New Booking Classes and Monopolies

Dear AS Team,

Seriously 26 booking classes?  Am I the only one that think that sounds ridiculous?  I get making some differences among the 3 types of passengers but 26 sounds like it might be a nightmare to manage.  One hopes that this change will not be impossible to manage. 

The single biggest problem this game has is simply the ability for one person through a series of airlines to control even the biggest markets.  Until AS fixes this problem every other problem that flows from it will continue to be an issue.  (And on Devau I am one of these big airlines so I get it)  We simply need a solution to this problem.  Being able to be the 80-90% airline in all the major domestic markets in places like the US, China, EU, etc is silly.  The AS team needs to find a way to limit a single company (holding on down) from being able to dominate the entire market.  (This suggestion does NOT apply in countries with a smaller domestic market that 1 airline makes sense)

I don't even suggest they do this on the old servers as the pain may be too much for some.  But before we launch a new "real" server this needs to be address.  It is the single BIGGEST problem airlinesim has and has had all along.  Most of the arguments that are being had on the German forum on the new changes all relate to this underlining fault AS has had this entire time.

Lipscomb407

You dont need to use all 26. I find the great and very useful, trust me on that one.

Anyone someone says "Trust me"...well...I know I shouldn't trust the next thing that comes out of their mouth. 

Seriously 26 booking classes?  Am I the only one that think that sounds ridiculous?  I get making some differences among the 3 types of passengers but 26 sounds like it might be a nightmare to manage.  One hopes that this change will not be impossible to manage.

 

Who says that you have to use all 26 different classes? I can imagine what kind of changes Martin made to the code, and that’s just the upper limit of what’s possible with sticking to what in the real world is used. He used a generic approach that does scale up to 36 booking classes in total and dedicated 10 for freight and 26 for PAX

 

Imagine what would have happened if Martin made changes to the code to allow for 3 different booking classes for First, Business, Premium Economy and Economy without that generic approach, just to enable different booking conditions, and in one year, some airline comes up with an “Business class light” or an “economy saving” class and he has to touch the code again …

Edited (hit “post” too early):

 

The single biggest problem this game has is simply the ability for one person through a series of airlines to control even the biggest markets. Until AS fixes this problem every other problem that flows from it will continue to be an issue.

Yeah, players are only competing for airport slots. That's the single limited resource in the game as of now. There's no real limit for PAX at the moment, so you buy a few planes, set reasonable prices and a good cabin configuration, so that you get a top ORS rating and then you have the license to print AS$: you make profits, you buy new planes, you get more profits and can buy additional planes for gaining even more profits. And so on. And as long as you don't make stupid mistakes, at one point you will control your countries market.

The suggested change with the booking classes is in my eyes an approach to tackle that problem: passengers get diversified. It's not anymore sufficient to have only big seats and good cabin service and rather high prices and you will automatically get cabin loads of passengers, but you can change your strategy: one company is a low cost carrier from e.g. Germany to the mediteranian holiday destinations, low service, low price, no cancelations possible. Another company caters for business travelers and offers different conditions for changing or canceling the bookings, but at a higher price and they of course target traffic between business hubs like Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, London, and so on, not the vaccation destinations. That will also help to avoid big monopolies as you just don't have one valid strategy for success.

Without a true game mechanism to limit monopolies this will continue to be THE ISSUE.  Personally I lean towards the solution being a cost issue.  Opening your first hub should be cheap.  Opening your tenth hub should be ridiculously expensive.  The cost should be an exponential function.  So each progressive hub becomes much more expensive than the last.  That would truly limit the ability of airlines to operate out of EVERY SINGLE market in the big countries.  And in order to have more than 200 (or so) flights out of an airport it should have to be designated as an actual hub.  Ok...maybe not 200 flights...but certainly by the time you've added your 500th flight you are operating a hub. 

This cost should be an initial fee AND a running cost.

Having this type of limit would truly allow more players to run small and medium sized airlines without worrying about the "big boys" coming in one day and using up 80% of the slots in 3 days.  Opening up that 11th hub in a six bar airport simply wouldn't make economical sense.  But you could successfully run your first couple of hubs out of airports like this.  And it would give the big airlines reasons to want to make interlinings and deals with companies like this.

