To-Do list
Always first and foremost, always... always any bug fix of material impact.
Key:
High Priority: Additions which will significantly change the gameplay and the easeness/hardness of running a airline.
Medium Priority: Additions which won't really be important, but will help in the easeness of running a airline.
Low Priority: Additions which will not be seen in the near future due to no major significance to gameplay.
Big Five: (Unfortunately, the reason most big suggestions are being pushed back, even if we love them)
#1. Hotswapping aircraft - Hotswapping aircraft (changing the aircraft, without having to close and reopen the route). This will bring a welcome addition which will dramatically reduce the time which you take to change an aircraft on an route.
#2. Order books - We need some way, production side, to slow the game down a bit. Trust me, we will not be going to the extreme of a few of our competitors, however the days of receiving 100 aircraft in the same day from the same manufacturer are likely numbered.
#3. Edit Route Update - A method to update multiple routes at once, in a simple clean interface.
#4. Multi-class seating - I have portions of this sorted out in my head, in fact most all of it except for the direct ways it affects the loadfactor scripts.
#5. Further measures to correct the excessive speed which the game's economy has hit. in 2 months we hit €11.7 billion Daily Operating Profit world-wide.
(As per Air Elbonia 9/10/08): Status Update: #3, Mass Edit Routes is in late beta testing, with luck it's close to being ready to be released. we'll find out. #5 is being worked on in small, incremental steps.
Common suggestions, not numbered but likely to be seen barring better ideas or some other small thermonuclear device taking out simultaneously all the code and all three of us developers (which are, as i recall, in three different countries even).
- Leasing modifications, most common: auto relisting of leases, negotiating lease extensions on existing leases/autorenewal option on leases, lease-to-own [or, installment purchases, however you wish to put it]
- Hubs / hub effect : I had eureka moment about this, i think i can whip out a relatively workable test of this soon.
- A way to relatively easily sell back terminal gates / demolish terminals
- Expansion of the page default system : somewhere, sometime, more page defaults will be added. who knows when, or where. just know they're coming... sometime.
- Runway Length / Airplane / Minimum Route Length Restrictions : Runway length data is already being implemented, the feature will come. Some day. It will.
Common suggestions NOT likely to be seen: (there may be reconsiderations on some of these, especially with compelling or innovative thoughts on the subject)
- resale [to players, public market] of built or rented gates - To be quite honest, this is likely to horde gates and/or flood the market with far too many gates at an airport.
- Mergers and Acquisitions - Between active players this seems fairly impractical, purchasing an inactive player either involves taking on a lot of idle planes or potentially a lot of near defunct routes which may exceed or violate the continent restriction and base limits.
- Stock Market - Though compelling and innovative methods have been thought up, it still does not seem to offer sufficient added value, while remaining relatively easily watched for abuse, to overcome the extensiveness of the suggestion
- Subsidiaries - Multiworlds will allow a player to play in two or more worlds at the same time, provided there are two worlds available to join. This is, in our opinion, sufficient enough reason to say adding a second airline for a player in a world is unnecessary.
- Automatic pricing - Automatic adjustments are likely, at the moment, to just drive prices immediately to 1 euro or have other faltering points in their logic. The price to achieve 100% loadfactor will never be given to you directly. There may be, in the future, some manner of aide to help you find the high loadfactors more easily/quicker, however, this is still a relatively important aspect of the game.
- Bank System / Loans - The potential for abuse of a loan function is too high for it to be of any use to the game.
This is all i can think of at the moment. Please don't take this as a reason not to make suggestions. In fact, we love suggestions. at the moment we're a little backlogged, but we may be able to squeeze in some small updates along the way. And, no, just because it seems small or big, doesn't necessarily mean that it's a small or big project. Some small changes require bigger things then we have the time for, some big changes require surprisingly little.
We will do our best to diligently take your suggestions, preferably within a day or two of their posting. Thank you for your time.
