Pricing Assistant

[hugomoto]

Hi there,

I actually just saw the DOs list and found this suggestion on the list of not liked suggestions.

However, I really do think, that a pricing help could be of good help without spoiling the whole point of the game.

I only played last year, so I don't know how much changed so far. Anyway, I remember, the game being really fun, including the pricing of the routes, until the point when I had to spend hours and hours in front of the computer. I bought many airplanes at once (I know, this is subject to change), which already were quite time consuming to put on a route... but then when I had to go through hundreds of routes and checking the prices, i just couldn't afford spending more than 3 hours per day... already in year 1 out of 10!

There is no need for a manager in real life to care about the exact price on a route. Hence a pricing assistant would operate just like an employee, who takes care of the route. You will still need to check the route for profit and take measures, if the price is going really down.

Here are some different ways to implement the assistant:

Costs
In general, i would suggest to charge for it. So, people would use it only, when they really need to lower the work load. Either by charging a percentage of the income on a route, where the assistant is applied, or actually "employing" people who could handle a certain amount of routes and cost a fixed amount of money.


Intervention
You could also imagine different points of intervention. Does it check the prices on a regular basis (daily, 48h, 72h, week) or rather on basis of a lowered load notification, e.g. when the factor has fell below 95%, 90%, ..., 60%. The more often, or the higher the load factor intervention, the higher the percentage/ the more employees would be needed.

  

[MrOrange]

But even when introducing the employee factor, the auto-pricing still has one very big drawback: price wars happen too quickly, and too fast. If every airline on, say, ATL-JFK has auto-pricing on, and one new airline comes in and charges one euro less for the route, all airlines will have to adapt prices, and the auto-pricing system would have to react to each single price change that comes along. The result might very well be that prices fall from 150 to 1 in one hour, or less, or more - the timeframe doesn't matter that much, it's the whole point of an automatic server-controlled pricewar.

We're still working on multi-editing of routes (like the mass-sell aircraft function), but that feature is not bug-free yet.

[CHR]

I think if any system is introduced to speed up route editing, it should not be fully automatic to avoid inactive, or less active airlines engaging in price wars while they are not actually playing.

The other specific problem with this suggestion is that someone could set up their auto-price bot to change prices just after their other competitor's bot changes prices - effectively meaning they always have the higher price.

A similar possibility to this which may work is implementing some kind of one-click fare adjustment, where a moderately large, one off fee (perhaps in the order of one or more days' revenue) is charged for each adjustment. The fee would prevent people from engaging in rapid price wars, but the quick adjustment would make it easier to fix fares.

[hugomoto]

This assistant shouldn't react to price changes of the competitors, but rather adjust the price for a good load factor of one's own company. In addition you could think of a load factor minimum of 70% or 80%. The assistant would only interfere if the load factor is below the minimum, hence a single change of a competitor doesn't change anything.


I do agree, a good alternative would be the one-click adjustment (on a single route or on multiple routes). It would simulate hours of checking and readjusting - i.e. what the player would have done anyway. But still needs the player to check and decide. 

[neldot]

What about a non-automatic, but simplified mass-pricing function that can affect a number of selected route in percentage?

For example you could select a number of routes and increase or decrease by 5% all their prices.

It will be a less accurate but faster way to manage a lot of routes needing adjustement.

[MrOrange]

We're still working on multi-editing of routes (like the mass-sell aircraft function), but that feature is not bug-free yet.

[neldot]

We're still working on multi-editing of routes (like the mass-sell aircraft function), but that feature is not bug-free yet.

Thank you, MrOrange, I missed it.