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 Once upon a time, Koei made RPGs, Strategy Games, and Simulations. This is one of them. Aerobiz Supersonic is a business sim released for the SNES and Genesis in 93/94, in which up to four players compete to build the best globe-spanning airline that money can buy. Despite the bizarre mismatch of a sim/strategy game on a 16 bit console, the game is actually fairly well made. The mechanics have some depth without being opaque. The player is given easy access to important information needed to make decisions, and figure out what makes for good and bad play. The AI is capable of working with those rules and, at the game's higher difficulties, can compete with human players without relying on behind-the-scenes cheating. The whole interface has been designed to be reasonably navigated with a d-pad and 6 buttons, so the absence of mouse control isn't too badly missed. And to top it all off, the soundtrack is composed of the most hypnotically relaxing muzak to ever crawl out of an elevator. I'll be showing the game off by taking us through each of its four scenarios. I will not fly alone. GOON-AIR IPO Through the magic of capitalism (or bureaucratic despotism) you, the stakeholders, will be making the calls that will lead our company to fortune or ruin. Stake out our territory, manage our fleet, outperform and undercut our enemies, or risk millions on buying hotels in Kazakhstan. Each update will span four turns of play, or one year of game time, after which you'll be brought up to date and given fresh opportunities to run everything into or off of the ground. Planes are well known to do both. Updates Explaining Mechanics 
A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 15:59
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Explaining Mechanics Objectives  Speaks for itself, really. We need to make the right business decisions to achieve global domination within 20 years. Of Air Travel. For Peace. (That "Europe" will be replaced by whatever your home region is) Regions  Aerobiz divides the world into 7 regions. Each airline can own a single hub in each region, located in one of its major cities. All your Air-Business will consist of routes between your hubs and other cities. An airline can spread from one region into another by connecting their hub to a major city in another region, then laying down some time and a pile of cash to build a new hub in that city.  A close-up of the Euro-region. Its major cities are in green, its minor ones in white. Cities  Here is where the fun starts. Cities and their traits are core information we'll need to make it big in the aero-biz. Every city is part of a country, and has population, economy, and tourism ratings that describe how prosperous it is. Linking highly rated cities is how we get bodies in seats and bring in the stacks of air travel dollars. Up in the top right corner you can see the city's opinion of you. The more they like your airline, the easier it is to do business there. Initial relations are set based on your airline's country of origin vs the country which rules the city. This screenshot was taken from a game based in London, so all cities ruled by the UK love them. Events can cause cities to change hands, and give you chances to Centre-Right, those six icons represent notable local businesses. We can lay down money to purchase these, generating modest profits and often presenting side-bonuses to our air routes through the city. Finally, that middle bar is all about the business end of the city - their airport. A city's airport is described in terms of how many flights per week it can handle. These schedule slots can be purchased by airlines, and are then put to use by their routes. A flight requires a slot from the city on each end of its route. This means you want to buy up as many slots in your hub-cities as possible so that your airline can grow. There's a cap on what fraction of a city's slots one airline can own, preventing absolute monopolies, and whenever a city hits that cap work will begin on expanding their airport to accommodate even more business. Aircraft  The fun continues with our separate-but-equal partner in this industry, planes. Aerobiz contains Real Aero-Planes(tm) forged by Real Aero-Smiths(tm) during Real Aero-Times(tm), along with some high-tech works of Aero-Fiction(tm) from The Future!! Our assorted vendors will supply us with the tool of the trade. What's up for sale will depend on what year we're playing in, and how much it'll cost us will depend on who we are. Vendors will cut discounts for airlines from their home countries, or who already use notable numbers of their craft, and will outright refuse to sell anything to buyers from the lands of their enemies. This bites hardest in the early scenarios, where being on the wrong side of the iron curtain will cut you off from half the world's supply of aircraft for a very long time.  