Average/representative load factor

[andqui]

I know the new economy mode introduces non-random loadouts and payloads. It's my understanding that if you do not have that enabled, the payload is random. Would it be possible to have some sort of bias that makes higher % load factors more common than lower ones, without going through the economy setup? Let's say, for example, I want an average load factor of 80%. This means that the random results generated by FSCaptain will cluster around that, instead of being completely random.

The reason I ask is that I don't really use FSCaptain as much for airline management (yet) as I do for the in-flight portion and tracking my individual log. I just picked one of the default big airlines (Air France I believe) and use that just as a placeholder while I do all sorts of flights in different airlines and aircraft. I don't want to set up the economy mode and such at the moment, but it's also annoying to get something like a 20% load randomly generated for a LHR-JFK flight. If the system is already setup to favor higher %, and I just haven't noticed, I guess that's good and sorry for my confirmation bias.

Also, because of the way I use FSCaptain above, is there a way to get FSCaptain to use the parking code specified in the aircraft.cfg when assigning gates, instead of the code of the airline in administrator?

[peter]

Hi Andqui,

thank your for your thoughts. The current economic model is actually randomized, but the maximum and average payload on your flights depends on your reputation. Currently, you can roughly think of a relation like "average load factor = reputation". So if your reputation is 10, you might get a load factor of 30% for a flight, but probably not 90%. The hard part is getting the reputation up

If you do not use the economic model, you can specify your payload in under "Specify Flight Details" if you wish.

As for the parking code: because you are using Air France you can probably get those gates assigned that FSX has identified as Air France gates.
Travis or Dutch should know more about this. We are discussing a better solution for gates, but it may take a while to be implemented.

Cheers,
Peter

[andqui]

Thanks for the reply, but I don't think you quite understood what I meant on either of the points. I know I can specify the exact payload, but that's what I don't want to happen. I want FS captain to give me a payload, but I want it to be more often closer to full than not. As it is now, it seems completely random, so on a 250 seat aircraft I can get anywhere between 0-250 passengers. In real life it's not a perfectly random distribution like that; the odds of being assigned 230 passengers should be much higher than the odds of being assigned 20 passengers, yet in FS Captain you very frequently get almost empty aircraft. Again, this is for the generated payloads WITHOUT the economy features.

Re: the parking, like I said above, I don't want Air France every time. Air France is just the airline I picked as a place holder, where my pilot's log and history live. One day I'll be doing a Delta flight, then maybe Cathay Pacific, then SAS, then Air France, then Japan AL, and I don't want to have to have a seperate save/pilot for every airline I want to fly. I'm not using FSCaptain to simulate an Air France organization, but for the in-flight aspects of it pilot achievements. If I'm a Delta flight inbound to Atlanta, with DAL as the parking code in the aircraft.cfg, it would make sense for FSCaptain to use that to assign a gate, instead of whatever the code is for the airline in administrator, which doesn't matter in my situation.

[Travis]

Andqui,

In your Administrator's Airline Definition tab, you can enter a Load Factor that would be used if you're not using the economy mode. I think by default it's 0 which means "totally random," which is what you're seeing.

I just ran a test with the RJ100 (which seats a nice round 100) and using a LoadFactor of 85%, I got a range from 75 to 98.

When I fly airliners, I fly like you do - this time on a Delta, next time on a TAP. I have a plan in mind for a future version to allow "mutable airline codes" but I may be missing one piece. For the Administrator you would have to enter a code on the Flight Dispatch tab since you're not necessarily in an aircraft at the time, but if you plan a flight from the FCDU... I think that the airline code is available to me... but I haven't hit on how you would signal whether or not you wanted to use the airliner's code, or your airline's code.

Edit: I guess we could accept an empty FSCaptain Airline's Code as an indication to always use an Airliner's Code from the FCDU. (And if there isn't one for your aircraft, we could default to an unknown code... perhaps "XYZA" or something so that a random parking would be assigned.)

[andqui]

That load factor in the airline configuration was exactly what I was looking for, thanks for pointing that out.

The edit seems like a good way to handle it- if nothing in FSCaptain, then look at the aircraft.