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Back Proposal You remeber what happened to the last Iranian guy who said no to Britain? Yeah, I'm pretty sure this isn't a request. Man, I played and stank at Aerobiz back in the day. Good to see it LPed.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:20
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More than a tenth of our cash reserves? No thank you, not at the moment.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:26
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We cannot allow an aviation gap! With Russia. Go for it.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:09
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On one hand, we will eventually be expanding into British spheres of influence. On the other hand, "eventually" could be years from now. If we were moving in within the next few turns then this would be worth it. But how long does the good will last?
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Feb 16, 2014 20:12
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We gotta think about the long run, if we don't get accepted into british air we lose out on a lot of tourism. Go for it.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:13
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The Casualty posted:On one hand, we will eventually be expanding into British spheres of influence. On the other hand, "eventually" could be years from now. If we were moving in within the next few turns then this would be worth it. But how long does the good will last? Indefinitely. Relationship changes are entirely event-based. The only things that would knock it back down would be negative events like wars or regime changes on one side or the other. This is especially hilarious when the event fires for a government and airline on opposite sides of the cold war. Suddenly you'll have a Soviet Aviation Bureau who's been whitelisted by NATO and may travel freely through the USA.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:21
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I say Go for it. The long term benefits outweigh the short term costs.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:22
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Krysmphoenix posted:Well, Europe is going to be a battleground, and Africa doesn't seem very profitable. While environmentalism is a noble cause, sadly that price tag is just too large for us. Politely decline. I'm going to retract my vote, as I now Approve. There is a great deal of potential in this deal, though it's still a gamble. Edited my previous post to make this change clear.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:30
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How are our relations with the British at the moment? If they are hostile or wary toward us, then we should help them out in order to smooth future business deals over. If they're neutral or friendly, though, then we don't really have that much to gain from this and should decline. We weren't the ones who polluted Lagos' airport, after all.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:37
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Indefinitely. Then this is a no-brainer. Take the deal. I suspect Murica will beat us to using London as a hub, but look to the east. Hong Kong could be the crown jewel of our East Asian operations, and good relations in Singapore could make taking gates right out from under ConAir's noses that much easier.
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Feb 16, 2014 20:39
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Brittania rules the waves, but they will need AirRan's help to rule the skies. I suggest we take the deal.
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Feb 16, 2014 21:16
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I think this is a foolish waste of our startup capital. And do you remember what they did to Mossadegh not two years ago? They can go stuff themselves.
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Feb 16, 2014 21:27
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This is Aerobiz, not Aerobitch. Do it.
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Feb 16, 2014 22:00
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Killer Emcee posted:This is Aerobiz, not Aerobitch. Do it. A compelling argument. Since this swung so decisively, I'm calling the vote early. We're taking the deal. 
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Feb 16, 2014 22:23
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Hedera Helix posted:How are our relations with the British at the moment? If they are hostile or wary toward us, then we should help them out in order to smooth future business deals over. If they're neutral or friendly, though, then we don't really have that much to gain from this and should decline. We weren't the ones who polluted Lagos' airport, after all. This fine upstanding goon knows what he and/or she is talking about. If we have good or neutral (teal or blue) relations with the UK, pass on the deal because it's over 10% of our money (or, in more concrete terms, about 5 DC6s we will no longer be able to buy) and it's not going to do enough for us to justify the price. If our relations are tense or hostile (orange or red), take the deal because it'll save us negotiating time and money in the long term and could potentially bring down the prices of British aircraft. Edit: Oh well.
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Feb 16, 2014 22:27
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Critic of the Dawn posted:This fine upstanding goon knows what he and/or she is talking about. Agreed. I doubt it will ever be realistically worth it for us to spend 10% of our money to better holdings that are pretty far away from us right now. They're pretty much mid-end game airports, so making it a little cheaper isn't really a issue.
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Feb 16, 2014 22:36
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London is the best hub in Europe in my experience, and (the future-named)-JFK-Heathrow one of the best routes in the entire game, but it's likely to be dominated by Team 'Murica long before we get there. Hopefully this pays off.
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Feb 16, 2014 22:42
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Slight misconception about the scenario on my part, it actually starts in Q21955 rather than Q1. (That event was on turn 3/Q4) To bring things back in line the callendar, update 1 will be about our first 3 turns. We are business. Expect the post to be up tomorrow, then we can get to planning 1956 fresh on the heels of that deal.
