In terms of time i wouldn’t immediately change the timetable for turnarounds. I’d rather see another slowdown on how fast ingame time flies. When this was done the firstbtime in alpha29 we witnessed alot of postive effects and could once more.
If the discussion for turnaround time is gonna continue might i suggest making this part of the difficulty setting? Longer times on easyband shorter on difficult.
I don’t think that timescale can be viewed as a difficulty setting, simply because of the fact that the current timescale hinders the smooth processing of flights.
If you were to have it like that the issue would persist for players with a harder difficulty setting. Same thing applies for large airports.
I didn’t say to have the timescale depending on difficulty, rather the turnaround time wich is ghe time a flight gets between arrival and departure before it gets considerd delayed.
We ended up doing a larger texture overhaul which means we’ll need at least one more day of tuning before another update is rolled out! 
How about the player being able to plan (shorter) turnaround time himself while slowing down gamespeed in general? The shorter turnaround time is, the more an airline may even pay (or other way, they may pay less for longer turnaround times)
This way a slower gametime could be achieved, while more efficient airports/stands won’t be blocked for no reason and a player is honored for efficient stands twice (more aircrafts per day and a higher rate paid by the airline).
I’d like if I could decide how turnaround should work through a setting: Either how it is now - once the airplane arrives at the stand everything will start coming there and do the work. Or set all the trucks and also the ramp agents to go to the stand a little bit before the airplane will land. This way they will be ready and waiting on time, but you would need more staff and vehicles. It’s “better service” vs. “saving cost”.
Best would be if you could choose it separately for every type of turnaround service.
Additionally, I’d like to choose how long before departure boarding will start. On the other side, I should get lower passenger and airline ratings if I regularly miss the boarding time because the airplane isn’t ready yet (no cleaning done on time).
Another approach would be we would have the A-Train way of observing stuff:
First one is in real time where we could see all things do their stuff at their genuine speed.
We could speed up to x2, x3, x4, x5 if we are bored. However, at that speed we can see whether our plans and designs work. We could make a jump to x30 which means 2 seconds real-time is a minute in game which is approximately the standard speed we already have. x120 would mean 1 second real-time would be about 2 minutes in the game so fast forwarding. Now, for the elegant (?) part:
At speeds x1 to x5 the game shows all movement and this should not be a real problem for the CPU to do and for us to watch. At x30 we won’t see PAX anymore, but rooms would instead get a people sign with a number currently occupying the room. If there would be any logic like in Prison Architect so that everything enclosed between doors would be its own room we could monitor corridors as well. Vehicles will only show up at their destinations so stands will be shown either empty or filled with stuff at the proper parking position as long as it is there. Maybe speed will allow to show vehicles as ‘blips’. Now, the high speed settings are used to generate lots of money and build stuff as it is correct, building takes time but still is absurdly fast compared to reality. So in fact, we might have two modes of viewing the game: slow-motion a.k.a. realistic speed to micromanage and simply observe and enjoy the busy life on our hub, thus pleasing the simulationists and the x30 and faster speeds are to propagate the tycoon game. Both combined might work and also iron out wrinkles we currently have regarding paths, reaching things in time and fulfilling needs of landed planes. Like 3 hours are a lot of time. How many planes would you think can you refill with a truck like the maverick if it was done at real time and how many can you do currently if additionally they do odd ways of turning around to get to their new goal? Think about it, let it sink in and then maybe offer something better.
One could argue, whether x30 speed would still please simulationists as well and display the PAX.
We don’t have realistic distances in the map, runways are much shorter than real life and in general the map is much smaller than a real airport, even planes are smaller so I don’t see the point of having a 1:1 mapping of time. Devs know better but I think maybe 5-10 realtime seconds to 1 minute in game would already be a great improvement!
The issue with realistic time is people like me who only get to play for an hour to two a week would not even get through a single turnaround process in a the available playtime.
As the poster above says it is just a matter of small tweaks to make sure that it is only poor design by the player which causes delay!
This is a great point. However, you could slow the time by the scaling factor to address the issue of taxiing length.
Provided that scaling is more or less within the same ball park for all objects.
