A Case For Unlimited OOB (Out of Base Aircraft)

[tungstennedge]

A case for unlimited out of base aircraft (OOB).

Note, this is a somewhat ranty, essay style piece filled with my own opinions and observations, which in some cases may generalize some of the playbase that I've observed. However, my main goal in writing this is to hopefully convince some people that OOB may be flawed. With AWS slowly losing popularity, removing OOB is the simplest way, from a coding standpoint, to alleviate a plethora of issues within AWS, primarily the lack of competition and the resulting boredom and gameplay stagnation.
Many of the points issues brought up mostly affect experienced players, so I'm not suggesting we should universally remove OOB, but it could make for interesting challenge worlds if it were removed. Here's why.

Limiting OOB aircraft is one of the most restrictive aspects of Airwaysim, and its inclusion greatly reduces fun in the game by limiting gameplay, competition, and airline size. Many see its inclusion positively, however, there are many ways in which it inhibits the importance of strategy and competition between airlines. Additionally, the purposes it aims to serve, restricted airline size, to protect smaller players, and maintain realism are redundant or unproductive for the enjoyment of the game. Let's explore.

The first major issue with OOB is limiting gameplay. It negatively affects how many hours a player can enjoy each world, the amount of competition seen against players in each world.

The issue with limiting the gameplay hours available happens because of the workflow of most veteran players who build larger airlines. Every player logs in, buys, and schedules planes, and additionally might plans for future strategy and aspects of the game such as fleet transitions, surviving key events, ect. The problem is, the strategizing and planning only take so long and usually takes a relatively constant amount of time when compared to scheduling, selecting routes, inspecting demand, and buying and selling planes. This means most larger airlines spend most of their time performing these actions, however, this is limited by OOB aircraft. A home base can only fit so many planes before the demand is full, and the player will have to wait ingame years, or IRL weeks or months for the game to progress enough to add some more planes and fill some more demand. This means once OOB planes are all used, and your main base is mostly out of demand, the player has nothing to do. They can't strategize more since they are just waiting to carry out a plan. They cant buy or schedule more planes, since they are already profitable, and their schedules are probably made close to ideally, so why re-do them. They can start a new world or patiently wait.

There are more reasons why gameplay runs out in Airwaysim, and one thing is the number of options airlines have to compete for demand with each other. Real airlines fight over fares, services offered, advertising, scheduling convenience, loyalty, rewards points, and much much more to win over customers. In Airwaysims case, only one of these is very applicable. Scheduling convenience. While fares, advertising, and services technically are represented in Airwaysim, optimal strategy around these items, and advertising, is exceedingly simple. Every airline runs 103-105% pricing on competing routes (which in case you didn't know is a universally optimal number), and charge more for monopolies if the player is bothered to micro. No fare wars can be done, as this would create a micro hell of price battles. It's a great thing that this is not an aspect of the game. Advertising is also exceedingly simple as only the amount of money you spend matters to increase your image. Lastly, using all standard seating is almost universally the best minus tiny edge cases. This leaves scheduling, which is one of the funnest, and most strategic parts of the game. Scheduling includes picking the right routes for your plane, and then finding a great way to stitch them together for the least wasted time. However, this can only be done when OOB and Main base have space left. Hence, there is nothing left to do when OOB runs dry. This has likely happened to most experienced players, and what likely happens is they get bored and start a new world as they await their next fleet transition and pass the time with their new world.

This is probably not a bad thing, as there are many positives to starting a new world. Players get to play in a new market with different planes, and Sami gets more income from credits. However, it would be fair also to say that most players care more about a single world than others, and play other worlds to pass time, experiment or try creative and unusual challenges such as using russian steel, or hunt achievements. However, there are also players like myself who just want to maximize the world they have. In my particular case, I would rather pay more credits to play in an uncapped world with no, or much higher OOB limits.

