I wanted to take a look at how game progression goes as of right now and see if there are any ways which things can be re-arranged, streamlined, or changed. I believe that in a lot of early access games the idea of feature creep takes place and things that have been in place for some amount of time are just glossed over. I’m as guilty as anyone for wanting or dreaming up features to add to the game, so I thought it would be good for me to first just look at the game as it is and see if the base needs anything changed. I’m also fairly new into the game so I don’t have the experience of small changes like many on here have had.
So for this I’m not going to propose any sort of sweeping changes. Most of what I might suggest would be smaller tweaks with the possible exception of one or two things. I’m also going to try and leave off systems that are not necessarily core to the game but I might drop in examples of how a change in something I think is a core part of the game could enhance a non-core part. I’m also coming at this from the view point of an American that has only traveled through major airports. I’m going to be mindful that things don’t work like that in all airports and try to balance the view out to a more generic view. I’m also warning you, this is going to be long. So if you want to read this grab a beverage and a snack.
As I see the game progression as of right now is this for the first few play throughs someone may do. You set up your runway then set up GA stands and away you go so you can enjoy planes coming and going. You’ll then add in AVGAS and get used to how the stand services work. After that you get into trying to build a terminal and using small stands for how PAX moves through the terminal and how staff flows. Once you have a good handle on that you add in staff rooms and food shops and things like that. Then the last two things that you eventually move on to are medium stands and all the services that brings in before you finally add in a baggage system. After the first few times it is likely that you ignore GA entirely and go straight to the commercial aspects of the game.
Within the current progression system I see two difficulty spikes. The first is the jump to the medium stand and the next is the jump to baggage. The jump to a medium stand is due to the extra PAX that come in and the extra staff and services you need. Suddenly you need two check-in desks for each stand (and likely two boarding desks for each stand) and your security may need to be expanded. Then you have the addition of the extra equipment like a stair truck and pushback truck that you didn’t need before. The difficulty spike in the baggage phase comes in the form of the new service trucks and also the sudden explosion in ramp agents required (since agents now basically need to be at each stand for the entire length of time the plane is there).
That leads me to what can be done to mitigate the spikes in difficulty for newer players while introducing the new ideas to them. First, I think there needs to be a restructuring of plane classes. Right now we have small, medium, and (eventually) large. The small class has planes that are normally 10 PAX with the largest being 20 (in real life, best I can tell). The medium class has planes that IRL seat anywhere from 48 (the ATR) up to 228 (the 757-200). The first time through you aren’t going to be prepared for the sheer amount of PAX you’ll get when one stand is pulling enough PAX for 10 to 20 of your other stands.
That leads me to the idea of breaking off the CRJ, ATR, Q400, and the BAE (maybe). The ATR is already an outlier in that IRL it has a range similar to the two small planes and a capacity in between small class and the rest of the similar size medium class. To be fair, the ATR 72 makes more sense than the 42, but that is an entirely different argument. The BAE (I believe) needs a stair truck which puts it at odds with the other three listed. The idea behind grouping these planes together would be that the difficulty would ramp up somewhat in that you needed a bigger stand, a pushback truck, a longer runway, and more PAX. If the BAE was changed or omitted you also wouldn’t need these to require the use of a jetway or stair truck. There is also the argument that you could put these on a stand that is in between the current small and medium stands. Where I’m at in the US regional jets are in the CRJ, Q400 size range and sit on smaller stands than everything else you see in the medium class. If you look at a satellite photo of PHL (Philadelphia International) the top most terminal is the regional terminal and you can see the stand sizes are much smaller. I’m ok with leaving them on the medium stand, it is just an idea. I also think that the runway length needs to be shorter for these planes (IRL they are around 5000 M required while the next shortest is the A319 at 6000). It should be enough to introduce the player to the concept of runway expansion but not requiring the purchase of new land. The 750k needed for land purchase usually results in a loan and the subsequent realization that loans are expensive and you needed more than you budgeted for.
The second spike is the baggage addition. I think the easiest way to mitigate that is in concert with the first change. Right now the only thing any of the requirements (Jet Fuel, Baggage, etc) matter for is the star rating in offered flights. You can get plenty of flights without baggage and when you add it nothing changes except complexity and a bit more money (plus every flight wanting baggage claim use). Jet Fuel should be a barrier to getting any flights except very cheap small stand flights. Once that happens (and you build an appropriate stand) those CRJ size flights should be available. Once you build a baggage system for your existing airport and flights then the bigger A319 and up flights open up. That gives you an incentive to actually build baggage earlier than normal, eases players in to new concepts, and is more realistic (when is an A319 coming in with no checked bags?).
One other thing I think that would work in conjunction with this would be to change how small stand flights are generated. Both the Cessna and DHC-6 are not a common commercial plane. If you look at the numbers in service for the DHC, 61 are operated out of the Maldives and 15 are operated by an airline in Southwest USA doing flyovers of the Grand Canyon. No other airline has more than 10. Small aircraft should still be available but they should be limited to only a few airlines in game and should only have a few local flights. There could be some extra every few days (to be like charter flights) but the real workhorse of a regional airport should be the CRJ size planes. Most airlines don’t operate anything under the 70 passenger size because it isn’t profitable. For game purposes and role-playing they need to be in and I like them being there, just shouldn’t be able to run an airport on those flights alone. Would also give you a reason to use GA flights since most days you’d want them on your small stands to make you some money.
Again, these are just my opinions on how I think things could be changed around in order to streamline the game a bit and to, hopefully, help newer players understand the newer concepts they need to learn. Mitigating frustration and letting players understand what is going on when the difficulty goes up is important but also not the easiest thing to do. Factorio has been struggling for years to mitigate the issue of their “blue science difficulty spike”. They have found that the jump in complexity at that point in the game is where they lose players so for years they have been trying to fix that part to make it easier to retain players at that transition. As this game gets more and more complex it will become more important to try and even out any difficulty spikes.