I have two items that are big on my list:
–Still need better multi-terminal functionality. I hate that every terminal has to have X feature. As an example, every terminal has to have it’s own set of check in desks. I’d rather see a way to link terminals, so I can say “Everybody enter in terminal one. All check-in desks for flights are in terminal one,” and then route passengers to to different terminals. While I’m not trying to copy any real word airports, I can think of several that are designed this way today…in the US, Atlanta Hartsfield and Pittsburgh International both have a design like this. A lot of times, I just need to use terminals to be able to segregate employees, to get them to go/stay in the proper area to do their job without getting lost or having pathing issues. I don’t want terminals to force me to have an entire airport setup in every terminal. That’s very limiting, in my opinion.
–Connections list or connections across floors. Expanding on the first item, I’ve been working on a new sandbox airport the past 2 weeks. Have spent a good amount of time building something to get around the limitations, and using multiple floors to expand available space. Probably have a good 30-40 hours laying everything out. Tonight, I started “hooking everything up.” I got the taxiways laid out for the small runways, and got General Aviation section of my airport up and running. I built a design where all passengers enter the terminal (single massive, multi-floor terminal) on level -1. Parking, bus, taxi, car drop off, check-in, baggage claim and security were all going to be on level -1. Level -2 was used for service vehicles and baggage lines. All my service depots are on Level -2, and my yet to be created baggage system was going to have all the baggage beltways on this level. As I began building out my boarding desks for my area designated for small plane stands, I ran into an issue. I designed my small plane stand area to use self check-in desks, baggage drop, and self-boarding gates. Problem is, my check in is on Level -1, and my baggage bays are on Level 1. I have no way of connecting any baggage systems because I cannot connect a Baggage Drop-Off machine on Level -1 to a Baggage Bay on Level 1. This is a very poor design choice, in my opinion. Again, I’m being forced to design things in a specific way that I don’t think is an “extreme, outside the box” way of thinking. What would have been a better design is, when you build a Check-In desk or baggage drop-off, show a list of already existing baggage bays that you can connect.
I’m sure there is some frustration in my two items above, but that unfortunately has been my experience…spending hours of time trying to design something, build pieces, and when I start trying to hook all the systems together, they just don’t play nice enough to allow my designs to function. And in my mind, for a building/tycoon type of game, I’m not doing anything that is outlandish in my designs.