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Feb 16, 2014 22:51
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Gamerofthegame posted:Agreed. It's a gamble, sure, but expansion into Africa is going to happen within a year or two, and having a friendly hub in Asia, competing against what will surely be a big rival, is something that is worth a lot of money. That's really the best part of the deal in my book. Hong Kong is a powerhouse city in a region with growing populations and economic potential.
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Feb 16, 2014 23:04
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1955 - The Year We Get Airborne With a plan in place, let’s take off where we left off. Q2 1955 First, we get some business in the air by opening our first routes. Starting a new route requires an open slot in a hub, a slot in the destination, and a free plane with enough enough range to make the flight.  It also carries a startup cost determined by a mix of the size of the city and the distance flown.  For this route I assign one of our IL14s. Baghdad is close enough that one plane can handle up to 7 flights per week on its own. More than enough for the slots we have, and it leaves room to grow if the route proves successful. To start, I’ll assign one flight per week at the base fare. Next turn, we’ll get to see how it performs and adjust things appropriately. Once that’s all arranged, we launch.   I set up the same test-route with Tashkent. Note how the greater distance means the IL14 can only pull 5 runs a week. Still enough for now, but we’ll need more planes, or bigger planes, if we plan to scale up the route beyond our current holdings.  Perfect. Now, on to aggression. We’re sending Igor to Rome.   Bidding is pretty straightforward. You send an agent to a city, tell them how much time to buy, and when negotiations finish you get the slots. While negotiations are underway we must pay an upkeep fee. Relations affect the cost of bidding two ways - speed and volume. Good relations make negotiations clear faster, and increase how many slots you can buy in one go. Less time spent at the table and fewer trips to hit your quota. I prefer to bid for as many slots as possible on each trip, unless I know in advance exactly how many I’ll need. If you end up with extra, giving them back is easy. If you’re left wanting more, it means more time and money.  I put Jerry in charge of the African front. He’ll spend the next 9 months in Egypt. I have every confidence that he will present our interests in a concise and professional manner.  Meanwhile, Cindy will spend just as long establishing contact in India. You’d think she’d be the one to stick around the home office instead of darting off on foreign ventures.  It is claimed.  Meanwhile, Steven goes shopping.    Our Tupolevs fetch $9 Million each on the second-hand market. May they find new life powering small villages what that coal furnace they call an engine. McDonnell Douglas is happy to fill the space they leave. And would you look at that last price tag. With the Tupolevs gone, our fleet is now nothing but Ilyushin products. This is well above the ratio needed to trigger a 10% brand loyalty discount on all their aircraft.   So ends our first turn. Let’s see the results.   We post an operating loss, but this is not a bad thing. For one, no one else brought in much revenue on their first turn either.   And for two, most of our expenses were fixed operating costs from sending out our agents. The routes themselves are doing fine, we’re just not moving enough volume yet for them to cover the rest. I played a very conservative start to test the waters in our area. Once we start expanding our services things will change. Q3 1955  One of AeroBiz’s scripted events, the olympic games will happen in all the historical times and places known when the game was made. When the games occur, their host city will get a sizable boost to tourism for that turn. These heads-ups give you the chance to make preparations to cash in. This turn, we get to go first. Turn order shuffles each quarter.   She carries on securing her domain by buying the transit company. It takes 3 months and costs $24 million.  New planes are delivered the turn after they’re purchased. They are welcome additions to our fleet. Now to check on those test routes.   Excellent. One flight per week translates to twelve per quarter, which translates to a nice pile of cash for us. The display here, and most others in the game, round to the nearest $10k. The expenses on the flight to Baghdad are so low that the bar rounds down to zero. Once a route is established, you can edit its specs at any time for no cost. Since both of these are thriving, I pump each up to use every slot we have. Next turn, we’ll find out how many people were left waiting. For comparison, here’s the route ConAir set up.  Like us, they started small with one plane and one flight. They also opted for below average fares to encourage demand. As said earlier, the AI prioritizes passengers over profits, so they’ll tend to undercharge then work their way up when setting prices. It pays off, and their DC6 feels right at home. That flight also cost them about five times what we payed to fly our two IL14s. Ten to One. That doesn’t take into account secondary costs like bidding, slot upkeep, opening fees, and difference in purchasing cost, but it gets the point across - As long as we can find homes for all our little guys, their performance will add up. The rest of our agents are still busy, so that’s our turn 2. Here’s what our opponents got up to.  ConAir orders some larger planes and-  Hello, Yang.   AirMarx remains idle. They’re negotiating in places which aren’t fond of the USSR, and probably waiting until those finish to open flights.  Once again M&M think a like. They’re waiting for London.    