Earlier, it was mentioned that after filling OOB and a main base, the player has no strategizing left to do. Why is this the case? One reason is high profitability of airlines, driven by low competition. Scheduling efficiency is one area players fight over fiercely, as frequency economics are one of the few ways players can gain a concrete advantage over another experienced player. For the uninitiated, frequency in Airwaysim is one of the strongest tools to capture demand. Passenger, and cargo current demand are both evenly split among every flight on a route. This means if 2 737's and one 747 fly daily on a route with 300 demand, then every flight still gets 100 passengers. The advantage is gained in the 737's having much lower expenses, making the 747 player lose money in comparison. What this all means is that to outcompete a well run airline, the only way to do so is to find a way to gain a frequency advantage over a competitor with less costs incurred per flight. Herein lies the problem, which is that large airlines have too many planes which are profitable.
A significant number of their planes need to be frequency spammed in order to lose money. Unfortunately, this is impossible. Say a large airline has 500 Very Large 747F operating from their main base.The goal is to use a321f to frequency spam this airline into losing money. This is in theory, a great idea but in practice nearly impossible to execute. Each A321F lowers the 747's load factor by 20%. Most 747F operate at around 55% LF when unopposed, meaning a 20% drop means 44%LF. That means by using 500 of our own OOB planes, to match we lower our competitors LF from 55 to 44. 18-25% is break even depending on fuel prices. We would need 1200+ a321f's to make this players 747's lose money in the worst of times. Ofcourse, this is an exaggerated example, as cargo is overtuned, but the same idea applies to passengers. It takes too many planes to try to dent a profitable player outside a main base. As seen it can be nearly impossible to make a dent on the player there are just not enough OOB planes to do so. Infact, it's more likely that the A321 player would simply find more open markets elsewhere and use their OOB aircraft there for a greater benefit to themselves rather than competing. Since each OOB plane is so valuable, players generally look to make each OOB plane's value outside their main base rather than compete with others. Infact, OOB actively reduces competition which, for at least some like myself, makes the game less enjoyable.

Ironically enough, one of OOB's main purposes is to protect smaller airlines from having their market share taken by larger airlines. However, OOB offers just as much protection to larger airlines, as no single airline mounting an attack on a large company has any hope of pushing a well run company near bankruptcy. The only groups in this game large enough to do something like this would be alliances. But since allies cant open bases in the same city, they cant pool their planes to take down a common foe. A well run airline simply becomes an invincible entity from whoms fate can only be decided by the player who owns it. Take a look at most of the largest bankruptcies of airlines and notice that almost all of them are to do player boredom and not competition. Players force quit their airlines sometimes. Others get closed by the bank, which would indicate economic failure. However, take a closer look at most of the large airlines that financially fail and find that the player was likely AFK from that game for years before it happened, allowing planes to grow old and prices to become too low due to inflation. The only players who go bankrupt due to competition are likely inexperienced or ignoring or forgetting some of the game basics, like opening routes with 300% oversupply, not charging 104% price.

While it could be debated, OOB primary functions in Airwaysim are to limit the size of airlines, and stop smaller airlines from being rundown. Another, is to try to make the plane counts of large airlines more similar to real life. However, it only does one of these things effectively, which is to limit airline size, while it fails dramatically at the others. It could even be argued that trying to limit plane counts in a game meant for entertainment is not even necessary.
OOB does limit airline size. It's simply impossible to expand an airline past around 2000 aircraft, as the largest main bases in AWS, ATL, LAX, LHR, house around 1000, while 1000OOB is allowed at the end. It's simply impossible to surpass this. The first question to ask is why does airline size need to be limited? I've personally heard arguments that AWS airlines already outgrow the max size or IRL airlines dramatically. AA has the largest fleet of 900AC. And AWS airlines can hit 2000 AC, so what's the issue?
Firstly, demand in AirwaySim is magnitudes higher than in real life. LHR sees ~80mil/year passenger IRL, while I've personally seen over 230m in AWS by 2021. This is necessary as there are high player counts who mostly want to run larger airlines, and there is more fun and things to do if demand numbers are substantial. Also, Airwaysim must create the need for VL planes with only point to point modelled as transfers are impossible. IRL, there is not, for example, 5-12k people per day flying from LHR-JFK like in AWS, rather, 5-12k people from all over the world who want to go to JFK and potentially beyond that connected through LHR. This induces demand for VL planes, where if AWS used realistic point to point numbers almost every long haul route would be too tiny to service, hence, demand numbers must be inflated.
With AWS's greater demand, when scaled, IRL demand vs AWS demand we see that the plane counts in AWS are not inflated at all. 230/80*900 ~ = 2587 planes, meaning American airlines scaled to AWS's inflated demand would actually be much bigger. And this doesn't account that in AWS cargo and passenger airlines are run by single companies. Fedex has 475 aircraft. Using the same scaling as passengers, we get ~1400AC. Together, we could expect nearly 4000 aircraft, and this doesn't even account the insanely inflated cargo numbers that AWS offers. For example, my UK based cargo airlines earn more profit than the next export of the UK in a year, in a single quarter. I don't even know how to account for this whatsoever. But even without it, we see that for AWS demand, 4000 aircraft fleets would be more the normal rather than the 1500 or so most big AWS airlines achieve.

