Topics

1

Suggestions / Purchasing aircraft

« on: April 26, 2013, 11:31:05 pm »

I am an avid fan of the game but i notice three things that differ from reality one i think may have been mentioned before the others i don't think it has.

The first, is that at the moment i can order around 150 planes and then receive them all in 48 game days this would mean that the manufacturer was making just over three planes per day, this is an extreme rate of construction, therefore staggered deliveries from day 48 would better replicate how planes were made, even if it was one plane every 2 days or something until the order was fulfilled.

The Second is that when a there is a highly competitive world with many airlines all making large amounts of money, 2 airlines could in theory order 250 boeing 737s each, a total of 500 assuming only these 2 operators order these planes would arrive in 48 days as stated under point 1, however in 2012 boeing produced only 415 in the whole year, this would leave a further 85 planes to be constructed in 2013. When the 2 airlines order they expect to receive the first plane as soon as possible. Therefore i suggest that an order queue is created along with the staggered delivery so that airlines need to wait until the order they placed is looked at and is started. This isn't to say that the second airline from the example has to wait until all 250 planes have been built but that a mesh is made where it alternates between airlines so that the average waiting time is low.

The third and final point is that currently the release date of an aircraft is when it went into full scale production, however, the manufacturers spend years developing aircraft and the airlines know about it and will order the aircraft from the manufacturers before the plane has flown. I therefore suggest that a variable scale is applied to aircraft of X years before the current order date, in which time airlines can order but not receive planes. I envision it being based on the size of the aircraft just like the build time is.

2

Suggestions / Terminal Capacity

« on: August 19, 2012, 01:21:18 pm »

I think it is kind of unrealistic with the way that the terminals work. Firstly the airports don't have the correct number of gates, but this isn't a huge problem. What, in my opinion, is, is the second reason; that all the airports have infinite capacity it would appear if an operator has a little bit of money. To add 66 gates to Heathrow with the construction of Terminal 5 cost £4.2 Billion (€5.3 Billion) The current cost to add a similar amount of gates is nowhere near that. So 2 suggestions I would make are as follows:

1) Each airport has a fund that any airline can add to and when it gets to certain points construction begins on a new terminal and this takes a period of time upwards of 1.5 years. The gates from this construction are then available to everyone to rent.

2) When you want to own gates without paying the rent fee, currently by building a terminal, you by the gate from the airport instead. If you have added to the fund to build the new gates mentioned in point 1 then aslong as some of the gate remain to buy then you can get them at a reduced rate.

A third point that would not need to be made but might benefit the game is:

3) Gates have a time limit at them which is used by the turn around + 30mins per aircraft. e.g. a gate might have 20 hours and you have a plane with turnaround time of 0.5 hours add onto this the 0.5 hours extra then you can land that plane 20 times for that gate. (Needs work)

3

Suggestions / Stop Overs

« on: September 16, 2011, 12:58:55 am »

I think that it should be possible for aircraft to stop at airports on a route so that a plane can still get to its destination.

4

Suggestions / End of Leasing

« on: July 31, 2011, 12:33:46 am »

I think that it may be useful for some airlines that when they lease an aircraft they can have the option to buy it when it comes off lease, and keep the routes with it. This would be an option that the owner can set and they can reserve the right to cancel the option to sell if they wish but must pay €1.5 mil to the leaser for inconvienece if they do cancel. When the owner puts it up for lease they have an extra entry field in which they put the sale price at the end of the lease. The leaser has the option to choose if they want to buy it after or just lease and return they too can change their mind but must pay the owner for inconvience.

