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Airports Dev Diary #2: Airport Progression & Public Transport Links

Welcome back to the second Airport Dev Diary! Today we invite those of you looking to create large airports to the front of the line as we begin this Dev Diary concerning Airport Progression and Public Transport Links.

Next level airports​

A level 1 airport is comparable to the base game airport - it’s a basic connection to the outside world - but with a lot more flexibility in terms of layout. It consists of a terminal, at least one plane stand and a runway with connecting taxiways, and can accept small planes. Decorative buildings are available and needed for the airport to level up, unlocking larger planes, more buildings and additional connections to the city.

2-1 Airport Area vs Vanilla Airport.png

Airport Areas can be compact like the regular airport - but expanded when your city’s needs grow

To reach level 2 your airport needs to service 500 passengers and have an Attractiveness Score of 200, which is reached by placing decorative buildings in your airport. Decorative buildings have their own menu filter and can be hotels, hangars and parked planes. Once your airport reaches level 2 you unlock the medium plane stand and your airport can start receiving medium planes, which can carry more passengers. Furthermore, you unlock large terminals, more decorative buildings, and integrated metro in the form of Concourse Hubs and the Elevated Airport Metro Station.

2-2 Decorations 1.png

Decorative buildings make your airport more attractive

Level 3 is the highest level your airport can reach and requires 5000 passengers and an Attractiveness Score of 1000, but in turn unlocks not only large planes, but also cargo planes, the Airport Train Station and the Airline Headquarters Building, which lets you found your very own airline - more on that in the next Dev Diary!

Once an airport reaches a level, it cannot be lost even if you make changes to the airport. However, any new area created in the city will always start out as level 1. And yes, that means you can have multiple Airport Areas in your city if you want!

2-3 Large airport.png

A well-established airport

Link to the city​

Among the new airport buildings are options for integrated bus, metro, and train so you can easily connect your new airport to the rest of your city - or create shortcuts within your airport if it spans a large area!

The Airport Bus Station is available from level 1 and can be placed anywhere along the concourse network. It has 11 available stops for buses making for a perfect opportunity to use the two new buses! The Articulated Airport Bus is able to carry 50 passengers, while the Doubledecker Airport Bus can transport up to 60 passengers, making them ideal for busy routes headed into the city!

2-5 Bus station.png

New bus options connect your city to the airport

When your airport reaches level 2 you unlock metro connections in the form of Large Terminals, the Elevated Airport Metro Station and Concourse Hubs. Like the bus station, they connect directly to the concourse network, but do not need a road connection! Simply connect them to your metro network and set up a line carrying passengers between your airport and the city. Keeping with the theme we added an Airport Express Metro, which can be selected using the vehicle selector when viewing the line details.

2-6 Metro station.png

Don’t miss your flight with the Airport Express Metro

At level 3 you are able to build the Airport Train Station. This modern ground station is placed along the concourse network and does not require a road connection either. You just connect the train tracks to your city and set up a train line. We also included an Airport Express Train, which can be selected from the Line Info Panel to add more variation to your train lines!

2-7 Train station.png

Integrated train station makes long distance travel in the city even easier

We’ve arrived at the end of this Dev Diary and hope you have enjoyed what we had for you today. Monday at 4 PM CET / 7 AM PST we take a closer look at the Airline Headquarters Building, which unlocks at level 3 and lets you set up your very own airline!

Last but not least check out the video tutorial by City Planner Plays and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more!



CS_Airports_Schedule_1080x1080.jpg
 
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Meesmoth said:
Looking good so far, but I have one question, what about the main airport building? Can they be plopped anywhere or they behave like the vanilla seaports, where it already contains a pre-built two-lane road?
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The roads are built into the assets similar to the harbors and the International Airport from After Dark.

Frederick III said:
The other airports look like they're all single buildings stretched along the modular concourse, but this one appears to have several independent structures. Are they connected underground?
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Yes, they're connected by underground metro! Concourse hubs (the independent buildings you see) all have metro built-in, which makes setups like that possible.

