Have just come off KPSP ATC on the Advanced server as it became too much for one person to handle. 18 aircraft on ground frequency, another 14 on tower, virtually no one changing frequency upon leaving the airspace thereby clogging it up etc etc.
There must be a simple way to limit the number of aircraft spawning or allowed at an airport at one time (which could be varied according to the airport’s size). Same goes for whole regions, there are times when a region is so full that it’s impossible to enjoy or have a realistic flight, and also impossible for controllers to handle the volume of traffic on their own. Maybe a limit of 50 aircraft in a region at any one time ? If it’s full you should start populating another, would make it more enjoyable for all I feel.
Apologies if you were departing from KPSP tonight, the endless barge of flashing yellow boxes on my screen finally got too much !
I usually either say the airport is full and it temporarily accepts any incoming planes or I let them fly circles at a save altitude and get rid of a few guys on the ground. But on Playground they hardly care about ATC instructions.
Yes but that’s only for incoming aircraft I believe. This was just an overwhelming number spawning one after the other. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming anyone, after all there were only 2 airports with active ATC so everyone flocks there (I would do the same).
But I’d be happy to get a message saying airport is full and to head off somewhere else, would stop overcrowding and also mean I could get airborne quicker !
Departures are easy all you have to do is clear them for take off. If there are no arrivals coming in I don’t see how it gets too hard. If there are 50 aircraft at your airport and they’re al in a line they shouldn’t be requesting take off until first in line anyway.
I would agree with this message if and only if the amount of planes is the total of gates. That is technically when an airport is full. If they have available gates then the airport isn’t full.
I agree with Simon - I had a similar experience at EDDL the other day. Of course it is manable - especially ground but when it comes to Tower it is impossible to provide a decent service. Basically you have to expect the planes to sequence themselves. Their lucky if you can give instructions for pattern entry - sequencing will take way to long. Also you won’t find time to send an expedite message upon touchdown. It is acceptable managing heavy traffic like that but APP is necessary which will often not be the case because we controllers are also only doing this for fun and in our free time. It would be great to limit Ops - like in RWA there are Slots for each flights. No more available slots → no more flights.
Yes departures are in theory easy if that’s all you have to concentrate on, but if you’re operating ground and tower then there’s lots more to divert your attention. As @Panth says there’s also inbound to handle, so many of whom don’t know how to sequence themselves.
There’s ground requests for pushbacks, taxis, runway crossings and the dreaded frequency changes. There’s take off requests from aircraft 5 back in the queue, there’s people who still don’t understand ‘line up and wait’ and just sit there. The list goes on and as I said earlier it can quickly become an overwhelming display of flashing boxes to the point where you just give up because it ceases to be enjoyable.
I take the point of @Samuel123abc when it comes to taking one frequency, but it’s better and more organised to be able to run both together.
Or course it is harder to have to communicate via slack when controlling ground only etc. Or is it really that hard? About what would you need to say to the tower controller other than runways in use?
In slack (which we advanced ATC use) almost every ATC is online when controlling, it’s just a matter of writing those letters.
Would it now be Nice if someone loads the game then there comes a message to the ATC that he want to spawn on your airport
And that you then can say Where Hi most spawn on wich spawn
@DS2001 Won’t solve the problem. Will just give extra workload for the active ATC and even more confusing blinking pop-ups. Also this would require learning the airport by heart and a lot of scrolling.
The number of aircraft spawning, is limited by the size of the airport (parking spaces-3 (the extra 3 are for incoming aircraft)).
If these suggestion are good then yay!