Setting Gate priorities

Continuing the discussion from Add Apron TaxiwayTextures for realism:

I asked in the other thread if we could decide on which runway a flight would land and which gate it would taxi to. That was obviously too much to ask for, and would become too tedious for player to set manually for each incoming flight.

Revised idea:
Can we set priorities for runways/gates?
That is, the plane will always attempt to land at the runway with highest priority. If that runway is not available, then next priority runway is selected.
Similarly, plane will try to taxi to the highest priority gate(stand). If that gate is in use, next priority gate checked, and so on till an available gate is found.

Why?
I would always want the planes to taxi to a gate where I feel the turnaround time is minimum(distance for passengers to walk, distance for baggage/fuel trucks to travel, etc). When my airport is empty, I would not like an incoming flight to choose a very inconvenient gate, increase turnaround time and cause delay.

How to implement:
Like all micromanagement aspects, this stuff may not be for everyone. Maybe this can be unlocked through research, or a unique idea: Staff Training.
Conducting the appropriate staff training (which will take x amount of time and cost y amount of money) will allow them to be “smart” enough to handle your micromanagement decisions.
If the feature is not unlocked, or after unlocking, the priorities for some/all gates are not set, those gates would be handled the same way they are handled in the current algorithm.

Obviously, this is not important at release, but an added feature down the road

3 Likes

I think this is a great idea, but would need to be optional like you said.

Can’t have everything be optional :L

I think staff training could serve as a research kind of system. For example if you want more control over something you “research” it - train your staff otherwise you can opt out. So more control over taxi routes and which runways are used comes with varying degrees of aerodrome controller training. Whilst other things like baggage belt breakdown time or time to fix broken things could be upgraded by training your handy/mechanics/engineer/DIY-men.

2 Likes

I think us setting the gate is a great idea, shouldn’t be too hard to implement and needn’t be too cumbersome for those who don’t want to micromanage.

At the moment when we schedule flights I notice that there are multiple rows that seem to be arbitrary and can be added or removed at will. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be changed so that each row represents a gate (so if we have five gates we only have five rows, each one corresponding to one of our gates). For those of us who want to micromanage, we can do so until our heart’s content. But it also serves a helpful purpose for everyone, as it becomes impossible to schedule more flights than gates (so in our proposed five gate airport you wouldn’t be able to plan to have six or more planes on the ground). It would be simple and intuitive. Those of us who want to plan the gate utilisation can do so, everyone else can just place flights wherever they want to. A feature could also be included to prevent you allocating flights to inappropriate stands, so you can’t allocate a 747 (if/when implemented) to a small stand.

Perhaps you should still be allowed to add additional rows for those players who want to make their airport congested, but at least you’d be making a definitive choice to do so and it would trigger a warning that the airport doesn’t have enough gates, prompting you to build some (or face the wrath of the angry passengers and airlines!).

For delays you could have the option of the AI (i.e. your workers) picking an available stand or requiring manual intervention from the CEO (for the serious control freaks out there!).

If and when multiple terminals are introduced, I think this feature becomes essential. Not much use in the AI redirecting flights to the wrong terminal.

I’d be interested to see a system where traffic movements are planned, including taxiway and runway utilisation, but that would presumably require a lot more work and would have to be optional. I think a lot of people wouldn’t really want to do this and shouldn’t be forced to, so an automatic option is essential IMO.

2 Likes

Like it. I was unclear what the purpose of all the rows was in the video other than overlapping planes at the airport. It wasnt clear if you could add more rows than gates. Makes more sense to have a row per gate, or at least the option to do so.

When I said optional, I meant being optional through researching it. Like how dogs are optional in PA, they’re in the game but nee to be unlocked

This sounds a bit like a tower control simulator, in my opinion.

You can already specify which gates are to be used for certain aircraft types.

I could see staff training be used to assign gates more efficiently in the future, though.

This sounds a bit like a tower control simulator, in my opinion.

Except gate assignments are definitely determined by airport management, not by the tower. Granted, airport management would only allocate gates to airlines, but then the airlines are the ones responsible for allocation of specific flights to gates they have been assigned.

All the tower does is communicate this information to aircraft, and get them from the runway to/from the gates.

Of course you don’t want to be driving aircraft yourself, but it definitely seems to me like some aspect of gate assignment is not only preferable for gameplay, but a critical part of management of an airport.

2 Likes

I definitely want to assign gates in my playthroughs. I want my highest pax flights closer to my baggage terminal and maybe shopping and lounges close there as well. Small flights I would place further away.

1 Like

Welcome to the forum! :smiley: No, sorry that functionallty does not exist in the current version. Stands are assigned based on aircraft size as of now.

2 Likes

Welcome! :slightly_smiling_face:

We don’t have true multi terminal functionality so assigning a terminal won’t be possible on release. Probably some way off before we can do this.

At release, the game will allocate a gate automatically.

Would this be something on the list of features to delevop in later stages of the game? (Gate Priorities)
One of the first airports that I would build is a U shaped terminal with gates on the inside and outside of the U, and baggage, fuel etc in the centre of the U (so it is equally close to all the gates inside the U).
If gates there are empty, I would not like a plane going to a gate outside the U.

Gate Priorities. Maybe a middle road between setting each flight’s gate manually, and leaving the assignment completely up to the path finding algorithm.

We will at least look into how to improve it. There are a lot of suggestions circulating now gate priorities, gates specific to airline, flight planning and gate allocating. So we will need to carefully think of what is possible within the current system and how it can add gameplay value first.

10 Likes

Take your time and get it right. We would love to see allocation of gates for the reasons we’ve outlined quite a bit over the last few days. But we haven’t played the game yet. So you’re the best placed to decide how to proceed with this.

This topic was automatically closed 31 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.