You know what? A-Train 9 also does not have realistic scaling of trains - unless you enable this in the options menu - it is totally possible there without the game crashing and the game is 4 years old. Been there, done that. It IS possible to do and as I wrote: x1 is only to look at the scenery for a while and watch things but it is the fundamental speed and scaling everything must be built upon. You usually would play with a 1 second = 5 seconds or even 30 seconds compression. We seem to do this anyways. This is moot, however, if the distances covered are wrong. Speed is related to time and lattice. If you fiddle with one of these, of course things will get wrong. Passage of time and speed of objects must relate correctly to each other - even if this speed is not displayed but a compressed one. But it has to be done correctly. The best examples are the trucks for fuel. They can do 50 or 80 mph max. Yet, when one minute passes, they cross a distance of what? 5 to 10 road-blocks which are what? 50 meters? 100 meters? So totally wrong. Yet this is important as transit to a new job eats up too much time at that compression. Same for people going by foot. 3 hours for getting on a plane is more than enough to cover the walking distance, yet they cannot do that if stands are too remote. We need a correct scaling and work with the correct compression factors to fix the simulation parts of the game.
It’s not a simulation, it’s a management game.
The question for realism is answered by the fact that you can rotate objects at 90° only.
Sometimes I think this is the white elephant in the room no-one dares to address. You cannot have anything close to realistic with that fix rotation angle.
I don’t want to have 1:1 game time and wait 30+ minutes for a turnaround. I totally agree with you that the durations need to be in a good relation to each other and be balanced.
However, I’m still a fan of variable turn around times based on some factors (arrival of ramp agents, traffic jams etc as it is in the game now and later maybe weather etc)
I dare to disagree. It is a management game with simulated time, (arbitrarily?) abstracted object size, and diverse simulated airport processes inside. Also - read carefully - I also do not want to play the game in 1:1. But 1:1 timing should be the base calculation on which the other parts are compressed and displayed. If we have it as a ‘view in real speed’ mode to switch on to just enjoy the sight, then bonus. The game even simulates a full turnaround. I am simply of the opinion, that our current game time does not work because the speed and the size of the objects is neither calculated correctly or scaled evenly - this is an assumption and might be wrong. But then, when a vehicle says ‘speed 50 km/h’, it should move a distance it would be able to in 1 game minute. There is our problem. The vehicle would zoom around in our 2 seconds it takes to let 1 game minute pass if we did this, but then we had a ‘realistic’ speed and it would get to its targets in time.
Now imagine, what would happen, if we had unlocked all 4 sectors and have the fuel depot in SW sector but then the truck must return and service to NE sector. More than an hour or even 2 would pass in the game for a distance it would not need 5 minutes for. With realistic times it would manage to drive about 800 meters which is down a small runway in just one game minute. The clock ticks on relentlessly, the plane is waiting for refuel, delays and…failure. Just because the plane sticks to the flight schedule but the depending vehicles do the time-warp. We need x1 time if only for scaling the rest and a miniaturization factor for scaling objects and distances properly and relate to speed.
I don’t think we disagree.
Here we’re facing a problem known from model making that distance, mass, weight, time, stiffness etc do not scale in the same way. That’s why real water in a model looks odd and model trains have less wagons.
If time is scaled correctly, it might get boring or hectic, depending on what action you look at.
When do you think Alpha 33 will be released
I dont think we know that yet. We dont even know what will be in Alpha 33. I believe we will find out on Monday (devlog)
Last devblog mentioned what 33 will have.
Hello all!
We’re back from a very exciting and rewarding two days of planning. We will let you in on all the secrets in Monday’s dev blog… this planning session has had our passion for this game seriously recharged and we’re super excited for the autumn ahead.
Next week we’ll make sure to deliver more updates. We’ve deployed one today on the experimental branch with a few bug fixes and some new textures!
Edit: Update is out again! Sorry about the disruption…
Release notes - Airport CEO - Version Alpha 32.11-0
Ooh! Can’t wait to see the new textures and taxis!
Sad to see this one “fixed”, it saved me many times because changing some existing parts of conveyor belt would cause lots of trouble without this.