Aircraft stats are largely straightforward. Each plane has a range, capacity, and fuel/mechanical efficiency. They self-explain nicely. Long range planes can handle bigger routes, larger planes can swing more tickets with each flight, and higher fuel and mechanical ratings reduce the cost of keeping them flying. Those last two numbers are for planes in service and held in stock by our line. There's a 1-turn delay on buying planes, so be sure to order them in advance of when you need them. Routes  Put A and C together and you get these. Link a city to a hub, assign some number of a make of plane, tell 'em how many laps to take and slap a pricetag on it. Now you're in the Aero-Biz. Fine-tuning all the options on your routes is one of the game's main decision-making points. Do you own enough space at your airports to assign more flights? Got the planes to do the work? Are the fares worth the price of flying it? Would you still be filling every aisle if you charged a little more? Could you steal customers from those other fuckers if you charged less? The dance of air and business turns and turns again each quarter, until only one remains. All routes have a base fare determined by the distance flown. You can chose to charge +/-50% of base, as suits your needs. Agents  Your other main decision points are these clowns. Each airline has four agents which they can deploy into the world, inflicting their will upon it. We use these folks to buy airport slots, invest in businesses, set up hubs, and run ad campaigns. Each can only be in one place at a time, and will be stuck there for a span of time depending on the nature of the mission and how much the local bureaucracy despises them. Our 5th beatle on the side there is always around to do the opposite of everyone else, selling back things if you don't want them anymore. The portraits are randomly selected with each new game. A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 16:00
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Getting Started The year is 1955. Air is in business, and business is good. We're getting on this in a big kind of a way, and riding it all the way to the big time. We're getting on that plane and we're doing it tonight - now and for the rest of our lives. We're taking the midnight plane going anywhere. Where are we going? Europe Easy-Mode One. Europe is home to many large and prosperous cities within fair distance of each other, in countries who are mostly on good terms. Aside from that whole "Cold War" thing. They're also in fair range to reach out to North America, Africa, and the Middle East. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- London 5.6 46 42 Paris 1.8 40 55 Rome 2.2 36 45 Amsterdam 0.3 18 36 Frankfurt 0.2 14 20 Berlin 2.0 20 20 Moscow 5.0 28 12  Easy-Mode Two. Almost entirely composed of the USA, success here is won or lost based what Uncle Sam thinks of you. He takes care of his own. Limited options for branching out though, as the Pacific Ocean is quite large. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- New York 5.4 50 46 Los Angeles 2.4 44 48 Chicago 2.2 48 35 Dallas 0.8 33 32 Washington 0.4 46 40 Vancouver 0.3 22 47 Atlanta 0.2 20 30  Medium-Hard Mode. Some large but sub-par cities held by countries who don't have the greatest diplomatic standings or care much for each other. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- Sao Paulo 6.8 16 9 Mexico City 5.4 28 29 Havana 1.4 14 12  Hard Mode One. One decent city surrounded by miles of aeronautic wasteland. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- Cairo 4.0 24 30 Tunis 0.5 10 20  Hard Mode Two. More poor cities in poor countries who all despise each other. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- Tehran 4.4 22 10 New Delhi 3.6 10 16 Baghdad 3.5 20 14  A happy Medium. Plenty of options, plenty of people to move, some countries willing to cooperate with each other. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- Beijing 7.5 26 22 Tokyo 5.2 30 20 Bangkok 5.0 16 33 Hong Kong 4.1 37 31 Seoul 4.0 16 8 Singapore 1.4 20 27 Manila 1.3 14 16  Another Medium. Has a handful of adequate cities that can get you started. Takes a rather long haul to get out to other regions, as it's a long way to your nearest neighbor in Asia. pre:City Pop(M) Econ Tour ---------- ------ ---- ---- Sydney 2.8 34 17 Perth 0.8 18 20 Auckland 0.1 15 29 A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 16:00
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Phoenix Travel in red, based out of Frankfurt. I spent quite some time playing Airline Tycoon years ago. That was a fun game.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:15
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Phoenix Travel in black, put that poo poo in Rome.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:49
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I played the poo poo out of this and its prequel. Even my mom (a travel agent) got in on the fun and had a good time with it. Air Murica in Blue, flying out of NYC
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Feb 13, 2014 17:19
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Hannibal Airlines White Tunis Our first stop should be Spain then Rome
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Feb 13, 2014 17:36
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Japan Japan Japan Sorry, I was kind of overwhelmed by my need to proclaim the superiority of Japanese culture. Did I mention I know some Japanese? I learned it from the Narutos. Seriously, this game was one of my favorites back in the day. I was terrible at it of course, but it was fun. I'd like to see what happens if we fly out of Tokyo and I think our color should be Red As Hell. It's a good medium: great population, fair-to-middling economy and tourism. That means we'll have to start the economic bubble ourselves. As for the name, we need something that simply states our goals and aspirations, and there is nothing that represents who we are better than Darumasan.
