Baggage system

[xHaugen]

Hello

I'm making a huge airport. Thinking of 8 small gates, 20 large, and 8-10 XL gates.

The problem for me is making a huge baggage system. And make It' as nice and in a smallest place possible. But how? I know how to make small one, but a huge Is a real problem for me. Anyone help? :)

[Ramsis]

Hi Haugen, sounds like you've got a pretty amazing airport in mind and I hope you'll share some screenshots with us when its done! This thread might prove helpful to giving you some extra ideas for making a great baggage system to compliment your airport: https://steamcommunity.com/app/598330/discussions/0/3288067088089492198/

Otherwise we might be able to help further if you give a few screenshots of what you have so far. :)

[Scifiwriterguy]

Well, general advice off the top: save before starting and after building sections that worked out. WIth bookmark saves, you can prevent having to deal with expensive and time-consuming mistakes. :)

Some things to keep in mind:
• Baggage hubs are configurable. While you're limited to five objects on any single conveyor line, such as five ticketing desks, you can reset the hub's port assignments. So rather than being stuck with the default ports you see when you place a hub, you can change them to suit the hub's function. When putting in your ticketing desks, for example, you can change five of the hub's ports to Producer ports, allowing you to connect 25 ticketing desks to a single port. (You need one port for a two-way conveyor to connect to the rest of the network.) The same goes for baggage carousels: reset four or five of the ports to Consumer mode and attach up to 5 carousels per hub. That by itself will save you a ton of space and spread.

• Speaking of ticketing desks, they're the only thing that puts baggage into the system. So if you have kiosks (and you should!), those pax are unlikely to use the baggage system. If they do have bags to check, though, they'll head to a desk to drop them off. So ensure you have adequate deskage to handle your peak passenger bubble.

• Conveyors and hubs can be installed on *any* underground level. This is particularly important when you note that fuel pipes can only be installed on -1. There are two main schools of thought on this issue:
School 1 - Interleaving. By running your baggage system under your terminal buildings and fuel lines under taxiways, the two never have to collide, as they will interleave rather than intersect.
School 2 - Dive and Surface. Or, you can let them intersect, diverting your baggage conveyors down to -2 to go under a pipe, then bring it back up to -1 on the other side. This is generally more expensive in foundation spending, though.

Between the two, for a nice and compact system, I'd recommend School 1. It's nowhere near as messy or patchwork.

• Baggage depots have two connections: a producer and a consumer. Make sure you attach both - which you know, but the bigger the system, the easier it is to overlook one of them. Lots of threads have started because of that little goof...and I made one of 'em, back in the day. ;)

• Don't let the conveyor animations convince you of...well, anything, really. It just tells you that both ends of the conveyor are plugged into something. Efficiency isn't factored in.

• Don't overload. Hubs have effectively unlimited capacity, but your depots do not. Generally, commit a baggage depot to no more than 2 gates, but you can push it to 3 for S gates. Ideally, you want one baggage depot handling a pair of gates just for truck movement efficiency; the farther the trucks have to go, the slower things go and the less efficient it is. On big planes, that can be a killer. Same goes for your vehicles; have as many assigned to the depot as the depot is to gates and you'll never run into a snag there.

• Count up the maximum number of flights you have arriving at the same time, then add two - build that many carousels. And add more as you expand. The last thing you need is a backup in baggage claim because of insufficient carousels; in a big system, those tiny inefficiencies can add up fast, and it's a headache. Some of the carousel strategies used in a small airport just don't scale up smoothly.

• I mentioned saving, didn't I? Yeah, make sure you do that. With separate filenames.

• If you see golf carts running around...well, you've screwed up. Not a big deal, but golf carts are only used when the baggage system can't deliver or pick up for a certain gate. Check to make sure there's a depot assigned to the gate, and there's at least one truck assigned to the depot. So view golf carts as a sign that things aren't running as they should. The funny part is that they're more useful the bigger your system gets; you can track them to their destination for an easy debug tool - they'll drive straight to any mistake or gap in the system. :)

And if something goes wrong or you just feel stuck, use the good 'ol F12 key to take a screenshot and post it here in the forum. Everybody has a baggage system tangle at some point or another, so there's a lot of us who are happy to help you untangle it. :)


EDIT: Minor corrections. Office brain on a Monday...

