Airplane loading speed

[Karn]

I think some problems that OpenTTD has with airports is caused by airplane loading speed. I know comparing to reality is like swear word here, but let me do the math. It takes ~12 seconds to fully load and unload 200pax plane, average one way taxiing time for smaller/medium (not cognested) airports is ~10 seconds.

Now when we compare to reality and scale to OpenTTD seconds. Taxiing without avoiding traffic usually takes 5-10 minutes on smaller/medium airports. Loading and unloading of 200pax plane takes 40 minutes to 1 hour. We can convert it to 10 seconds taxiing, which would mean 40-60 seconds loading/unloading.

If I'm right, current game gate/runway ratio has effective value around 2 gates per one-way runway(only one of landing or takeoff). In reality it's around 20 gates per 2-way runway (40 gates per one-way runway).

I propose to slow down loading speed of airplanes by factor of 5 (maybe 10?), which would need few more changes.

It would require bigger ratio of gates/runways. Which would make possible to design nicer more realistic looking airports. The short runway size wouldn't be so relevant anymore and we could have longer runway without capacity problems. Also it would help with balancing airplanes. Slow loading speed means less income from airplanes, because airplane is resting at gate for longer and doesn't offer as big throughput anymore, you would need more airplanes for same throughput, which would take more space.

In my opinion, good time for this change would be introducing modular/NewGRF airports, which would then allow to redesign airports for nicer look without crazy amount of runways.

[acs121]

If you have airplane crashes disabled, just build a lot of commuter airports instead of intercontinental ones. Commuters, because of their size, and the length of their runway, are extremely effective without airplanes crashing.

[Alberth]

In my opinion, good time for this change would be introducing modular/NewGRF airports, which would then allow to redesign airports for nicer look without crazy amount of runways.

Loading speed of aircraft is solely decided by the aircraft, airport has nothing to do with it.

As for taxi-ing, ever noticed how few tiles a flying aircraft travels in a single day, even at an incredible speed of 500-something km/h or more?
Tiles must be enormously big.

In general, scale in OpenTTD doesn't exist, or rather, everything has its own scale, namely one that works for the game. As such, trying to relate one scale to another is a useless exercise, it makes no sense.
Nonetheless, I agree with the idea of having modular airports, it would expand the scope for building an interesting air transport system a lot.

[Karn]

As for taxi-ing, ever noticed how few tiles a flying aircraft travels in a single day, even at an incredible speed of 500-something km/h or more?
Tiles must be enormously big.

In general, scale in OpenTTD doesn't exist, or rather, everything has its own scale, namely one that works for the game. As such, trying to relate one scale to another is a useless exercise, it makes no sense.
Nonetheless, I agree with the idea of having modular airports, it would expand the scope for building an interesting air transport system a lot.

I agree the scale is not very relevant as long, as things go smoothly. But I think the current loading parameter is too much out of scale.

Seems there is bit of misunderstanding.

My perspective on this is someone, who tries to design new airport (I tried that long ago in OpenTTD). Now, when you want to design new airport and whatever tools you have - current state machine or something new in the future.

You will run into weird limit. And the limit is effective Gate/Runways ratio. Current airplane movement and loading counts with very few gates to runways, something around 2 gates per runway. You need A LOT of runways. And this create strange looking airports and you run into design limit around 8 runways.

To make possible of better looking and less limiting airports I suggested to make planes spend more time at gate, such as they do in reality. The parameter for this is loading speed. In my opinion planes should load 5 or 10 times slower.

Loading speed of aircraft is solely decided by the aircraft, airport has nothing to do with it.

Once you noticeably change loading speed, you need to redesign current airports, because there will be bottleneck on those too few gates, it's all connected.

[Alberth]

To make possible of better looking and less limiting airports I suggested to make planes spend more time at gate, such as they do in reality. The parameter for this is loading speed. In my opinion planes should load 5 or 10 times slower.

What I said is that loading speed of the aircraft (ie the transfer of passengers to/from the aircraft) is fully under control by the NewGRF. It's not in OpenTTD at all (except for the default set, but that is not changeable at all for backwards compatibility reasons).

In other words, you can already do that today. Use a NewGRF or build one with lower pax transfer rate for the aircraft, and done!

[Eddi]

slight correction there, while the amount of passengers/cargo loaded per loading tick is controlled by the NewGRF, the game can define how long a loading tick is. e.g. it is different for ships and trains. (for some unexplained, probably historical, reason)

[Karn]

To make possible of better looking and less limiting airports I suggested to make planes spend more time at gate, such as they do in reality. The parameter for this is loading speed. In my opinion planes should load 5 or 10 times slower.

What I said is that loading speed of the aircraft (ie the transfer of passengers to/from the aircraft) is fully under control by the NewGRF. It's not in OpenTTD at all (except for the default set, but that is not changeable at all for backwards compatibility reasons).

In other words, you can already do that today. Use a NewGRF or build one with lower pax transfer rate for the aircraft, and done!

I'm not author of any airplane NewGRF and I'm not interested in becoming one. I think we have great choice of airplane sets, including default one.

Changing loading speed for individual NewGRF wouldn't have much effect, since problematic is what the efficient airport layout is, and not the airplane sets. Sure I could spend my time on changing some NewGRF locally, but that won't change how airports could look in the future.

Maybe it would be helpful to have before-unloading waiting time, between loading/unloading and after loading waiting time to make smaller difference between empty and full planes.

Picture is worth thousand of words.