Warning: this is just my personal opinion below, whether you agree with me or anything I don't care.
So what type of airline should we cater to? LCCs? Premium Airlines? Hybrids? Or even Full Service? Honestly it is up to what the game community wants to do. Yes, IRL premium airlines don't exist, but right now airlines are flourishing with 80+% rep (at least that is what it looks like based on the sheer number of airlines at that range of rep), flying to/from the most obscure locations (Like Air Koryo with shocking high rep flying a profitable airline with widebodies from just FNJ), or even spamlines with a shockingly high amount of planes higher than IRL American. Yes, I just don't get it how some of these things work, but the problem is that they do. So at what point do we say this is too much? At what point is it "unrealistic"? Different people would definitely argue for different things, but I feel that Unk should tell us what he intends to set as boundaries. Ultimately I just feel that the best way is to Ensure that everyone country is playable, spamlines are alright (but not ridiculously huge ones) and any model could be done, but this isn't my game, and I would gladly take what the game goes with.
What I do wish to see after all, is that the demand of flights could be better set so that every type of airline has a challenge. I don't like the idea of revolving around a "base price", because honestly market forces determines the equilibrium, not like some random price. Neither do I see the point of having a limit on prices, because what we can have instead is to have some formula where we compare flights on that route, and base on every airline's rep, price, etc, determine the actual demand for that flight. I don't feel like there is a need to set an artificial limit where demand becomes flat 0 because after all, everyone has their preferences. Who is to say you can't ride a flight between Boston and San Francisco in First Class for $45k? If their flight is so superb, so be it right? The dream would be to determine passenger counts based on city popularity, and maybe consider if it is a domestic or international destination, but right now I don't think that coding it is realistic in the short run (I do coding stuff so I have an idea the difficulty for such a large scale).
Really what I want to say is that let regional LCCs work, let Long haul premium airlines work, but could there be a way where we make some of these airlines legit unworkable, such as short haul Low density narrowbody flights? Yes, having no artificial limits is good, but having ridiculous combos to get high rep and high passenger count is of course nonsensical. Just thinking whether there will be a way where competition between airlines is actually something and not just a matter of "who is here and who monopolize the market with 15 flights daily wins"
So what type of airline should we cater to? LCCs? Premium Airlines? Hybrids? Or even Full Service? Honestly it is up to what the game community wants to do. Yes, IRL premium airlines don't exist, but right now airlines are flourishing with 80+% rep (at least that is what it looks like based on the sheer number of airlines at that range of rep), flying to/from the most obscure locations (Like Air Koryo with shocking high rep flying a profitable airline with widebodies from just FNJ), or even spamlines with a shockingly high amount of planes higher than IRL American. Yes, I just don't get it how some of these things work, but the problem is that they do. So at what point do we say this is too much? At what point is it "unrealistic"? Different people would definitely argue for different things, but I feel that Unk should tell us what he intends to set as boundaries. Ultimately I just feel that the best way is to Ensure that everyone country is playable, spamlines are alright (but not ridiculously huge ones) and any model could be done, but this isn't my game, and I would gladly take what the game goes with.
What I do wish to see after all, is that the demand of flights could be better set so that every type of airline has a challenge. I don't like the idea of revolving around a "base price", because honestly market forces determines the equilibrium, not like some random price. Neither do I see the point of having a limit on prices, because what we can have instead is to have some formula where we compare flights on that route, and base on every airline's rep, price, etc, determine the actual demand for that flight. I don't feel like there is a need to set an artificial limit where demand becomes flat 0 because after all, everyone has their preferences. Who is to say you can't ride a flight between Boston and San Francisco in First Class for $45k? If their flight is so superb, so be it right? The dream would be to determine passenger counts based on city popularity, and maybe consider if it is a domestic or international destination, but right now I don't think that coding it is realistic in the short run (I do coding stuff so I have an idea the difficulty for such a large scale).
Really what I want to say is that let regional LCCs work, let Long haul premium airlines work, but could there be a way where we make some of these airlines legit unworkable, such as short haul Low density narrowbody flights? Yes, having no artificial limits is good, but having ridiculous combos to get high rep and high passenger count is of course nonsensical. Just thinking whether there will be a way where competition between airlines is actually something and not just a matter of "who is here and who monopolize the market with 15 flights daily wins"