[Scorp]

Bro.... do not bother with the "huge" airport. i have rebuilt mine over and over 90 + hours now. I just went from 8 xl gates to 16 in my design. I have a very strong computer but 16 Xl gates brings me to a crawl. Over 4000 pax in the airport gets tricky. I have one xl plane land every 15 minutes... too many pax. I have one XL land every 30 minutes is about the max. giving my XL planes 3.5 hours between landing and taking off means. i can stagger them at 30m 1hr 1.5 hr. 2 hr. 2.5 hr. 3hr. 3.5 hr ect.... meaning 7 to 8 gates and like 3+ runways is enough. Also skip the cafe if only adds cooks running around slowing your compuer down. As far as the baggage system.
Have 5 ticket desks connect together (max) run these to a hub. so 10 desks need one hub.
have these connect together using the "2 way" converyer. these go out to your planes. good luck.

[Daniel]

On my side i have begin a new game and begin to build a big airport they will make explode my computer with 50 XL gate,

the best way to build clean thing, it's to reserve place and floor for this if possible, on my side, the building of my airport have 5 floor, and i put all the thing for the baggage travel and the security to the more deep floor, (-2),

for the floor (-1), i keep it for the pipe and ticket and cafe and other small thing,

for the ground floor, more small building for baggage and other and all the rest it's for the runaway and door for plane,

for the second floor (1), i keep it for the embarcation door and bench for sitting ect...,

for the 3 floor, i keep it for the office, electric area ect...,

the best way i found for the bagage it's to put the building for the travelling vehicule neer all around the border of my base neer the road and i have make an another road to the sud to east, it's more than enought for the 50 xl door, and i have some place too in the center of the map for some rapid work, all this building send the bagage to the level -2,

when you build your system, try to use the less possible the small connection of the hub, build hub neer all your srtegic point for splitting the baggage to send it up, and try to use more the two way line, and if you try to put it neer all the border of your map, you can send line anywhere after, and it's better to try to planify before building...

[MetalDad]

I plan the whole airport with as much detail as possible. I spend hours drawing squares and lines before I start building. Every conveyer line is drawn before building. Especially with large airports. When you draw the whole thing first, you can finetune the stuff. And ~40 gates??? Wow... Depending on the number of flights per gate of course, but this will slow things down A LOT at the moment. Be sure to build everything before letting the pax in, because afterwards it will take until forever to build stuff with all the pax running around.

[flick70]

When I design my airports, I use Level -2 for all my baggage conveyors. So if you look at my Level -1 map, all you will see are small islands where the conveyors transition down, and of course the baggage claim area. This leaves me a lot of space on Level -1 for fuel pipes and underground walkways. I also tile all baggage foundations with FLOOR 11 tiles. They are gawd-awful to look at, but makes it quickly obvious that those foundations are just for baggage handling.

[Scifiwriterguy]

Originally posted by flick70:

When I design my airports, I use Level -2 for all my baggage conveyors. So if you look at my Level -1 map, all you will see are small islands where the conveyors transition down, and of course the baggage claim area. This leaves me a lot of space on Level -1 for fuel pipes and underground walkways. I also tile all baggage foundations with FLOOR 11 tiles. They are gawd-awful to look at, but makes it quickly obvious that those foundations are just for baggage handling.

Doesn't that get pretty expensive, Flick?

[flick70]

Not really. Just the cost of extra down/up transition conveyors and some small foundations. The foundations themselves are just big enough to contain the transitions and 1 square of conveyor. Typically there are only 2-3 tiles being placed.

[Scifiwriterguy]

Ah, now I get you. Clever. :)

[flick70]

Its pretty simple actually. Here is a pic.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/993492320936184923/A51257C28422A0033CF85C64F06DAAFC1A82537E/

[flick70]

Weird, why didn't that auto-change to a picture?

[Scifiwriterguy]

Probably a glitch with the new UI update.

[flick70]

Oh well, the link works...just wanted the pic embedded in my post. Anyhow...see how ugly FLOOR 11 is? It is perfect for my needs! :)

[Scifiwriterguy]

...I use that floor as a perimeter border in my first class lounges.

[Ramsis]

Well I'm sure Haugen will be excited to see all the responses! :D