Archive for November, 2010

AirlineSim’s Christmas Fundraiser

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
With the launch of version 1.5 and several new game worlds, 2010 has been an exciting year for AirlineSim. Our usual modus operandi for the looming Christmas season would be to run some games and giveaways for our loyal playerbase. And although we still want to give something back to the community, this year we thought we’d go about it in a slightly different way.

More specifically, we got to thinking: simply giving away credits is a nice gesture, but it’s not really anything more than that. While we all play the day away on the Internet, from the comfort of our homes, there are people who can’t be sure where their next meal is coming from; while we direct our airline empires from the ground, the real world’s air and seas are menaced by pollution and climate change; while we grumble about hidden costs when booking a flight, many others are only too aware of the hidden costs of political dissent. So, while we want to reward our players, we’d also love to encourage everyone to help out a little over Christmas.

For this reason, we’re going to be running a special AirlineSim fundraiser: Anyone making a donation to a charitable organisation working in the fields of human rights, environmental and climate protection or humanitarian assistance between the 1st and 24th of December may forward us a copy of their receipt (to support@airlinesim.aero). In return, we will reimburse the donor with AirlineSim game credits worth 5x the amount donated. Whether it’s a small neighbourhood project or a global organisation doesn’t matter: every donation counts!

We look forward to your commitments, and we hope we can give away plenty of credits!

Small Print

1. To prevent abuse, we can only accept a maximum of one receipt per account.

2. A scan of the receipt sent to our support address, support@airlinesim.aero, is sufficient proof of a donation – paper copies aren’t necessary.

3. For donations made via PayPal, bank transfers or other digital payment methods, a screenshot of the payment confirmation and a contact address or website of the organization should be provided.

4. We reserve the right to audit recipients of donations, and will not provide reimbursements to projects or groups found not to be serious charitable organisations.

5. The amount of credits reimbursed is based on the donated amount in EUR. Recent exchange rates will be applied if required.

Version 1.5.4

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

Today all game worlds received the scheduled update to version 1.5.4. This update includes the already announced changes to the stock market rules. Beyond that it is a regular maintenance release fixing various bugs and introducing smaller improvements. One of these is the in-game support page which gives you a brief overview over all available support channels.

Read the rest of the article to get a full change log.

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Coming up: New stock market rules

Friday, November 19th, 2010

The launch of our latest international server (Tempelhof) has shown that, starting with the first IPOs, there has been an excessive level of abuse of the stock markets. For that reason, the run-up period to an IPO on the latest German server (Fornebu) was extended to give us time to work out some important changes to the stock market rules. Discussions regarding this problem took place on the German forums and were based on the following premises:

  • Both the problems affecting IPOs and later share trading need to be addressed.
  • The stock market is not in itself a key game feature. As such, the strategic element takes precedence over the speculative one.

The discussion resulted in the following measures being decided upon, to be implemented in the upcoming version 1.5.4:

  1. IPOs can only be subscribed to a maximum of 200% of the shares offered.
  2. The stock rate follows a given base rate, tied closely to the company value, and gives a rough prognosis on the company’s development.
  3. Stock rate changes through trade will only be possible within +/- 10% of the base rate.

As a result, players who are active on the stock market should be aware that, when the patch is implemented, stock listings may change significantly. The magnitude of this can be approximated based on the company value of any publicly traded company.

Important: The formula for the calculations of the base rate is not yet final and will most likely need optimizing after the patch is implemented. If you’re seeing significant losses on the stock market, it is recommended that you sit out and wait for future changes to the calculation methods.

We expect to apply this patch towards the end of next week, depending on the results of further internal testing.

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