Couldn’t you just give it realistic values and have a ‘fudge constant’ that changes it into something playable? That way everything is consistent and you can use real world numbers
Could you elaborate? What do you mean?
Yes, this is a good idea. Not currently in the game but to have GA assigned to a specific runway should not be that difficult to add before release. Will loo into it.
Yea, this is planned when we implement tugs and more advance pushback.
What i mean is this:
- Realistic turnaround time is i.e. 1 hour.
- Realistic refueling time is i.e.0.5 hour.
- Fudge constant is 5.
- Actual in game turnaround = realistic * fudge = 1 * 5 = 5 in game hours
- Actual in game refueling is 0.5 * 5 = 2.5 in game hours
Doing this for every operation means you keep their relative duration consistent, while only having to adjust 1 value to make it fit game play
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I don’t necessarily mean one baggage belt offload per flight, I mean a “scanner” that reads the baggage and you can set conditions such as “if from flight x or flight y or flight z then divert else continue” or “if from stand a or stand b or stand c or stand d then divert else continue”. That way you can have a different flight on each baggage reclaim belt.
That would be a pretty good solution. It seems that the refueling is lightning fast compared to everything else, if all things we set to the same multiplier it would seem realistic to the eye even though it takes longer in game vs real life.
There are definitely a few things to test to see where the delay is coming from, but I don’t think it would be the end of the world if the simulated day lasted a bit longer. The simulation speed seems ok, perhaps could be just a tad faster but that wouldn’t completely solve the issue that a plane with 119 on board departed almost 4 hours late. It might require a combination of issues to fix. Changing the turnaround time to 5 hours vs 2 might also fix it, however, that will limit the number of flights your airport can handle per gate by a large factor and may damage the realism factor of the game.
I heard that the competition game also struggled with this very issue and they changed the time factor of their game as well, it might be the correct solution to tweak this slightly so that you keep the animations looking nice. The one drawback would be overnight where nothing happens. In the other game it is very boring during these times. Perhaps a skip several hours button could then be implemented if there are no flights or skip to the time when first passengers start showing up sort of thing.
Definitely a few things to look into, I know you guys are on the ball and will find a solution that works for the game and the users.
Yes, but i talked about airlines which doesn’t has a hub at that airport. Than it is most likely that the incoming flights are odd and the departure flights even. When an airline has an hub: departure odd and incoming even
A couple other posters said its generally designated by flight direction, then add or subtract 1 for the opposite direction. Also another mentioned main airline has lower flight numbers and subsidiary has 3000 and above. I believe those posters are correct.
According to me, there are different ways how airlines do that. KLM for example has outbound flights from AMS (hub): odd and inbound flights AMS (hub): even. There are exeptions by a A-B-C route (AMS-AUA-BON(-AMS)). Other airlines may have different systems for flight numbers. Maybe this could be add in the game 
Hopefully I’m not communicating the wrong thing, but what I mean is if we have multiple runways, we can manually assign aircraft types their own runways - if the game assigns planes their own runways then that would not be a good idea, but providing us the option of making certain aircraft types land on their assigned runways would be good. Hopefully that’s not too confusing.
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How I understood it was that it does it sort of automatically with the different runway ratings (Cat 1-3), for example an A380 can’t land on a Cat 1 or 2, only a 3. A medium size jet (ie. B737) could land on a Cat 2 or 3. To me this is ideal, I’m more interested in being able to select departing and arriving runways. There could be logic added that a small regional jet wouldn’t use a Cat 3 runway if a smaller runway was available.
Not sure how it’ll work with assigning arriving/departing runways when the wind direction changes though. Especially if you have perpendicular runways.
As far as the turn around times, I think the ai ramp support and ped speeds could be tweeked. This would then let the players airport design/sevices/staffing/etc. decide the overall turn around.
Other thought, change the in-game time factor to bring the turn around times down a bit. If ai movement speeds were not tweaked but the game time progression was, you could leave the ai like what’s in the video and then the turn around problem would correct itself.
Hope this makes sense.
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So i rewatched the turnaround of the Air Strada and noticed a few things.
Deboarding took 45 minutes.
Boarding took 2 hours.
Loading bags took 1 hour and 20 minutes, but didnt start until after passengers starting getting on for a while.
There were 110 getting off and 119 getting on. That means more than half minute per person to get off and a minute to get each on.
Perhaps a few things could be done to increase realism here.
- Lower the time scale from 3 seconds per minute to 4 seconds per minute.
- Very slightly increase walking speed animations, or perhaps allow several to walk side by side getting on or off.
- Add at least 1 more worker loading and unloading bags.
- Have the baggage truck with the departing flight be mostly loaded or totally loaded before unloading is done.
- Increase flight turnaround for larger flights from 3 hours to 4.
Doing minor changes should not break the gameplay and should increase realism while lowering frustrations for both the simulations and the user. I look forward to any comments from other users and the devs about this issue. It was one of the worst aspects to me of SA, didnt matter how many employees and desks i had, the big planes always very late. I beleive they lowered the time scale as a fix.
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In relation to the rows in the flight planner would the rows not make sense to correspond to the gates?
Each gate you would assign a flight to. Gates could then by assigned restrictions, such as exclusively leased to certain airlines, certain upgrades, plane restrictions, etc…
This would also restrict you the number of type and number of flights you are able to handle.
You would still have the ability to dynamically reschedule gate assignments if there was an event such as late arrival or departure, aircraft failure etc… given you the fun of juggling gate assignments. In the future this could be handled by a executive so as your airline grows you do not need to micromanage as much.
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I do like this approach. I’m in favour of micromanaging gate allocations because I think it would help you plan future growth in the airport, and in the future when transfers are implemented it would be desirable to keep an airlines’ flights as close together as possible (e.g. an easy connection from Gate 2-4 is easier than Gate 2-79, and the airlines and pax would be happier if you can minimise the distance and hence any delays/missed flights). Using the grid would be easy and intuitive - those who don’t particularly want to micromanage would need do nothing different.
Here’s an idea: make the game speed context-aware, so that it automatically scales to be faster when nothing is happening, and slower when lots of things are. (With enough filtering that it’s always smooth).
Have you considered that these planes have two cargo bays (forward and aft) and that usually both are loaded at the same time? Couldn’t it be a solution for the time thing?
That is a great idea, would make the actual day length in real time about the same.
The idea is good but honestly not sure if it is even possible to do. It would require very sophisticated algorithm to figure out when to speed up and when to slow down. It also has to be very balanced for the player not to be annoyed by it. I think working on getting a good time balance with the current system and keeping the “speed up” buttons is the best solution.
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