Things pay off. That’s a $280K operating profit. We’re outperforming ConAir  Meanwhile, Air’Murica earns more than than everyone else combined from just their hotel in New York.  The cash reserve jumps around a bit because these finance sheets show you the numbers for a given Quarter's business the turn after it's happened. I then bring them back from the future to present beside their matching end of turn report. Q4 1955   I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Jerry. Just keep on that contract. Once again, we go first. Veronica gets back from buying busses and is reassi-   Stay out of my territory.Right. Igor returns from Rome with a closed deal for 5 slots, and we get a very special guest.  As decided in a quick emergency meeting, we accept a request from the British government to donate money to a project of theirs. It’s an expensive proposition, but brings a powerful effect.  All British cities are now friendly. See how big the deal was in Tehran? Now that’s us in London. That’s us in Hong Kong. That’s us getting up in ConAir’s business in Singapore. That is the cost of opportunity. Twelve slots in one turn is five to seven times the speed we’ve been able to expand in neutral cities. With that one bid we maxed our slots in Tehran before Danny Yang had time to hang his coat.   Our added flights all sell out. There’s even more money waiting to be made here. We should continue to grow these routes until we find their limits. Since our agents have more important work than adding slots here, I boost each route’s fare by 10%. These fine adjustments are how you squeeze the most Biz out of your Air. Barring specific orders from the shareholders, I will carry these out in the background at my own discretion.   With slots opening up and planes in the hangars, I lanuch some new routes. Rome, because connecting it to our network is the next step in establishing a Euro-hub, and Islamabad because although I expect it won’t put out much cash, we already have the slots and passengers are still worth points. May as well find out how many of those five can be put to use.  For reference, all that’s left to turn Rome into a hub is to deploy an agent to negotiate for it. This is what it would cost to do that in Rome. It can be done the same turn that you establish the connecting flight, but in light of recent events I chose to hold off for now.  To close things off, Igor pulls some strings back in the motherland to close a deal with the Uzbeks. On to the opposition.   ConAir hooks up Osaka and Sydney. They’ll be reaping the benefits of all that sports-travel when the Olympics come around. They also bid in Sapporo and Tokyo.  Someone told them they’re running an airline, right?  London to New York to San Francisco, Air’Murica now has the widest reach of any airline.  Another helpful event. Tourism booms buff the stats of a random city. They can last several turns.     We’re still growing, but slowly. ConAir and Air’Murica got more of a boost from their first inter-regionals than we did, though we’re in position to capitalize on that tourism boom in Rome and stand on the verge of breaking into richer markets. Next year, the true competition begins.  1955 Year End Review Next turn we’re going third, so we have a little preview of what our foes are up to.  Buying new L1049s and DC6s, bidding in Cairo, building up London.  Getting ready for the games.  As for us, all of our agents are home. We have our hotel in Tashkent, 5 slots each in Cairo and Bombay, and we’re maxed out in Tehran. Our core business is finding its footing and we’re ready to take our first steps out of the home region. We’re keeping some degree of pace with our opposition, only Air’Murica is decisively ahead of us and that’s largely on the quality of their home base. Once everyone starts spreading out things will get a lot more competitive. We've spent a whole lot of our starting capital, but that's normal for the early game. Our good routes will pay back their startup costs around the halfway point of the scenario, or sooner if can get them grown and optimized. And that's just from the best we've found out in the Middle East. And now, we've bought the friendship of the United Kingdom. In light of that, opening that route to Rome may prove to be a misstep. We can only have one route between a given pair of regions, and London just became really good candidate for our Euro-hub. To connect it, we’d have to cancel Tehran-Rome. On the upside, it can pay back some of the loss over the time it would take to get London ready for business. London is 2750 miles from Tehran, and opening that route would cost $39.4 Million.   Here’s how those new routes did on their first turn. Rome’s performance is a fine use of our DC6, and that’s from before the effects of the tourism boom. With a solid foundation of supporting business on either end, it could grow into a hell of a route. Islamabad is a typical poor third world route. 6 whole people ride this plane each week. If we slash prices we may be able to fill one flight of that IL14, two at best. A way to pad our score and add a little drip of income (half-price still puts us ahead if it brings in 5 times the customers) but it takes a miracle for a spot like this to become anything more. Meanwhile, Baghdad and Tashkent are still selling out. They may have enough demand to justify more slots for the IL14s, or even handing our current schedules to larger planes.  This meeting is in session, chose our plans for 1956. A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 04:33
