So we have the contracts with the daily flights now. Great! Yet I feel like we can go one step further.
What is it?
The idea is called “unlimited contracts”. These contracts offer flights which will return at your airport every day for an unlimited time. (unlike the current contratcs which will last for about 5 days).
The contracts can only be earnend after requirements are met, such as high reputation and a certain board member hired.
In order to break the contract, a fee needs to be paid. The fee will be high but gets lower the longer the contracts runs.
Why do we need it?
After a while, planning flights becomes one of the more boring parts of the game. Especialy when you have a giant airport and need to plan over 40 flights a day. Some people even refer to the game as flight-planner simulator, which is ofcourse not what the game should be about. Unlimited contracts will eliminate the large amount of time spent on planning, and gives the player more time for building and managing.
You got master contracts, and as long as you were adhering to their demands you would keep the contract with flights. Within the contract would be demands about shops, check in desk, security rating, etc. and you could pickup “forever” cycles they offered you. The moment you dropped your service level you would be informed that certain flights would be withdrawn. Say; the master contract starts with 1 small flight daily. If you service that well, you get a second, and after 5 you get a medium flight weekly, etc, etc. and the moment your service level dropped, they would withdraw last extension.
That way you can progress in game and have to keep paying attention to service a master contract. Also, when additional “buildings” come onto the map, the master contract can be send to you for negotiation (one sided), so demands can go up over time.
You should have to work for such a contract. To much up-following “downgrades” of service could give you a one sided termination of the master contract.
Over time you could build up several master contract relations.
That’s definately a way to keep people interested in the game. I don’t think they should copy the system exactly from airport tycoon, because this game can be unique in it’s own way. But this is definitely the route I hope Airport CEO will take.
I think the contracts and the business aspect side of the game needs a lot of work. Once you’ve built your airport it basically becomes contract acceptance CEO.
Unlimited contracts with the possibilty that the contract is canceld with a fee for contract violation seems a good way. such a violation could be a bad ranking (under a certain point statet in the contract) or if the flights are getting delayed. the last would make more sense if there are more “delay situation” like storms etc.
Delay’s would effect the contract situation, delays would also effect employee behaviors and speed and efficacy in my opinion at least. that’s the way i would make it.
Thus far devs have done an awesome job and the game isn’t even done yet. Yes there are some bugs but every game has bugs.
Wouldn’t this be considered a daily contract, even though it’s not unlimited you wouldn’t want an unlimited flights coming in 24/7 every single day. I mean, you’ll want to improve flow of your airport after each contract to manger pax better after each contract. At least that’s what i have been doing the past 6 hours.
After noticing that the daily contract being added for 23.0. I would assume it got added in 23.0, i didn’t notice in 22.
Some far off thoughts: I’d like to contract away an entire gate to an airline. Perhaps even in such a way that the airline gets it’s own check-in desks that it staffs itself, it’s own baggage handling with own staffing etc.
Let me worry about the infrastructure and capacity while the airline manages flying and scheduling.
In the end it might even be implemented that the airline chooses your airport as a hub in it’s flight plan and even further down the line your airport might become the homebase for the line, which would require many gates, extensive parking and maintenance facilities and much more.
Sounds cool but the airline should have some restrictions in order to avoid too many planes planned at the same time. Maybe let the player set 3 flights or so on the same gate per day?
Still would like to pre-set a scheduler plan and then “autofill” all contracts I sign into the schedule. All the repeated dragging does not make sence, make a scedule once for each gate, then auto-fill contract by contract (so, you as CEO can prioritize certain contracts).
If airline renting out of gates becomes a thing, perhaps a mission/milestone system could be implemented where an airline requests capacity upgrades/features to advance to new levels of contract.
If service degrades fines could be implemented and/or the contract level could be degraded.
If such things where to be implemented I’d also like to see my contracted airlines take priority in take-off and landing, depending on the contract level.
But for now something that unloads the player of all the contract planning would be great. I guess it makes sense in the early game to have us players plan everything, but should be unlocked after a few medium gates are opened. Perhaps a board member that unlocks after X medium gates, that handles contracting and planning on planning slots that are set by the player?
I’d like to see more of a relationship between the airline and airport. For example, when we’re nearing the end of an airline contract, it pops up and says “We’re happy with the airport service and would like to bring x more flights”, or “Airline X is withdrawing service from your airport due to Y reasons”. Or “We will provide X more flights, and if you provide the following services, we will provide Y flights”. So in future could say they’ll bring their A380 if the airport provides minimum services, has a good rating, has a large gate with two jet-bridges, etc.