Your thoughts please 
 

5

Suggestions / Hot swapping ideas

« on: July 25, 2011, 08:14:35 pm »

I just had this though about how hot swapping could be done, i don't know if you are working on it at the moment or not but just wanted to let people know. It is quite a primitive system, basically when you view an individual aircraft by clicking its number there would be some extra options 1 for each route the is operated by the aircraft the second and third are on the right hand side in the infos bit by the sell and lease options. The option by each of the routes is "save route" the options on the right hand side are " save all routes" and " load routes basically when you click the save route button or the save all routes they are entered into some kind of storage system that saves route, frequency, ticket price and flight number etc altogether, and hot links it to the plane they were saved from as a permanent connection so that if you have to alter the frequency, ticket price etc it will remember the changes without you needing to do this. The hot link feature could be a premium feature if need be. Also when you click the close route or close all routes buttons as well as recreate route there would be an option to save route so you can close and save simultaneously. When you click the "load routes button" you get a list of every route on this menu there is a colour code of 4 colours Green means you can add it, Red means you can't, Orange means It is assigned to another aircraft but can't be used and Blue means it is assigned to another aircraft but can be used by this aircraft. Each flight has a square tick box in front of it not a round select box and as you tick each one it removes the amount of time spare that the aircraft has and as this happens the other flights change colour accordingly once you are happy with what you have selected you select Load at the bottom and the flights are transfered to the plane. A method of organisation could also be put in so that you can set it so you only view certain routes or routes from certain planes etc. 

Once again sorry for long post, if you want me to clarify anything just say and i will try my best.

6

Suggestions / Cargo Idea

« on: July 25, 2011, 07:19:03 pm »

Just as a possibility there was at one point a plan to CONVERT a320 and a321 passenger jets into a freighter version although never finished because of high demand for the frames you may want to consider that when you have implemented the freight system you could set up a system in which an owner of a plane can convert their jet from freight to passenger or passenger to freight for a sum of money as some people might have bought an aircraft a while ago and realised it isn't needed but don't want to spend all the money on a brand new freight plane when they can convert them to cargo. I know it would be a painstaking task to work out how much cargo each plane could carry but it could be possible to base it on the number of passengers or the size of the plane, i dunno though

7

Suggestions / Ranking system

« on: July 24, 2011, 11:39:41 am »

I think that the continental ranking system could be improved by displaying all airlines that operate on that continent but only include the flights that arrive or depart on that continent not those from others.

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[+] Suggestions / [+] A few suggestions

« on: July 07, 2011, 09:43:00 pm »

Warning This Post is Long
I have coloured each idea to break it into easy sections.

1) I think that the the sale and leasing could be made more realistic in a couple of ways:

i) A negotiation feature could be implemented in which the 2 parties involved work out what price it should be leased at this could be done in 2 ways:

a) the leasee fills in a form of a couple of things such as the approximate number of passengers at the airport at which it would be based and how much they think they could make daily the system could then suggest a price range in which the leasor should base their pricing when offered the leasee would be told whether the price offered is below in or above the range that the computer suggested.

b) when the two parties start the negotiation the system looks at a number of factors e.g. airline value and number of daily passengers and then it suggests a suitable range again the leasee will see if it is below, in or above the range.

ii) Sales and leases should be done round a contract system this is in 3 major parts:

a)When a contract is designed the owner of the aircraft can either pre-sign it or they can sign it after the buyer if the first is chosen the plane will go straight to the buyer/bidder if the second is chosen then the owner can decline the sale/lease of the aircraft but could agree to it for another airline

b)When an aircraft is sold or leased it may not be at the airport that it will serve from there for i think that an aircraft should have some kind of basic log that remembers where it was flown from most on its previous routes (e.g lets that a plane has been with an airline for 2 years and has had 1 change in the routes so in the first year it flew only from LHR but in the second it flew one flight from LHR and the rest from CDG therefore it would be based at CDG not LHR.) this would mean that the aircraft may need to be transported from one airport to another in the contract the owner could specify if they will provide transport or if the buyer/bidder must provide their own transport of the AC. If the owner provides transport it will cost more initially but if the buyer/bidder provides transport then it could cost more it would be upto the owner.

c)The owner could put a clause in that means that when someone buys or leases an AC the owner could demand it back at any point if sold the owner has only a couple of months (game months) to reclaim it but if leased the owner could have it back whenever they wish but they would need to give a couple of months (game months) notice to the owner so they can make preparations for the return of the route. This is an option that would be part of the contract and therefore if signed by both parties it should have minimal problems, if however this option is not selected it should still be possible to ask for it back but this would need the consent of both parties and if aggreed the same process applies but the buyer/bidder does not have to agree if they want to keep the AC in operation.