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Feb 13, 2014 18:17
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Oh man I have a completely irrational love for this game AirMarx Red as all get out Moscow Let's turn Europe into hard mode
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Feb 13, 2014 18:30
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I Don't Care for our company name. We should be red because it's the best colour. And let's fly out of Sydney
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Feb 13, 2014 18:39
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Goon-Air Neck beard brown Start out of Chicago
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Feb 13, 2014 18:41
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While Europe is easy mode, given that Cold War era fun was mentioned, I'm surprised nobody has voted for Berlin to be our base of operations. Think of all the border checkpoint shenanigans! Airline colour should be red, as is only proper. I can't think of a clever pun for the name, though. You're on your own, there.
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Feb 13, 2014 20:11
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Will take the chance to note that Aerobiz considders Berlin to be 100% territory of East Germany. 
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Feb 13, 2014 20:17
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Al-Jabra Black Cairo ABC for hard mode.
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Feb 13, 2014 20:34
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You will be a red airline company, therefore it's logical to start in Moscow. Also, you will go by the name Con Air because nothing's safe with us. But we'll still be the best.
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Feb 13, 2014 20:42
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Purple Rome Caelum
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Feb 13, 2014 20:51
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Red New York Air Biz
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Feb 13, 2014 22:22
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Well I can't argue with Phoenix Travel  Red is a nice color too. Hmm...I can't pick a city very well there's so many so Whatever City in Asia has the highest count Krysmphoenix fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 23:18
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Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah!
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Feb 13, 2014 23:32
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! I vote for this! Never shall the Shah fall!
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Feb 14, 2014 01:18
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I wonder, does your choice of planes flip from Western Bloc to Eastern Bloc after the Shah is exiled? I've never played as a Middle Eastern airline before. Edit: Tehran would be a believable hub though. Don't even think about offering flights to Israel! (Because places like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv don't seem to be on the map  )
The Casualty fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Feb 14, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 01:25
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! I vote this because the real life Iran Air was ascendant during this time. They even had Concordes on order when the Revolution struck, and might have been the big Middle East airline instead of Emirates if they had continued how they were going. Also hell yeah Aerobiz LP.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:34
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Red and Moscow sounds good, dunno about the name.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:42
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Red in Atlanta. Name should be Con-Air.
Iron Chitlin fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 14, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 01:47
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Iron Chitlin posted:Red in Atlanta. I have no opinion on name. Oh please why don't you just cop to the fact that you want us to be Delta
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Feb 14, 2014 01:49
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Coolguye posted:Oh please why don't you just cop to the fact that you want us to be Delta Nobody wants to be Delta. Nobody.
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Feb 14, 2014 02:51
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The Casualty posted:Nobody wants to be Delta. Nobody. Not even Delta.
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Feb 14, 2014 02:57
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I'll be closing voting and getting things underway in another twelve hours or so. Current frontrunners are Moscow, Phoenix Travel, and Red.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:09
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I'll toss my stock in with Japan, Red and another vote for Con-Air.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:11
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! Voting this. I'm interested in how this LP will go, since Aerobiz is a game that I could never quite get the hang of as a kid. I always ran out of money. 
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Feb 14, 2014 04:14
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Smite posted:I'll toss my stock in with Japan, Red and another vote for Con-Air. Yes me too. 
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Feb 14, 2014 04:34
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! My airline isn't getting any votes so I'd like to endorse this choice!
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Feb 14, 2014 05:24
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! Absolutely this. No one else has a better pun.
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Feb 14, 2014 06:36
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! This.
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Feb 14, 2014 07:59
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Testikles posted:Air-ran with a green livery flying out of Tehran. Long live the Shah! I've never managed to actually succeed basing in the Middle East before (as I am terrible at this game!) so I'd love to see this!
