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Airports Dev Diary #1: Modular Airport Buildings

Greetings city-builders! I hope you’re ready for another round of Dev Diaries as we prepare for the release of Cities: Skylines - Airports, the expansion that was announced on the 10th of December 2021! If you haven’t already, check out the trailer here or watch it below.


Cities: Skylines Airports is an expansion in which you design your own airport and grow it from a small local transit point to a massive international hub buzzing with life. It’s modular, using special concourse networks to connect each building, which allows for a lot of creative freedom and flexibility, meaning you can build an airport in many different shapes and sizes to fit your city!

Airports expansion lands in stores on the 25th of January and to ensure a smooth arrival we have prepared these Dev Diaries covering each new feature, so please sit back and enjoy!

1-1 Layouts.png

Shape your airport to fit your city

Create your Airport​

Airports use the Area Tool which can be found in the Districts and Areas menu, and becomes available when your city reaches Milestone 4. It works very similar to Districts and other Area Tools with one exception: It flattens the ground and removes trees in preparation for your airport, adding a landscaping cost and affecting the amount of soil available to you. The 3 new maps added in Airports feature a lot of suitable, but more on those in a later Dev Diary.

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The Airport Area tool prepares the terrain for your airport

Once you are satisfied with the area, it’s time to start actually building your airport! All the items you need are in the Public Transport menu under the new Airport Area tab. A functional airport needs a terminal building, a plane stand, and a runway, and taxiways connecting the plane stand to the runway. The Airport Area has a handy checklist alerting you to anything you’re missing to get your airport going!

1-3 Airport area checklist.png

Go through your checklist before takeoff

The first thing your new Airport Area needs is a terminal. Once placed it unlocks the additional buildings and the concourse, runway and taxiway networks needed to create your airport. Concourse networks serve as a connection between terminals and plane stands, which are placed along the concourse.

Next, the airport needs a runway for planes to land and take off. It works differently than most networks as it has both a minimum length and cannot be extended after placing it, so make it as long as you want it right away. Taxiways connect the runway and the plane stands in a one-way loop.

1-4 Basics.png

A modular airport in its simplest form

Choose your style​

There are 3 different styles you can choose from when building your airport: Classic, Modern and Ultra Modern. Each style has 3 different sizes of terminal buildings, a concourse network, a control tower and a concourse hub with built-in metro for those very large airports, and all 3 style options are available at level 1.

An airport can have multiple terminal buildings, which function as different entry and exit points for citizens. This lets you expand your airport as it grows, with different terminals able to handle different amounts of traffic. For a busy airport you might want to use the 2 story terminal option, which splits arrivals and departures and has a dedicated lane for buses and taxis to drop off or pick up passengers.

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Pick your favorite style or mix all of them in one airport

Airport Info Panel​

Selecting the Airport Area name or using the Airport Area Info button after selecting a terminal brings up the Airport Info Panel, which shows all the relevant information for your airport: Level, passenger count, attractiveness score, income and expenses, and much more.

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The Airport Area Info Panel gives a quick overview of your airport

Like most public transport you will find an airport to be a costly investment with little direct income. Instead, it brings in tourists to your city, who visit attractions and commercial buildings, adding to your income. And the attractiveness of the airport also increases the City Attractiveness, which helps bring in even more tourists!

The Policies tab lets you apply area-specific policies, like Hotel Discounts, which gives your airport a direct increase in attractiveness, Great Maintenance, which adds a Land Value bonus to the whole airport, and Car Rentals, which encourages tourists to use cars but may cause increased traffic.

With the basics of creating an Airport Area covered, we come to the end of this Dev Diary. We hope you enjoyed this first look at Cities: Skylines Airports, which arrives in stores on the 25th of January and don’t forget to check in on Friday 4 PM CET / 7 AM PST when we explore Airport Levels & Public Transport Links!