2) This next idea would rely on hot swapping being implemented it would be a function most likely premium due to the sofistication called Fleet optimization, this would review all your aircraft and work out if there was any way to increase the number of spare planes i.e. take routes away from planes and re-assign them to other planes so that the number of planes with 24 hours of free time is increased, it would also try not to lower the DOC and prompt you if you can free planes but decrease DOC, when run it would have a couple of settings:

i) All Aircraft - this would look at every aircraft and work out the best way to change the routes around it might mean routes run by a Bombardier CRJ 200 are transfered to a Boeing 767

ii)Family Specific -this would look at aircraft families such as the airbus a320 family which is made of a318s a319s a320s and a321s and it would then do the same process but you wouldn't get a route moving from an a320 to boeing 767 as they are not the same family. Families would be variants within a model e.g 747-400 and 747-100 would be the same family.

iii) Fleet Specific - This would look at your custom fleets and sorts within those with no overlap occurring between fleets if you have no fleets it is the same as all aircraft.

iv) Custom - This would let you select which exact aircraft to switch between e.g. you have 5 of every type of basic 737 i.e. 737-100 to 737-900 you may only want to switch between your -900 and -800 so you can select those options

3) I think that there should be a customer perception of your business this would be based on things like the number of destinations, the price of tickets (in comparison to competitors this is not like loadfactor as although you might have a full plane you may be charging €500 and your competiors only €200 so customers would perfer them to you) If you have a terminal then customers may be happier as they know that it belongs to your airline and isn't split with other operators, the age of the plane the older they are the less well received they are and the type of plane as some people may like a roomy 737 to a small ATR (just an example) all of these would affect your company image which could have an effect on your company value.

4) Maintenance of the plane as i have said in previous topics this is an annoyance for me my suggestions to improve this are as follows

i) each aircraft has it's own maintenance cost this increases slowly and steadily whilst it is still in production but a few years after production stops the price climbs much fast as parts are harder to source a message could be sent to the owner to inform them that the plane will go out of production the next year rather than messaging about each plane indiviually it will be a single message either stating the number or listing each plane number.

ii) at your hangers you could bring in the concept of contracting staff i.e you can choose a company that provides your maintenance depending on 4 areas quality(how well it is done), cost(how much it costs), appearence (the condition that the plane is left in this affects customer rating (see point 3)) and ethicalness ( how the workers are treated this affects customer rating (see point 3)). You could get Very High Quality, Very High Cost, Very High Appearence and Very High ethicalness all the way down All Very Low with different suppliers providing different options that can fluctuate over time

5) Marketing this is a section that allows you to advertise in different ways i.e radio, TV, newspaer etc each one costs a different amount, has a different quality and will do various things. The quality is like asking how much is to be spent from very low budget to very high budget with some outlets overlapping in price. When you have decided what type of advert and the budget for it you can then choose the run time in months all of this is calculated and a quote is given if this is too high you can go back and alter parts when you are happy with you advert you can buy it at the same time as the quote is given a percentage is also quoted this could be any size including negative this percentage is the affect that the adverts will have on your prices when you start the campaign ALL your prices increase by this much with no change to your airline there may be changes to other airlines but what ever seems fair i guess.

I know they are complicated and would be difficult to implement but i think they would make the game more realistic. Sorry for making it SO long.

9

[+] Suggestions / Making a world

« on: June 08, 2011, 01:33:54 pm »

I have just spent loads of my tokens on making world that is wrong and i did not intend to do this, instead of selecting the very large world i selected the smallest option thinking that it would mean that i would have loads of airports including tiny airports i was obviously wrong, there was no explanation as to what each option meant and so confusion ensued my idea is that when you put your cursor over the name of a world/map on the creation page it will tell you what is there i.e x number of airports etc. i am annoyed and would quite like my 366 tokens back

10

[=] Suggestions / New departures and arrivals board

« on: June 07, 2011, 10:34:07 pm »

This is a different way of displaying the aircraft that arrive and depart an airport, as they are not live boards which reflect the next flight to arrive/depart could they not show the place and then each of the planes that land are on that route and their frequnce if that makes snese?

