Airports

zztong said:
That's trying to place 3 Tiles, right? If so, I wonder if a 2 Tile settlement becomes more predictable.
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The airports I've been generating since the other night are all 4 tiles total. After I noticed the buggy airport, I set up 4k maps to generate 3-tile airports (2 straight + cap) and 5k maps to generate 4-tile airports (3 straight + cap). Then I started running test maps again, switching between the two.

The 3-tile airports definitely seem to be more consistent than the 4-tile airports, but of course they don't look as cool. I'd assume that 2-tile airports (1 straight + cap) would be even more consistent, but don't hold me to that because I thought the 4-tiles were working great...until they weren't. :(

That's the problem with RNG -- lucky streaks and unlucky streaks can seriously screw with your perception of how things work. Just ask any XCOM fan.

Anyway, I guess I can pare it back to a 2-tile setup and see how reliable it is. But that means we're back to short runways again.
 
EvilPolygons said:
The airports I've been generating since the other night are all 4 tiles total. After I noticed the buggy airport, I set up 4k maps to generate 3-tile airports (2 straight + cap) and 5k maps to generate 4-tile airports (3 straight + cap). Then I started running test maps again, switching between the two.

The 3-tile airports definitely seem to be more consistent than the 4-tile airports, but of course they don't look as cool. I'd assume that 2-tile airports (1 straight + cap) would be even more consistent, but don't hold me to that because I thought the 4-tiles were working great...until they weren't. :(

That's the problem with RNG -- lucky streaks and unlucky streaks can seriously screw with your perception of how things work. Just ask any XCOM fan.

Anyway, I guess I can pare it back to a 2-tile setup and see how reliable it is. But that means we're back to short runways again.
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two tiles does work for a regional airport...just saying
I think these look amazing...in that they prove the concept and provide a "bp" for anyone looking to take it farther. BIG thumbs up.
 
I was basically looking for a goal and was thinking "how long would make for a reasonable representation of a runway." If one tile in length represents a reasonable Walmart parking lot, how many tiles for a runway. 2? 3?

I think 3 works for sure, but maybe 2? I'd kind of want to see it and it depends on what buildings you put with it. If you build an International Airport with 50 gates, then it is going to dwarf the runway. If it's a 1 gate private airport for small aircraft, 3 tiles? 2 tiles?
 
zztong said:
I was basically looking for a goal and was thinking "how long would make for a reasonable representation of a runway." If one tile in length represents a reasonable Walmart parking lot, how many tiles for a runway. 2? 3?

I think 3 works for sure, but maybe 2? I'd kind of want to see it and it depends on what buildings you put with it. If you build an International Airport with 50 gates, then it is going to dwarf the runway. If it's a 1 gate private airport for small aircraft, 3 tiles? 2 tiles?
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Making the runway more narrow would help with the illusion of length, which is especially important if you have fewer tiles to work with. The runway in my cheezy test tile is 30 blocks wide, which is really a bit too wide even for 3 straight tiles of runway. So yeah, I can trim that down and maybe it won't look too bad.

However, none of this would be an issue If the townplanner actually respected the maxtiles property! Sometimes it seems to, but other times it seems to randomly go rogue and just do whatever the hell it wants. Very frustrating!
 
EvilPolygons said:
The 3-tile airports definitely seem to be more consistent than the 4-tile airports, but of course they don't look as cool. I'd assume that 2-tile airports (1 straight + cap) would be even more consistent, but don't hold me to that because I thought the 4-tiles were working great...until they weren't. :(
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2 tiles should always work. That would either be a gateway plus a cap, or a straight plus a cap if no gateway is used. In either case, it will always be a straight line. As soon as you reach 3 tiles, you risk having a corner added, even if it isn't visible as you showed in the one that didn't work for you. With each additional tile, the odds of a bad layout increase. If they change it to allow preventing corners, then it would probably always work. Still, just having a chance for it to work is good. You might need to try a few seeds, but that is a minor inconvenience.
 
EvilPolygons said:
However, none of this would be an issue If the townplanner actually respected the maxtiles property! Sometimes it seems to, but other times it seems to randomly go rogue and just do whatever the hell it wants. Very frustrating!
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I suspect it is the reality of RWG / Town Planner. It expects a certain toolkit of Tiles and doesn't have any logic related to making due with scarcity. That is, I don't think it will ever say... "I only have one puzzle piece left, I'll just use that." Instead, I think it says "I want a straight tile ... oh, but I can't use any more of those, so I'll pick a different one." Or, "I want a corner tile. Huh, there aren't any. I guess a blank spot then."
 
Yep, I agree. *long dramatic sigh*

Well, I do have an idea for a 1 straight + cap combo that wouldn't require the double runway idea that Riamus seemed to dislike so much. I've been experimenting lately with using PartSpawns to patch the dirt road gaps on 150x150 tiles which feature a single, centered 60x60 POI spawn marker; RWG will only draw a road up to the edge of a tile, and RoadExit markers are completely ignored using the custom settlement method. So that's why I've been tinkering with "patching" that gap with partspawns. It actually works pretty well.

It might be possible to adapt that idea to this. We can add a "patch" to the cap tile, overwriting the road connection that kinda has to be drawn into the north and south ends of the straight tile. This would allow us to have the runway centered, extending all the way into the cap tile. If it works, that is. I have no idea if a partspawn "patch" can overwrite a neighboring tile the same way it overwrites world terrain.
 
EvilPolygons said:
Well, I do have an idea for a 1 straight + cap combo that wouldn't require the double runway idea that Riamus seemed to dislike so much.
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You showed that it isn't rotating the tiles, so that shouldn't be needed anyhow. And it wasn't that I disliked it. I only said that it wasn't realistic as an indication of the limitations involved and why it would be a good thing to see RWG improved instead of just using workarounds.
 
