When a plane is “dismissed” before the boarding starts, it is assigned a zero count. So, if the auto-send-away function is enabled, you get lots and lots of refused PAX.
We really need custom rules for “dismissing” planes, I would like to auto-dismiss planes that are 90% filled with PAX at the moment of the delay reporting by the engine. That would solve 80% of my delay warnings.
Other warnings I want to see, so I can solve problems on the ground, now I dont after a certain airport size, since you make money anyway on the PAX that do board, and the PAX numbers that shop.
Stand related service bugs are not apparent from the point you auto-dismiss planes that are delayed. But without auto-dismissing, you never get 5 star shops, so, you as CEO have no choice.
Thus, bigger airports have planes that are dismissed all the time, due to 2 factors; you cant dismiss on rules, so you dismiss on the default “hour delay” category. And secondly, since you auto-dismiss on time, you have no way of detecting service defects on stand level.
The result; planes leaving with 0 PAX on board all the time, on stands that are difficult to reach measured in TAXI-TIME from runway to stand, since on arriving, its auto-dismissed instantly by the engine setting “dismiss delayed flights”.
For me, these factors make running big airport very repetitive. From a certain size you are just extending assets, in stead of managing an airport decently.
Things that would help to resolve this;
- Stand specific delay timer value setting (1h, 2h, etc)
- Stands that can be assigned to runways
- Stands that have a “route” setting for planes that are on approach, or want to leave a stand.
- Taxi blocks, where the taxi-route is between blocks/boxes, on the route assigned. So, no longer 1 plane having 8 to 12 planes waiting on it. (see Smart Signals from OpenTTD as example)
- Rules for “auto-dismissing”, based on other values as “time-delay”.
- Couple depots to stands, in stead of vehicle*, you want to create “service domains” for vehicles. Certain parts of your airport serviced by a particular vehicle.
- “service domains” for staff would also provide economic choices, that cannot be made atm, you just over-hire to compensate for long distance staff calls. Same with hiring double staff amounts on security stations, since staff syncing on them required you to work with the double amount due to instant parallel shift changes.**
- Auto-flight planner template option.
'* assigning vehicles to stands still makes no sense to me, economically it is not interesting at all to optimize your fleet. You just ramp up your numbers the moment you start gushing cash.
'** same for staff.