IQuit

You might have noticed that most players are no longer actively playing. If the game is too easy or too fast, you can't retain players who get bored when the game is no longer challenging.

In real world, airlines take about 7 years to earn back the money they spend on buying a brand new aircraft. So if done right, you can only grow to about 16 times the size where you started over the course of 30 years. In the game, it only take 7 days! It is funny to talk about more new features (which makes the game balance even harder to tweak) to improve realism when the basic math is unrealistic ...

The game is currently too easy even for small / new airlines. The hardest part is you have to always remember to change the ticket price after setting up a new route, which some new players fail to realize.

15 minutes ago, IQuit said:

monitor the game database and always show the aircraft sorted by usefulness.

I mean aircraft specification database and sort aircraft types. The way it is now, some aircraft are too cheap (i.e. 727) or too fuel efficient (trident).

It depends on how far you want to go and how much time you can spend. AE tried many things and mostly settled down with removing exploitable features. There are only a handful of developers and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of cheaters out there.

On 4/12/2019 at 9:47 AM, sviridovt said:

Yeah, the plan is currently to write rules (and make it impossible code-wise) to lease/sell to your own airlines but I havent got around to writing 'official' rules or anything like that. The plan to do that is something along the lines of:

Hopefully all rules are enforced code-wise, else:

• honest players never break them, constantly at disadvantage
• 25% cheaters get caught and become honest players
• 25% cheaters get caught, retry more stealthily until they succeed
• 25% cheaters get caught and banned, come back with DDoS attacks
• 25% cheaters never get caught

On 4/12/2019 at 9:47 AM, sviridovt said:

• You cant have more than one airline in one country (unless its a subsidiary which will be added in the far future) 
• You cant sell/lease planes between your own airlines 
• You cant have a business relationship with your own airline (except maybe have it be in the same alliance) 

Account base restriction can be easily circumvented by creating another account using another IP / ISP / fake IP. You will be surprised that many users have their whole family playing with them. :)

On 4/12/2019 at 9:47 AM, sviridovt said:

Another idea that I had as part of an anti-cheat system (which is coming later), have all transactions analyzed for 'fairness' and if they're deemed sketchy have them marked for manual review by an in-game mod or something similar.

Sure. I believe it is even more important to write a script to monitor the game database and always show the aircraft sorted by usefulness.

On 4/12/2019 at 9:47 AM, sviridovt said:

All of this will also be less relevant since over time the game is designed to run with lots of small worlds rather than one large one (in fact, there exists a set number of airlines (that I have not calculated) at which point creating a new world would be more computationally efficinent than adding an airline to an existing world). 

Slot limited worlds are another source of abuse. How they abuse it is too long to write here. Perhaps you can have hard competition world (current implementation) and soft competition world (see AM@FB) for players who dislike competition.

CPU resource wise, the same players will play in more worlds. So it kind of offset the benefit of small worlds.

Then I will create a second airline and lease it cheap to my first airline so my first airline can be far more profitable than my competitors. :) The same goes to selling used aircraft, there is a reason why you can't decide selling price in AE.

I do agree that leasing is one way to help new airlines. If you limit the number of aircraft an airline can lease and buying new aircraft takes very long to break even, that will curb expansion of large airlines without making it too hard for startups. The limit has to be tied to capacity however, or everyone will just be leasing A380.

On 4/6/2019 at 7:56 AM, KJS607 said:

Fixed. Notice that it's DIA, DOH didn't open until 2014.

Thanks, other possibly missing airports:

DSS
MED
DQM
GUM
FSZ
MWX
CJU
PUS
CJJ
GRV
NBE
ZIA
REP
HYD
DJJ
SYX

1. Config name empty by default or remove this field totally. Display config layout (e.g. 12F24C96Y) if name is empty.

2. Make config account wide, if you have two airlines in the same (or different) world, they can share the same config.

3. Default color attached to service class (like the current default pitch and width) so that you don't have to pick new colors every time you configure a new aircraft type.

4. Total pax slightly less than max allowed if can't fit into the last row, rather than max allowed + 1 extra row.

5. Only send update to server when dragging ends (i.e. mouse button released), unlike when you're playing on localhost, the nerwork latency makes sliding the pitch and width very unintuitive. Or perhaps perform all the seat layout calculations client side, then revalidate again server side upon clicking a save button.

6. Better configuration allows you to charge significantly more (i.e. first class vs LCC), it is currently negligible.

By the way, how do you configure upper deck?

Thanks, will wait and see then.

If there is no reliable sources for aircraft prices, the formula:

( capacity * 30 + range ) * speed * 20

can give fair prices without introducing any personal prejudice.

On 4/5/2019 at 3:53 AM, sviridovt said:

Definitely, fixing the database is the first priority though 

I know AE isn't a reliable source, but please fix existing errors before introducing even more new errors.

One-eleven 500 : AE - $38,000,000 | ASW - $6,200,000

727-200 Adv : AE - $51,000,000 | ASW - $4,250,000

Il-18: AE - $16,000,000 | ASW - $245,000,000

DC-9-40 : AE - $36,200,000 | ASW - $7,100,000

Trident 1C : AE - $39,000,000 | ASW - $6,250,000

For example,

DOH exist in the file, at least the version I downloaded.

VVO TZ is correctly set in another file from OpenFlights.

The page warns about UTF-8 problem and some csv parser may be broken. Unlike easier tsv, there are a few quirks when parsing csv.

How was it converted to the game database format?

There are many csv to json converters available online, perhaps can try another one ...

Have you looked at OurAirports or something similar?

Currently, too many errors in the game to correct one by one.

E.g. DOH missing, VVO TZ set to UTC+8 instead of UTC+10

Is it possible to write a script to parse the data from the source? Too many typos in manual data entry. I.e. a zero missing in the price of DC9, DC10, B727, B73J etc while a zero erroneously inserted for Il18.

Price / capacity should stay within a narrow range or the game will be wildly unbalanced.