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A summary of our current inventory of aircraft and a shortlist of promising cities in Africa and Europe would be very useful for suggesting new routes here. I think that we currently have 3 DC6s (2 available) and 12 IL14s (9 available), correct? With that aside, I think the big strategic decision at this point is whether it makes sense to stick with Rome as our European hub, or to cancel the Tehran/Rome route and use London as our hub instead. Here's how I see it breaking down. London: +All around higher stats than Rome. +We can obtain more slots faster here than in Rome, which will help us to outperform M&M in Europe assuming we place enough focus there. +IRL London is about 3,359 miles from New York, which puts it within DC6 range. I assume it's rounded somewhat in Aerobiz, but a DC6 will definitely do the trick. -We would have to cancel our profitable Tehran/Rome route. -New routes are expensive - A_Raving_Loon didn't show how much it cost to create this route, but the flights within the Mid East cost us $26 million and $19 million, so I assume an inter-regional flight cost at least that much and probably more. We would be throwing away the cost we invested in Rome AND investing a similar amount into a new route into Europe. This basically means that it will take a long long time before we hit the break even point on this route. Rome: +We're already here and have already paid for it. +I seem to recall Rome being a frequent RNG choice for Tourist Hotspot. +Rome and Cairo are only 1326 miles apart, and we could therefore use smaller planes for the trip if it turns out to be a low-margin route. London to Cairo is 2183 miles, and therefore too far for our IL14s if the route turns out to underperform using a DC6. -New York to Rome is 4293 miles, which I assume after rounding will still be too far for the DC6. We'd need to buy expensive L1049s to cover this route. -We just spent 10% of our money cozying up to the UK - it'd be a shame not to benefit from that. Frankly, either of these options result in us losing money due to a shortsighted investment. If we want to get into a knife fight with Murica and AirMarx over Europe right off the bat, London is probably a stronger long term choice. If we want to focus on building a base in Asia, Africa and Oceania where the competition is a little less fierce at the moment, Rome is probably just as good.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:46
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Something to note for those who aren't so familiar with the gameplay. Cities that get a positive boost from the Olympics or a tourism boom get a temporary boost of their economy and tourism stats to 100%, meaning your properties will make huge profits and you can charge premium ticket prices without worrying about empty planes! We may not be able to fly people to the Olympics, but we should consider buying a business in Melbourne, and raising rates and flighrs to Rome for as long as the boom lasts. We'll also have at least 2 agents left if we do that. Let's expand our future European holdings with slot negotiations in Berlin and Paris. We obviously should open up routes in our newly available airports too.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:52
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Yeah, the setting up Rome while also cozying up to London puts us in a pickle, and why I opposed it. We should stick with Rome as our hub. We should also buy up slots in London, and create a Rome/London route. Since that will only take one turn of negotiating, we can then turn and add slots in Paris for a Rome/Paris route. One negotiator should absolutely buy facilities in Melbourne to profit off the Olympics, whichever the CEO believes will give us the most profit. For their second action they should be dispatched to either America or Asia to get slots for our next hub, but I am unsure as to which city would be best for that. Lastly, we should pick up hotels in London and Rome, both of which will be gigantic money-makers for us. Obviously we should keep adding routes to the places where we've bought airport slots.
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Feb 18, 2014 06:06
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Still just Douglas. McDonnell Douglas won't exist until 1967. 
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Feb 18, 2014 06:43
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Team 'Murica is going to make London their European hub. Two hubs in the same city is bad news; while it would hurt the Americans as much as it would us, with AirMarx being based in Europe it's a recipe to lose any real chance of dominance in Europe since they won't have the same trouble. London is really, really good so it might not be that big of a deal but Rome is no shithole and wouldn't have us constantly competing for slots in our own hub. It should also be noted that an American airline begins Friendly with Britain, so we won't have any speed advantage over the Americans in London, either. NY-London is doable with DC6s but the number of planes you have to devote to it to get a decent number of flights is astronomical. L1049s are the superior choice regardless, and the upcoming 707 (which is currently well-known to be in development, so we're not making any decisions based on future knowledge if anyone but me cares) should make NY-Rome almost as economical as NY-London. We should stick with Rome but focus on Rome-London at first since we have the relations boost and lay groundwork for a push east. Since the 707 is coming the distances we have to deal with to go east are not as big of a deal as they seem right now. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 06:47
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Killing Rome as our hub in favor of London will not only cost us tens of millions of dollars, but too much time. We should not bury ourselves up to our necks just to impress the Brits. We bought their happiness, which will help us globally so long as they have imperial holdings. Like I've been saying, that deal is more valuable for us in Asia than it is here. Stay in Rome, but use our leverage to get plenty of slots and businesses in London. We can at least make it tough for the other guys.