You would also need to limit the number of daughter companies one can run as well.  There are some worlds one person is running 6 (or more) huge airlines all in the same country.  Obviously I'm not opposed to a company having a local monopoly but being able to completely dominate a big market is just nuts. 

Everything else the AS Team is working on is just eye candy.  Until they implement something like this this game is just "Monopoly" on steroids.

wait where is the info from?

Wait until this new feature comes out to a public test server and comment later... Speculating without the full knowledge wont help.

I apologize in advance because my writing proposals use google translator!

01. Introduction of concepts - open the Office and opening a Hub in return for a fee. The number of hubs in one country may not be more than / 3 three /. Early in the game selected airport is Hub. Closing them receive half of the amount paid. Prices for opening and acquisition of Office or Hub depend on how the bar's airport for passengers.

For Office / 1 bar - $ 10,000, 2 bars - $ 20,000, 3 bars - $ 30,000, 4 bars - $ 40,000, 5 bars - $ 50,000, 6 bars - $ 100,000, 7 bars - 150 000 $ 8 bars - $ 200,000, 9 bars - $ 250,000, 10 bar - $ 300,000.

For Hub / 1 bar - $ 100,000, 2 bars - $ 200,000, 3 bars - $ 300,000, 4 bars - $ 400,000, 5 bars - $ 500,000, 6 bars - $ 1,000,000, 7 bars - 1,500,000 $ 8 bars - $ 2,000,000 9 bars - $ 2,500,000, 10 bar - $ 3,000,000.

02. Limiting the number of departures from the Hub to 700, and from Office 70.

This would limit growth way too much and even today station staff cost way too much with all those flight attendants and ground crew. For example even if you got one weekly flight to the destination you need to pay atleast two people full salary. I think outsourcing or collaborating with alliance partners at stations should be an idea, meaning that the alliance employs the ground crew and each airline pays for how much they use of them. 

Without a true game mechanism to limit monopolies this will continue to be THE ISSUE.  Personally I lean towards the solution being a cost issue.

Everything else the AS Team is working on is just eye candy.  Until they implement something like this this game is just "Monopoly" on steroids.

I don't think the AS development roadmap is just eye candy. On the contrary the new booking class system is designed to make the monster monopolies much harder to manage because the "one size fits it all" strategy (luxury seats, moderate prices, hub system) to dominate complete markets will not work any more. There will be passengers who simply won't care about luxury seats but will strictly go for the lowest price, or for direct connections.

I am very hopeful that this will create more competition so we don't need your proposed artificial regulation - that's always the second best choice in an economic simulation game...

Opening a station / office somewhere does not cost money and also should not cost money. It starts to cost only for stations where you are scheduling flights. And that is the right way I think. I am opening stations somewhere and then I don't have the planes to fly there or I decided to not fly there for now but later in the game perhaps. And then there are stations still open which I used in the past but I stopped flying there - and then I just forget to close the station.

Using stations within a group of players and pay for the real use seems to be too complicated for programming. Just my 2 cents. A limitation of companies per user in one country would make sense but I predict that it will not change the possibility of being the monopolist. It does not matter if I have 1 or 10 companies if I have the money to through planes on all stations.

I also hope that the booking classes will help in that direction.

Your single biggest limitation for 1 or 2 companies dominating a market is the number of flights AS currently allows you to assign.  I can't remember the exact number but you do get topped out on flight #'s after a while.  This is currently the only braking mechanism the game offers someone from having a huge airline.  Also limiting the number of daughter companies would help.   (They could still be huge by almost any measure)

I agree that simply opening an office should not cost money.  Only once you've gone over a certain number of flights.  The current cost structure is sufficient for just normal operations out of most places.  I also believe that once you've paid the fee to open a hub you should be able to use as many slots as you like.  Again I'm not against a local monopoly if you can swing it.  I'm against you being able to operate hubs in essentially every major city and thus dominate a country like the US, EU, China, and others that should have major competition.  Obviously a smaller country could and SHOULD have monopoly players. 

