New Game World

[Grahame Air]

Is anything new starting soon?

[Sami]

I will put up a quick vote here tomorrow on the topic. It's either a Speed World, or some other theme game like a "Regional Challenge" or "LongHaul Challenge".

[Mr.HP]

Remind me again, does LH/regional challenge mean only VL / medium AC available?

[Amelie090904]

Last time, LH challenge meant no demand below 2000NM. Regional Challenge meant no planes with more than 100 seats and do demand beyond 2000NM iirc.

[Todorojoz]

Would still be cool to have a Hard Difficulty game. Lower the amount of demand available a bit. Tighten the finances. Open up the rules to make it a complete bloodfest. Needs to be long enough to force a fleet transition if possible. Maybe no 4th fleet penalty.

By opening up the rules, I mean more just let airlines do whatever they do so long as they stay in business.

[tungstennedge]

Would still be cool to have a Hard Difficulty game. Lower the amount of demand available a bit. Tighten the finances. Open up the rules to make it a complete bloodfest. Needs to be long enough to force a fleet transition if possible. Maybe no 4th fleet penalty.

By opening up the rules, I mean more just let airlines do whatever they do so long as they stay in business.

Wow I actually love this idea. The penalties of commonality have never quite made sense in this game, would be way more interesting if we could use more fleets, but got specifically rewarded for using less fleets. (per unit maintenance and crew costs lowered as there is more flexibility in operations), when just using one fleet. Making the margins lower would also stop rampant oversupply in nonsense manners and make picking the right planes for each job actually meaningful.

An unlimited OOB speedworld would also be terrific fun.

[Mr.HP]

I second a Hard difficulty game, and some of the below setting can make the game much harder:
- Lower default price -> lower margin
- RI increase slower
- Shorter D check (5-6 years)
- Fuel spikes, both in frequency and the impact
- More huge impact events like the 9/11 (like once every 10 year) which last > 6 months, and demand drop by 50%
- Open up the limit of loan to like 50% of airline value, but higher loan rate. Loan rate increases more depend on how much loan you have. So airline can survive the events, but any inefficient airlines will be caught from the loan rate and BK eventually

Also, remove the 4th fleet penalty, but any extra fleet from 1 will add some % overhead cost. It's to encourage airlines to be efficient, but not as a way to kill any airlines that cost the line

But I think it's better to make a short game world, to gather opinion and adjust parameters before doing an epic length Hard mode game world

[SP7]

I second a Hard difficulty game, and some of the below setting can make the game much harder:
- Lower default price -> lower margin
- RI increase slower
- Shorter D check (5-6 years)
- Fuel spikes, both in frequency and the impact
- More huge impact events like the 9/11 (like once every 10 year) which last > 6 months, and demand drop by 50%
- Open up the limit of loan to like 50% of airline value, but higher loan rate. Loan rate increases more depend on how much loan you have. So airline can survive the events, but any inefficient airlines will be caught from the loan rate and BK eventually

Also, remove the 4th fleet penalty, but any extra fleet from 1 will add some % overhead cost. It's to encourage airlines to be efficient, but not as a way to kill any airlines that cost the line

But I think it's better to make a short game world, to gather opinion and adjust parameters before doing an epic length Hard mode game world

While I think a hard world would be funny to watch as a spectator I don't think it would be a good world.


All of these Hard Mode rules you have would actually make the game easier for the top players. They're all anti-competitive, once someone establishes a monopoly it will be impossible to dislodge. Once a player BKs they have no chance to challenge a well run airline with a RI lead. Random events won't matter if you can get billions of dollars in loans.

[tungstennedge]

While I think a hard world would be funny to watch as a spectator I don't think it would be a good world.


All of these Hard Mode rules you have would actually make the game easier for the top players. They're all anti-competitive, once someone establishes a monopoly it will be impossible to dislodge. Once a player BKs they have no chance to challenge a well run airline with a RI lead. Random events won't matter if you can get billions of dollars in loans.