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Feb 18, 2014 07:31
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Yeah, I like keeping Rome as well and moving towards a Rome/London route, while expanding in both spots to grab some insurance in the European market. Slots, hotels, what have you. I don't think we've got to get another route in Europe just yet, since we're still feeling out the other routes and don't know their full potential yet, and we might be running short on planes if we move too fast. Instead, we should be looking to either Africa or Asia to abuse that new-found relation with Britain. I'd say we might be better off moving towards Asia and snatching up Hong Kong while ConAir fucks about taking Olympic cities for the short-term.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:44
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I never pointed it out in the update, but you can see on the Finance sheets that our businesses are doing quite well. The game doesn't give you a way to check on how each individual one is performing, but we can see on a macro level that they're earning about twice their upkeep cost. That puts them on course to pay off their puchase costs in about 5-7 years just from their own operations, without counting the buffs they're giving to air routes. (Unfortunately, those are also rather hard to measure.)
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Feb 18, 2014 18:22
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TheMcD posted:Yeah, I like keeping Rome as well and moving towards a Rome/London route, while expanding in both spots to grab some insurance in the European market. Slots, hotels, what have you. I don't think we've got to get another route in Europe just yet, since we're still feeling out the other routes and don't know their full potential yet, and we might be running short on planes if we move too fast. I second this vote.
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Feb 18, 2014 19:29
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A_Raving_Loon posted:I never pointed it out in the update, but you can see on the Finance sheets that our businesses are doing quite well. The game doesn't give you a way to check on how each individual one is performing, but we can see on a macro level that they're earning about twice their upkeep cost. That puts them on course to pay off their puchase costs in about 5-7 years just from their own operations, without counting the buffs they're giving to air routes. (Unfortunately, those are also rather hard to measure.) There is a way, actually! This LP got me back into playing again and I stumbled upon it accidentally. It's a little convoluted (as is the rest of the UI, if you ask me), but it's possible. 1. From the main screen, select the info tab (second row, looks like a radio tower) 2. The info tab is open. Select the Properties tab (second from the right, looks like buildings) 3. This breaks down your business holdings by type and region. Left/right changes the type, up/down changes the region. Find the business region and type you want to view and press A. 4. Now you can see a detailed view of the relevant businesses. Select one and press A and it gives you a precise income breakdown. Unfortunately, as you said, it's tough to tell how good they actually are for the routes. If there's research into which businesses are best and what exactly they do behind-the-scenes, I haven't seen it.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:02
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Non-Aerial Business The more I learn about this game the more I come to respect its design. The Casualty posted:There is a way, actually! This LP got me back into playing again and I stumbled upon it accidentally. It's a little convoluted (as is the rest of the UI, if you ask me), but it's possible.     This is the business info screen. We can use this to check on the business holdings of any company, sorted by type and region.     And view, in detail, the current performance of each. (That's the part I didn't know about before) They're paying out nicely, if gently. Businesses run on tighter margins than air routes, but are generally less sensitive to fluctuations. A stable investment to sink extra capital into. I'll tracking this data from now on, and report any interesting findings.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:48
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I vote we bid for slots in British Hong Kong and make a route to launch an Asian hub ASAP. We missed the boat on London but we can still make use of our relations boon.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:20
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Gabriel Pope posted:I vote we bid for slots in British Hong Kong and make a route to launch an Asian hub ASAP. We missed the boat on London but we can still make use of our relations boon. I second this idea.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:38
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Gabriel Pope posted:I vote we bid for slots in British Hong Kong and make a route to launch an Asian hub ASAP. We missed the boat on London but we can still make use of our relations boon. Yes, this. This is what we should do.
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Feb 19, 2014 01:49
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I don't know as much about this game as some of the other posters, but that makes it exciting! In order of priority: 1. Stick with Rome. One thing I do know: The 1960 Olympics were held in Rome. We should continue to build up in Rome, start a Rome-London route, and use Rome as our hub to expand into Europe. Trying to battle it out over DoubleHub London sounds like a bad idea, and Air Murica seems to be doing pretty well. We should stick with Rome and get Rome-London and Rome-Berlin routes going. 2. Go East! Asia looks like a great prospect at this point. Hong Kong is Friendly now and is perfectly suited to be a Hub. We should make Hong Kong into a hub, then aiming to connect it to Beijing and Tokyo for routes that could be major moneymakers. 3. African Strategy Africa is virtually untouched. We should use our new hub to get routes to get European routes to Cairo and Lagos going while also connecting Cairo to Tehran. 4. Buy Boats. There is a service business that has a boat icon. I like boats. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 02:08
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:I don't know as much about this game as some of the other posters, but that makes it exciting! In order of priority: quote:2. Go East! Asia looks like a great prospect at this point. Hong Kong is Friendly now and is perfectly suited to be a Hub. We should make Hong Kong into a hub, then aiming to connect it to Beijing and Tokyo for routes that could be major moneymakers. quote:3. Rome-Africa Africa is virtually untouched. We should use our new hub to get routes to Cairo and Lagos going. Ideally, we can lock our opponents out of this region. quote:4. Buy Boats. There is a service business that has a boat icon. I like boats. The Casualty fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 02:39
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Is there a decent equivalent to Aerobiz on PC (or consoles but that seems even less likely)? I'd like something with more detail than something like Pocket Planes but not quite Airline Sperg Simulator 2014.
