AirwaySim Detailed Features

[JJP]

Hello Sami,

Thank you for taking on such an immense and awesome project!  Ever since I discovered Aerobiz Supersonic by Koei for Super Nintendo so many years ago, I've been a huge fan of airline sims.  Now, unfortunately, no such product is commercially available.  I am currently playing the web based "Airline Empires" which is quite fun but devoid of many features.

I see your sim seems to be quite detailed (from the screen shots), including scheduling maintenance checks for each aircraft and determining departure times.  Recently, I've played (and purchased) the ongoing Australian project known as Airlines 6 which has similar detail.  I really hope you plan to handle such features differently than Airlines 6. 

If a particular feature of the game is a "must", as in "You must schedule your aircraft for maintenance checks", then I don't quite understand why the player would be bothered with the minutiae of handling that portion of the game.  Would the player gain some advantage to scheduling the maintenance checks at certain times?  If so, is there an optimal maintenance schedule, and could this not automatically be built into the game (the game automatically schedules optimal maintenance)?  Perhaps the player has the choice to schedule more or fewer checks (supposedly to save money but run the risk of more mishaps)?  If so, would it not be better to simply have a global maintenance setting of, say "Below Average, Average, Above Average, and Optimal", from which the player could choose on a fleet wide basis?  I just hate to see the "mistake" of building a feature into the game because "it's realistic" while not adding to the experience and enjoyment of the player (only adding headaches!).

Also, I noticed the player will schedule departure times for each aircraft.  In Airlines 6, the player schedules departure times as well.  Unfortunately, selected departure times have no real effect on the success of the route.  For example, a player may choose to depart at 0700 or 2300 and absolutely have no effect on the profitability of the route.

In your sim, will selected departure times affect how successful the route is (takes into account that passengers would rather fly at x time versus y time)?  If so, are there optimal times of day that passengers choose to fly?  If so, why not have all flights automatically scheduled for those times of day?  Again, I hate to see building a feature into the game because "it's realistic" while not adding to the experience and enjoyment of the player.

Please forgive me.  I don't want to already be picking on a game that isn't even finished yet!  I simply want to help make this the best airline sim ever. I think I've played almost every airline sim that's been produced (Airbucks, Airlines, Airline Tycoon, Aerobiz, etc.).  I hope yours becomes the best!

Thanks for listening,

JayP

[Seattle]

Have you tried Airline Mogul?

Well, to answer your questions in general, its very easy to schedule checks and routes. Currently, there are no peak travel time per hour, but if you look at one day, there are peak travel days (Friday and Monday) while there are lows (Wednesday and Saturday).

Route scheduling is important and EASY. It makes it realistic, but still fun.

[JJP]

I've not tried Airline Mogul.  I'll have to check it out. 

Well, if route and maintenance scheduling is truly "very easy", that'll work for me. 

Thanks for the reply.

[Seattle]

Its not instant, but it doesnt take much effort to click lets see..... one.... two.... three....four.....five....six times and that about 10-15 seconds. Routes are a bit longer to make, but that becuase, you'll want to custumize the plane you want, the time, and the dates.

[Sami]

Hi there,

I've also played the Airline6 game once and found that it's rather complex with all the features and such, but at least the version I ran was buggy and the usability of the features was not that good in my mind. Has it gotten any better nowadays? There are also some online sims around there but have only tested the Empires game but a  long time ago - so all in all I try to make this as "my own looking" thing and not to model/copy it after any other project of course.


The sim is a balance between management decision and handling some more smaller things like the maintenance checks. In my mind just keeping it as 100% management decision game would be boring and it's tempo would be rather slow. So thus the player is also responsible of scheduling the aircraft and other such things (which of course in real life the CEO wouldn't do, but I'm trying to find a balance between the micro-management and large scale management to keep it interesting but not going into too much of unnecessary detail). And also to provide automated functions for those players who don't wish to go into details.

The scheduling of flights and maintenance is mandatory so you need to put A&B check time for each plane and they mustn't overlap the routes. The usage interface for that is quite simple and some improvement is still to be built based on pre-beta feedback.  The heavy C/D maintenance checks can be automatically made if you check the option from your settings, they are every 1/8 years while A check is weekly and B check monthly. If your plane is in bad condition then you can also assign extra repairs for it. Have to say that the ABCD maintenance system is not completely realistic but in my mind suitable enough to model the maintenance. As in real life the check interval varies according to each aircraft model and the time frames are always different etc. But that would be just impossible to build.

For routes, the dep.time, among 10s of other things, does have an effect on the passenger demand. That's not yet completely done in the game but will be finished before the release. Other factors are your company image, total flight duration (slow or fast plane, or if we have a refuelling landing perhaps?), inflight service, ticket price, deptime, arrival time, frequency (flights per week) and so on. Passengers in Y/C/F classes have different preferences on what they prefer to be the highest factor when choosing the flight. Things like company image and inflight service are not built yet but planned as you can see. 


Oh yes, I remember playing Airbucks also! That was like 10-15 years ago??



Here's also a pic of the window where you assign the scheduled maintenance:


[attachment deleted by admin]

[JJP]

Thanks for the great reply, Sami.  I can see the level of detail (behind the scenes mechanics and demand model) is intense.  I love it!  I can see how the maintenance screen looks quite straightforward.  What happens when an airline approaches 100+ aircraft.  Maintenance must not overlap.  How much of a headache must this be to keep it all straight!   