TTJ said:
Question: How do the mentioned hotels for levelling up the airport work? Are they just decoration or do visitors stay there and generate taxes like hotels outside the airport do?
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They get visitors but do not pay tax.
 
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Looks interesting, but I’m a little disappointed by the lack of options. No monorail connections in airports (which is where they are most commonly used irl), no taxi ranks (or car parks), I guess trams mostly run on roads, but it’d be nice to be able to use them to connect up airport buildings, and then helicopters don’t seem to have any integration with airports which I think is disappointing.
Not sure if I’ll be getting this right away.
 
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Hello all, Having an issue with buses not spawning. I had a drop off in transit passengers, and when I looked I discovered that the only buses that would spawn are the basic vanilla buses. Neither the articulated bus from the workshop that I've been using a few years nor the two new buses from the DLC will spawn. I can select them in the drop-down, but they never show up in the route. Anyone else seeing this glitch? I do have advanced vehicle options, but that mod is clear per the spreadsheet. I am not aware of any other mods that affect transit vehicles that could cause this glitch. Regards,
 
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Hubbubb17 said:
Hello all, Having an issue with buses not spawning. I had a drop off in transit passengers, and when I looked I discovered that the only buses that would spawn are the basic vanilla buses. Neither the articulated bus from the workshop that I've been using a few years nor the two new buses from the DLC will spawn. I can select them in the drop-down, but they never show up in the route. Anyone else seeing this glitch? I do have advanced vehicle options, but that mod is clear per the spreadsheet. I am not aware of any other mods that affect transit vehicles that could cause this glitch. Regards,
Click to expand...
You should open a thread over here :)
 
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Hubbubb17 said:
Hello all, Having an issue with buses not spawning. I had a drop off in transit passengers, and when I looked I discovered that the only buses that would spawn are the basic vanilla buses. Neither the articulated bus from the workshop that I've been using a few years nor the two new buses from the DLC will spawn. I can select them in the drop-down, but they never show up in the route. Anyone else seeing this glitch? I do have advanced vehicle options, but that mod is clear per the spreadsheet. I am not aware of any other mods that affect transit vehicles that could cause this glitch. Regards,
Click to expand...
We're currently looking into biofuel buses not respecting the selected bus model. For the time being, removing biofuel bus depots in your city should have the correct buses spawn.
 
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I built an airport using the concourse hubs as satellites. I set up a metro line internal to the airport (used monorail to bring cims to the airport). Inbound traveling cims ignore or don't recognize the metro stations underneath the hub. The only cims flying were those visiting the airport lounges. I know the game recognizes the metro line because I watched cims from my city use the monorail to travel to the airport, debark the monorail, and access the metro from the terminal in order to get to a job in the cargo section of the airport. I wondered if maybe the airport was just too far away from any sites for tourists to read it as an efficient journey to spawn, so I attached the concourse hub to the terminal with a network concourse. Immediately hundreds of cims started visiting. So I'm fairly certain that tourist cims simply don't "see" the metro station underneath each hub.

I am using the most recent version of the game and play on PC.
 
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Hubbubb17 said:
I built an airport using the concourse hubs as satellites. I set up a metro line internal to the airport (used monorail to bring cims to the airport). Inbound traveling cims ignore or don't recognize the metro stations underneath the hub. The only cims flying were those visiting the airport lounges. I know the game recognizes the metro line because I watched cims from my city use the monorail to travel to the airport, debark the monorail, and access the metro from the terminal in order to get to a job in the cargo section of the airport. I wondered if maybe the airport was just too far away from any sites for tourists to read it as an efficient journey to spawn, so I attached the concourse hub to the terminal with a network concourse. Immediately hundreds of cims started visiting. So I'm fairly certain that tourist cims simply don't "see" the metro station underneath each hub.

I am using the most recent version of the game and play on PC.
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Inbound tourists can definitely travel through the satellite hubs using the metro, but depending on your setup and other available aircraft stands, they may end up taking a "shorter" route through the main part of your airport.
 
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co_avanya said:
Inbound tourists can definitely travel through the satellite hubs using the metro, but depending on your setup and other available aircraft stands, they may end up taking a "shorter" route through the main part of your airport.
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I tried disabling the stands connected to the "main" concourse, and the passenger count fell off a cliff almost immediately and no one is using the metros still.

My airport is like this. This is an older picture and there is a road/bus and train connection to the entrance hub

But the only way from plane to city and back is taking metro from concourse to the top concourse hub, walking to the main terminal, then getting other transport into the city. They aren't doing it. Like I said, the passenger count fell off a cliff and the people only travel between gates and lounges on one concourse.

Did you test it with the metro lines not having a direct city connection? Think ATL, where you go through security, walk to the internal metro line, then take that to whichever concourse.
1643917062119.png
 
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co_avanya said:
Inbound tourists can definitely travel through the satellite hubs using the metro, but depending on your setup and other available aircraft stands, they may end up taking a "shorter" route through the main part of your airport.
Click to expand...
1643918877948.png


By fell off a cliff, I mean now it's down to 0 other than the occasional tourist visiting the lounge or another gate. Even connecting the concourse to the city with another metro line isn't working.

This is when the metro stops in the concourse hubs are the only way in and out of the planes.
 
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Rocket034 said:
I tried disabling the stands connected to the "main" concourse, and the passenger count fell off a cliff almost immediately and no one is using the metros still.

My airport is like this. This is an older picture and there is a road/bus and train connection to the entrance hub

But the only way from plane to city and back is taking metro from concourse to the top concourse hub, walking to the main terminal, then getting other transport into the city. They aren't doing it. Like I said, the passenger count fell off a cliff and the people only travel between gates and lounges on one concourse.

Did you test it with the metro lines not having a direct city connection? Think ATL, where you go through security, walk to the internal metro line, then take that to whichever concourse.
View attachment 801976
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Yes, this is exactly what I was seeing. I had it set up like Denver, with a terminal for passengers to connect from local transit to the airport's internal metro that would move them to the satellite concourses and I had no stands set up at the terminal). Nothing. And I know tourists will use this route because previously I had a vanilla airport set up at this same location moving hundreds of passengers a day. And as stated previously, I also confirmed the game recognizes the metro line because Cims from my city were using it to go to work at the cargo section of the airport. It's simply the case that tourist cims do not recognize the metro station.

As soon as I attached an actual physical concourse connecting the hub to the terminal, a flood of passengers began landing and would walk the concourse to the terminal... hundreds of them.

I'm going to test the design with the classic and modern hubs tomorrow and see what happens.

This was with the ultra modern hubs. I'm going to try a different hub tomorrow.
 
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I had the hubs only connected to the terminal yes, but I am using the Modern set in my test city. Will check the Ultra Modern Hubs in the same setup to see if I have the same result or run into trouble too.

Any mods in use that might affect things and should be considered?
 
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I have a list of about 50-60 mods that I'm going to look at after I test modern and classic hubs. There is a reddit thread where I've been exchanging comments with another user and they have experienced the same issue w/o mods.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/scgj58

p.s. and this isn't a game killer for me. I built a perfectly functional airport right now. It's really a matter of reality not meeting expectations atm, which is entirely subjective.

Thanks for all your work!
 
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Looks like Ultra Modern Hub is the only one having trouble. Thank you for brining it to our attention!
 
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Hubbubb17 said:
Oh! That is useful. Glad the info was helpful. :)
Wondering if I should hang in there for a fix or use the modern hubs.
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I don't have an ETA on a fix at this point, I'm afraid, but the Ultra Modern Hub will need to be deleted and placed again when the time comes if that helps with your decision.
 
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