Messages

1

General Chat / Concerning €1 Routes

« on: January 15, 2008, 01:09:03 pm »

Oh that was you.  What I meant by stupid is that you can be a terrible player in the game and you still won't go bankrupt.  On many routes, you can have a price of $5 per route and you still make a few bucks.  It's essentially pretty much impossible to lose in the game because of your play.  That's why it is quasi-competitive.  It's not a matter of if you can make money or not, but more a matter of how much more money you can make.  I'm sure most airline execs wish they were in an industry like this.  Their industry is hardly quasi-competitive.  It's quite cut throat.

2

General Chat / What's Your DOP?

« on: January 15, 2008, 01:06:02 pm »

"Did you hear me? This conversation is OVER!! Especially if you dont want the mods locking this thread. Mad"

nwaboy,

   You don't control what people say on this or any other forum.  Should you feel that I've made a personal insult, then feel free to contact the moderators.  Otherwise, I'm perfectly fine in making comments around what you or anyone else says in this forum.  If you don't like people pointing out how you're using a highly less than optimal game strategy, then you might want to either not post or choose another strategy.  Get used to it my boy.  It's called free speech.  

3

General Chat / Concerning €1 Routes

« on: January 15, 2008, 01:01:34 pm »

"Like Pacific said, this is a competitive game. If you don't like competitiveness, LEAVE!!"

It's quasi-competitive.  The only real way to go bankrupt in the game it stop logging in.  People can do very stupid things like have low DOP's and sit around for days saving up to get a 732 on some failed impression that it is a good thing to do and still stay in the game.  When the game punishes people for doing things that are stupid then it will be fully competitive.

4

General Chat / The Accelerated Price Drop strategy

« on: January 14, 2008, 09:42:10 pm »

DOP.  Sorry, been watching the presidential race too much.

5

General Chat / What's Your DOP?

« on: January 14, 2008, 09:26:10 pm »

"i correct myself: it will be 1/3 as long next time, then 1/4 as long, etc. still a lot better than before. Razz

and you know what, my strategy seems to be working just fine for me, so this conversation is over. Cool"

Well the game is so easy that anyone on here can have a positive DOP.  Even people who play strategies that are highly less than optimal can do well.  In this case, as I pointed out very conservatively, your decision cost you $45M and your DOP is 1/2 what it would be otherwise, not including the planes that you could have bought/leased.  I guess there is a reason why some of us wake up in the morning and have to figure out what to do with half a billion of capital and then others waste capital by tying it up in some emotional quest for a brand name plane.

6

General Chat / The Accelerated Price Drop strategy

« on: January 14, 2008, 03:56:49 am »

Yeah, and then you end up getting nothing from the route because your competitors drop the price after you do.  Do what you want, but again, there's a reason why some of us have a ton of money and GOP and others have little.

7

General Chat / What's Your DOP?

« on: January 14, 2008, 03:54:02 am »

Exponential?  Sure.  Perhaps you might want to listen to those who have a higher DOP than the 737 you so covet.  I just explained how you lost $45M you could have had and you are making a much smaller amount with it than you would have otherwise.  Everyone else has the same exponential growth as you are.  The difference is, I just overed 6 of the advanced 737's and will order 6-12 more tomorrow morning.  You will have enough for it in a few days.  Who do you think has the better strategy?

Good luck with it.  By the time you get a decent DOP, all of the routes will be completely saturated.

Instead of focusing on your false exponential growth idea, I'd focus more on the time value of money and opportunity cost of tying capital up in non-revenue generating ventures.

8

General Chat / What's Your DOP?

« on: January 14, 2008, 12:53:27 am »

told ya this would happen...

pre-737: ~$360,000
post-737: $846,037 Very Happy

Hahahaha, you have a DOP that low and you saved up for a 737?  Just so you know, that's probably the weakest growth strategy that I've seen in the game.  Assuming that you get 20 days of profit per month, you could have added 5 $7 short range planes before you even ordered the 737.  Assuming that you get $150k (highly conservative) for each one of these planes, you have lost...

(5+4+3+2+1) * 20 * $150k or $45,000,000 in profit to this point.  Also, you'd be at $1,100,000+ DOP right now excluding what you'd have by using that $45M in profit to lease planes and increase your profit.  

As a small airline tying up capital instead of leveraging yourself leads you to abysmal growth, not to mention boredom as you have nothing to do for days while you save up.

I don't think I ordered a 737 until I had a DOP of $20M

9

General Chat / The Accelerated Price Drop strategy

« on: January 14, 2008, 12:48:13 am »

"me too. if the lowest fare on a route is, say, $500, i always do $499 fare. Twisted Evil"

Which is stupid, btw.  Your competitors just reduce it to 498 and then another goes to 497, etc.  Reducing it to a point where the market can handle the number of planes is the only way to go.  Otherwise, you're just playing poorly.

10

General Chat / The Accelerated Price Drop strategy

« on: January 13, 2008, 05:26:20 pm »

"Recently, I tinkered around with €1 fares because I was bored - but I learnt something significant from it. The base demand for passengers between 2 airports actually increases the lower the prices go. So despite the €1 undercutting, an equilibrium will eventually be reached. So to reduce the effort resetting the same routes over and over again, start undercutting by €20 or more so that the equilibrium is reached quickly, instead of painfully €1 by €1. "

Yes, that is the basic law of demand.  In reality, airline routes will, in the long term, adjust to the highest price that airlines can get based on demand, their capacity and the market capacity.  Dropping prices by $1 is silly.  The good players match the prices to the lowered value of their competitors when they bring in larger aircraft or drop it to a price where the market will roughly sustain the demand.  Nice you're seeing this.  It's fun messing with the less intelligent players who don't get this.  I have one guy who'll put an argosy commuter on one of my routes with 3 routes per day.  I take my single drop cheap as hell aircraft and quickly drive the market price to nothing.  He's too foolish to listen to my advice, so I'll let him enjoy the <$100 DOP he'll get from that plane.

11

General Chat / Concerning €1 Routes

« on: January 12, 2008, 09:21:08 pm »

Perhaps you guys can move to asia.  Thanks to people like Nihon Kokuritsu Koku・日本国立 you've got poorly run airlines by people who don't have the wherewithal to understand economics who are driving prices to that level simply because they're too lazy to set up more than one route per plane.

12

General Chat / Fleet Uniformity

« on: January 12, 2008, 04:03:32 pm »

As long as you realize that a fleet of planes that small means you won't be in the top players in the game have at it.

13

General Chat / Gates Tagged for Return

« on: January 12, 2008, 03:58:09 pm »

Gates get tagged for return when you're absolutely not using them from my understanding.  Probably stops maniacs like me from renting all of the gates in my hub to stop competition.

14

General Chat / Boeing 747

« on: January 12, 2008, 04:04:49 am »

Well it flies at the same speed as your 30M plane.  It does carry 4x the passengers, although as you fly more passengers in the route you end up with a lower price per passenger.  You would need to get roughly 2.x the price per ticket per mile on a 742 to get the same economic return.  That's excluding what you would have made had you ordered 10 737's and had them for two days while this was being built.  You will also end up leasing a gate just for this and not using it for anything else at your destination.

15

General Chat / Fleet Uniformity

« on: January 12, 2008, 02:43:11 am »

100 planes that small?  You must have a ton of time on your hands.  

"The old manager of Jet European who handed his airline to me was very much into uniformity with his fleet. I plan to continue this"

So when you see good deals on used planes and leased planes you're going to pass up on them and wait for a day for the sake of conformity when it in and of itself really provides no cost savings?