What OOB massively fails to achieve is stopping smaller companies from being overwhelmed by larger ones. The reason is, better run airlines manage to generate more profit per expense than poor ones through better scheduling efficiency primarily, but also a plethora of other small factors. Additionally, larger airlines often have a huge backbone of low competition flights that could subsidize unprofitable ones. Since smaller, just starting airlines have only 20-50 planes, it's exceedingly easy for a player to use something like 100 of their OOB aircraft to ahilate the new player into bankruptcy, or slowing their growth to a crawl. Most players in fact choose this path over moving 100 OOB into a hub with another seasoned player as it's more profitable to do so. So OOB not only fails to protect new and less experienced players, but protects large established airlines from large attacks. So what's the point?

Infact, Airwaysim already has methods that help protect new players much more effectively. Geopolitics. Instead of trying to let smaller companies thrive in the world's most competitive markets like the US and EU, AWS already offers protection in smaller less popular countries. Some of which even have very solid demand, like iran, algeria, egypt, south africa, and many more. What AWS needs if for the largest markets to become much more cutthroat, as that is far more realistic. Think about the US IRL. Most smaller airlines have had to merge into larger ones to survive. This is because the free markets are brutal for all but the largest, or smartest competitors, which would be awesome if this were reflected in AWS. Instead, large markets tend to act as safe havens for anyone active in AWS as it's impossible for a fewer number of companies to occupy the whole market. For example, taking a brief look at my HATF world, roughly 20-30% of all airlines are based in the US, or 40-60/200. IRL, there are 59 airlines in the US, and over 5000 globally. That means ingame, the US houses 20-30% of airlines where it is just over 1% IRL. There is an enormous overrepresentation in the number of airlines surviving in what should be the most difficult market in the game since there isn't enough competitive pressure forcing bankruptcies. All of this is because there just isn't enough OOB.
Overall, OOB aims to fix certain issues like large player domination, and fleet size realism. However, it addresses large player domination poorly in a way that actually protects larger companies rather than smaller ones, whilst simultaneously making what should be the games hardest markets among rather easy. And fleet sizes in AWS are not unrealistic when adjusted for the inflated demand. OOB ends up taking away from gameplay challenges like dealing with large scale competition, and in some cases literally takes away all gameplay in a world.
I personally would love to see a world, perhaps labelled as hard where there is no OOB limit. This lets the largest markets actually become difficult challenges to survive in even for experienced players, and players can self-select their difficulty by playing in markets which suit their level of competition. If additionally played with higher than normal slot counts for the same demand, this could induce really fierce competition, not seen since gameworlds would have 600-700 players. Games would actually be a challenge since there were just so many people competing when this was the case, but with new worlds topping our around 300 players individual companies need a bigger share of the market to actually breed competition. I know this may not be everyone's favourite idea which is why maybe a good solution would be to limit unlocked OOB to a single world that was labelled HARD. The hope would be margins would actually be thin, and airlines always would be at risk of failure, like real life.

Anyways, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts, and thanks for reading if you got through this essay style rant

-Tungstennedge

[knobbygb]

I would tend to agree with you, but I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem limiting the game. Lack of pax CBD (promised around two years ago) and no proper mechanism to control pricing (described by Sami in a very  detailed thread over TEN years ago) would be my main complaints, but that's off-topic...

