Fans of management sims who always wanted to build and manage their own city should look no further than Cities: Skylines. Perhaps one of the most impressive city simulators ever to grace gaming, Cities: Skylines can be as elaborate or simple as fans need them to be, thanks to its extensive gameplay features. Aside from mods, players can be as detailed or simplified in their approach to city management, accommodating a lot of various playstyles. And now, Cities: Skylines take to the skies as the Cities: Skylines - Airports finally allow cities to have their very own airports.As simple as this sounds, adding aerial control in a city management sim gives players a new dimension of control over their metropolises. Featuring airports in existing cities may spell success or doom, depending on how they’re used. And for newcomers to the concept, some expert tips can help skyrocket their newly-made airport into city stardom.
8 Skip The Mods, For Now
As with any DLC for a game like Cities: Skylines, players might want to disable mods before activating their Airports DLC. At release, there’s potentially a chance for the DLC to break cities that have a lot of mods in them. And for players with already-manageable utopias in their hands, having airports that break their progress is just too substantial of a risk.
This might not necessarily ruin a player’s enjoyment of the game, but preparing for these risks when playing the game with mods on can certainly help players plan in advance and anticipate things such as early-DLC bugs. If the airport isn’t necessarily performing properly, this might be because of an activated mod and not particularly out of poor management.
7 Inspirations Are There For A Reason
For a realistic city builder like Cities: Skylines, it’s almost blasphemous for players to regard looking at real-life city layouts as “cheating.” The same thing applies to complex structures like airports, which tend to be contained yet efficient to a fault. This is courtesy of careful planning, and players can look at real-life cities as inspirations for their ideal airports.
Scale and size matter for airports, especially in already-developed cities since they already make up space. For larger cities in Cities: Skylines, this is no problem for players, meaning they have more room for flexibility. If players plan on building other districts around their airport, using an existing city as inspiration can help plot out the size and scale of their dream airport district.
6 The Airport Is Another Form Of Traffic
While an airport is considerably big and takes up a lot of space in a giant city, it helps to remember that the airport isn’t just a place but rather a mode of transportation. This means airports are just another way for people to get in and out of the city, making them yet another part of traffic management. At its core, players need to remember that airports must still be easily accessible by most forms of transportation - often explaining why they’re often found beside major roads or with access points for almost any kind of transportation.
In the Airports DLC, players can also implement rental car policies in their cities, giving citizens another mode of transportation to access airports. With the right transportation strategy, an airport won’t be as congested, which will then boost overall Attractiveness.
5 Prepare The Area, But Start Small
It’s easy to get entranced with the idea of creating a massive airport that suits the needs of a utopian city, but newcomers to the Airports DLC should probably be more practical and start small and simple. Ideally, players should plan where to best position their airports, that way they can allocate a particular area where it would be placed. Purchasing an airport district will flatten its entire area, meaning players need to take note of where they want to place it. Since a large airport district can have players run out of soil it may help to purchase slowly.
Moreover, it also helps to start small. Building a small terminal and a decently-sized runway can make an airport functional on the get-go. A smaller airport terminal allows players to experiment with Attractiveness and Population options, and only expand once they level up.
4 Optimize Taxiways To Save Space
When players start building their airports, they will soon realize that taxiways are just one-way roads for airplanes to travel to and from runways. This can become extremely inconvenient in large terrain, as this means airplanes will have to travel a long distance before reaching the runway. In smaller spaces, this can compromise overall operations due to the number of taxiways needed for airplanes to travel around the airport carefully.
As such, players need to optimize taxiways to save and conserve their space. Ideally, their terminals and taxiways should be as close to the runway as possible to ensure airplanes can load and unload passengers fairly quickly.
3 Spice Up Surroundings To Boost Attractiveness
Airports in the Airports DLC also level up similar to other services, and their primary basis for success lies in two characteristics, namely Passenger Count and Attractiveness. These make sense, considering a beautiful airport will definitely have people go there. Mechanically speaking, boosting any airport’s Attractiveness is tied to the overall Attractiveness score of its components and surrounding buildings.
At its core, placing monuments and other unique buildings can help the airport achieve an optimal amount of Attractiveness. However, if realism is a player’s goal, it always helps to place various airport hotels near the airport. As in real life, this is a great way to invite tourists to stay near the metro as airport hotels are a convenient way to stay near the airport prior to departure.
2 Use Entertainment To Boost Overall Progress
Building upon the Attractiveness tip, players can also maximize this strategy by focusing on entertainment services and attractions instead of just hotels and other landmarks. With the right kind of tourism districts and entertainment districts, an airport can easily attract multiple visitors while benefiting the city overall.
A good example of this would be placing a zoo near the airport. Given the traffic driving to and from the airport, a zoo can immediately be a part of a citizen’s itinerary. Doing so will boost the city’s tourism industry and make the city more attractive in the grand scheme of things. Of course, high tourism will encourage more people to use the airport, which would then boost Population and help the airport level up. This system can repeat continuously with the right kind of management.
1 Anticipate Expansions To Transportation Methods
In the case of progression, players may want to anticipate where they’ll want to place new airport buildings to improve the district’s overall attractiveness, and they should pay more attention to new transportation methods that pop up as their airports grow while their cities are progressing.
Transportation is perhaps the most important sub-component of airport growth as they dictate the kind of traffic that gets into the airport. Maximizing these options will justify the space the airport is taking, so anticipating where everything is placed is extremely important. As airports grow, they’ll gain access to Cargo Airports, which allows players to transport resources instead of people. This will need their own set of runways and buildings. In terms of passengers, players need to pay attention to where they place Airport Bus Stations, Elevated Airport Metro Stations, and Airport Train Stations.
Cities: Skylines is currently available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch.