basic bug fixing

[Warchief]

Look, I know this game is still in early access, and I know the developer team is very small.

I'm really trying to enjoy this game, As i really enjoy the gameplay and premise of it.

I'm comming back to it every half year or so, but the same bugs present at day 1 is still here. And I always reach a point where the game simply breaks down.

i have a 1 hour gap betweens flights but oh boy does the game crap out when you reach around 30 flights a day. In my current game, i have 9 medium gates and 3 large gates all set to auto with a 1 hour gap between flights. I have more staff than a real airport CEO would ever consider reasonable. more than half of them idleing at any point. But still half of the planes are just sitting there waiting ...

Pathfinding is a mess to put it mildly,

When you hit a certain point in the game, planes start getting delayed for dumb reasons. There are no bottlenecks in my airport, but the AI pathfinding is just a mess causing every other plane to get delayed. Passengers need to be able to judge how long things will take and prioritize getting to the plane in time as the first priority, no matter what.

Passengers wading through shops even though they have no business there because its the shortest way.


Simple things as when you press an employee that cant get to his destination (even though he can) it highlights the zones, and you have to then open the zoning tool and right click it to get out of that view..

Passenger parking flat out not working. they wont leave. ever.

The horror of laying down baggage belt only to find out that one of them goes in the wrong direction because the game decided that that specific part of the belt needs to go in that dirction even though the arrows clearly pointed the other way when you layed it down.

Baggage trucks going in circles at the baggage bay indefinetly for no apperant reason.

Catering trucks just stopping for no reason, and then just "parking there" in the middle of the road, forever until i sell the vehicle!

Busses backing up all the traffic out of the map, because the driver decided the moment he entered the map, to use THAT parking spot, no matter what, even though there are 10 free parking spots just 10m down the road. And the bus currently in the spot, wont leave until that LAST passenger that for some reason decided to stand in the 10km line for a newspaper is very late.. (!)

You cant even resolve the traffic issue by laying down more lanes, since the drives will ALWAYS choose the shortes route, making traffic no more than a nuisance that you cant even try to manage, in a management game..

All of the above while the plane is just waiting there on the tarmac for that one meal that didnt get delivered, or that 12L of fuel it is missing. Delaying all other traffic.


Suggestions:

Pathfinding needs some serious work obviously.

Easy way to see how many people still needs to board the plane.

Some indication of WHY the plane is late when you click on it so you'll be able to fix it.
Fx: The plane at medium stand 3 is late, BECAUSE its wating for fuel / (x)passengers / Catering etc.

Easy way to change one way road back to normal.

Busses only picking up passengers actually waiting at the stop and then moving on (the rest can take a cab i dont care, be there on time!)

Traffic actually utilizing the 2 roads in one dicrection you have designated for them.

Traffic being able to change parking spot on the fly, and not beeing locked to the one the AI choose for them when they entered the map.

Medium and large security checkpoints should be faster hands downs. Theres no reason not to only go with the small ones.

An actual reason to make seperating walls in you airport. You can just make different zones in a large square, and the passengers will blindly follow them. At the very least, your security zones should have an requirement to be bared by walls, doors, or security exits/checkpoints.

A large square with just invisible zoning in it is not that interesting to look at, but it makes by far the most efficient airport in this game since passengers will always choose the shortest route and there is no penalty for not enclosing fx security zones.

You can place a urinal right next to a check in que, and the passengers will happily use it as long as it is zoned as a toilet.

Zones need to have an enclosure requirement.

Abillity to designate planes to other gates when the plane in front of it is delayed (standby gates)

Airline requirements in the contract (kinda like the franchise deal)
etc. Airlines demand that your airport has cleaning, fueling and deicing before they will even consider landing certain planes there.

I very much doubt, that an airline would be landing and taking off a fully loaded 787, in minus 15 degress from an airport that doesnt even provide de-icing service.

Airplanes also shouldn'dt be able to take of without fuel!

Decision on waiting for remaining passengers, catering or cleaning should be at the airlines discression, not the airports.

[andycishere]

Currently the focus is to bring in all the features. The big time for bugfixing starts during beta.
You have interesting points. Have you reported them with the ingame bug report tool?
Also you might get more attention when you post them in the official forums.

As early access game, the devs need bugs and issues reported. Many people seem just to buy an early access game to play it like a normal released game and then they complain about issues they have. Sorry, no understanding for that from my side.

Originally posted by Warchief:

i have a 1 hour gap betweens flights but oh boy does the game crap out when you reach around 30 flights a day. In my current game, i have 9 medium gates and 3 large gates all set to auto with a 1 hour gap between flights. I have more staff than a real airport CEO would ever consider reasonable. more than half of them idleing at any point. But still half of the planes are just sitting there waiting ...

That's worth for a bug report or a topic with screenshots of your setup.
I have airports with 30 medium and 15 large stands and the staff is doing their jobs.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Pathfinding is a mess to put it mildly,

Yeah mentioned a lot of times and hopefully a very high prio before they increase land size.

Originally posted by Warchief:

When you hit a certain point in the game, planes start getting delayed for dumb reasons. There are no bottlenecks in my airport, but the AI pathfinding is just a mess causing every other plane to get delayed. Passengers need to be able to judge how long things will take and prioritize getting to the plane in time as the first priority, no matter what.

Passengers wading through shops even though they have no business there because its the shortest way.

Simple things as when you press an employee that cant get to his destination (even though he can) it highlights the zones, and you have to then open the zoning tool and right click it to get out of that view..

Hopefully something pathfinding fixed will bring.

But pax walking through shops without reason sounds very realistic to me.
At some airports, pax are forced to walk through the duty free. So it should not be prevented in the game.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Passenger parking flat out not working. they wont leave. ever.

What? Explain that more please.

Originally posted by Warchief:

The horror of laying down baggage belt only to find out that one of them goes in the wrong direction because the game decided that that specific part of the belt needs to go in that dirction even though the arrows clearly pointed the other way when you layed it down.

reported?

Originally posted by Warchief:

Baggage trucks going in circles at the baggage bay indefinetly for no apperant reason.

Reported?
But an overhaul of the baggage bay is needed, the paths they drive are just strange.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Catering trucks just stopping for no reason, and then just "parking there" in the middle of the road, forever until i sell the vehicle!

Sounds like a calculation issue of the CPU. What performance does your hardware have? If you fullfill the min requirements, I would report that too.

Originally posted by Warchief:

You cant even resolve the traffic issue by laying down more lanes, since the drives will ALWAYS choose the shortes route, making traffic no more than a nuisance that you cant even try to manage, in a management game..

An overhaul of the small entrance road is planned. I'm looking forward that it gives more options.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Easy way to see how many people still needs to board the plane.

Press G for the numbers. Press the boarding desk to see where they are.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Some indication of WHY the plane is late when you click on it so you'll be able to fix it.
Fx: The plane at medium stand 3 is late, BECAUSE its wating for fuel / (x)passengers / Catering etc.

Click in the stand instead the plane and you see the ongoing services and what is missing.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Easy way to change one way road back to normal.

Press CTRL when placing arrows to remove them. Works for all objects by the way.

Originally posted by Warchief:

You can place a urinal right next to a check in que, and the passengers will happily use it as long as it is zoned as a toilet.

Zones need to have an enclosure requirement.

A minor detail, at the end players should bring with some intelligence when playing a game. But hey, that gives some design freedom to the players :D

Originally posted by Warchief:

Abillity to designate planes to other gates when the plane in front of it is delayed (standby gates)

ohh yes. It's a suggested feature with many votes. I thinks devs are aware of this.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Airline requirements in the contract (kinda like the franchise deal)
etc. Airlines demand that your airport has cleaning, fueling and deicing before they will even consider landing certain planes there.

A airline class system overhaul comes in A36, let's see what this changes in the requirements. :)

Originally posted by Warchief:

I very much doubt, that an airline would be landing and taking off a fully loaded 787, in minus 15 degress from an airport that doesnt even provide de-icing service.

At the end it's a tycoon game and players without airport management know how should be able to play it. And you may cannot effort de-iceing at the beginning.
So better a lower airline rating instead 0 flights offered.

Originally posted by Warchief:

Airplanes also shouldn'dt be able to take of without fuel!

No fuel = no flights
no flights = no money to build fuel services
Same as above, better just having a lower rating than nothing to play at all. :D

[Warchief]

thank you for the tips. theres allot of stuff I didnt know you pointed out. I still think that the tool tips should say "hold ctrl" to remove when you are placing one way roads fx.

My hardware specs should be able to handle the task without problems. I'm playing on a 7700k with 16GB ram, but every game, as I get to a certain point (usually the large planes) the games just decides to go

"nope, not having it"

and everything just slows down or simply stops working. In this case my service infrastructure.

there should be an option to "Wait a maximum of 15 min. for passengers not boarded" and realistic fuel options, meaning that the plane simply will not take off before beeing fueld.

Planes asking for a pushback will push them selves back no problem when the pushback truck doesnt show up..? I'm not sure if you get a fine for this, but if the plane can back up by it self no problem, why would it need a pushback truck in the first place?

I would rather have (since were not playing a realistic game) have the planes leaving on their scheduel, no matter what, on a maximum wait timer defined by the player, (exept for fuel and de-icing) and then punishing the player afterwards with fx fines for airline requests not fulfilled. (catering, cleaning and so on)

I'm not sure, but I think that the way the game works right now, the plane will wait for all conditions to be fulfilled and then still dish out a fine so theres really no reason for the plane not to leave at the planned time gameplay wise since you will still get punished.

[Jojo]

This terrible pathfinding ist a game killer! Everything ist fine, but this fxcking bug kill all fun. Fix the basics, before you bring new features.

[Personal Responsibility]

Originally posted by jojo:

This terrible pathfinding ist a game killer! Everything ist fine, but this fxcking bug kill all fun. Fix the basics, before you bring new features.

Why? Alpha development is basically putting in the core features and bug fixing and polishing comes in beta. The devs have responded to this already (if you would read a bit into the steam forum) and mentioned that the next update will already have some changes to the pathfinding. The biggest fixes though will come during beta, which will be starting after the next Alpha (A36).

[Warchief]

one thing is "bad" pathfinding" I'm sure the dev's will fix this eventually.

Another thing is min-maxing players like my self making the most unrealistic airports simply because it is the most effecient way.

No need to have you terminal floor beeing more than one square wide since all the passengers will always take the shortest route

No need to have your taxiways more than one square since a A380 will hapilly taxi on it.

Airport CEO is a simulator at heart, meaning that it should simulate fx the way passengers, trafic and planes would behave in a realistic setting.

A bus would NEVER in any setting just stand still on the road wating for that specific parking spot to clear, stopping traffic behind the bus for a mile, when theres 10 free spots not beeing used just 10 meters down the road. It just doesnt happen.

A Plane would NEVER try to taxi past a building when the left wing is clearly smashing 25 meters into it.

A passenger would NEVER take a piss (delete that, some might) in a fully open urinal right next to the check in desk.

There absolutely needs to be boundries and conditions for some things to work.

Etc: small planes need atleast 3 square wide taxiways. medium 5 large 7 and so on.

Toilets have to be enclosed by walls and doors.

Security zones needs to be enclosed by walls, chekpoints and exits.

Passengers should absolutely step over security lines and bypass passport control when the player didnt plan out the airport correctly.

and so on.