Since AirlineSim first appeared based on our currently employed technology, the human resources features have been nothing but a shadow of their former self. When doing the switch from the old framework to the new one, some parts of AS simply went overboard due to time constraints or because they were simply "overlooked". So as promised on the forums and elsewhere, this topic will be one of the last big ones we will definately tackle to some extend in the 1.3 branch.

Obviously nobody wants his staff to be on strike form one day to the other. So with the upcoming patch the first thing to be integrated will be some sort of "mood index" for your staff. This index will be without effect for the moment, so no strikes, no influence on your product whatsoever. It's merely intended to show you where you stand at the moment and you will have plenty of time to adjust your settings before additional features like strikes are implemented in some future patch. For your viewing pleasure (if that term is appropriate in this case), please find a small glimpse at the new feature in the screenshot below.

[singlepic id=15 w=320 h=240 float=center]

So what's new here? First of all, the way you set the salaries has been changed. At least in respect to the interface: Although your salary settings have always been applied at the end of the week and never had an effect during the week, now you officially set the new salaries for the next week. The setting of last week remains visible and is used for calculating country-wide averages. Next and best visible is the "mood indicator". It ranges from -5 to 5 and gives you a rough estimate about the mood of your workforce. Note that the upper limits are a cut-off: If the mood rises or falls below these limits it won't be displayed. On the right of the indicator you see a slope icon whic tells you whether the mood improved last week, went worse or remained unchanged.

Similar to the salaries, the mood of your staff "changes" just once a week (on payday, to be exact). These changes accumulate over time. If you treat your staff badly over several consecutive weeks, the mood will fall continuously even without a decrease in salaries. Of course, this works in the opposite direction, too. The consequence of this is that you cannot undo the mismanagement of serveral weeks by paying an above-average salary once (unless maybe it is extremely high!). When the new feature will be integrated it will be interesting to see how all the airlines will adjust their salary-levels. The mood is greatly based on the average wages of the country the enterprise operates from. So we might see some real-world application of game theory ;). I'm looking forward to it and I hope you do so too! Let me know what you think.

The changes mentioned above will be integrated with the upcoming patch to version 1.3.21b which is still scheduled for the 29th of September.