Riamus said:
You showed that it isn't rotating the tiles, so that shouldn't be needed anyhow. And it wasn't that I disliked it. I only said that it wasn't realistic as an indication of the limitations involved and why it would be a good thing to see RWG improved instead of just using workarounds.
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The straight tile can actually flip north to south. It's just that in a multi-straight setup, the tiles all flip in the same uniform direction for whatever reason. I nearly have everything setup to test it out. Just need to get the patch part tagged correctly and I'll give it a spin.
 
Test map #1. Part spawn "patch" works! Figured it would, but you never know until you try. So even though the runway on the straight tile is interrupted by dirt road connections on both ends, the "patch" overwrites the little dirt road connection touching the cap tile, which allows for a seamless runway extending all the way through both the straight and cap tiles.

I'll post pics after I clean up the runway & dirt road connections a bit. It's pretty rough even for a mock up lol.
 
Here we go. The 2-tile airport on a few different maps. I don't like it as much as the 4-tile, but at least this one seems to always spawn correctly. Notice that the dirt access road flips north to south on some maps. This is why I had to build dirt road connections into both ends of the straight tile, and then place a partspawn in the cap tile to patch it over on that end, to get an unbroken runway.

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This pic shows the spot where the runway partspawn patch was applied between the two tiles. Seamless!

Makes me wonder just how far outside a tile or POI's borders that you can place a partspawn marker... 🤔
 
And here are pics of the tiles, for anyone who might be interested.

Straight tile w dirt road connections:
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Cap tile with part spawn marker:
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Closeup of part spawn marker:
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The runway patch works just like a driveway marker that you'd use on any residential or industrial tile. But instead of a POI removing the sidewalk from its host tile via a driveway marker, we're using this runway marker to replace the dirt terrain with asphalt on a separate adjoining tile. I've never used a marker this way before, so I'm happy to see that it works.
 
EvilPolygons said:
And here are pics of the tiles, for anyone who might be interested.

Straight tile w dirt road connections:
View attachment 35961

Cap tile with part spawn marker:
View attachment 35963

Closeup of part spawn marker:
View attachment 35964

The runway patch works just like a driveway marker that you'd use on any residential or industrial tile. But instead of a POI removing the sidewalk from its host tile via a driveway marker, we're using this runway marker to replace the dirt terrain with asphalt on a separate adjoining tile. I've never used a marker this way before, so I'm happy to see that it works.
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Maybe I'm missing something. You shouldn't need a part between the tiles. If your straight tile had the runway all the way to the edge instead of dirt, you wouldn't see the edge of the tile any more than you do with a road in a town.

The reason it is done for some town driveways is so there isn't a curb or ditch between the driveway and road.
 
Riamus said:
Maybe I'm missing something. You shouldn't need a part between the tiles. If your straight tile had the runway all the way to the edge instead of dirt, you wouldn't see the edge of the tile any more than you do with a road in a town.

The reason it is done for some town driveways is so there isn't a curb or ditch between the driveway and road.
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Scroll up and look at the straight tile again. It has dirt road connections on both ends. Without the part spawn, there would be a giant dirt stripe bisecting the runway where the two tiles meet.

If the runway ran all the way to the edge, then a north -> south flip (as seen in some of the pics) would cause there to be no road connection at all on the straight end of the airport.

We have no control whatsoever over the townplanner flipping the straight tile. It's a coin toss on every map. All we can do is design around that behavior.
 
@Riamus
Notice how the straight tile access road is on the left side in the desert biome pic, but on the right side on the snow biome pic. That's because the straight tile was flipped by the townplanner. Without the dirt road connection "buffer" between the end of the runway and the dirt road, it would look even worse.

I have an idea about how to improve the looks of it, though. But it requires abusing the part spawn marker in a way that I'm not sure will work.
 
I guess what I'm not understanding is why there is a dirt "road" crossing either end of the runway (for the straight tile, not the cap). If the runway extends to both edges, rotating doesn't matter as far as the runway is concerned. And any dirt access road wouldn't cross a runway. It would stop at the runway.

Maybe if you show an example of what looks bad or worse when the runway doesn't extend to both edges, it would help me to understand.

If what you're concerned about is the side road that connects to the airport, I think you can set a connection point that isn't in the center of the tile. But even if not, where it connects would not really look any different with or without that dirt road strip at the edge of the tile.
 
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Riamus said:
If what you're concerned about is the side road that connects to the airport, I think you can set a connection point that isn't in the center of the tile. But even if not, where it connects would not really look any different with or without that dirt road strip at the edge of the tile.
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That's exactly the issue. The townplanner completely ignores RoadExit markers and only draws roads to the center point of a tile's edge. RoadExitr markers only work for wilderness POIs, but this airport is technically a town.

The lack of a proper dirt road connection might not bother some people, but it drives me up the wall. That's why the parts spawn marker is necessary.

However, what I'm experimenting with right now is using an insanely offset (by 130 blocks!) "driveway" marker on the cap tile. That would allow me to create a really nice dirt road connection point for the airport AND allow me to get rid of the dirt stripes on the straight tile. No idea if it's going to work. I kinda doubt it will to be honest.
 
I cannot freaking believe this actually worked.20250731205055_1.jpg20250731205110_1.jpg20250731205155_1.jpg

So now, I can have the roadside end of the runway terminate however I want. This also allows me to create a little extra space between the end of the runway and the dirt road entrance into the airport. Here I've added a section of fence to give an example of what's possible.
 
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