My main issue with OOB is that it doesn't grow big enough in shorter games.  In the current speed world it will only reach about 700 before the end of the game.  As long as it has  a maximum, it needs grow more quickly to reach that figure, say, 5 years before game-end in all cases.

In most cases, small players get 'crushed' because they make, let's say "questionable" strategic decisions. It's hard to say without sounding disrespectful, but there should be a limit to how many rules we have to 'protect' them. If a player gets the basics right, it is almost impossible for anybody to BK them in this game, regardless of where they are based. This is surely designed to be a cut-throat, aggressing game, or am I wrong?

I would be interested to see games with these 'experimental' suggestions thought - both unlimited OOB (maybe bases too) and other things people have been requesting for literally years.  I'd like to see some much more difficult games too.  Now that the servers seem powerful enough, I guess there wouldn't be an issue running more games.  There would be fewer people in the niche games anyway and, of course, it would use extra credits, benefitting Sami too.

[tungstennedge]

I would tend to agree with you, but I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem limiting the game. Lack of pax CBD (promised around two years ago) and no proper mechanism to control pricing (described by Sami in a very  detailed thread over TEN years ago) would be my main complaints, but that's off-topic...

My main issue with OOB is that it doesn't grow big enough in shorter games.  In the current speed world it will only reach about 700 before the end of the game.  As long as it has  a maximum, it needs grow more quickly to reach that figure, say, 5 years before game-end in all cases.

I would be interested to see games with these 'experimental' suggestions thought - both unlimited OOB (maybe bases too) and other things people have been requesting for literally years.  I'd like to see some much more difficult game too.  Now that the servers seem powerful enough, I guess there wouldn't be an issue running more games.  There would be fewer people in the niche games anyway and, of course, it would use extra credits, benefitting Sami too.

Yeah, I actually agree with you that no price control mechanism, and CBD pax are huge issues, but the way I see it is that development may be difficult for these features. Removing, or increasing OOB is a nearly instant fix and it would make works so much harder and more interesting in the snap of a finger compared to CBD pax deployment.

My hope is that this somewhat detailed account of how different aspects of the game are effected by OOB is mostly negative in exchange for very little positive so hopefully sami could atleast give this a trail run.

[Mr.HP]

I dont oppose your idea. But i would prefer if it comes with more options to compete against each other, so the most efficient airline prevails, not the biggest. That way big airline players will have more things to do than just creating routes and schedule them, here a few off the top of my head:
1. Ticket price. Both pax and cargo need to be more price sensitive, and cant be set low if not making money
2. Service offered
3. Nationalism. British should prefer a British airline than French airlines
4. Frequency over the clock, like airline A have 3 flights at 7, 8 and 9 am vs airline B have at 7 am, 1pm and 18pm. B must attract more pax than A
5. Landing slots. Imagine 100 planes land at 22h55 at LHR?
6. Maintenance cost dependence. Imagine how big your maintenance team/cost is if all A checks done on Monday 0000-0500?

[Cornishman]

100% agree with Knobby on this: 

"It's hard to say without sounding disrespectful, but there should be a limit to how many rules we have to 'protect' them. If a player gets the basics right, it is almost impossible for anybody to BK them in this game, regardless of where they are based."

[Sami]

Maybe we'll run the next Modern Times game without the limit, just to test?

[Tuckernut]

Your post could not be more timely.  For the first time today I received this error message.

My home base is ATL.  There are only scattered slots available and none scheduled for the foreseeable future so I have grown my airline through out bases.  All are profitable.  But now I am hamstrung with aircraft deliveries scheduled and I had planned to use them outside of ATL.

I am really stuck in a no win situation.  I have enjoyed the game I am in (Jet Age) but it is moving so slowly you have to scrounge for routes.  So I had a number of airplanes sitting unscheduled ay my outbases which I returned to ATL.  I thought this would release the error message by increasing the number of planes at my home base but no luck.  I still get the error message.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Tuckernut

[tungstennedge]

I would tend to agree with you, but I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem limiting the game. Lack of pax CBD (promised around two years ago) and no proper mechanism to control pricing (described by Sami in a very  detailed thread over TEN years ago) would be my main complaints, but that's off-topic...

