Airports, modular or not

[Tilarium]

I was thinking about re-installing the game and redoing all my mods.  A question that started floating around in my mind was which to do, modular airports or regular in-game style airports.  I like modular airports because I can design them myself, how I want, but to make one realistic, it has to pretty much take over a whole large city.  What does everyone here prefer to use?  Modular?  SC4 style?  A mix of the two?

[ShadeSlayer]

If you are looking for a reasonable-sized and realistic airport, then I would recommend using the AC Prefabs. Some information is located at the top of this post.

Those lots are a healthy balance between the smaller, in-game airports but also add a level of realism not available with the built-in content. They aren't modular, but they provide the appearance of one (and their ability to grow adds to the dynamic aspect).

Personally, I would never again use the Maxis airports in SC4. At the same time, the full on setup with various content from both the AC and SCAG teams ends up taking a good portion of your city tile and leaves little room for actually playing the game so I think that pack will do very well for you.

[Tilarium]

If you are looking for a reasonable-sized and realistic airport, then I would recommend using the AC Prefabs. Some information is located at the top of this post.

Those lots are a healthy balance between the smaller, in-game airports but also add a level of realism not available with the built-in content. They aren't modular, but they provide the appearance of one (and their ability to grow adds to the dynamic aspect).

Personally, I would never again use the Maxis airports in SC4. At the same time, the full on setup with various content from both the AC and SCAG teams ends up taking a good portion of your city tile and leaves little room for actually playing the game so I think that pack will do very well for you.

The prefabs are actually what I meant by in-game style    They are amazing and will be what I'd be using, also in conjunction with the add-on bits over on SimPeg.  I love the idea of modulars but they have to be huge to be realistic, so I end up never making one  LOL

[Voltaire]

There's no reason for a custom airport to take a whole city... unless you want it to   So by all means go for the modular if that's what you really want.



For example, this one (an RMIP-2 testing airport) takes only 25% of a medium city, yet still includes many many features:
- 2 crossing runways with full-length parallel taxiways
- approach lights at 2 runway ends (with water and a road passing under one of them)
- commercial terminal with jetbridges and walkway gates, and a big public car park
- 3 aircraft aprons apart from the terminal, with hangars, helipads, and more support buildings.


The city surrounding the airport is balanced RCI development with a population of ~35,000. Mind you, that's with a fair amount of water in the city -- a land-only map would have more residents. Plus, if I'd built parallel runways (or just one runway) the airport could've been even smaller.

[Tilarium]

Looks like you're right about that, that airport is pretty nice.  Guess it's possible to make a modular airport that isn't taking the entire city. 

As an aside, what region is that city from?  I like the way the islands are, and would like a new region to play in... I've been using the same one for years.

[Terring7]

You can use the parts of the modular airports to build heliports as well, that needs even less space. Or download some spaceships and build a spaceport! Plenty of possibilities

[Voltaire]

You can use the parts of the modular airports to build heliports as well

Quite right, you don't see vertiports in the forums much, but helicopter parking can be done with the same lane markings as fixed-wing aprons.

Regarding the airport town, sorry but it's from so long ago I can't recall which region map. Thanks for liking my islands though -- I'm always carving small pointy islands from existing coastline