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Feb 14, 2014 08:26
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And that's time! For Scenario 1, Air-Ran will be flying out of Tehran under an overwhelmingly agreed-upon red banner. I'll get things fired up and check in with the initial state of the game later today.
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Feb 14, 2014 16:06
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Pregame 1955 - Islam is the Flight Before we get started, I mentioned difficulty levels briefly in the OP. One of the things I like about this game is that difficulty mostly influences AI behavior, and the regular mechanics adjusted by it cut both ways. The higher the difficulty, the more aggressive the AI will be about choosing good starting cities, expanding its territory, and fine-tuning their routes in response to competition. This can backfire on them though, as the AI prioritizes passengers over profits and can be lured into bankrupting itself by operating at a loss to steal your customers. Speaking of, the lower the difficulty the more slowly that customers will react to changes in the market. They’ll possess a degree brand loyalty which keeps them from all jumping ship at once. This inertia makes it easier to defend your own holdings, but also slows down any attempts to break into enemy markets. We’ll be playing on Turbo for this scenario to get a nice middle ground. Anyway, on to the game.  Air-Ran won out at the polls, so we’ll be getting our start with getting feet off the ground in the Middle East. The AI’s counter-picks provided a chance to use some of the runner-ups. Every potential hub has its own default name for an airline. Tehran's was the boundlessly creative "Iranian". For some reason, Moscow’s is Siberia. Each of our rivals go before us in the turn order. This will give their agents the initiative when it comes to grabbing deals, but also lets us choose our actions in response to theirs. Though we take all our actions in order, the turn is resolved simultaneously after everyone has moved.  Air ‘Murica opens by laying some groundwork for inter-regional flights, bidding for slots in Mexico City and London, and digs into their home base by buying a Hotel in New York. The AI will often hold off on opening any routes for a few turns while they get their footing.  Air Marx plays a similar but more close-reaching opening. They bid in Athens, Zurich, and Cairo, and secure a Hotel in Moscow. Buying business in your hub cities is a common move, since it means they’ll provide their benefits to all your flights in that region. You may notice that these two started with quite different supplies of cash. An airline’s starting assets are influenced by their home city. There may also be a random factor in there as well, but I’ve never paid close enough attention to be sure.  Con-Air wastes no time launching their first route from Singapore to Fukuoka. They bid in Osaka and Sydney, and follow the trend of buying local hotels. This brings things over to us.  Every campaign begins with one of our agents greeting us and reiterating the goal of the game - dominate the industry in 20 years. They’ll also inform us of our lose condition, if we remain in the red for a full year we go bankrupt. This unskippable text helps introduce something I like about the UI - All text scrolling in Aerobiz can be sped up by holding any direction on the D-Pad. This lets you swiftly fast-forward through any message you’d like with zero risk of accidentally making any important choices. It’s a nice touch.  Can you feel the Aero-Zeal?   Let’s get to business! We begin with some modest Aero-holdings. We don’t have a lot of lot of slots, or planes to fill them with, but that’s not much of an obstacle to us. The airports out here are fairly small and demand for travel is low, so we don’t need all that much property to saturate the market. Those 820 Million dollars sitting in the company account can get us all the things we’ll need to break out of here and start growing. Time to take a look at what we have.  A fine batch of executives.   And an adequate home base. The airport is rather small, but we have enough of it to service what flights we could set up this round. We could also easily max out our share of it to provoke some construction, which should finish by the time we need any new slots. Four out of a possible 6 businesses also isn’t bad. Those are an Arts Pavillion, a Shuttle Bus, a Hotel, and a Commuter Airline. Any one of them could make a fair addition to our portfolio. So where could we fly to?    Here’s what we have already. In a turn of good fortune, Iran’s foreign relations aren’t all that bad. That blue hesitant-brofist is what I’ll call ‘neutral’. It’s only one step down from from the teal handshake of ‘friendly’ that we have in the homeland. Negotiations in friendly cities take only one turn, neutral cities need two. On the far end of the scale, outright hostile cities take a full year to settle a deal. Baghdad has stats close to Tehran’s and is practically on our doorstep. Tashkent has the best economy and tourism ratings in the whole middle east. It’s on par with midrange cities in Europe and America. Islamabad is far less impressive but still has a high tourism rating for the region. Routes to these cities could get us started on bringing in the Aero-Bucks. Here are our local options for expansion.     