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Feb 19, 2014 06:58
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Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:Is there a decent equivalent to Aerobiz on PC (or consoles but that seems even less likely)? I'd like something with more detail than something like Pocket Planes but not quite Airline Sperg Simulator 2014. I'd say Airline Tycoon for PC would probably fit that bill. It's decently complex, but not extraordinarily so - it's got single flights, routes and last minute single flights, you can buy planes either brand new from the shop or old planes in damaged condition from the museum, that kind of stuff. Stay away from the sequel, though, it's crap.
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Feb 19, 2014 13:56
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Business Plan -1956 Primary Objectives: pre:5 - Confirm Rome as Euro-Hub 5 - Open Rome-London Route 4 - Establish Presence in Hong Kong, Develop into Far East Hub Secondary Objectives: pre:2 - Business in Australia, London, and Rome 2 - Connect Cairo and Bombay 2 - Bid in Berlin 2 - Set up Far East routes via Hong Kong Stretch Goals: pre:1 - Establish African hub and connect Lagos 1 - Connect Paris 1 - Buy a Boat We’re becoming a proper Megacorp.  So it is written, so it is done. The polls are closed. Next, we take off to the brave new world of 1956.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:25
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| # ? May 15, 2024 22:50 |
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1956 - Spreading Our Wings Q1 1956 First things first, we waste no more time crying over spent millions in venture capital and send Igor to finalize negotiations with Rome. Unfortunately, our hesitation is going to cost us a little more.  The tourism boom has temporarily inflated the cost of development in the city. Waiting until the bubble bursts could save us the cost of opening another route, but would also mean turns not spent digging in and locking horns with our enemies in the Euro-Aero-Market. No more waiting. Well, the three months it takes to sort out the deal. We wait for that. Then no more.  To take advantage of that Bubble, I put our idle DC6s into action. Together, they can take up all the time we have in Rome.   Speaking of using slots we’ve already paid for, we open service to India and Egypt. From our other mideast routes we already know that cities with their stats can fill several IL14s, so I don’t hesitate to use our time.  It appears I oversold the immediate effects of friendship. There’s other factors which influence bid volume and time taken. Cindy’s effort is limited to 5 slots in 6 months. Your first step into a new city will be slow going, then it picks up speed. Veronica’s mission to Hong Kong is much the same.  Dammit, Jerry, you had one job! The whole of Australia is Unfriendly with us. This slows negotiations and drives up the cost of business. Unless we get a chance to correct that, buying in over here is simply not worth our time. Back in Rome, the tourism boom is also driving prices up. Fortunately, that’s temporary, so we’ll have a chance to nail things down after the market cools.  After all that time in Egypt, Jerry has come to appreciate that some things belong in museums.  And nothing of value is lost  The People’s Airline finally takes action. Bids in Rome, Cairo, Tehran and Madrid.    And use of Tupolevs.  Rome continues to buzz. Aside, Moscow becomes the first airport to expand. They add 26 new slots.    We continue to grow, holding on to second place in revenue and profit and taking the lead in passengers. Side business is stagnating a bit. Q2 1956  Tunis strikes out on its own. Their new regime is friendly with us.  Conair does more bidding in Japan and buys a lot of planes.  Murica fans out into LA and Mexico, and gets their hub down in London. Every enemy airline has now bid in Tehran. Our home city will become the nexus of all air travel in the middle east.  Our hub goes live. We also claim our Slots and Museum in London.  This is Tehran-Rome on Tourism. That’s 3.5 flights worth of passengers so I recall one plane, dropping the route to 3 flights, and dial up a price a smidge. That should pay out about the same, and frees up a DC6 to head for London.   Good opening quarters from our new mideast routes. Fares are adjusted and another plane assigned to use Bombay’s remaining slots.   And a lesson that some things aren’t worth flying for.  Construction is underway in Tehran. We’ll see who’s first to claim those new slots in 1958.  Now that we’ve set up shop there, the Italians are happy to shower Igor is all the finest contracts. 6 Months well spent.   Time to start paying back that bribe.  Japan doesn’t like us, putting them near the back of the line for our advance into Asia.   China is more approachable, and the local British colonies have decent stats. They’ll make fine additions to our network.  