Taxiway pathing widths

This should not be possible:

To me that’s an obvious bug (and I can see it has been reported as such a few times). And even if you do “correctly” width the taxiways at the recommended 3,5,7, we all know it’s possible to have planes pass through each other. This suggestion fixes that.

Suggestion
Fixed width taxiway pathings. I don’t mean fixed width pieces of taxiway - those can remain as the 4*4 that they are, I mean the blue-dot pathings.

Two options:

  • Simplest: Have 3 “sizes” of taxiway pathings, each requires a minimum of x points of taxiway around it. So small would require 1 on each side, medium 2, and large 3 boxes (exceptions for roads and stands). Could probably use different coloured dots. Also could use different line markings (i.e.: slightly offset from the centre in different ways - one above-left, the other below-right, the third normal) on the taxiways to show the routing. Pathing gets cancelled if surrounding taxiway removed and it stops being “legal”.

  • Realistic: As Simple, but also require there not be buildings within X tiles or X+Y (other taxiway/runway path width) tiles in the case of taxiways/runways. Also requires that players be disallowed from placing such items within x tiles of a taxiway. This way not only gives you the realism of not having planes go through each other, but always forces the player to engage in good taxiway/airport design and adds a significant gameplay element to the game.

Both have the added advantage of allowing you to route different sizes differently on the same network.

Edit: As an added bonus you can use this method to ensure medium, and especially large planes don’t use grass taxiways! The A380 for example needs at least 18cm thick pavement (actually up to 38cm depending if I’m reading this Airport and Maintenance Planning doc correctly).

Nobody forces you to place 7 tile width taxiways for Cessnas. Nobody also forces you to place 1 tile taxiway width for A380.

Let people enjoy however they want :slight_smile: People whow ants realism build realistic. People who want arcade builds however they want.

6 Likes

That logic doesn’t follow. Maybe I want an A380 at my small stand; Or perhaps I want my bags to just magically float around the airport rather than have to build a proper baggage handling system; or perhaps I don’t want to deal with staff (I actually don’t they’re a grind as they stand!); or maybe I want shorter intervals between flights at the runway; or maybe no constraints on what the ATCT can handle; or maybe…

The game imposes constraints to make the game more fun (staff excepted) and/or realistic (i.e. the A380 example above). Yes I could do it manually, but… then I’d have to first of all calculate the necessary widths for everything, and then for all pieces manually do a spatial overlap test and manually count how many boxes there are between them. And then manually check it /every/ time I built new stuff in the area. Or the game could do some very-basic spatial analysis for me.

I guess you could put a gameplay-settings checkbox for the constraint checking between arcade/realistic, but that applies to many things in the game (and would probably benefit the game if done too).

2 Likes

Hang on, so do you want this feature just because you want to make sure about sizes of taxiways you are going to build?

Not just the size (I always do them all 3,5,7 respectively) but more importantly the distancing between them and everything else. This seems like a reasonable constraint given the nature of the game.

3 Likes

But surely once you have done it once you now know the distance that you need between your taxi way. Personally for me this is part of the challenge of designing the airport!

Because this makes it much less of a chore (like templates for rooms) and enforces it as a constraint, thereby deepening the gameplay for people who otherwise haven’t considered this (which is probably most players).

But have they not considered it because they don’t care they just want to build and have fun.

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Probably because it never occurred to them. Think about all the gameplay design constraints you find in games that are fun (or not) that you never would have thought of yourself. This didn’t occur to me until after I’d “completed” ACEO

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Added edit: As an added bonus you can use this method to ensure medium, and especially large planes don’t use grass taxiways!

1 Like

I agree with you @EG0611. People should have the freedom of picking taxiway widths. Also, @Moriarty, what if I want a tree in one of my engines? :upside_down_face:

2 Likes

If you wanted to you can make a 25 tile width taxiway. It’s pretty much you can make the taxiway as small or a big as you want

It’s really just the space limitations that the regular game gives you that restricts this. If the map was 8 large tiles this would be of no absence to the right mind. We just have to wait for the optimization, but I would give a +10,000,000,000 If I could. :innocent:

Wait. Who recommends taxiway widths? IDK anymore what is going on. Imagine what an airbus beluga would be like on a 1 tile taxiway. :upside_down_face:

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Imagine? EEEK! TatteredJampackedBirdofparadise-max-1mb

I prefer imagining an An225 on a one tile taxiway.

The distance between the landing gears is probably more than 1 tile… :rofl:

I prefer imagining an An225 on a one tile taxiway.

The distance between the landing gears is probably more than 1 tile…

That’s actually the case in the A380 picture I pasted above. The wing wheels (WLG - Wing Landing Gear) are outside the wingbox so as you can see, that means they’re off the taxiway (and that’s with the game having scaled-down aircraft!).
The A380 spec says they’re 12.46m apart axle-to-axle, or 14.34m from wheel-edge to wheel-edge.

Yes, the right amount makes perfect sense and like you mentioned earlier or I don’t remember who did, but “That’s if you want it to be realistic”. My choice would be realistic, I wouldn’t want a big plane going by and stomping on little one tile lanes…
…imagine that. :smile:

The point here is that your choice to go realistic doesn’t have to impact my choice to go full on one-tile taxiway because I’m a cheap ass.

I like sensible taxiway sizes just as much as the next guy, but there are people who aren’t bothered about it and it feels silly to limit their fun for our ‘realism’ if it is not necessary.

I like sensible taxiway sizes just as much as the next guy, but there are people who aren’t bothered about it and it feels silly to limit their fun for our ‘realism’ if it is not necessary.

I’m not suggesting this for realism (that’s an added benefit); I’m suggesting it for gameplay.

Good game design works by forcing the player to make decisions, tradeoffs, and balances. If I gave you a racing game and gave you a car that could go full speed across all surfaces (including water!), while that would be fun in some scenarios (and the GTA franchise came about as a result of something along those lines), for a racing game the vast majority of players will find it more fun if there are constraints on where the car can go and different speeds on different surfaces.

By constraining taxiway pathing, you’re forcing the player to better design their airport, making the game more fun for most players.