Airlines 6 is a pretty good game, but its interface is still very clunky.  I would say if they much improved this one thing, they would have an outstanding product.  Airline Mogul is a fine sim.  Very cut throat!  You must absolutely stay on top of it every have day of real life or so.  Otherwise, your routes become trashed by the competition.  To me, this is not fun.  Airline Empires has an "Autoprice" feature that allows the system to modify your route price based on the competition.  This seems to work very well.  How the creators built such a feature that did not result in slug-fest price wars is beyond me, but it works!  This way, I can come back to my airline 2 days later (2 months game time) and still have an airline left!

[JJP]

Sami,

I must ask you about one feature in your product that absolutely bugs me in every single airline sim (except Aerobiz!!).  I love hub and spoke systems.  I also like to find the optimal aircraft for a route and stick to it.  Most airine sims make a player create a route for each new aircraft, even if the player already flys that route (with a different aircraft)! 

Does your sim have the option to create a route (say, ORD to JFK) and simply open that route to add more aircraft to it?  For example, let's say I have 2 Boeing 757's flying ORD to JFK. I just purchased another 757.  Instead of "Create Route" for the new jet, I would go to my ORD-JFK route, select "Add Aircraft" and voi la!  I'm done!  Or, is your sim too complex to have such a feature?  Or, do you have a much better way of handling routes?!

Thank you for your great responses.

--JayP

[Sami]

What happens when an airline approaches 100+ aircraft.  Maintenance must not overlap.  How much of a headache must this be to keep it all straight!

Once you schedule the maintenance in to the aircraft, it's ok and no changes are needed unless you change your routes. The checks of several aircraft can overlap eachothers of course, let's say even all your 150 planes can have the A check on monday at 01.00. However that may change to a bit more realistic way in the future where you must schedule the maintenance so that you need more staff etc if you have the checks at the same time of day for many planes, but like you said there the main problem may be the controllability of a large fleet.

Does your sim have the option to create a route (say, ORD to JFK) and simply open that route to add more aircraft to it?  For example, let's say I have 2 Boeing 757's flying ORD to JFK. I just purchased another 757.  Instead of "Create Route" for the new jet, I would go to my ORD-JFK route, select "Add Aircraft" and voi la!

At the moment the creation of a route is still a bit complex, as it has been spread to 5 different pages where the system asks for the flight details (first the destination, then flight times, then pricing etc), but this should be improved a bit and with that a simple "copy route" button could be useful (however there you'd still perhaps want to change the dep times and days of operation etc). The route management area is still the one with a couple of pages undeveloped, usage-wise.

[JJP]

Thank you.

[AHToronto]

Hello Sami,

Thank you for taking on such an immense and awesome project!  Ever since I discovered Aerobiz Supersonic by Koei for Super Nintendo so many years ago, I've been a huge fan of airline sims.  Now, unfortunately, no such product is commercially available.  I am currently playing the web based "Airline Empires" which is quite fun but devoid of many features.

I see your sim seems to be quite detailed (from the screen shots), including scheduling maintenance checks for each aircraft and determining departure times.  Recently, I've played (and purchased) the ongoing Australian project known as Airlines 6 which has similar detail.  I really hope you plan to handle such features differently than Airlines 6. 

If a particular feature of the game is a "must", as in "You must schedule your aircraft for maintenance checks", then I don't quite understand why the player would be bothered with the minutiae of handling that portion of the game.  Would the player gain some advantage to scheduling the maintenance checks at certain times?  If so, is there an optimal maintenance schedule, and could this not automatically be built into the game (the game automatically schedules optimal maintenance)?  Perhaps the player has the choice to schedule more or fewer checks (supposedly to save money but run the risk of more mishaps)?  If so, would it not be better to simply have a global maintenance setting of, say "Below Average, Average, Above Average, and Optimal", from which the player could choose on a fleet wide basis?  I just hate to see the "mistake" of building a feature into the game because "it's realistic" while not adding to the experience and enjoyment of the player (only adding headaches!).

Also, I noticed the player will schedule departure times for each aircraft.  In Airlines 6, the player schedules departure times as well.  Unfortunately, selected departure times have no real effect on the success of the route.  For example, a player may choose to depart at 0700 or 2300 and absolutely have no effect on the profitability of the route.

In your sim, will selected departure times affect how successful the route is (takes into account that passengers would rather fly at x time versus y time)?  If so, are there optimal times of day that passengers choose to fly?  If so, why not have all flights automatically scheduled for those times of day?  Again, I hate to see building a feature into the game because "it's realistic" while not adding to the experience and enjoyment of the player.

Please forgive me.  I don't want to already be picking on a game that isn't even finished yet!  I simply want to help make this the best airline sim ever. I think I've played almost every airline sim that's been produced (Airbucks, Airlines, Airline Tycoon, Aerobiz, etc.).  I hope yours becomes the best!

Thanks for listening,

JayP

wowwww....you all like to write long postes....mine would only be for an airline announcement, if i get around to it.. i did write a long (6 pages) post for my airline in the game Airlines 6. i warn you Seattle, i renamed Paradise Air to Paradise Airways... if youwant this post, message me through my tag. thanks!

-Austin