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



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Fantastic. We'll see the development in the other dev diaries.
Looking around I don't understand how I can build a simple plain stand or one with a jet bridge (or finger, as you like). It would be interesting if we could build a "fat" area with a restaurant, or a passport control area, for example. But it seems really nice.
 
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One thing I noticed that was not mentioned in this article but is mentioned in the video is that you will now be able to pay to buy or dispose of soil so that you can continue landscaping if you run out of or get too much soil and are not playing with the 'Unlimited Soil' option.

Very useful for those who do not use the 'Unlimited Soil' option.
 
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Danbyization said:
One thing I noticed that was not mentioned in this article but is mentioned in the video is that you will now be able to pay to buy or dispose of soil so that you can continue landscaping if you run out of or get too much soil and are not playing with the 'Unlimited Soil' option.
Click to expand...
I assume this feature will be free content, which is why it's not covered in this diary post :)
 
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Thank you for this nice dev diary @co_avanya - well written and structured as I'd have expected from you :)

Besides I like the concept and the new functionalities there is something which get's me puzzled - or better said which triggers my inner Monk ;) in fact the new runways look really good, however I don't like the fact that the first section is so different from the last section. The first section features like touchdown zone markings and approach lights but the last section features just none.

I know that irl runways which are exclusively used in one direction often only got this stuff in place on one end (as it makes no sense to invest millions on something which would not be used, and I know that runways in C:S are also just oneway but honestly most airports are configured to be flexible when it comes to wind directions so they got these features on both ends ;)

That's also what I would have expected tbh :)

Another thing is the "automatic flatten" functionality - I would have loved if that option would be toggleable as there might be cases one does not want an entirely flat airport. An extreme example on this would be Lukla Airport but quiet often the runway is not perfectly flat ;)

Other than that the DLC looks really promising! :)
 
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Please please please, allow us to edit in-game the type of road that touches the terminal. All images show a single-lane two-way road.
Hopefully it won't be like docks, where one is unable to setup avenues or one-way streets.
 
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If airports are going to be more similar now to Parklife and Industries, then seaports should be given the same treatment as well in a future DLC.
 
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Funny mayor said:
Fantastic. We'll see the development in the other dev diaries.
Looking around I don't understand how I can build a simple plain stand or one with a jet bridge (or finger, as you like). It would be interesting if we could build a "fat" area with a restaurant, or a passport control area, for example. But it seems really nice.
Click to expand...

The different plane stands are for the different sized planes. Tomorrow's dev diary goes into progression, which also covers this. :)


ImCrecky said:
Are we getting 3 lane one way roads now?View attachment 793570
Click to expand...

No 3 lane roads added I'm afraid. These are essentially just 2 lane roads with extra space for dropping off or picking up passengers.
 
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The runway "cannot be extended after placing it"? That really ruins the whole concept of growing the airport. We'll have to start with a relatively modest airport, but put down an inappropriately long runway.
I suppose we can bulldoze the original runway and replace it with a longer one? Or perhaps Move It will save the day...?
 
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Warren said:
The runway "cannot be extended after placing it"? That really ruins the whole concept of growing the airport. We'll have to start with a relatively modest airport, but put down an inappropriately long runway.
I suppose we can bulldoze the original runway and replace it with a longer one? Or perhaps Move It will save the day...?
Click to expand...

Or you do what many IRL airports do and build a second. longer runway?
 
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My current concern is that we may not be able to cross two runways without an anarchy mod, unlike the pre-existing vanilla ones. The reason why I think this is the runways have a minimum length, which theoretically eliminates connecting smaller segments to cross a pre-existing runway. There are also no such examples in any screenshots or videos. While it's not mandatory to have this option it's certainly a bit limiting.
 
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co_avanya said:
View attachment 793143
Shape your airport to fit your city
Click to expand...

So, I assume these are the modern / ultra-modern / traditional airports aligned side to side. I notice that for the left and the right, the entire airport structure is connected. For the one in the middle, though, there are two distinct structures with no above-ground connection. Does the ultra-modern have some additional below-ground construction that makes this feasible?
 
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