By the way, Thracian, your hub costs would simply be inefficient at the highest levels.  Your tenth hub should cost $10 million up front and $1m a week to maintain.  Or perhaps even more!  (100m  &10m?)  Adding these costs could simulate the inefficiencies a big sprawling airline (or any organization for that matter) gets when they get too big.  Heck, even at $1m/week that is still chump change to these huge airlines.  (My Devau airlines operating out of Canada and essentially 10 hubs by my definition of 500 or more flights is generating $100m/week in profits between my 2 airlines...and I'm by no means being absolutely cut-throat in that market.  I imagine some of the biggest airlines in the US and Chinese markets are making double that easily per week.  (At a certain point you have so much cash that the only thing left to do is buy planes and terminals so this would also act as a cash sink for these companies too.)

These hub costs should cross over on any company within the same holding in the same country.  (If you open an unrestricted market company in a different country that should be counted differently.)

Lipscomb407

After a loong time I will make a comment again on the forum, because the thread tackles two of my most pressing issues.

@Lipscomb:

Why already compain about possible 26 booking classes if you haven't even an idea what the solution looks like?? I think it will be a major step forward if we can offer transfer passengers different fares than origin passengers, as real airlines do.

The topic of monopoly:

I agree this is the biggest issue in Airlinesim, I consider this a bigger issue than slot-blocking, although the two are linked.

Attacking it via costs is not a good solution, simply because big airlines have enough money and the current demand in AS is ridiculously high which makes it viable to even make a profit if you have to pay a high amount of money for a hub. And then: What is a 'hub'?

My solution, and I've wrote this already 7 years ago (that's how old the problem is!). Unfortunately it never had enough support, although I clearly do not see a negative thing. If an airline becomes too big in real life, the national competition commission (or how you call it) will require the airline to divest slots for new airlines, so that no airline will be too big at one airport. That's how we should attack it.

It's pretty easy and straight forward:

- Limit the maximum of slots a holding, an airline and possibly an alliance can have at one single airport. By example: At a 10 bar airport, one single holding is only allowed to hold 25% of the slots, one single airline only 20%. WE CAN DISCUSS ABOUT THE NUMBERS, so don't go after them, it's just an idea. The lower the airport becomes, the higher the maximum share an airline/holding can have.

Result:

- There is competition at every airport!!! (which is not the case right now)

- Interline agreement start to make sense, because a partner might operate a route for you giving you the ability to have more flights elsewhere.

- Slot blocking will happen in a more limited way, because you can only "block" a limited amount of slots.

- It will still be possible to operate a hub-network at smaller airports, because your allowed share is higher.

- There is simply no effort to control it. The maximum number of slots can be displayed at the airport page and competitors will most likely keep an eye on each other, therefore there is no need for the team to actually check until an airline/holding is reported.

So give me the negatives about it! Oh yes, you cannot control an airport all by yourself, sorry. Any other?

I just looked on Idlewild in the US. The 8 biggest airports are devided already between 4-5 companies. The "leading" company on each hub has between 20 and 44% market share. (I did not count the slots on each company on these airports.)

Might be a bad example (the situation on other servers might be worse) but in my eyes, this already works pretty well. (And I joined Idlewild 6 months ago, when a big company in the US ceased away. I managed to build up a company there also on the biggest hubs.)

On Aspern (also a different server) the situation in Brazil: I am the only longterm player there. If I would have restricted slots (20-30% only), the other 70-80% of the slots were completely unused. Would that make sense? I don't think so - not saying that I would not like someone else to play there, I am supporting each new company there who want to play in Brasil! But the slots would be idle - and the demand in Brazil is (like in real life) really huge...

I also don't believe that a scenario like hub restrictions would work if not coded and implemented in the program. If you let competitors keep an eye on it, the reports will fly to support every hour, too much work to do for them.

I also don't believe that a scenario like hub restrictions would work if not coded and implemented in the program. If you let competitors keep an eye on it, the reports will fly to support every hour, too much work to do for them.