AirMarx continues its shaky start.  This harmful event befalls us. It’s hard to track down the exact effects, but appears to simply spike our expenses for the quarter. They become more common if you cut back on repair funding. Rome continues to crawl with tourists.    Revenue continues to grow, though margins are slim. Air’Murica scrapes ahead of us by few passengers. Q3 1956  ConAir arrives in our Airspace, digs into their home, and sets up their Australian hub.  The Americans settle into Europe.  Exactly what they need to counteract the financial hemorrhaging brought on by Tupolevs - Swiss Busses!  The gates of the East are open to us.       Rome underperformed vs its last turn, though it still brought in a lot of extra fares. Expecting that the tourism boom won’t last much longer, I recall a plane to send to Hong Kong. This time, we do not hesitate to lock in our claim. Note that, now that we’re in contact with hostile routes, we can compare their stats directly on when configuring our own. An extra DC6 is ordered in anticipation of future routes.   I also discover the limits of our original local routes. This is about how much we can expect them to earn until competition drives our prices down.   Planes well spent.   Great. This war will inflict some harsh penalties on Cairo and, while established air routes will continue to fly, all negotiations there are shut down until it ends.  And another of these eats into our profit margins.  The 1956 Olympics occur without us. While the plan to sneak a hotel in there was a clever idea, Australia’s hostile attitude would have made it terribly overpriced. Our agents’ time was better spent on expanding our network.    We really feel the end of Rome’s tourism boom, and are squeezed tight by that breakdown, but once you set aside that spike we’re still climbing from where we were at the start of the year. Air’Murica continues to dominate the charts, but we’re maintaining second place ahead of ConAir. Q4 1956  Blue links Athens, bids in Paris, and develops South America.  Black links into more of Japan, then bids in London and Bombay.  Rome, Tehran, and Madrid are linked to Moscow. They’ve run out of Tupolevs and been forced to deploy IL14s, so some of those routes will manage to stay in the black. They bid in Algeria, Vienna, and Lagos.  We’re starting to look respectable on the big board.  Our bid was not entirely successful. These things can happen. Still, they’re enough to max out our current space in London while leaving 4 more to dabble elsewhere. We’re not even close to maxed out here either, so another round may get results down the line.   Surprisingly, the war isn’t hurting our business in Egypt. This is quite fortunate for us, as while this war’s start date corresponds with the Suez Crisis, it does not have a scripted end date and can last for several turns. It’s nice to know they won’t let a little invasion get in the way of expanding their airport. Once the fighting stops the Aero-Battle for those time-slots can begin.  Our Mid/Far East route is outperforming ConAir’s, moving more people at higher prices on a less expensive plane. I keep pressure on them by cutting prices deeper.  And our India route breaks one million in quarterly sales.  Berlin should manage even better.   More bidding in our new hub. Three months for five slots will make us ready to connect Beijing next turn. The ones we have now open an IL14 route to Kuala Lumpur.  With the tourism bubble over, we snag the biggest hotel in Italy.   The war continues as we close out the year. Egyptian airports continue to give no fucks.  And people fall in love with New Zealand.    Days without spontaneous combustion of aircraft: 84 A much better turn. Profits exceeded the height of Roman tourism boom, confirming that we are continuing to grow. 1956 Year End Review Things this year ran pretty tight. Margins were slim, cash was drained, side-business is stagnating, and some of our plans were disrupted by our first brush with hostile territory. On the upside, we’ve staked out claims in powerful cities in Rome and Asia, put most our planes to work on profitable routes, (Islamabad :arrr:) and show ourselves capable of making money while competing with our rivals. We also have a feel for how much business a small city can handle, so less time will be wasted fishing around for the best route schedules. Our current position is a natural consequence of how Aerobiz is structured. We begin with a lot of cash, very few assets, and a system which limits how quickly we can turn one into the other. The early game is a frenzy of purchasing where everyone scrambles to assemble an income stream. That well will soon run dry, and we’ll transition to fine tuning our existing network to squeeze as much out of it as possible while carefully choosing which cities are best to expand into. Our largest expenses have always been