DevLog 39: Improved Taxiway Building, Economy Panel & Aircraft Voting

Hey there!

Another productive week finished and a lot of new content to present, as we reveal more and more we hope that you’ll slowly get the same sense of the game as we have. Although the economy panel indeed is a work in progress and it’ll be great to have your input, a lot of effort has been put into testing different panel variations and design. It indeed is a challenge to cram a bunch of data and controls into a tightly packed space while making it look interesting and detailed enough to spark that micro management feel while still being perspicuous. Anways, that’s my two cents. Here’s the link!

http://airportceo.com/devlog-39-improved-taxiway-building-economy-panel-aircraft-voting/

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I really enjoy seeing how much extra stuff goes into making the game! It’s amazing seeing what you guys get done in a week!!

Do you guys use this type of stuff when drawing the planes out??

I know you plan to show us more next week, but is this kinda what you use?

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So much stuff done as always. I particularly like it when you’re loading the loan section and it says “Connecting” as though you’re really surfing the next. The micromanagement does look complex but I think really good, hope to see more of it to add more suggestions and ideas. Keep up the good work :slight_smile:

Looks really good, and the economy panel looks professional, and very intuitive to use. The green and red is a good way of differentiating the income and expenditure.

My only immediate feedback - I have never been charged for use of bathrooms in the airport (although I have at major railway stations). Whilst I admire the spirit of Michael O’Leary that’s clearly struck the development team :wink:, I wonder if that would be best represented as an actual cost on the economy screen (in the same way that the parking is), rather than a %age modifier? Personally, I’d be keen for the option to not charge my passengers.

It might also be nice to allow different currencies (even if just £, $ and €) - I don’t think you’d need to change the value of the currency or come up with complex exchange rate mechanisms, just a way of changing the symbol in the options menu might be nice?

Looking forward to seeing the contracts!

Looking good this week :slight_smile:

A few things i noticed:

  • The budget overview screen looks pretty detailed. Would it perhaps be beneficial if you could collapse categories? Or would that be too much work? That would make it easier to see at a glance what’s happening, especially if later on perhaps more categories / details are added
  • The budget fee screen: I think it feels … detached if you can only work with percentages instead of real numbers. Especially for things like bathroom usage. I’m a bit on the fence about this
  • Same goes for the salaries screen. I want to know how much i’m paying, so i can correlate this information to what i see on the overview screen.
  • Love the ‘Connecting…’
  • Does staff retire? Should you be putting money into a pension fund? A health benefit fund? Stuff that is mandatory in the Netherlands, but a good thing to get more people in the USA

Great work guys! I agree with what has been said before. And I would like to add some things:

  • I think it would be better if we could control the salaries of each individual staff member, especially in the beginning of the game. Some staff can have better qualifications than others and you might want to pay more or less depending on their qualifications.
  • Besides the fees that you included for airlines, I think there should be a fee per aircraft parking spot. It could have a slider which determines the default fee for all new parking aprons and then you can go and adjust them individually. This way you can make the ones closer to the terminal or baggage collection room more expensive and then have some lower cost ones for low-cost airlines.
  • Related to the point above, certain airlines could require different types of parking options for their contracts. Some could ask for spots at a lower price and others might request jetways, for example.
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Would there be some way to assess what competitor airports are paying for staff roles, to create demand for the best staff? Option to hire a head hunter to poach the best staff from rivals etc.

On the economy panel, could there be arrows up and down which show if a certain item is increasing or decreasing in revenue, a way to easily observe game feedback to any adjustments made.

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You do a great job. It looks good and I like the Economy Panel and no, it’s not too complicated. In my opinion it could a little more detail, but I’m an old Tycoon gamer :wink:
AND the Taxiway picker is really sweet.
On The Budget Screen the white font color on the light green is not easy to read. >> Airline Payments … Franchise Payment. In my opinion black or dark green would be better.

You could have a ‘website’ (or just a simple figure) that tells the industry standard salary. Going above means people will come to you, going below means less people will come to you

Will we be able to set preferential taxi route such as we can ensure separation between arrival and departing aircraft? Or is it all just pathfinding? Will we be able to set priority paths and the like, for example a runway exit needs to have priority so that the runway is always clear for landing aircraft.

As an example these are the preferential taxi routings for London Stansted airport: Screenshot - d49e406871c84c34753d4ae88d613920 - Gyazo
As you can see arrival and departure aircraft are always separated flows other than the apron area. It would be good if we could define routings so that all arriving aircraft can exit the runway and proceed to the apron, the apron could be left to pathfinding and then the departure could be routed.

Also will runways have multiple entry and exit points (that will be used) for example at Stansted runway 22 the three rightmost holding points are Quebec, Romeo and Sierra from left to right. Will aircraft be able to enter the runway from Quebec and Romeo at the same time, where the Quebec one has been given takeoff clearance and the Romeo aircraft has been given a line up and wait clearance?

Lastly… Departure and arrival sequencing on single runway airports. I’m sure i’ve seen it mentioned somewhere before but I can’t find it. How exactly will it work, will there be arrival and departure slots?

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Not sure still but I’m leaning more on the side that’s it has too much micromanagement. Maybe keep it in game but give an option to hire a character to handle it? The character will set the prices at the most efficient, or almost there depending on the character’s ability, in exchange for paying him. So initially while the airport is small the player can deal with it, but as it becomes larger it becomes tedious and hiring someone becomes useful

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Yep, check out the work here: Follow the Boeing 737-600 Creation

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I saw that, it’s epic how quick it’s happening!! How long does it normally take to get one of these done?

This is something we are trying our best to mimic any real world scenarios. There is a runway check-in/check-out system which prevents runway incursions. Also there is a similar system for the taxiways so that hold positions commands are given to avoid collisions on the ground. In the future we want to make it so that you can use preferred paths for arrival/departure, but remember we are also coding and improving the pathfinding system for persons and other vehicles. On the vehicle side we have only implemented very basic traffic rules so far. Meaning we need to spend our time there as well. It is also quite hard to code the perfect arrival/departure “ballet dance” that a human led ATC usually coordinates, but we will do our best. :slight_smile:

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Not sure. It will be much faster than the first aircrafts as we now have a standardized design and routine for the game arts and graphics.

This just came across my mind. Will parking fines and toll fees be included?

Yeah, we’ll iterate on the design over time, next step now is to connect all variables and see how it feels when its used.

Regarding the fees panel, they all do affect a set dollar value! But you can’t of course know this since we haven’t shown the room panels, bathroom prices are set on each bathroom via the panel. If your airport operates a shop or dining place, you also set the cost for “1 item” (generic) via the panel and then using slides you can affect the global prices - if you want to.

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This looks like a great economy. Especially with the amount of control you give the player. But will it also get influenced by random events, like for example a recession? This could also give the player a challenge as in getting no more contracts or extremely high fuel price, which would pretty much result in the same thing or even customers cancelling the contract since the player has adjust his fuel price to the actual fuel price… Except he has oil wells in Saudi Arabia.

One thing about taxiway and runways, their length, width, and even depth are important to the size of aircraft that can operate on them. These things developed over time, causing some extensive/expensive retrofits to some airports wishing to accept larger aircraft.

In addition, revenues could be seriously impacted from delays or runway capacity loss caused during construction work.

Perhaps this is something you’d want to considereal in the game.

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