Would you describe this as an airline manager ?

[almogo]

Hi everyone.

I understand that the core of this addon are the passengers and how they survive the flight. I also noticed that there are some airline management
options and i was wondering to which way does it lean more , flying your passengers or managing your airline. I also wanted to know if the managing is
serious as in Airline 6 http://www.airlinesimulation.com/ or more like airline tycoon.
I have been looking for a good Airline management simulation for a long time. Airline 6 seems to be the best in this very narrow selection but it is
just too expensive for me (over 60$).
Being able to fly my own company flight is FS seems wonderful I just wanted to know how "deep" is it going to be in the management dep.

Regards
Oren



Post Edited ( 05-14-05 03:17 )

[DanSteph]

I think a real airline managment would give headeach to anyone and would be really boring..
this has nothing to do with flight simulation.. Anyway I understand your question I'll try to answer...

The function fo ariline managment are very basic in FsP, you don't assign route, you don't assign shedule
etc etc... It would be impossible to do a real airline managment because you fly all the flights
So you can imagine how much flight you would have to make to get even one day of a real company...

So in FsP in fact your company healt and money is really linked to the way you make your flight, you make
good flight: your company reputation increase, you have more passengers than you get more money etc etc...
You make bad flight you need a lot money to repair your aircraft, you get less money, less passengers etc etc...

What you can do:
-buy aircraft, you have to make a choice beetween brand new or older aircraft but that may be costly with maintenance.
-Set ticket price, service price, service quality: this set directly the number of passengers you'll have and their satisfaction.
-Choose to repair or not your aircraft.
-Get bank credit.
-sell aircraft.
-choose cheaper airport for departure for fuel price or arrival for airport taxes.

That's all in the financial mode, all your job is now to make good flight, get more passengers , get more money
so you can buy more aircraft...

There is also two company setting mode :
1-free setting: you choose all your setting.
2-scenario setting: a scenario decide of your compayn setting as well as VICTORY or FAILURE condition..

Scenario setting are intteresting because you can have a lot of victory condition: cash to reach, reputation, number of aircraft
maximum crash, pilot that must have rank etc etc and a lot more...

In fact FsP is hard to decribe because it's a "multiple product in one"... you'll get
a lot of feature to enhance your flight experience...

So it's not a "airline tycoon", your company's fait is more decided by the way you fly your aircraft...

I was never able to describ FsP accurately , first my english is not good for that and FsP
include too much features to be correctly defined... FsP simply don't fit in any category
appart perhaps "Fs2004 enhancer" ??? I don't know...

You might perhaps read some of the previous post I made they have all a [dev news] or such tags
and contain often screenshots (that are mostly outdated by the way... but you'll get the idea)

Hope it ...answer.. ?

Dan

[JaWood]

It would appear that this simulator only simulates the business aspect of running an airline. Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like there's no actual
flying involved. The game focuses on creating the company, buying the planes, setting the routes, and then "pressing play" and seeing if you make or
lose money.

FsP will not only focus on creating an airline and buying the planes, but also letting you act as the pilots of your airline. That's what has sold me on this addon. It takes Flight Simulator (which I love "pretending" I'm flying real commercial flights with ) and and makes the experience a lot more real. The game now will simulate the airline experience (including management) instead of having to imagine you're flying
for an airline.



Post Edited ( 05-14-05 04:08 )

[djsebx]

When you use it, you feel the pilot's duty : fly safe for your passengers and bring them back alive first, and you also want to reach the aim :
make them happy of their flight.
That's what I feel, like all beta users i would say.. that's why FSPassengers deserves his name, just he has a lot more to offer.

[almogo]

I think a real airline management would give headeach to anyone and would be really boring..

Might be boring for some but not other ....

First, thank you all for answering.
Personally I believe that full scale financial model with make it much more realistic. If you are flying all of the companies flight, then what is the
point in creating other pilots ? This also means that the status of the company will have to change dramatically from flight to flight, otherwise, as
you say, their will be no interest. Same goes for having a company with more than 2-3 flight day. If you fly all the aircraft. time will move really
slow in the game.

But hey, I am not disparaging you add-on , it actually looks really cool and unique, and I still might give it a try.

Oren

[jboweruk]

I'd be the first to admit it would be nice to be able to hire pilots to help you make money, and have them handle the other flights while you
fly your own.

Has anyone seen a game called King of the Road, this is with trucks but the principle is the same as this, but in that you can hire other AI
drivers to do some routes for you. In this you control all the pilots, so will in theory have pilots of all different ranks.

[DanSteph]

This might be cool but that would be another add-on... 40% of FsP would have to be rewritten completely...
FsP is dedicated to your flight enterely it wasn't mean't to be an AI airline tycoon.

Also what to do with other pilot ? they behave randomly ? then it would not be fair, your company might
loose or win with no link with your flight performance...

Or making them perform like you ? you do well, they do ? You perform bad they do also. ?

Then in this case what the difference with no AI pilot appart that your result are multiplied by nn number of pilots ?
And what to do with their flight log ? making fake complete flight report ? fill the database with 70% of flight you didn't make ?
or simply put a message on screen "there was 10 other flight today the result is: your-result-multiplied by-nnn"

As you see making a gameplay isn't easy... either you do an arline tycoon and you don't flight, then the AI pilot is a necessity
either you make flight then AI pilot are at best only an eyes candy at worse a pain...

FsP in my mind was meant to give you the taste of the responsabilities and concern you have in real flight...
about your live first, about your passengers second and about performing well for the happiness of all
and the healt of your company.

In this matter the goal is achieved I think... you don't have the same feeling at all when flying without FsP or with it...
With FsP you don't "fly useless" and you do care about your mistake...

I even think that the imersion can even be better if you fly with "instant death" setting (your flights are automaticall registered)
imagine you have an engine failure with your 600 hour pilot onboard... you DO care about an eventuall crash... And you try your
BEST to avoid that... you have so much to loose.

Dan



Post Edited ( 05-14-05 14:36 )

[Deacon]

IMHO, FSP should at least offer the opportunity to manage a "group" of live pilots who have formed a VA. So the infusion of a CRM enters into it and
the ability to transfer flight data to a central database vis a vis a PIREP or other online/offline method. Let the airline management simulation that
it provides be taken care of by the "owner" at the request and direction of his management staff (generally made up of other group va pilots).

[jboweruk]

I see your point Dan, with the other game I mentioned they just drove the trux to the best of their ability, the idea was always to try and be
first to the destination with cargo. Sometimes your drivers could, sometimes they couldn't, but ultimately whether they did particularly well
or not you made money. I realise now this is a completely different concept, but it would've been a nice idea, maybe pilots perform like
any other AI pilot, ie they don't do particularly badly unless your maintainance is bad, or really good if they didn't have the plane to do it in.

[DanSteph]

Deacon wrote:
IMHO, FSP should at least offer the opportunity to manage a "group" of live pilots who have formed a VA. So the infusion of a
CRM enters into it and
the ability to transfer flight data to a central database vis a vis a PIREP or other online/offline method. Let the airline management
simulation that
it provides be taken care of by the "owner" at the request and direction of his management staff (generally made up of other
group va pilots).

Give me 6 more month and you'll have it....

Dan

[Deacon]

Yup. No problems. This is one of those things that will become obvious, I think, the more people actually use the product and it becomes one of those
"wish we had it now" type of things.

But judging from you programming asbilities, Dan, this should only take you about a week!