11

[-] Suggestions / Flight planning

« on: May 28, 2011, 02:05:15 pm »

this is just an idea but i think it would be useful if there was a map which had every airport on it and you could select one of your bases from a list then type in the range of your aircraft and it would hide every airport that could not be reached this will help as you can see which airports can be reached rather than just one at a time as the route research does other filters could be enabled such as minimum passenger number and runway length (when/ifit is in use)


Cue criticism from virgin serbia about how dificult this would be

12

[-] Suggestions / Buying Aircraft

« on: May 21, 2011, 12:03:51 am »

In the real world when you buy an aircraft from a manufacturer you negotiate number of seats engine type etc, i know some of this is WIP but something that it may be possible to implement is the negotiation of the price of the aircraft with existing customers of the manufacturer having a greater say. The way it could work is that you suggest a price to the maker for x number of orders and y number of options with specs A,B,C... the value is compared to the base price for this aircraft and then depending on variables such as if you are an existing customer size of your airline etc a price is suggested by the maker for example.

E.G you place a offer of €500(each) for 10 737-400s, this is hugely too little and would upset the manufacturer who would retaliate with €80,000,000(each) which is about €16,000,000 greater than brand new.

If you were to put a more reasonable offer on then they will either accept that value or they might make an offer which is less than the asking price but greater than your offer. The ability to have options may serve some airlines useful as they may find that the aircraft they ordered wasn't as good as they had expected e.g a 747 makes less money on some transatlantic routes when compared to a 767. so if they had options for both they don't need to commit to both types and therefore save time and money to build their routes.

13

[-] Suggestions / Aircraft Age

« on: May 20, 2011, 06:29:18 pm »

I am not sure if this has been suggested yet, but the idea is that when an aircraft reaches a certain number of cycles or miles it should be scrapped, if you decide not to replace it you will incur fines from a body such as the CAA for operating an aircraft that is unsafe as this is what would happen in real life if you continued to operate an aircraft that is over it's recommended number of cycles. This could in theory lead to an ability to implement crashes which would only happen after an extended period in the danger zone and therefore not effect new players unless they decide to buy an old plane and then run it beyond the limit in which case it would be their fault for the incident if they don't replace the plane. If i plane is over the max number of cycles then it should not be possible to buy on the market and must be sold for scrap. A fine should be imposed per flight the plane makes depending on several variables possible ones would be, Number of passengers on board, the fare, the distance and how far over the cycle limit the plane is.

14

[=] Suggestions / Route making

« on: May 02, 2011, 07:53:13 pm »

I am in the middle of replacing my fleet of Boeing 737-200s with the Airbus A320-200 the problem is that i also have other aircraft that have maybe 1 or 2 hours to go but no routes to put them on and these always come before my new aircraft with 24 hours left this means i am constantly scrolling down i think that it may help if you put some kind of filter on that menu so that you can set what types of plane to show. the two categories could be Manufacturer e.g. airbus, boeing, bombardier etc. and Frequency greater than 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 etc this would eliminate aircraft that you don't want and if it was set to remember what your filter settings were and then forget them when you log off it would mean you won't have to keep inputting the settings.

15

[=] Suggestions / Customer Perks

« on: January 06, 2011, 06:10:05 pm »

I have an idea that may be pointless but might have potential for improvement. Essentially it would be that an airline can receive perks from manufacturers that might give advantages on certain routes. Ideas i have are Launch customer (when you are the first person to purchase an aircraft) this could give you an increase in your company value as long as those aircraft are still in your fleet, Largest operator of X plane this could lead to incrased profitability on domestic routes i.e flights less than 250 nm.