Problems with Version 2.13 Final

[WiCloverS18]

Hi,

I just recently discovered this game and i really like it finally there's a good modern Airline Manager. There are just 2 bigger Problems and one small error i encountered in Version 2.13 Final.

1. I can't start before 1935. Every time i choose a year between 1930 and 1934 the game crashes after i choose an Airline and click on the start button. Log is in the attached ZIP.

2. The AI Airline behavior is weird and slows the game down. What do i mean by that?

If i start early (Tested with multiple 1935 and 1940 starts) the ai starts to buy planes like crazy. After 2 years most Long haul Airlines already reaching more than 250 aircraft. The weird part is that they're not using them. More than 50% of their aircraft just sitting around having flown 0km. From that Point on they just buy more and more (going ever further in debt) and the game extremely slows down. After 2,5 years it needs 10 seconds for an ingame day to pass (at Setting very fast).

If i start later (multiple times tested in 1945, 1950 and 1960) this doesn't happen. After 2 years the first Long haul Airlines may reach 100 aircraft but also using 95% of them. They mostly don't go into debt or just a bit but quickly recover because they actually make Money. I also have no noticeable slowdown at all at this point.

There is a Savegame in the attached ZIP File where i started as Air France in 1935 and just let the game run for around 2 in-game years to show the problem. 1 in-game day already needs 8 to 9 seconds to pass on my PC and you can see the large amount of unused aircraft the ai has.

3. There is a small error in the configuration of the Savoia-Marchetti S.73 where the seat pitch is "74,4" but Needs to be "74.4", otherwise the plane will have 0 seats. This Problem does not affect the two above because i corrected it myself and the 2 other Problems still happen.


Best Regards

WiCloverS18

[Tjoeker]

Thanks for the report.

1. I'll leave this to Pjank, since he knows more about this stuff.
I quickly tried to start a game in 1930, using 2 opponents and Sabena as my airline. It didn't cause any trouble.
What airline were you using? And how many opponents do you select?


2. AI improvements is something we have planned for a future update. We first need to work on other stuff, or we'll have to redo the AI again.
I suggest to not take on too many opponents for the time being.

3. Thanks, I'll fix this error.

[WiCloverS18]

Thanks for the reply,

1. I tried different combinations. 0, 2, 5, or 10 Opponents, different Airlines (even a custom one), the game would crash every time if the start was before 1935.

2. It's not such a big Problem. I'll just have to start 1945 or later. Then everything works fine. I just forgot to mention that i startet with 10 Opponents in most of my test runs but the Problem also occurs with just 5 opponents (that they buy an unnecessary amount of planes which they don't use and extremely go into debt). The slowdown then is logically less extreme but still substantial.

[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.

[Tjoeker]

We're aware of this AI behaviour, but thanks for listing these issues.

AI improvements are currently planned for a later version since we need to work on other factors first that will influence the behaviour.
We'll see if we can improve those 2 issues for the next release, since that would already make the AI significantly smarter.