My main issue with OOB is that it doesn't grow big enough in shorter games.  In the current speed world it will only reach about 700 before the end of the game.  As long as it has  a maximum, it needs grow more quickly to reach that figure, say, 5 years before game-end in all cases.

In most cases, small players get 'crushed' because they make, let's say "questionable" strategic decisions. It's hard to say without sounding disrespectful, but there should be a limit to how many rules we have to 'protect' them. If a player gets the basics right, it is almost impossible for anybody to BK them in this game, regardless of where they are based. This is surely designed to be a cut-throat, aggressing game, or am I wrong?

I would be interested to see games with these 'experimental' suggestions thought - both unlimited OOB (maybe bases too) and other things people have been requesting for literally years.  I'd like to see some much more difficult games too.  Now that the servers seem powerful enough, I guess there wouldn't be an issue running more games.  There would be fewer people in the niche games anyway and, of course, it would use extra credits, benefitting Sami too.

Smaller players getting crushed by bad strategy is definitely big reason for bankruptcy. For myself at least, when I see a small player say in Denver with 50 airplanes and only a 6% margin, and another player, in JFK with 250 planes and 20% margin, ofc me, and almost anyone would try to go win over the Denvers players marketshare. By adding 40-50 planes to their routes, they will fold and you will win over their marketshare.

I believe, that with unlimited OOB, while the small player in denver will still get smashed, unless the Newark playing is doing everything very optimally, flying up to date, and smaller long range planes like A332/787, using 757f/737/a321f, they could actually be a target too. It would be worth it to dump 3-400 planes to compete with him, since even if they dont die you would have had a fierce battle, and more importantly, you can actually do this without wasting you ever important OOB on a unprofitable battle where your opponents have just gone and killed every small guy instead. You could have done both.

[MuzhikRB]

you start in big base like LAX/ATL

you are great at at start - you own this base, got most slots at prime time. and because of it you are sitting on tons of money.
then there is no OOB, and you look at other big base like ATL - there were blood bath. competitors are not at good condition and one of them Bked recently.
and you just spam all slots with unlimited resources you have already on hand.
and every new slot drop in LAX or ATL you will do the same. and may be in ORD too - cause the only limit you will have is time and amount of bases.

so - what competition level you will bring to AWS with no OOB limit? to spend 20 hours in game just to have chance to protect yourself from some lucky big boy ?

IRL there are plenty of Anti-Monopoly/Anti-Trust acts that regulates this aspect of domination.
In AWS it is mostly covered by OOB.
I dont see any reason to remove game balance feature without creating substitute for it to avoid mega domination companies.

[schlaf]

Maybe we'll run the next Modern Times game without the limit, just to test?

I would like a gameworld like that!!!!!

[tungstennedge]

you start in big base like LAX/ATL

you are great at at start - you own this base, got most slots at prime time. and because of it you are sitting on tons of money.
then there is no OOB, and you look at other big base like ATL - there were blood bath. competitors are not at good condition and one of them Bked recently.
and you just spam all slots with unlimited resources you have already on hand.
and every new slot drop in LAX or ATL you will do the same. and may be in ORD too - cause the only limit you will have is time and amount of bases.

so - what competition level you will bring to AWS with no OOB limit? to spend 20 hours in game just to have chance to protect yourself from some lucky big boy ?

IRL there are plenty of Anti-Monopoly/Anti-Trust acts that regulates this aspect of domination.
In AWS it is mostly covered by OOB.
I dont see any reason to remove game balance feature without creating substitute for it to avoid mega domination companies.

I feel like this is why not all worlds should have unlimited OOB as of-course not everyone agrees with it. But keep in mind there is enormous selection bias here. People who keep playing this game and posting on this forum and discord are likely players that are already ok with the state of the game as is.

There have been a couple people I tried to introduce this game to who played successfully but became bored immediately after filling their OOB. Other people enjoy doing specific challenges or smaller goals and of course enjoy the game as is. All I'm saying is that there are players who dont like OOB, plently of them and its such an easy aspect of the game to change, and also could be different between worlds to accomodate more kinds of players.

