[Mod] AirportCEOTweaks 2.4.0: Mod Loader Support!

You need two things:

  1. UModFramework. This is a program that you install with an installer. Links in the post, including to the UModFramework wiki install page (I have that linked as being for mac support, but the wiki page has instructions for all OS’s).
  2. My mod itself. This is a file with the extension .umfmod. If you’ve successfully installed the framework the file should be associated with the program and can be installed by double clicking. If that fails, you need to copy and paste the file to whatever-your-aceo-root-directory-is\uModFramework\Mods. for me this is as follows:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Airport CEO\uModFramework\Mods

I took a look at the path, but I don’t have the uModFramework file.

Go ahead and create the folder(s). I believe it should have been created when the framework was installed, so if when you launch the game you do not see a UMF overlay on the main menu, the issue is likely that UMF didn’t install correctly. In that situation I would refer to their wiki.

Keep in mind, I did manually install it, so it didn’t get anything else.

I’m stupid, and misread something in it. I missed an entire step.

Get it working now?

Just an update for those interested: I moves cross-country and started a new job over the last two weeks; so I’ve have had little time to work on things; the 1.2.1 update is not very far along and will mostly involve bugfixes.

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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:

  1. Budget
  2. Normal
  3. Above-Normal
  4. 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!

4 Likes

I LOVE <3 <3 :smiley: this, this is awesome. Wanna say how much I appreciate all the work.
I have some feedback and some info to share.

INFO: I loaded the mod and loaded my game that already have booked flights.
Those flights that are already planned, on those the number for full capacity is off.
After closing stands and rebook a flight it is correct.

BUG: My real issue is that no booked flight will initiate pushback.
I closed all stands, saved the game, quit and started again, then booked one flight as a test.
All the numbers look good, but after boarding. It did NOT initiate pushback.

Question. I booked a flight that arrived From Norway, but after Turnaround Departed to Greece?
Is that from this mod? Because vanilla flights would arrive and depart from/to the same destination, pls correct me if this is not the case.

So, If it is from this mod, are you able to put the destination in the flight planner instead of the arrivals info? It would be better to know were it’s departing too, than arriving from in my opinion.

So as seen in the pics, this flight arrives from Norway and is then departing to Greece.
In the flight planner(where you book flights) the top flight is shown, but I would much more prefer to know where the flight is heading after turnaround. Or even both would be very cool.


Good to know, and pretty much as expected; I’m using a variable for “full capacity” that previously meant “number of passengers before any modifiers” and was therefore somewhat randomized; where that number has already been set by the vanilla game it will be kinda odd.

I’m not super surprised, but that is something I’d want to resolve; I haven’t seen that in the testing I’ve done. If you still have it could you direct message me the save file from before loading the mod? Also: is the flight due to leave? A tweak that was necessary for cargo flights was delaying the push-back request to ~20 minutes before departure time; if the plane isn’t scheduled to depart it will wait around now…

Thats the mod :slight_smile: . 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.


I appreciate the support and the information; hope you continue to enjoy :slight_smile:

1 Like

Will send you a message.
Very interested in what Is your thoughts about Departure/Arrival info in the flight planner? Is it possible to show both or only one?
Another question is, will it always be the same arrivals and departure destination for a “set” of booked flights?

Very interested in what Is your thoughts about Departure/Arrival info in the flight planner? Is it possible to show both or only one?

I haven’t looked at how the map is coded. In theory I’d think I’d be able to draw both the arrival and departure route and zoom to fit; this will probably be what I try to do in the future.

Another question is, will it always be the same arrivals and departure destination for a “set” of booked flights?

That is the intended behavior yes. In theory all flights in a given series are identical. There are places where I use the flight number itself to determine “randomized” values.

2 Likes

Actually that “feature” was part of the game before the international zone was implemented. Since then the origin and destination is always the same.
@zekew11 do you include the international/domestic settings in your logic? To prevent that a plane at an international stand gets a domestic destination and vice versa.

1 Like

In the original game, there’s a chunk of code which generates a route from somewhere to your airport. Another chunk of code then copies and reverses that route.

The way the mod currently works is that there’s a random chance that instead of copying the arrival route and reversing it, we generate a second arrival route (still using the original code though) and reverse this route, with the effect that arrival and departure routes are now different.

Because of this method, all of the rules that apply to vanilla routes are still enforced. These include range being achievable, endpoint airport being large enough for the aircraft, and, to answer your question: the international status of the route.

3 Likes

Thanks for this mod, its making me fall in love with the game again! Its exactly the change I needed.
Just wondering if there are any plans to try and more realistic destinations for modded in airlines - eg. Japan Airlines offers flights to / from Japan only.

Thanks!

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Hi! Though I’m not Zekew (I’m sure he’ll elaborate), I do know that realistic airline routing is a planned feature of ACEO Tweaks :slight_smile:

2 Likes

To continue the thoughts about realistic destinations. I also want this very much.
I Also wanna share some thoughts about routes, and ideal for the flight planner would be to display both arrival and depurate info if possible I think.

But for the routs them self, we kind of need a way to set an airline as HUB, because in my mind it’s like this.

Very basic, We have three airport. A, B, C.
A is the player airport.
B And C is two other airports.

So for non hub airlines, you would mostly fly B-A-B, because that airline has another Hub country, It can fly B-A-C but then C would probably be another airport in HUB country as well.

And for an Airline that has A as HUB, the Routs would mostly be B-A-C Because the player airport is both starting and end point for those flights.

2 Likes

This is the next large coding project I’m planning to undertake. I’m shooting for a realism level of “vaguely believable” by making international flights by an airline with a defined county code require an endpoint in the home country. Trello.

I’ve had lots of thoughts about a hub system. I want to implement something with a bit more depth than just the routing changes you’ve suggested; this does mean it is a ways off though.

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1.2.1 may or may not take an extra week to get out of beta: there’s an issue with flights generated before the mod was installed failing to push back that is taking quite an effort to fully resolve.

2 Likes

Sounds complicated. Hopefully it can get resolved. Thank you for all your devotion :slight_smile: <3