Pax numbers

[lukasba]

Hello

I have been a silent but enthusiastic user of FSCaptain before MSFS2020 was released. I have always found it to out battling other airline simulation programs by its sheer inclusiveness of all aspects, there is just one aspect that I have a bit of a question about, one that has been missing in order to shelf other programs completely. The way Pax numbers are calculated.

Are there any logic, or does it take a completely random number? I understand not all planes are full, but flying a 747 with 29 pax would just be so rare that it would border the unrealistic. I remember some sort of economy mode was introduced a while back, and I was hoping that could be expanded upon in the future. 

being able to set prices somehow to predict the load factor, taking into consideration the size of markets that's being travelled between, and the type of operation thats being selected, legacy, tourist, charter etc. This could be a valuable addition, to get pax numbers that comes from more than thin air.

Or maybe i'm just boneheaded and there has already been developed something since I moved to MSFS. Either way, thank you for your time, and I will look very much forward to the MSFS release of FSC

[peter]

Hello Lukasba,

welcome to the FSCaptain forum. What you describe is already available: when you start an airline, you can specify a load factor, which determines the average percentage of payload on you flights. 100% means that the flights will be close to maximum capacity. You can also set the variance of how much your payload will fluctuate around the load factor. To do that, open file "Config/options.cfg" and change the variable "PAYLOAD_VARIANCE".

In standard mode, FSCaptain will randomly assign payload within the range set by these two variables. The economic model goes much beyond that. Payload will be determined by your airline's reputation (which grows over time and depends on how well you fly) and the ticket prices relative to your competition. All these variables can be set with minute detail in various configuration files. The economic mode is fully functional. We call it a prototype only because it requires a lot of setup right now to set all those parameters. But once you have done that, you don't have to touch that anymore and just fly well to get your company thriving. There is a separate document EconomicMode.pdf in the Documentation folder that explains all details.

Happy Holidays,
Peter

[Travis]

I'm glad that Peter answered first, because I had completely forgotten about the option of "PAYLOAD_VARIANCE".

So I started to dig through the code and I encountered two other modifiers.  There is a general guard of a 25% minimum of a PAX load, but that can be overridden by several other factors... resulting in a "last chance guard" of a minimum of a single PAX.

Looking at that code, I found that I could easily maneuver and break the "25% minimum", consistently giving me repeated lists of up to 32 charter flights of a B747... each with only one PAX.

Fixed for 1.8.4 Alpha 2.... 

Best,