Maybe it works at certain airports, but it doesn't work on other servers. As said, the amount of slots is debatable.

How do you know that the other slots would be unused? An airport with a lot of open slots usually attracts new players.

And I completely disagree with the reporting thing you said. It's pretty simple: You have a maximum amount of allowed slots and the slots used by an airline both on the airport information page. Comparing these numbers is an easy task, I don't think that someone reports an airline which uses less slots than the maximum allowed. Both numbers are on the same page.

As much as I would like to have a responsibility and control in the hands of the users, I am 100% sure that in most cases it will go completely wrong, voeni.

Too many players are full of enby. Too less people would take that role as you described it. That is my perception.

I can definitely say that over the last 18 months in Brazil on Aspern, some players started when I was not as big as I am now. They stopped within weeks or ceased away within months. There was quite lot of competition until March of this year when the last company which had a decent fleet size quit. After that, nearly nobody tried it again. The 3 main airports GRU, GIG and BSB were always more or less full. But I tend to leave at least 20% of the slots free - to give someone else the chance to be part of the Brazilian market. There are other cities which have a decent amount of slots free. I can't (and don't want to) cover all airports - even with my 1300 planes it is not possible.

But nobody wants to start.

It might be different on other servers than on Idlewild (on Pearls of course it is different), but I also know from Gatow with one huge holding with 3 or 4 subs, it is still possible for other to build up a company in the US. Again my perception (I played Gatow for a year or a bit longer).

I just looked on Idlewild in the US. The 8 biggest airports are devided already between 4-5 companies. The "leading" company on each hub has between 20 and 44% market share. (I did not count the slots on each company on these airports.)

Might be a bad example (the situation on other servers might be worse) but in my eyes, this already works pretty well. (And I joined Idlewild 6 months ago, when a big company in the US ceased away. I managed to build up a company there also on the biggest hubs.)

 

On Aspern (also a different server) the situation in Brazil: I am the only longterm player there. If I would have restricted slots (20-30% only), the other 70-80% of the slots were completely unused. Would that make sense? I don’t think so - not saying that I would not like someone else to play there, I am supporting each new company there who want to play in Brasil! But the slots would be idle - and the demand in Brazil is (like in real life) really huge…

 

I also don’t believe that a scenario like hub restrictions would work if not coded and implemented in the program. If you let competitors keep an eye on it, the reports will fly to support every hour, too much work to do for them.

I think even if a company is the only long term player in a territory, it would still be the best to have some empty slot, although proboably not 70% of entire airport slot

And btw i guess it is someything that can be coded?

Operate only the actual amount produced aircraft !!!

The Bombardier CSeries family of aircraft has the following firm orders, as of 30 November 2016.

Type Ordered Delivered

CS100 123 3

CS300 235 1

Total 358 4

Quimby V - Bombardier CSeries 100 - Quantity produced - 779, REAL - 3

Nothing to do with real life !!! ??? There are many other real-manufactured aircraft, which can be operated.

Would not work in AS with much higher passenger demand than in real life

Operate only the actual amount produced aircraft !!!

The Bombardier CSeries family of aircraft has the following firm orders, as of 30 November 2016.

Type Ordered Delivered

CS100 123 3

CS300 235 1

Total 358 4

Quimby V - Bombardier CSeries 100 - Quantity produced - 779, REAL - 3

Nothing to do with real life !!! ??? There are many other real-manufactured aircraft, which can be operated.

Are you kidding me?

As much as I would like to have a responsibility and control in the hands of the users, I am 100% sure that in most cases it will go completely wrong, voeni.

Too many players are full of enby. Too less people would take that role as you described it. That is my perception.

I can definitely say that over the last 18 months in Brazil on Aspern, some players started when I was not as big as I am now. They stopped within weeks or ceased away within months. There was quite lot of competition until March of this year when the last company which had a decent fleet size quit. After that, nearly nobody tried it again. The 3 main airports GRU, GIG and BSB were always more or less full. But I tend to leave at least 20% of the slots free - to give someone else the chance to be part of the Brazilian market. There are other cities which have a decent amount of slots free. I can't (and don't want to) cover all airports - even with my 1300 planes it is not possible.

