SAVE OFTEN OR YOU’LL HAVE TO START OVER which isn’t a bad thing really. It’s a good way to learn but if you don’t want the hassle of having to start over then save every time you complete something and BEFORE building something, especially at first.

If you can’t remember where an item is in the Build Menu you can use the Search bar and type in whichever item you want.


QUICK REVIEW OF THE GAME: So far, this game seems to have some great potential and now that I understand how to play the basics, I’m excited to expand. However, the down side was it took me a while to get through the tutorials and I felt a great degree of frustration. I had to do some tutorials more than once as things weren’t always clear. So, I’m offering this as another way to learn the basics of the game and I think it will help understand some parts of the tutorials which are not explained in enough detail or enough depth for a beginner. (The tutorials also sometimes gave information which I think, is premature. Some info was offered too early and left me confused as to what I should do at the beginning and what I should wait for. Still, the tutorials were enough for me to eventually figure out everything … and it looks like quite a few people have already made their way through. But just in case you get frustrated here’s another way.

CAREER MODE
Instead of clicking on the Basic Tutorial, click on New Game then Career Mode. Because I found the tutorial quite a puzzle to work through, and I thought it could be made easier, I decided to write this as a supplement to the tutorials in the game. My offer here is for you to play it my way first then go do the tutorials. I think they will be easier to understand then. I hope so.

Along the top is lots of info. How you’re doing financially, how happy your passengers (called PAX) are, airline interest (in other words how well you are doing) and weather conditions. The far right is how you control time or pause (useful when you want to pause to look at everything and see what’s needed next).

Along the right are Heatmaps which I will talk about a little later. Along the bottom are the buttons you will use the most. You will use them to build, to manage staff and schedules, to place zones, to do research and buy plane contracts and schedule them. I suggest opening everything and having a look at what information and objects are available to you, to get a sense of what the game offers and how it’s set up.

CAMERA MOVEMENT
Camera movement is pretty simple. WASD keys or arrow keys will move you around or you can scroll or move to the edges of the screen. You can also zoom in and out with the zoom wheel and this is useful sometimes when you want a closer look at what you’re building or placing. There are other key assignments listed in the game.

THE AIRPORT
In Career Mode you have a basic airport already set up. You will notice some zones – Deliveries, Storage, Pickups, Drop-offs, Ticketing, Baggage Claim, Security, Washrooms, and Garbage. If you start from scratch, you will have to create these zones. But in this instance, they are placed for you

Hover your mouse over any area and useful info will pop up.

• On the left is the roadway entering the airport. You should see passenger buses arriving at the airport every once in a while.
• Enter the airport (hover your mouse over its left wall and it will show you sliding doors. Make sure you don’t block them when building anything). Up (or North) is the Ticketing zone with two ticket agent desks. To the south is the Baggage Claim area which I used some of to build an electrical room. Although I may have to move the room later when the airport is expanded. In hindsight I could have added onto the airport rather than use up space already there. The very first Basic Tutorial shows you right away how to add on a room.
• Heading East (right) you see a number of washrooms. Notice that there are three (3!!!) washrooms for females and only 1 for males. Great. The lineups to women’s washrooms seem to always be longer so good idea.
• You will also notice there is a Security Zone. There are 3 staff there, with a metal detector and bag scanner in place. If you start from scratch, you will need to have at least these three things to have a functioning security system.
• Furthest right is the tiny little icon showing the Gate Agent’s Desk. To the north (above) the desk is the plane stand (I think that’s what it’s called). It shows a little A1 upside down. That’s the Gate number. North of the stand is the taxiway (the black road with the yellow lines) and the black and white runway above it.

That’s your airport basically. There are floors – click on the G on the right side menu and go up or down. There is no 1st floor, just Ground, 2 and 3, then 2 underground levels which you will probably use for expansion of the airport.

Try this first then do the tutorials. This is just a basic airport, on one floor only and only offering vending machines in the way of food and beverage. Also, some Arcade games at least.

