.  I even had one, don't remember MSN, trigger a too poor condition warning at 8 years, soon after a D check which is why I bought it.  I've now spent the money and over 80 days to get it to flying condition.

I've even hired extra technical staff thinking maybe at 101% I needed more...still not helping.

If not intended, then I'd be curious what's going on as I've been going to the UM recently to stay ahead on plane retirements after running a pretty tight ship the past 60 GW1 years    I also do find it odd, that 23 year old planes are in better shape than 5 year old ones consistently..then again what do all old people say about how things used to be built better 20 years ago? 


If this is intended then should make things interesting.


Unrelated...thanks!!!
All and all, great job on things as always...and hopefully you are pleased with the long game world's as GW1 comes to its final weeks.  After almost 1.4 years of a game, I can say I've enjoyed it.  You should let us all chip in a credit so we can buy you the child's book, "if you give a mouse a cookie".  think you could probably relate to all us wanting more and you always delviering ...anyway all the best!

[schro]

Ok. For the stats view, I was about halfway through writing up a bug report when the "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, I SEE IT, I SEE IT" light went on. When looking at the stats delta, my mind automatically assumes that arrow up/arrow down and then a number indicates the NUMBER of rankings an airline moved. So, I'm sitting here with my head tilted wondering how the heck I was first place the prior quarter in some obscure stat that I'm #252 in now and then it hit me that the prior value is what was being displayed rather than the delta value. Because isn't placed right next to the current ranking, its not very easy on the eyes/brain to quickly determine movement in the ranks.

Therefore, I'd propose that the changed indicator display the number of ranks moved rather than the previous value (or both would be fine, regardless, give me movement, not prior value!)

[Yarnam]

Is the new Airline Score graphed anywhere so we can see how we are doing (up/down/holding)?

[Sami]

I'm sitting here with my head tilted

Yes I was actually pondering if the change indicator should have the relative change (eg. +3 for three steps up) but that didn't look nice there.. But let's see..

Is the new Airline Score graphed anywhere so we can see how we are doing (up/down/holding)?

No, it's a basic value stored only once. But it's technically easy to add the history data for that (since many other values, like company image, are stored on weekly basis too).. though wouldn't see that as very useful feature really. Perhaps adding the score into the stats (as a new stats item) could work and you can see the trend compared to others then.

Overall I like the new improvements.  for alliance scoring the only issue is ties and especially the CI category.  I always assumed the number shown was rounding and the game engine ranked us to some decimal place...I.e., #1 position was 99.896, #2 was 99.892,

CI is rounded in stats - so CI 99.6 and 99.8 will be both 100, and thus scoring the same. (really a very minor difference)

[Yarnam]

No, it's a basic value stored only once. But it's technically easy to add the history data for that (since many other values, like company image, are stored on weekly basis too).. though wouldn't see that as very useful feature really. Perhaps adding the score into the stats (as a new stats item) could work and you can see the trend compared to others then.

That sounds like a good idea

[LotusAirways]

The new scoring system is a great improvement. Congrats! But can we take it a step further? At present the score reflects the views of both Shareholders and Passengers using 18 variables. Perhaps we should have 2 scores:

Shareholders, 9 variables: Pre-tax profit, Operating revenue, Profit margin, Fuel burn per passenger, Route ASK, Route RPK, Route LF, Fleet utilization, and Credit rating.   

Passengers, 9 variables: Airline image, Transported pax (since start), Airline age, Fleet size, Fleet age, Fleet condition, Punctuality, Number of weekly flights, and Number of airports served.

And both scores the top 3 airlines can be on players' achievements.
LA

[alexgv1]

I really like that idea LA...

May be cosmetic for now but could become useful later on as well if stocks/shares or something are introduced.