I came up with this a while back in the discord for another game, but wanted to share it here since…shockingly, it’s a pretty good suggestion, and certainly something that could happen as current events will tell us.
We’re currently in the midst of a global pandemic. During this pandemic, the airline/airport industry has taken a hard hit, with governments either shutting down airports or people (and subsequently, airlines) simply choosing not to fly. My suggestion is to implement the exact same thing in ACEO. Every 8 or so in-game years, there is an epidemic (similar to irl, where we have big health scares every few years) which will have several major in-game effects.
Airlines schedule, on average, 25% less flights than they normally do.
40% less passengers show up per flight, reducing your revenue for those flights
The local government may impose “travel restrictions” which won’t shut down your airport but may stop international flights or flights to certain parts of the country.
Cleaning costs increase 25%.
You would be updated 3 or so times about this epidemic via email letting you know of major developments (first discovery, peak, and when it’s died down). Let me know what you think!
Improving the game is making it more realistic and fun. I believe this would be a cool, challenging, and realistic addition. If you don’t want obstacles, there’s sandbox mode.
Maby, for a dlc and it’s added in with say, tornados, hurricanes, and other events like that. For the hurricanes you should get like a large pax boost before it hits for people evacuating
Also on that note of pax boost, same should be said with the pandemic, increase in about 30-40% from people trying to get home before the -40% of normal pax count. Also maybe every 10-12 years instead
I’m just hoping the game is generally stable enough by Alpha 36, for emergencies to unfold without making your aircraft delayed beyond belief and your airport unplayable.
The central question here is, would you like it if your perfectly functioning airport is struck by an enormous event that cannot be avoided and disrupts everything you have build every few years?
If the event happens too frequently, it’s annoying, if it happens one time it isn’t worth implementation time
If the impact is too severe on a player and the player cannot manage it, what is the point of it?
If international flights are banned, what happens to one-airport countries?
An event that happens should always be able to be dealt with by the player in such a way that perfect managing will allow the player to earn slightly more and bad managing will cost money. An event that simply says “you will now get less passengers and there is nothing you can do about it” doesn’t seem like something I would enjoy after working hard on making a perfect airport.
don’t go too far with such an events like tornadoes and mass panic events, this is rather like a challenge about managing an airport not dealing with some events that certainly exist in real life, so therefore I don’t see them being added to a game about managing an airport.
Why not start on a smaller scale? There might be medical emergencies in the airport like someone having nausea for which case you might need a medical office in the terminal and maybe defibrillators on the walls. Hire a paramedic or 2 and there you go. Persons getting nausea, anxiety or slipping where the janitors have just wet-washed the floor.
I really would not like to have a random pandemic event screwing my game. If I wanted that, I would play Plague inc. or similar games. Frankly, I hated catastrophes in Sim City - because it is a building game. Unless we were talking the Sim City 4 Rush Hour expansion where we could drive ourselves to unlock things but this was a game in the game and not needed here, I guess.
having those types of events would make the game realistic but I dont think its necessary at this point in time where development of the game play and bug fixes are more important. decent concept but I personally dont think it would work. I like the idea of DocDesastro a lot and think it would add some sort of extra realism to the game without going extreme.
I also thought about this and think it would fit nicely into some game mechanics focused around different airport security measures. In the pandemic case your role would be to prevent the virus getting through your airport and could involve medical/temperature checks, cleaning, banning flights from certain countries etc. In other scenarios this could involve finding contraband items or terrorists etc. It could even be a separate game mode where your main objective is to build an airport which prevents any or as few infected as possible getting through while still keeping the country open to travel/trade.
I still not like the pandemic case just because we have one now. However, health regards could be taken into account when rating an airport. Ask questions like:
Do I have small ways where thousands of people roam by? Do I check arriving passengers for having proper vaccination passport (That yellow WHO thing the doc writes in, when we get a needle against flu and whatnot)? Is your airport dirty? Do the janitors sanitize common rooms regularly? Overall, how germ-infested is your airport and what do you do against it? Are there defibrillators around? Is there a nurse’s room for treating nauseous passengers?
Contraband item handling is important as well. Checking international visitors for illicit cargo like fresh foods, drugs, ivory, wild animals and whatnot. But pandemics? Well, we have the tools for dealing with it: Close airport button.