Now that I have completed all of this, I’m at the point of expanding onto the second floor where I can set up shops to browse in, and a café and a kiosks of food and souvenirs (which people really like in the game). Definitely fun once you understand how to play.

HIRE WORKMEN – you need them to build anything and everything as well as do other things like drive baggage carts.
• Go to Staff menu at the bottom. Then to Manage Staff. Along the top of the box you will see Workman. Click on it and below it will ask you how many you want to hire. The game gives you 2 already so add another 4 more. Six workmen is recommended for starters in the Basic Tutorial. Don’t forget to confirm your hiring. Then close Staff menu.

PLANE CONTRACTS AND SCHEDULING
First some definitions for the shifts:
EAM = early morning (12 am to 6am)
AM = morning (6 am to 12pm)
AN = afternoon (12pm to 6pm)
PM = evening (6pm to 12am)

Click on the Flight Management icon (plane). A box pops up showing you two tables. Go to the top one and scroll down until you find Learnyville Air listed on the left side. You should see a 5 inside a pukey green box under the AM column. Click on the 5 and another menu pops up with the heading Learneyville Air. Go down to Flight Contracts and accept (pukey green boxes again) one by one three AM planes and three AN planes. Don’t accept all because you don’t have room for more than 3 planes using the runway right now. So, three will run the AM shift and three in the AN shift. Then, close that menu pop-up.
Now you will see that the plane icon at the bottom has a little red button on it. Also, the Flight Management box should still be open. Now that you have the plane contracts you need to schedule the flights. The bottom half of this menu shows time slots, each shift in a different colour. Look on the line that says New Flights (it should have the number 6 there too as that is how many contracts you bought). You will see each plane listed on this line. Also, on the left of each name is a coloured box which matches the shifts below. This is to tell you in which shift the plane belongs. As well, if you hover your cursor over one of the plane names it will tell you in red letters to which shift the plane must go.
Click on a plane and slide it under the right shift and on the line that says Gate A1. Make sure you put the name as far to the left of the shift as possible so you can place the other planes right next to it. you only have room for three planes in that slot. Note: the game is good at telling you if you are placing something in the wrong spot.
Now you are done. The planes will start arriving tomorrow.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
You need to get started on Research as soon as possible. You will need a CTO (Chief Technical Officer) early on so Technologies is the best place to start. (I may find out differently later on but the tutorials suggest this path for starters).
Click on the Research icon (the Microscope) and you will see a number of tech trees listed. Far right is Technology. Click on that and get it started. As you can see it takes a while.

A queue is pretty important as it brings order. Without it PAX would be just surrounding the Gate Agent, and all would be chaos (Gawd forbid). So, it’s pretty simple to set up, with one word of warning when placing the queue.
Click on the Build Menu, bottom button with hammer, and a menu will pop up. Click on Queues then Expand Queue. Place the Queue just to the right of the Gate Agent’s Desk (near Gate A1) and drag for 5 spaces or so.
WARNING: I accidentally placed the Queue by placing tile by tile rather than drag the line out. What that did is screw up the Queue and I couldn’t get rid of it afterwards even though there are ways of demolishing things. SO MAKE SURE YOU DRAG THE QUEUE OUT, DON’T PLACE ONE TILE AT A TIME.

ASSIGN GATE AGENT’S DESK TO QUEUE
Now you need to connect the queue with the agent’s desk. To do this, first ZOOM IN so you’re up close to the Queue. Click on the Gate Agent’s Desk. A little menu pops up to the right. Click on the Assign to… button in it. Now another little menu pops up and says Queue with Assign beneath it. Click on that button. (Note: if you are too far out you won’t see that little Queue menu. It’s practically hidden. So, you need to ZOOM IN to see it.)
Now look at the pop-up that says Gate Agent Desk. It should say below that title that 2 are assigned. If you ZOOM OUT now you will see that the Desk is now connected to the Gate A1 and the Queue. Click on Close (Gate Agent Desk pop-up).

---- SAVING ----
Save often especially after you complete something, and it all works. That way if you screw up (I did many times) you can go back to the last part that did work.

