More efficient vehicle usage

[Timmiej93]

More efficient vehicle usage:

I can’t imagine that this hasn’t been addressed yet, but I can’t find anything about it, so I’ll leave it here:

I’ve seen many vehicles driving to an airplane, dropping off a little bit of fuel, only to be empty before the plane is completely fueled, or collecting a bit of garbage, only to be full before the aircraft is empty. This makes it so that delays are unavoidable at some points in time. Sure, if the fuel truck just fueled another plane on the stand right next to it, it can dump its remaining fuel in this plane, but if it’s coming from a parking spot, it should always make sure it has enough fuel to completely fill the aircraft. Same goes for the garbage collection trucks. If they just cleaned the plane nextdoor, feel free to come over and use whatever capacity you have, but it shouldn’t come over to the stand from the parking where it was for the past 8 hours, when it’s nearly full, that just doesn’t make sense.

In addition to that, I think it would make a lot of sense for trucks to permanently park at their respective buildings. Catering trucks park at the catering depot, garbage trucks park at the waste depot, and fuel trucks park at the fuel depot. Sure, you should be able to still use parking spots or general vehicle depots if you want to, but the specific depots (catering, waste, fuel) should at least have a few parking spots. That way, each time a vehicle parks up, it can be emptied / filled so it’s ready for its next job.

Why it should be implemented:

Currently, the logic just doesn’t make sense. Nobody in their right mind would drive up to an A380 with a 10 liter fuel can, thinking “that should do it”, just to have to drive all the way back to the depot, fill up, and go back with more fuel. Improving this should be easy, and would make the vehicles’ behavior a lot more predictable and reliable, plus it would prevent random delays.

[parillos]

Remote shuttle buses are also something that needs to be optimized, or perhaps in conjunction with when its processes are deployed in conjunction with others. They seem to only use one bus if a bus is assigned to a stand, but will use 2 if none are assigned to a stand. You would think not assigning it would allow for two buses to work simultaneously - one dropping off the arrivals, one picking up the departures, when the boarding ought to begin (when cleaning is closed). However, I notice that the buses for the departing passengers get deployed once cleaning is complete. It would be nice if they could be deployed earlier, and wait to board passengers once cleaning is done, or better yet, board regardless, and if need be, wait on the stand, as a full bus of passengers, until cleaning is done.

Also, vehicle movement speed/paths on stands need major overhauling. The fact that they go to a snail’s pace once around the aircraft is unnerving as most remote flights are already delayed due to the current nature of how they work. Sure the slowing down is for “safety”, but I don’t think it’s too safe when I see vehicles drive under the wings, jetways, each other, etc. Until it’s fixed, save us the precious time.

[Jettuh]

This is really stuff that will be worked on during the BETA!
Making balances to this stuff and optimizing how and when stuff works.

Ps, the Maverick truck with trailer, assign it to a large stand and you should be fine

[Jettuh]

Oh btw, i like your catering parking idea.

Not sure if I agree for fuel, more cause there isn’t really room for it… but for catering, garbage and deicing, there is actually a parking space for them

@Olof +1 from me for allowing catering and garbage trucks to assign parking to the actual building

[Timmiej93]

@Jettuh I’m not sure how assigning the fuel truck to the stand would help? The issue is that they don’t fill themselves up before going to fuel an aircraft, so if it’s parked at the stand with 1% fuel in it, it still has to go back to the fuel depot before the aircraft can be fueled completely. I’ve noticed that multiple fuel trucks show up for large planes, so it seems like there’s some logic for it.

About the fuel truck parking, that’s an easy fix: Change the fuel depot. I’m pretty sure that in real life, fuel trucks can’t even park anywhere else outside the fuel depot (or specially constructed parking areas), because of the potential of leaks.

Somewhere I’m sad that I joined this game at the end of its alpha stage, because I always like when new things get added to the game. On the other hand, it’s nice that I joined just when they start making improvements and optimizations.

[Jettuh]

“easy fix” and “change the fuel depot”, that doesn’t really go hand in hand I’m afraid, sorry.

But as mentioned, during BETA the existing features, including fuel will be revisited and balanced.
This likely includes having a threshold when it well refuel or maybe even double check before driving to an airplane to see if it has enough to fuel it or maybe should refuel first.