Come to think of it this is actually true. Funnily enough, the best way to make a world hard is to make all routes start at 100 image, and have significantly higher slot counts. This would make starting up easy, and excelling in a world like this would actually take having the best operational efficiency in the markets that you serve to succeed. I still would like to see margins lowered however, if not for pax for cargo since it really doesn't make sense the load factors cargo makes profit at. Most cargo planes breakeven at 20% and by 30% they make more than a pax plane could dream of.

[Mr.HP]

While I think a hard world would be funny to watch as a spectator I don't think it would be a good world.


All of these Hard Mode rules you have would actually make the game easier for the top players. They're all anti-competitive, once someone establishes a monopoly it will be impossible to dislodge. Once a player BKs they have no chance to challenge a well run airline with a RI lead. Random events won't matter if you can get billions of dollars in loans.

Well, now I think again, what you said make sense. Do you have any idea that make challanging a well established airline more doable?

I suggested the slot daily fee. The bigger you are, the more you pay. That will make mega airlines more vulnerable. But seem noone thinks its a good idea

[gazzz0x2z]

the most realistic way would be dividend. Alas, it might prove tricky to balance. Probably easy to code (and I'm not even sure of that, it depends on many things outside my knowledge), but a nightmare to balance properly.

[Meddix]

Well certainly would like to try something different.

Hard difficulty game sounds nice.
A hard game could also be such a tight budget that you need to start with small planes first. Enough transitions necessary before you end up with VL planes

A regional game could also be nice. EG in the US in combination with alliances of max 4-5 players.
Which alliance is able to control the US, no OoB and no base limits

[SP7]

Well, now I think again, what you said make sense. Do you have any idea that make challanging a well established airline more doable?

I suggested the slot daily fee. The bigger you are, the more you pay. That will make mega airlines more vulnerable. But seem noone thinks its a good idea

I don't think i can come up with a hard mode that would be popular. At the end of the day most (70-80%) of the people playing do so out of a casual desire for escape and fun. In essence any of the non-beginner game worlds is already a hard mode as there's a group of 20% of the players who could potentially build huge airlines given the opportunity and desire. People play the game with different motivations, you can always create your own hard mode by restarting in the HQ of the biggest/most profitable airline and running nothing but russian planes for example.


But if i'm forced to think about it i would do this:

Regional Challenge "Data Missing" - Timeframe: 2015-2035. Very well stocked UM - medium airplanes only, no Fokker 120NG, Penalties for more than 2 fleets. No OOB, 10 base restriction. All airports start at infra 7 with 4.0 Slot multiplier - good luck slot locking (also removes the putative monopoly fees that are impossible to pay with mediums). Tax rate for all countries: 25% - no more tax evasion.

0 demand in the following countries - To/From and internal

• USA
• China
• Japan
• England
• France
• Germany
• Spain
• Italy

Purposely left some popular high demand trunk routes in (Turkey, Brazil, Australia) for people to fight over. Cargo is removed from consideration as the high cargo countries don't exist and medium cargo planes are bad. Since I killed off the most popular base countries I expect that a lot of the challenge would be to explore where demand is in the rest of the world.

I don't think anything in here would require additional coding, just some behind the scenes database changes.

[Sami]

I will put up a quick vote here tomorrow on the topic.

Tomorrow that is. Was a busy day today. 

And thanks for the comments and ideas too.

[Todorojoz]

A Hard game world would be intended to be hard. So realistically is would be a world for the upper half of airline managers to battle it out. It's not intended for a novice to be able to jump in any time and easily survive. So I am not sure how making it tougher with some of the suggestions would benefit the better airlines when, the better airlines is who the GW is intended for.

And hopefully it would attract a bunch of people who want to test themselves against the best under tough circumstances rather than be able to always avoid the best airlines because they are all spread out in 3 Epic GWs and a few other GWs at their own individual massive hubs.