Airlines game

Thanks, ilta, for those comments - they look well thought out. That said, I have these responses:

• 1) I took the idea for writing down orders from Diplomacy. I know there are parts of it that are ugly, but here's why I rejected every other option I could think of (and please, I would LOVE more ideas. I'm not in love with writing down routes myself).
  

  a) Cards for routes

  There are too many potential routes (and I wanted to catch the flavor of being able to fly from anywhere to anywhere). 25 cities = (25*24)/2 = 300 routes, and then a card for each player. That's 1500 or more cards.

  b)Cards for cities

  Again, too many routes. Even with your ingenious idea of giving a few cards per gate, there are simply too many possible routes (I calculate somewhere near 1300 if you give each player a set). That said, I like the idea of recombining in your hand.

  c)Dry erase/disposable maps

  I really wanted to do this one, but I tried it and it's impossible. The USAirways current route map gives some idea of what I'm talking about. Things get crowded, especially with more than one player trying to claim a route between two cities, or more than 3 routes running from one city. And then someone rips the paper board/smudges the dry erase...it just doesn't work out.

• 2) I may not have been clear about this, but drawing the event card is the first action of the round. That means that there is no being "unable to complete the round" since it doesn't really start before the Game End card is pulled. It would just be that a round would end, and then the next round would not start.
• 3)Here's what I'm considering doing about the low-price poaching high-price routes. First, the events are primarily weighted towards getting more money for high-price airlines (things like business conferences that will only fly high-price because they want the best). Second, I'm cutting the amount of money in the game down (by about a factor of 5; every number in the game was divisible by 5 already except the price point modifiers) so that it's a lot harder to survive your costs as a low-price airline, meaning that high-price airlines will have flexibility to fly where low-price airlines can't due to lack of planes and gates. Third, and this isn't new, remember that low-price airlines have to keep flying their routes too. This can be a problem if the high-price airlines suddenly branch out into newer, profitable routes (particularly at deregulation).
• 4) As for the market capitalization rule, it's really only used at game end. It's also pretty intuitive to keep track of (since you know other player's market shares because of turn order). "Hmm...do I have more or less than him? A lot more? OK, I don't need as much money." I would not use it each turn, but I think (emphasis on think) that it should work for the end-game. But I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I really appreciate it! I'm personally a weird hybrid player; I love 18xx, but I also really enjoy simplified, stripped down games. So I'm trying here to create a more simulation-y experience, but I'm very sympathetic to trying to simplify as much as possible (for instance, I already cut the different airports at each city in favor of a "NYC" space or a "DC" space...LaGuardia vs. JFK and National vs. Dulles was getting crazy).

In respect to the complication idea, I have thought that maybe I could design a smaller subgame in which one attempts to start a regional airline. This would involve perhaps 10 cities in a specific region (ie, to take on with which I am familiar, the Pacific Northwest: Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Eugene, Bend, Bellingham, Pendleton, Yakima, Wenatchee, Walla-Walla), which makes for (10*9)/2=45 route cards, which would be manageable. The number of plane types would also decrease (and the planes would change...) but that could be a legit way to try out the general system without straining the bounds of possibility.