Also, there is a ton of truth in what you said about slots protecting a lucky few. This is definitely a problem, which there are solutions too but the game will likely never see. But for now, simular to real life, some lucky airline will get protection from slot limitations in major airports. However, this also only effects the airports in the world with the largest demand pools, as unless the slot multiplier is set as unreasonably low as in HATF, most airports, even ORD/Dallas tier airports are not significantly limited by slots in the latter years, as there is more that enough to 2x demand. Only ALT, LHR, and LAX can consistently achieve full slot locks, (and LAX because of its very specific need for good timing windows, and high cargo demand), and with 2.0 slot multipliers which I remember seeing in pervious AG games even LHR did not manage to slot lock with 1,7x oversupply in pax, and world#1 cargo. In a world like that even the biggest players in LAX, ATL, and LHR could be severely hurt by a well executed attack.

[Todorojoz]

If this feature goes away (oob), then we really need to be able to change HQs. New airlines won't be able to get into any large airports at all a few years into a GW. But the ability to start in a smaller airport and build up while waiting for space in a larger airport would become very important I would think. Granted, with no OOB you might think it less important, I would disagree. Some times a base like Kansas City just won't work well with similar fleets to a base like LAX or ATL.

[tungstennedge]

Yeah i expect every mid america airport except dallas to be impossible without mediums.

[Cornishman]

If this feature goes away (oob), then we really need to be able to change HQs. New airlines won't be able to get into any large airports at all a few years into a GW. But the ability to start in a smaller airport and build up while waiting for space in a larger airport would become very important I would think. Granted, with no OOB you might think it less important, I would disagree. Some times a base like Kansas City just won't work well with similar fleets to a base like LAX or ATL.

100% Support this - always have !

[knobbygb]

Another thing to consider - towards the end of a game the number of players usually drops significantly.  Where the long games often start with 300 to 500 players, they often finish with fewer than 100.  This is an issue in itself (introducing features to tempt people to play to the end) but it does contribute to an argument for higher/unlimited OOB too. There is often a LOT of untapped demand right at the end of a game, even (especially!) in the V.Large airports.

[gazzz0x2z]

Another thing to consider - towards the end of a game the number of players usually drops significantly.  Where the long games often start with 300 to 500 players, they often finish with fewer than 100.  This is an issue in itself (introducing features to tempt people to play to the end) but it does contribute to an argument for higher/unlimited OOB too. There is often a LOT of untapped demand right at the end of a game, even (especially!) in the V.Large airports.

I have tough times finding the Mojo to fill Hurghada in current modern times, even though I've got the birds & the OOB. I'm pretty dure there is a lot of untapped demand in Cairo & Sharm, too, last tim I filled those airports was 20 game years ago...

EDIT : here the purpose is to go up from 40th to 35th place, without any local opposition. Not very motivating anyways. I would not be concerned with the OOB modification.

OTOH, in my current HaTF, I've got 10 small bases in France. With the upcoming A140s & others, I'm gonna hit the limit again. I'll probably more or less fill the aiports, but barely. I4m hitting a double limit : number of airports and OOB. That's what's happening when you're playing a tiny HQ. Probably makes the harsh commonality rules even more important.

[konchr]

From what I read, there is demand for a game with:

1. No OOB aircraft limit (but keep country limitations)
2. Reduced demand for pax AND cargo
3. Lower prices and higher price sensitivity

Basically a free-for-all game world for huge airlines (which is how the real world works)

Bring it on!
All in favor say Aye

[gazzz0x2z]

From what I read, there is demand for a game with:

1. No OOB aircraft limit (but keep country limitations)
2. Reduced demand for pax AND cargo
3. Lower prices and higher price sensitivity

Basically a free-for-all game world for huge airlines (which is how the real world works)

Bring it on!
All in favor say Aye

I never saw a game in "Hard" setting, only "easy" or "normal". Could be the opportunity to create a new difficulty level.

[schro]

I never saw a game in "Hard" setting, only "easy" or "normal". Could be the opportunity to create a new difficulty level.

Last time there was a hard game, if I recall correctly, a proper fuel spike cleared the entire playing field out and pretty much everyone quit.

[Todorojoz]

Last time there was a hard game, if I recall correctly, a proper fuel spike cleared the entire playing field out and pretty much everyone quit.

That would be amazing! 😄