In this part, you will be setting up a PA system but in order to do that you have to hire a CTO. And in order to hire a CTO, you need to Research Technologies (which you hopefully have going right now) and you need to build him/her an office with desk and chair.

First let’s hire the CTO. Go to the Staff button at the bottom and click on Manage Admin. Along the top are listed people you will eventually be able to hire. Scroll over until you find the CTO. Now if you haven’t finished Researching Technologies then this is locked. So fast forward (top right) until Technologies is done.
Once Technologies is finished your CTO is unlocked. Click on the CTO and Hire for $12,500.

BUILD CTO’S OFFICE
THIS IS A GOOD TIME TO SAVE, JUST BEFORE BUILDING SOMETHING. This is where I most often made mistakes so save right now.
A lot of what you build has a prerequisite and it’s often zoning an area before building anything. (Also, some items require a store or a kitchen, for example, before they can function. So, check everything you want to build or place.)
So, you’re going to zone a small area for the office. You only need about 4 x 4 tiles. Click on the Zones button at the bottom (they are also in the Build Menu, as are Queues). Scroll down until you find Office. Hover your cursor over it and it will tell you what you require to make it function. In this case you will need a wall, door, desk and chair. But first zone a minimum of 4 tiles by 4 tiles and fill in the whole square. I put mine in the far-right upper corner of the airport. The area should now be shaded with two exclamation marks telling you that you are missing items.
Now the wall. Build menu – Construction – Tools. Click on Walls and place them AROUND the zone, not in it. The office must be at least 4 x 4 tiles. You can place the Wall by dragging or clicking on individual tiles.
Now the door. Build menu – Objects – Ops – Door. Try placing it in every tile that is the Wall and you’ll find that sometimes the tile turns blue and sometimes red. The red means you can’t place the Door there and green the opposite. However, you can Rotate the door and it will fit in different tiles now. To ROTATE PRESS R OR THE MIDDLE MOUSE WHEEL >>> REALLY IMPORTANT AND USEFUL INFORMATION

Place the desk – Build – Object – Ops – Office Desk. Zoom in so you can see where you’re placing it and which direction you’re facing. I ROTATED the chair, so it faced the desk.

GOOD TIME TO SAVE.

THE HEATMAPS
On the right side of the screen is a column headed by G (or -1, -2, 2 or 3 depending on which floor you’re on.) You should be on G. The third symbol down is a speaker. Once the CTO has been hired you should be able to click on this icon (it should turn a bright green) and your screen will darken. This will show you the effects of your speakers when you experiment placing them.
Go to the Build menu – Object – Ops. Scroll down until you find PA Speaker and PA Speaker 2-way. Click on the 2-way first then place it half-way between Ticketing and Baggage Claim areas. You should see a number of tiles lit up in turquoise in decreasing intensity as you move away from the actual speaker. I placed a 2-way in this spot because of the way the airport is divided here. So, place one there if you like or you can do just the 1-way. Place 4 speakers altogether wherever you think is good. I would suggest not placing more than 4 speakers right now, as is also suggested in the tutorial. Close the Build menu and the heatmap so you’re back to normal view. SAVE.

CONNECT SPEAKERS
Now you have to have an amplifier and hook the speakers up to it. But in order to have an amplifier you need to build an Electrical Office. That’s why you have exclamation points over all the speakers.

Remember we had to zone an area first in order to build an office. We have to do the same here. And again, the Electrical Office doesn’t need to be huge (at this point anyway). So, Zones button, find Electrical and lay out an area minimum 4 x 4 tiles. I took the right corner of the Baggage Claim area. Even though it says it’s zoned for Baggage Claim I can zone right over top and it will change to Electrical zone.
Now build the walls and add the door. Build – Construction – Tools – Wall. Then Build – Objects – Ops – Door.
Then place an Amplifier in the Electrical Room. Build – Objects – Comfort – PA Amplifier. (Don’t put the HD Amplifier here. It’s for a larger airport).