But nobody wants to start.

It might be different on other servers than on Idlewild (on Pearls of course it is different), but I also know from Gatow with one huge holding with 3 or 4 subs, it is still possible for other to build up a company in the US. Again my perception (I played Gatow for a year or a bit longer).

Thus why I say the control should be a function of costs.  Costs should dramatically rise as you keep adding hubs.  I don't know the coding side but perhaps it would even effect connecting passengers.  IE....no hub = Direct passengers only internally. 

I have not personally dealt with Brazil so I don't know much about that market.  I imagine the market size is similar to Canada  How many airports do you currently have over 500 flights/week in?  I'm guessing it is somewhere around 10-15 just based on outside perspective.  In our respective markets it makes sense for a dominant player but with the potential for one or two decent competitors.  In even smaller markets (Peru, Algiers, Vietnam, etc) it makes sense that in the long run there would be only one airline per country.  (Fairly realistic as even IRL those countries by and large only have a single carrier...and most of the time much smaller than their AS counterparts (function of demand I suppose).

But what I referring to specifically isn't the small to medium sized markets.  It is the huge markets of the US, China, and the EU.  Those markets SHOULD BE much more difficult for a single holding to control as much as what you see on many servers.  On the older servers you tend to see a few very big players as other big players leave the game.  The big players are the ONLY ONES capable of moving quickly to take market share when someone quits.  A new player simply can never compete with that long time player.  In the past I've suggested that new players should be given a much larger starting amount.  I still think that would help significantly.  But a way to slow the existing huge companies is also needed.   

Honestly...if you don't want to recode the whole game then simply giving new players on the old server $25 million to start would make a huge difference.  You could actually build a decent model of connecting passengers with that.  (Even without using 25 year old planes)  And it would give new players a reason to play on those old servers.  Like I've said on other posts...there is simply no better feeling than making a profitable airline on an old busy server.  And as I've done it in the past it is possible to do.  But for every success I've had I've had 9 failures on the old servers. 

Oh...and if I were looking at a market to move into I'd pass on your Brazil as well.  With 80% of the slots used in the big markets it would be nearly impossible to compete with you with only $10 million to start.

While I wrote here, another players started in Brazil. Yeh - a competitor!

It is possible to start with 10 Mio AS$ and become a big player. By the time I started on Aspern, there were 4 already huge companies there. They passed away while I not only survived but I grew.

And yes, I agree that US, EU and China should not be dominated by one airline / company. Same for Brazil and Indonesia and other huge markets. Just for the fun part of it - without competition it becomes boring.

- Limit the maximum of slots a holding, an airline and possibly an alliance can have at one single airport. By example: At a 10 bar airport, one single holding is only allowed to hold 25% of the slots, one single airline only 20%. WE CAN DISCUSS ABOUT THE NUMBERS, so don't go after them, it's just an idea. The lower the airport becomes, the higher the maximum share an airline/holding can have.

Exact numbers notwithstanding (I would prefer around 50% per user - regardless of how many holdings or airlines), this would actually be realistic. IRL there are anti-trust authorities that prevent airlines from getting too much of a market share and monopolizing airports.

On Aspern (also a different server) the situation in Brazil: I am the only longterm player there. If I would have restricted slots (20-30% only), the other 70-80% of the slots were completely unused. Would that make sense? I don't think so - not saying that I would not like someone else to play there, I am supporting each new company there who want to play in Brasil! But the slots would be idle - and the demand in Brazil is (like in real life) really huge...

Funny you mention Brazil, as in my server (Stapleton), a single holding is monopolizing nearly 100% of slots on all the major airports:

http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero/app/info/airports/407?12

http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero/app/info/airports/480?10

http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero/app/info/airports/479?9

http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero/app/info/airports/469?8

...

This is a major market for airlines to and from Europe, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, so the idea that 70% of slots would be empty is absurd.