@Fredrik@Olof
I don’t like the news about fixed sizes of the runways.
IMHO there isn’t a reason to remove the possibillity of extending a runway to the desired length.
You still can add medium and large runways to be directly build anyway, so someone doesn’t need to go the route via a small runway first, if he want’s to built a large one.
Simply don’t remove the possibility of extending runways please. Keep this kind of reality. There are lots of real life airports with different runway length all around the world.
Alpha 33 and Alpha 34 is being worked on concurrently. The motivation for rolling out Alpha 33 before 34 is because it is, as mentioned, one of the most highly requested features and the motions for it was put in place long before this planning was ultimately formed. It is likely that the span between Alpha 33 and Alpha 34, at least with Alpha 34 on the experimental branch, won’t be very long.
I feel we need to clarify the decision to remove extendable runways a bit since there seem to be a few different of opinions about it. There are some of our reasons behind this decisions.
We don’t want to support two different systems going forward. Having both fixed and dynamic extendable runways could introduce more bugs and make them harder to debug. We must fix them on two different system and make sure both will work the same way. This will also take development time to make sure they both are updated if any new runway feature is added.
From a gameplay perspective, two different ways to build a runway doesn’t make sense. Imagine communicating this to a new player who never played the game before, the game is already very complex as it is. Having two very different ways of building a runway will only add to the confusion. Unfortunately, confusion and complexity is the number one reason people decide to refund the game.
Performance wise the new fixed runways a lot are more optimized. The old extendable runway consisted of several small parts added up while the new one uses only a few sprites for the entire runway.
I hope that clears some of your questions around this topic.
A short note on the development order. The current milestones are meant to take us to version 1.0 and the order of large aircraft vs. terminal update doesn’t really effect the main goal. You could always find reasons to change the order but for us it is more of getting the features in the game so that we can focus on final polish and tying it all together.
I can definetly see the reasons why you are removing it. I definetly agree with the 3 sizes, I assume that we are still going to be able to choose between asphalt and concrete, plus grass for the small size, the different markings for each size as I mentioned earlier would also be a neat feature. But still, maybe if you preset a few optional lengths for each size, for example 400/600/800m for small, 1000/1500/2000m for medium and so on, we could at least somewhat choose the length and it would be much easier to explain to new players.
Just wanted to throw my opinion in and say that I think having standard runway lengths are a good idea. Will help with game play, and if it cuts bugs down then I am all for it.
Remember all they are creating a tycoon game not a simulation.
I know it is good to recreate airports and i like doing it my self, however I’m sure we can use the concrete tiles to create the look of longer runways if desired.
Actually, I would say that it would be more confusing for new players to give that extra length choice with 3 different runway sizes. I tend to think that new players won’t understand why can’t medium aircraft land on “longer” small runway, neither the need of having one. Moreoever, the new entry / exit for every aircraft size added on the runway (which is a great addition) make me think that extensible runways would also create weird behaviour since those entries should also move to a new location, depending on which side you are extending the runway.
It may be a bit more confusing, but definetly better than having two systems as Fredrik mentioned, this is I believe the best compromise possible. I propose that when building a runway, you will select the length before you actually place it down. A small category runway would always be longer than a medium one, and by a significant margin that is. I would only go for 2 or 3 length options, as to not overconfuse anyone. If we go by the rule, that a small one will always be shorter than a medium one, plus give them different markings (see my first post about this) it should be easily understandable, at least I think so.
There’s no point, in my opinion, in implementing more than one fixed length of each type of runway as build options if that would have no impact on the performance of aircraft.
It would be extremely confusing to new players Who would simply have no clue on why they’re being offered multiple options without being able to distinguish the consequences.
The only way I think it would be possible to extendable runways is to maintain the current dynamic way of building them.
If a small and a medium runway in alpha 33 will keep having the same width, Then there’s absolutely no need to differentiate them and replace the current system. I would definitely prefer to be able to extend the runway in length towards either end and also in width towards either side, so a small runway could be gradually upgraded to medium and large. Upgradeable infrastructure makes much more sense than having to bulldoze a runway to replace it with a larger one.
If one believes that preset small, medium and large runways must be offered to the player in the menu, I don’t see why these couldn’t be preset buils of the dynamic runway in several sizes. It doesn’t matter if the actual runway is modular. A “medium runway” preset would be simply the right amount of modules packed into a shortcut with the minimum requirements for small, medium and large. So no need to have two parallel runway building systems in-game either.
