11-04-2018, 04:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-04-2018, 07:37 PM by WiCloverS18.)
Hi again,
I know you said you won't work on the AI yet, but i did some further testing of the AI behaviour anyway and thought this could be helpful so i decided to share my results. (Beware this is going to be a longer post)
At first i tried a normal game from 1945 with Air France and only Europe again (15 Opponents). The first 5 years everything worked fine but then the AI startet buying massive amounts of planes again. In 1960 BMI already had almost 1500 planes (but this time the slowdown was acceptable). So i decided to look what exactly the AI does from day to day. There i saw 2 things:
1. At every season start the AI abandons all their routes. If, before, they had weekly flights on 50-60 routes, after the season start they have 0 weekly flights on all routes. Then over the next few months they slowly build up flights again, gaining weekly flights on 2-3 routes per week only to loose them all again on the next season start. After testing this on a new started 1945 game i could also see that every time the AI abandons their routes on season start they create brand new ones and mostly only use These until the next season starts. The old ones mostly stay at 0 weekly flights.
In 1960 KD Avia couldn't even build up flights again. They stayed forever at 0 flights on all routes. I assume by then they had already covered all Airports they could reach and therefore weren't able to create new routes. And because the ai only rarely uses their old routes after abandoning them they mostly stayed at 0 flights.
2. Planes stay assigned to routes even if they have 0 flights. In the fleet overview it is shown that most AI planes are assigned to a route but there are no weekly flights on that route. After testing with a fresh 1945 start i also noticed that the AI doesn't use these planes after the start of a new season (I used the changing condition of the planes to determine which planes were being used). After abandoning their old routes and creating new ones they only use newly bought aircraft which were prviously unassigned to a route. The old planes won't be used again. That could be a reason why the ai buys so many planes.
After the start of a new season I then took over 2 AI Airlines (KD Avia and BMI) as subsidiaries to have a better look at the situation. I noticed that all routes (at KD Avia) were running but no aircraft were assigned (hence 0 weekly flights). Also in the route overview no airliners were displayed as assigned to the routes which actually had weekly flights (at BMI).
edit: I looked further into the routes of my new subsidiary BMI and saw that the ai seems to shedule flights always only for the current season which explains why they "abandon" the route at the start of the next season. They seem not to shedule new flights once the current ones end at the end of the season.
As for the planes, as mentioned in 2., in the fleet overview most planes are displayed as assigned to a route even if the route in question has 0 weekly flights and no assigned aircraft according to the route overview. Even after assigning a plane to the displayed route and then deleting the flight, it still showed the plane in the fleet overview as assigned to this route. Assigning the plane to a different route and then deleting the flight didn't remove the wrongly displayed first route either. The only way i could remove this first route from being displayed in the fleet overview was to delete the route entirely.
So in my opinion the source of the bad Performance of the ai Airlines are these 2 problems. They often abandon their routes and rarely use them again which costs them huge profit. Also they keep buying planes because they're not using their older ones and so constantly have huge expenses.
I hope this can help because sadly after some 15 to 20 years i have almost no competition anymore because the ai never has more than 60 routes active (before they abandon them again) and rarely uses the profitable routes for a longer time (or at all) so i don't really have to compete with them.
I hope you soon find the time to fix these issues because i really like this game but with this ai there is currently 0 challenge.
I know you said you won't work on the AI yet, but i did some further testing of the AI behaviour anyway and thought this could be helpful so i decided to share my results. (Beware this is going to be a longer post)
At first i tried a normal game from 1945 with Air France and only Europe again (15 Opponents). The first 5 years everything worked fine but then the AI startet buying massive amounts of planes again. In 1960 BMI already had almost 1500 planes (but this time the slowdown was acceptable). So i decided to look what exactly the AI does from day to day. There i saw 2 things:
1. At every season start the AI abandons all their routes. If, before, they had weekly flights on 50-60 routes, after the season start they have 0 weekly flights on all routes. Then over the next few months they slowly build up flights again, gaining weekly flights on 2-3 routes per week only to loose them all again on the next season start. After testing this on a new started 1945 game i could also see that every time the AI abandons their routes on season start they create brand new ones and mostly only use These until the next season starts. The old ones mostly stay at 0 weekly flights.
In 1960 KD Avia couldn't even build up flights again. They stayed forever at 0 flights on all routes. I assume by then they had already covered all Airports they could reach and therefore weren't able to create new routes. And because the ai only rarely uses their old routes after abandoning them they mostly stayed at 0 flights.
2. Planes stay assigned to routes even if they have 0 flights. In the fleet overview it is shown that most AI planes are assigned to a route but there are no weekly flights on that route. After testing with a fresh 1945 start i also noticed that the AI doesn't use these planes after the start of a new season (I used the changing condition of the planes to determine which planes were being used). After abandoning their old routes and creating new ones they only use newly bought aircraft which were prviously unassigned to a route. The old planes won't be used again. That could be a reason why the ai buys so many planes.
After the start of a new season I then took over 2 AI Airlines (KD Avia and BMI) as subsidiaries to have a better look at the situation. I noticed that all routes (at KD Avia) were running but no aircraft were assigned (hence 0 weekly flights). Also in the route overview no airliners were displayed as assigned to the routes which actually had weekly flights (at BMI).
edit: I looked further into the routes of my new subsidiary BMI and saw that the ai seems to shedule flights always only for the current season which explains why they "abandon" the route at the start of the next season. They seem not to shedule new flights once the current ones end at the end of the season.
As for the planes, as mentioned in 2., in the fleet overview most planes are displayed as assigned to a route even if the route in question has 0 weekly flights and no assigned aircraft according to the route overview. Even after assigning a plane to the displayed route and then deleting the flight, it still showed the plane in the fleet overview as assigned to this route. Assigning the plane to a different route and then deleting the flight didn't remove the wrongly displayed first route either. The only way i could remove this first route from being displayed in the fleet overview was to delete the route entirely.
So in my opinion the source of the bad Performance of the ai Airlines are these 2 problems. They often abandon their routes and rarely use them again which costs them huge profit. Also they keep buying planes because they're not using their older ones and so constantly have huge expenses.
I hope this can help because sadly after some 15 to 20 years i have almost no competition anymore because the ai never has more than 60 routes active (before they abandon them again) and rarely uses the profitable routes for a longer time (or at all) so i don't really have to compete with them.
I hope you soon find the time to fix these issues because i really like this game but with this ai there is currently 0 challenge.