Anyone has any comparisons of this to Air Tycoon Online (there's a non online version of it too). Was hooked to that game and this looks very interesting as well!
Played and second game knowing what I was doing from the start and found out the game is much better. You actually do start with an HQ but you can't update it.
I fully agree with your opinion. I thought I would play right away, but it actually took me a little bit of time to get into the game. I was happy to discover I could just accelerate the IA players turn with one button directly (this button should be renamed). All in all, this is a good game and worth the time spent to learn out to play.
This is what I was comparing it to, also -- or more distantly, Aerobiz. Short answer: it's pretty different! The best way to describe it might actually be that this is more arcade-y. Is that a weird thing to say about a management sim? Consider how fleets work: In most other airline sims I've played, fleet management is a big deal: you need to plan ahead to buy the planes you need, and sometimes open routes with sub-optimal planes because that's all you have on hand. In this game, you can open any route you want -- provided that aviation technology of the era allows planes to exist that can fly that route -- and the correct plane is automatically provided for you. So you never purchase or lease planes, or have them in reserve: they're part of your fleet if you open a route, and are removed from your fleet if you close one. An even bigger deal: NO MONEY!!? There are no capital costs in this game: opening routes costs no money, and as I said, there's no purchasing of planes. There's cash flow, but it exists only as a type of score: the game measures how mich cash you're bringing in per turn, and how much you've brought in overall. The incentive to save money, by reducing flights per route or modifying service options (which is done globally, not per-route), is only to affect that cash flow score -- but that doesn't affect anything else. Why not just open 100 routes the first turn? The big limiting factor is that every turn you get five "moves," which let you do things like open/close routes, modify service, etc. So the game sacrifices realism and micromanagement for a streamlined experience that emphasizes the big-picture decisions of where to fly and how to expand over min/maxing individual routes and services. It's unique, and I'm enjoying it much more than I ever did Airline Tycoon.