The only challenge I see is that take off / entry points would need to also be made dynamic, moving with each runway extension.
By having pre set runways the developers are preparing themselves for future features
New version is more optimized than the current one
Having pre determined run way sized allows them to set where an airplane will land/takeoff based on weather and size of the plane, to come,
And any future update to the game which involves runways will be easier to implement rather than having to go through to make sure it works with a range of runway sizes
I’m sure the devs decision is for the good of the game, let’s just wait to see how it works
If complexity is the issue, I don’t really understand why we need a small and a medium runway with the exact same width, if you can’t extend the small runway manually to 800m anymore. If you wanna make it less complex, get rid of the 600m runway and let us chose between the remaining two.
However, if you wanna make the game a little more progressive, and I would always advocate for that, narrow the small runway down to 3 tiles. That’s still wide enough for small planes, it’s probably less expensive to maintain and it’s also a nice visual and also somewhat realistic and more sensible progression, when changing from a small to medium runway.
It looks like the large runway will be 1200m long. If we won’t be able to extend runways manually anymore, please please please consider increasing the length of the medium runway if you chose to continue with 3 runway types.
Question: When smaller planes are taking off on a larger runway, can they ONLY use their designated intersections? I would strongly recommend that all aircraft preferably use full length for takeoff and only take the intersections when a suitable runway entry exists and/or when it’s closer to their parking spot, otherwise that could lead to erroneous and unrealistic behaviour, especially when operating parallel runways.
And last but not least, please consider adding self-taxi-out medium stands to the game that work like the current small ones. This would add more flavor to the game and they are also easier to use.
I think the length of 1200m for large runway might be due to the current airport size. Unless the available area will be extended you can’t really work with longer runways.
Actually I hope that the different takeoff intersections will lead to the airplanes always taking the closest runway entrance from their required intersection. That way I could create completely separate entrances for different types of aircraft. Maybe in the future we could even get priority settings so the medium aircraft queue will always depart before any of the small aircraft is allowed.
yeah, there really is no point in having high speed exits with the medium runway at 800 meters when they use up most of the 800 meters to slow down anyways. I have tested this out and they use about 95 squares of the 100 squares to slow down. The Medium aircraft won’t exit before that.
So either allow extendable runways or make the medium runway longer. The whole point in having high speed exits is for runways that are longer than the 800 meters.
I understand the reasoning for the set lengths on the runways (code and maintenance wise) however, it is a nice feature to have for airport design. I will be sorry to se it go.
I also do believe if you are going to have a small runway for small aircraft/GA only that it does need to be narrower. the medium runway width is too wide for a GA only runway! Please narrow the runway for the Small runway
I don’t understand why people still get so upset about the new runway system. The devs explained the reasons and they are absolutely logical. Why do we still discuss about this feature? The runway building process is in my opinion only a small part of the game. So this is not a big game changer.
There are other updates coming, which are a big game changers. So please trust the devs, that they’re knowing what is good for the future of ACEO.
I think it’s just human. If you don’t get something at first, you can take it much easier than having something and later having it taken away again.
Additionally, here in the forums I think we can find a high ratio of people who like to build “beautiful” or even rebuild real airports. For those -including me - of course the new system will be a limitation. For the majority of people who just care about playing for fun and having succesful operations the change probably doesn’t matter at all.
Anyways we can just accept what we get and make the best of it.
… you don’t need preset runway lengths for that, just some programming skills.
Variable runway length allow several features, especially when adding emergencies. The longer a runway, the more tolerance for aircrafts to stop before they overrun. These applies to harsh weather conditions too. To be honest, the actual runway classes of the aircrafts are very abstract compared to real life anyway.
For the moment it looks to me, as Olof and Fredric point their direction to the simplicity of a smartphone game. In my mind there are pictures of lots of terminals being larger, than the runways. Runways are far to short already.
Them talking about avoiding refunds due to a to complex game isn’t comprehensible when I read that they won’t fix bugs caused by bottlenecks when the game runs at higher speeds before beta. I’m sure these bugs have far more impact in game reviews and refunds, than the complexity of the game.
At least they acknowledge these bugs to exist, long time they said, theres no reason for bugs to happen
because of higher game speeds.
The devs explained the reasons and they are absolutely logical. Why do we still discuss about this feature? The runway building process is in my opinion only a small part of the game. So this is not a big game changer.