Karachi is a mirror of Islamabad, another map dot that may be worth a flight or two but nothing to write home about. New Delhi’s mostly unimpressive, but as a potential hub for our competitors we should keep an eye on it. Bombay and Calcutta are more of the same, potentially useful but also a ways out. On to our options for branching out.   Over in Africa Cairo is a mere 1250 miles away, closer than most of our local cities, and stands out as the best city in the region. Tunis is farther out at 2310 miles, but would be notably less expensive to set up shop in.    Our nearest link to Europe is Moscow at 1560 miles, but flying there would mean plunging face-first into the heart of Air-Marx’s territory. We’d be directly competing with them on every euro-route we make. Rome isn’t much farther out at 2120 miles, and would do more to set our routes apart from those of the Russians. Berlin is also pretty near at 2180 miles, while being closer to the middle of the Euro-region as a whole.   Going east isn’t so easy. The closest we can get is Bangkok at 3370 miles, then Beijing at 3500. Once we’re over that hump, either is a decent base of operations. Now, let’s take a look at our fleet.  Not so great. At least they have engines and wings. We’re sitting on a handful of early Russian-made passenger planes. Fortunately, our current foreign relations are good enough that we’re not refused access to any vendors right now. We’ll have free reign to scour the market for whatever suits us.   Russian planes are cheap, small, and short-range. For most purposes, they’re worse than western aircraft from a given year. The Tupolev 104 in particular, with its godawful fuel efficiency is something you only use if you have no other choice. However, as a third world airline we have a niche perfectly suited to the Ilyushin 14. Though tiny and short-range, the IL14 has the best efficiency ratings of any plane on the market right now. It’s perfect for hops between small cities who’d never generate enough customers to fill any larger planes.    Western planes are at the other end of the spectrum. American planes are huge sky-whales that can fly whole villages to any corner of the world you wish, as long as you can keep their operating costs fed. They’re great mainliners for flights between big cities and inter-regional flights where there’s enough demand to fill them. European companies like Vickers tend towards smaller economy-sized planes for when you need to run a short route and refuse to buy from communists. With all that out of the way, it’s time plan our opening moves. How shall we proceed with our first year of play? Routes With no existing connections to manage, the only question on the table is where and when we start. And what to send and how often to fly and how much to charge and what's the deal with the food... Bidding Airport-Time is Airline-Money. Where do we barge in, and where do we back off? Do we shore up local travel options or start laying foundations for new hubs? Business Everyone else bought a hotel on their first turn. Do we fall into line or break the trend? There’s not a lot of business in our home region, but buying the right ones could help make up for the low quality of our cities. Planes Our fleet is small, young, and must some mix of Vodka and Dog-Oil for how much fuel those Tupolevs burn, but we have the whole world’s market to buy from. Vote on our policies for 1955, and while you’re at it, Name our agents! A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 03:02
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I have absolutely no idea how this game works. That being said, I like Rome as our first potential hub, but the fact that all the AI took the same action makes me believe that it's the right move, so I'd probably go with buying the hotel in Teh(e)ran (why the hell is it spelled with an extra e in German I don't get it).
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Feb 15, 2014 03:21
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Tehran->Cairo->Rome->Europe Basically at this time I would imagine that the majority of travellers would be heading to Europe and America so I would think we should focus on that region first before heading to the far east and India. Business- No idea DC6 looks like the best at the moment for ME to EU but our old IL14 look great for small markets
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Feb 15, 2014 03:45
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Well, I used a random name generator for our Agents. And starting from the top left, and going right wrapping around, I'm suggesting Heydar, Parvana, Nilofer, Javed, and FereydoonLord Windy posted:Tehran->Cairo->Rome->Europe I agree with pretty much everything here. Business stuff: Let's get a hotel in Tashkent. If it's not too expensive, we should get one in Islamabad too, but I don't know if the 2 in Econ will make that a really bad purchase.
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Feb 15, 2014 05:54
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