1.2.1 Beta
2.1.0 In New Scheme
Author’s Notes
Franky, 2.0 (formerly 1.2) was a rushed and buggy mess that I (incorrectly) thought I could finish before my move. Sorry about that.
2.1 (formerly 1.2.1) is essentially what that update should have been. Flight types are now enabled with just enough functionality to see what they’re about and start getting feedback before “finishing” them in 2.2 (formerly 1.2.2).
I’ve made a bit of a philosophy change in this update. Previously I wanted to have every feature of the mod be toggle-able in settings. I still do. However, supporting this means testing every combination of different settings with many heavily interacting with each other. Toggle-ability is not canceled, but it is postponed. In general, I plan to make a feature toggle-able at the time that it becomes “mature”. This will mean that its code base is fairly stable and refactored to something vaguely readable. For the current round of airline/commercial flight changes, I expect this to come around update 4.0 Anyways, on with the update…
Not-The-Update: Beta
UMF generously manually curates mods uploaded to their site for safety and compliance with basic ground rules. This inherently means there’s a delay between uploading and the mod going public. This scares me, because I don’t want to drop an update that accidentally breaks everything only to have to wait three days for the patch to go public. Therefore, when I have an update ready, I’ll let it sit on the forum via manual download for a few days. If nothing is on fire, I’ll send it to UMF, and a few days later it will go public for automatic download via UMF. Anyways, on with the update…
Not-The-Update: Github
I did a github. I don’t know what I’m doing. Its for the source code, if you care. Maybe a wiki, one day, maybe. Anyways, on with the update…
Flight Types System!
Airlines now have both a star-rank (vanilla) reflecting their “prestige” or importance in the airline industry, as well as an “economic tier”. where “star-rank” describes the airline directly, “economic tier” describes the airline’s target audience. Economic tiers are as follows:
- Budget
- Normal
- Above-Normal
- VIP
These are manually distributed among vanilla airlines according to those airline’s descriptions. For mod airlines, a guess is taken based on star-rank. This guess will be made smarter in 1.2.2 as I get more feedback from modders.
These airline traits influence the types of flights offered. Flight types are as follows:
Economy
Economy flights usually want a fast turn around and don’t care about things like catering. PAX are crammed in tight.
Commuter
Commuter flights are usually short hops. They are similar to economy flights in that they care more about turnaround time than services on offer, but this tendency is less extreme.
Mainline
Mainline flights are closest to vanilla airport CEO. They want a balanced turnaround.
Flagship
Flagship flights are important to the status of an airline. Expect to provide full services.
In 1.2.2 these flights will become very demanding with deep satisfaction penalties for failure to provide all that is requested.
VIP
These are all business class flights. They are similarly demanding to Flagship flights, but have reduced PAX capacity and widely varying turnaround time requirements. They are often offered in short or one-flight series.
Cargo
These flights have no PAX. They will request cleaning at most. They are likely to sit on the tarmac for a long time. Cargo services are not (yet) simulated.
The pop-up that displays in the planner now indicated the flight type and turnaround type requested. It also indicates the number of passengers vs the capacity of that flight. Expect higher loadings during the day. Complain to me when an economy flight is operating over the exit-limit for the aircraft type (actually please do; I am trying to tune these things).
Airline/Flight Behavior Changes!
Airlines will now add more flights at the end of a contract when a flight completes. This will happen if they are satisfied with your performance (currently delay-based, this will be more nuanced in 1.2.2) and there are at least three repetitions of the flight already scheduled. This means that as long as an airline is happy with the service it gets in a given slot, the flight will remain in this slot indefinitely.
If a flight is not renewed and slips below the threshold of three remaining repetitions, it is doomed to expire (as it would have in the vanilla game). This is also the case if the player cuts the series short by canceling all future flights (hold shift while canceling a flight) at a nearer date than 3 days in the future.
The length of contract offered initially by airlines is now dependent on both the airline’s size (star rating) and satisfaction. In the early game it should be important to grow your relationship with small airlines to the point that they reliably renew their flights with you beyond the three-day expiry threshold.
The little number in the flight slot UI now reflects repetitions remaining after the one you are viewing; helpful for knowing how far out a slot is booked.
The UI indicator in the flight planner for an airline’s number of offered flights now instead reflects the number of offered flight-series.
Renewing flights will schedule at the same time-slot as the last flight in the series. If you’ve scheduled new flights several days out at a time that interferes this may create overlap. The three-days-out rule for renewals ensures that it is safe to modify your flight schedule any time in the upcoming three days.
Changelog
1.2.1
It is recommended to disable the auto planner when starting to play with 1.2.1, and enable it only cautiously, one stand at a time. The design goal of the update is that autoplanner is not necessary.
- Turnaround times depend on type of flight
- Airlines extend flight contracts when satisfied
- Airlines cut short flight contracts when upset
- Airlines operate various flight types based on their economic focus
- Some airline descriptions updated/retconned to match new game mechanics
- Flight types displayed in flight info window, as well as expected PAX vs PAX capacity
- PAX capacity depends on flight type
- PAX load factor depends on time of day
- Fixed some planner bugs from 1.1
- Rewrote service request system for baggage, catering, cleaning, fueling, ramp service
- Added setting to disable baggage service on small stands (vanilla behavior is default)
- Added setting to disable baggage service on stands with no baggage bay (improved behavior is default)
- Depreciated settings for experimental flight types and new contract lengths
Link!
this, this is awesome. Wanna say how much I appreciate all the work.
. The small changes I made to the planner preview represent me learning to tweak the UI. I do want to represent routes better in the future (I’ve been reading up on the math involved in great circle routes for example.) I’m not sure exactly what I’ll settle on, nor when that improvement will be ready, but it is something I’m thinking about and planning on.