startup costs. Compared to the price of launching a new route, adding more planes and flights to existing connections is pocket change. A major turning point will come about five to ten years into the game, when our routes finish paying back their startup costs. Our Competition Our enemies are an odd mix. ConAir is our nearest rival. Our ability to stay slightly ahead of them can likely trace back to the savings from our IL14s vs their preference for fewer flights with bigger American planes. They’re also backed into a corner geographically. Trans-pacific flights won’t be very feasible for quite a while, (The nearest possible link there is Vancouver to Tokyo at 4750 miles) so ConAir has to go through us to reach most of the world. AirMarx is a big of a joke. Handicapped by the AI’s inability to grasp that the Tupolev is not a good plane, they’ve only managed to start profitable air routes when forced to deploy their own IL14s. They have enough cash on hand to make a recovery with some good plays, but for now they are decidedly not a threat. Air’Murica will be a challenge. They’ve made good use of their starting advantages, maintaining a strong lead in earnings since they started flying. It’s a lead we’ll have a hard time contesting until we’re able to slip in and compete directly with their home markets. Our strong start in Europe will help get us there, but it will be an uphill battle. The USA itself is unfriendly to us. Every city in North America will be an unpleasant and overpriced slog to acquire assets in. We’ll need a presence there to win, but barring another government contract there’s little chance it’ll be a region we dominate. (Canada Doesn’t like us either) Supporting Assets Stagnation has set in on the business front. Our early buys are running on tight margins, often barely breaking even or even posting losses over the course of the year. Our younger ones are doing well in their first turns, but there’s no telling if the rot will settle in for them as well. We have a counter to this - Marketing.   An Ad campaign targets a region and a category of business. We take an agent, hand them a budget, and put them into action. If they succeed, the target businesses receive a boost in performance for some time. The base cost scales with the count and quality of your assets, and we can spend anywhere from half to four times that number to adjust the odds. As you can see, the stakes are quite low with our current level of business holdings, so an experiment may be in order. Networking Options With $190 million left to throw on the table, we should select our next routes carefully. Here is a selection of stats for some cities not yet in our network. At home, we have a lot of proven low-volume routes powered by our IL14s. (And one barely-solvent monument to failure) Any extensive projects here must wait until Terhan expands, but we have a few extra slots to throw around until then. We could bid for more time on the routes we already hold, or open a link to somewhere fresh. pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- New Delhi Blue 3.6 10 16 Calcutta Blue 2.4 16 16 Karachi Blue 3.7 19 8 pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Lagos Green 2.1 14 8 Algiers Blue 1.2 26 14 A. Abaaba Blue 1.0 1 6 Nairobi Green 0.6 8 15 Tripoli Blue 0.6 19 5 Tunis Green 0.5 10 20 pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Athens Blue 7.2 44 46 Madrid Blue 2.5 36 36 Paris Blue 1.8 40 55 Barcelona Blue 1.4 27 32 Vienna Blue 1.2 40 42 pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Shanghai Blue 9.3 25 22 Bangkok Blue 5.0 16 33 Seoul Blue 4.0 16 8 Taipei Blue 2.0 33 18 Singapore Green 1.4 20 27 Manilla Blue 1.3 14 16 With present aircraft technology, North America is just within reach of an L1049. Washington is 4500 Miles from Rome and and has stats in the 40s. Though on the low side for population, it’s about as good as we could get until ranges get a lot better. Our only other option there is to dive into New York. We’d then be free to slog our way into business with more decent cities which despise us. pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Washington Orange 0.4 46 40 Los Angeles Orange 2.4 44 48 Chicago Orange 2.2 48 35 Houston Orange 1.2 42 24 Philidelphia Orange 1.2 42 24 pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Sao Paulo* Blue 6.8 16 9 Mexico City* Blue 5.4 28 29 Rio de Janeiro Blue 3.8 27 18 Santiago Blue 3.3 28 8 Lima Blue 2.4 26 8 Bueanos Aires Blue 2.0 22 15 Havana* Blue 1.4 14 12 Kingston Green 0.4 10 20 *Hub Candidate pre:City Rlt. Pop Ecn Trs ---- ---- --- --- --- Sydney* Orange 2.8 34 17 Melbourne Orange 2.4 44 17 Brisbane Orange 0.9 36 22 Perth* Orange 0.8 18 20 Adelaide Orange 0.8 28 25 Nandi Green 0.1 1 8 Papeete Blue 0.1 1 14 Noumea Blue 0.1 2 7 Auckland* Orange 0.1 15 29 *Hub Candidate A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 23:46
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