Expanded inflight meal options to affect reputation
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Detailed Description
The current offering for inflight meals etc. isn't very detailed due to two things:
- The list of possible options is very basic.
- The default time periods 0-2hrs, 2-5hrs etc are very rudimentary. You can manually create different offerings for 3hrs / 4hrs etc but it is very cumbersome.
At the moment the default seems to be offer everything even if it isn't realistic as the costs aren't all that much more than the basic offering which again doesn't seem correct.
I propose the following which is based more on real life and gives additional challenges to players depending on the type of airline they run:
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Change current segments to miles not hours. I.e. 0-500miles - commuter / 501 - 1000 miles / 1001-2500 / 2500 to 4500 miles etc. This makes it easier to have a specific IFS for short domestic hops where the average passenger would be more than happy with a drink and a biscuit.
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As well as the current food offering "3 course full meal / gourmet meal etc" have a sub menu for the quality / luxury of the ingredients. I.e. do you want to offer a 3 course meal with cheap horrible meat or something that's actually edible. Same class of meal but could dramatically affect reputation. Also, state how many choices you get which again affects price / reputation. I.e. is the gourmet meal a choice of take it or leave it or a menu with 8 entrees to select from etc. Also, at the moment a "pizza" seems to be acceptable as a business class second meal / snack - in the real world I think it needs to be something a bit more luxurious than that to obtain 100% reputation.
Something like Airline Enterprises could work better as you picked the number of available dishes in each class as well as the quality of food / drink provided.
I also think if you want to go into detail (probably too much detail for the game) you should take time of day into the calculation. If you're offering an overnight flight then the chances are you'd want to offer either dinner and a light breakfast or a supper and a full breakfast. Or an early morning flight your customers are more likely to be happy with a lighter breakfast type offering versus if the same flight was at 7pm where they'd prefer something more substantial.
Context
It would further improve how reputation is calculated, therefore making it more of challenge to get 100% rep without eating into profits. Most likely airlines would start to accept not having 100% rep and therefore it'd lower their demand, in turn making them work harder to fill their aircrafts. At the moment, even with considerably more expensive than default pricing, it is easy to achieve 100% load factor.
As above - makes the game more of a challenge to achieve good reputation and therefore charge premium prices if you want full loads.