Tips, Tricks, and What I've Learned - A running list

[Bardaek]

Rather than having to search for things the more experienced players have learned, scroll through the feed below. Hopefully we might keep this a running feature. Feel free to add to or take away from what I’ve built if you think it’s relevant.
If you add anything, only make it one post and edit it each time you want to update your own personal ideas.

Brief airport preferences/structure as a guide for seeing why we have the list below
Small Stands: 0
Medium Stands: 81
Remote Stands: 0
Runways: 5 Arrival only 4 Departure Only
Service Vehicles: 0
Concourses: 9

• If there’s weirdness, save the game under a new name and reload it. It fixes a lot of stuff.
• Keep break rooms small and specific. Too many staff in an area means they have to travel farther to get to jobs.
• Ramp Agent only break rooms right next to the baggage bay
• Airport Staff and Ramp Agent break rooms right next to the stand… they have to be just big enough though, otherwise it turns terrible.
• Use the assign vehicles to an aircraft stand feature. I don’t care for anything different than 1:1 ratio of each service vehicle to aircraft stand.
• If you’re going to have a bathroom… have many, never one… people will go a long way out of their way to drop a deuce…
• Turn off baggage service if it gets out of control. Let things wind down and turn it back on when it’s settled down. Same goes for fuel trucks.
• Old save files opened on new versions may take a good amount of time for the new update to work through the old data structure. Patience usually prevails. Let things play out, even if it does seem like watching a hurricane unfold in your lap. The game is stable.

More to come.

Current as of 29.10.4

[Toby_H]

• Don’t open every gate at the same time, open them gradually and see if everything works

• Try and limit where your staff can take breaks. Ramp agents need to be by baggage bays, airport staff don’t.

• Don’t spend all of your money at the start, you won’t be able to make it back. Expand and upgrade when it is vital. (This does not jut mean buildings, staff aswell)

• It may be tempting to set auto-planner to 15 minute gaps to fit in as many planes as possible though this is often not practical due to passenger/vehicle/staff/runway load

[Sepone]

• Use Generic Baggage Scanners to sort out suspicious luggage. Don’t send all baggage through all the security scanners.

• Make sure you have at least one Check-in Desk per Small Stand and two per Medium Stand.

• After playing for a while, check for new Fuel Contracts. There might be much cheaper ones available.

• Build Small Security Checkpoints for your staff, so they don’t have to queue with all the passengers. Small Security Checkpoints set to Staff Only and Big Security Checkpoints for Passengers Only.

• If you don’t want passengers to walk/stand on the conveyor belts in the Baggage Claim Areas while waiting for their luggage, zone the belts as Staff Only. Passengers can still grab their bags, but won’t walk on them.

• If you have too much traffic on the public roads and bus stops in front of your airport, build Subway Entrances in front of your entrance/exit areas. But beware: they are expensive.

• Carefully watch your zoning at all time. Zones are important, because passengers and staff can only change from normal to secure zones via Security Checkpoints, and can only leave secure zones through Secure Zone Exits.
  This is important when building Remote Bus Stops, Service Car Stops and Stands not adjacent to terminals. Also with Baggage Bays that shall be reached by staff coming from secure zones. Make sure the pass used by passengers and staff to reach these destinations is zoned as secure, and in case of the baggage bay the bay itself, too.
  Zones stay when build stuff is deleted. That means, if you demolish a service car stop, for example, the Secure and Staff Only Zones stay in place where the stop has been. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
  You can use this feature to zone areas that can’t be zoned by default: For example, build some concrete tiles that match your stands and taxiways, making your airfield look like a coherent area. Then build a sidewalk on top of it and zone it as needed. Now demolish the sidewalk by choosing it in the building menu and holding the ctrl key.
  (I always leave at least one square of concrete between stand and terminal, so big vehicles don’t “break” through the walls when making a turn.)

• To make money offer passengers Food and Shop services:
  Easy way to do it: mark a small area as a food/shop room and click on it. Check out the available contracts by clicking the green button in the upper right corner. If no contracts show up, speed up the game and wait a moment. Build your food/shop area so it matches the required conditions (size, number of fridge displays, etc.).
  I recommend to build a bit larger/more stuff as required, because contract requirements change randomly over time.

• If you encounter performance issues with the game and your Graphics Quality is already set to Fast, check if V-Sync and Tree Animations are deactivated in the ingame options menu. Be aware that checkmarks are almost invisible at Fast setting, so V-Sync might be activated without you noticing it.

[VOID]

Also for large amounts of service vehicles the 1 can be changed.