NOTE: BY THIS TIME (DAY 2) YOU SHOULD HAVE FLIGHTS ARRIVING AND DEPARTING if you have used the time in normal (1x) mode or faster. This is fine as you now have some money coming in. You can continue (I would suggest 1x mode) as you also build.

You still have exclamation marks above all the speakers. Click on the Amplifier and a little menu pops up over to the right. Click on Connect to… and ZOOM out so you can see all the little menus that have now popped up. One for each speaker and the Gate A1. Click on each Assign button (all 5) then click on Close (Amplifier’s menu).

GOOD TIME TO SAVE AS YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE A WORKING PA SYSTEM.

Pax (passengers) need information (and food, and bathrooms and entertainment…). There are three different types of display – Flight Information Display, ditto XL (PA system extra large) and Flight Information Kiosk. You probably don’t need an XL one at this point.
Time to use another Heatmap. Click on the i (information button) on the far right and the screen will darken. Now go to the Build menu – Object – Ops. Click on the Flight Information Kiosk and drag it over to the area between Ticketing and Baggage Claim. You should see some highlighted squares, just like the speakers, showing the effects of putting the kiosk there. Place a kiosk there. (I thought it was a good place as its right where people first enter the airport.)
Now click on the Flight Information Display and drag it over a spot in the airport and see its effects. Place 3 or 4 of them in different parts of the airport where you think people can easily access them. Put them up against the wall so you’ll have room to build other things.
Turn off the Heatmap and SAVE.

Planes need fuel obviously, so you need to build a system which involves a Hangar, Fuel Truck, 2 Fuel Tanks, a Fuel Depot, Fuel Pipes and a Refuel Station.

Hangar first. Build – Objects – Structure – Small Hangar. Place the Hangar just to the right of the plane’s Gate and just beneath the Taxiway. You’ll need to ROTATE (R) it first twice until it’s facing the Taxiway. The ground will have a red highlighted square until you place the Hangar in the right spot, right up against the Taxiway. Then it will turn green telling you this is the spot. Click and Build.
When the Hangar is built hover the cursor over it and it will tell you that Slot 1 is Empty. Click on the Hangar and a pop-up appears to the right. Click on Assign Vehicles. Another pop-up with an Add button. Click on that. Choose Fuel Truck.
Next, a Fuel Depot. Build – Utilities – Fuel Depot. Place the Depot between the Garbage and Dropoffs zones and right next to the road so the trucks can access it. Then add two fuel tanks near to it. Build – Utilities – Fuel Tanks. Don’t choose the larger one at this point. You’ll notice that you can’t place them right next to the Depot as there is a fence there, so you have to move to the right until you get green highlighted tiles to place the tanks.
At this point you should have several exclamation marks on the screen. Three to be more specific. That’s because they all need to be connected by fuel pipes underground. So, go to floor -1 (right side menu under G). You should see three tiny little nozzles (I think that’s what they are) in the same spot as on the Ground floor.
Build – Utilities – Fuel Pipe. Place pipes from the two tanks to the depot underground (floor -1) making sure to include the tile each nozzle is on as well or you won’t have a connection.

SAVE
REFUEL STATION
Build – Utilities – Refuel Station. Place it up against the Taxiway, on the Taxiway’s left side, not too far away from the Depot.
Once the Refuel Station is complete you will have an exclamation point over it. That’s because you need to connect it to the Fuel Depot as well via underground Fuel Pipes. So, go one floor down (-1) and you should see a tiny nozzle where you built the Refuel Station. Connect it the same way as you did with the Fuel Tanks remembering to also build a pipe right on the tile with the nozzle as well.
IN HINDSIGHT, I should have lined up the Fuel Depot and Tanks and Refuel Station laterally so the least amount of pipe would be used. It all costs you money so you’ve got to think of those things too. I didn’t.

Now you need to set up a system for obtaining the fuel. Click on Operations Control Panel at bottom. Click on the Fuel Services button. Under Resale Status it should say in red NOT ACTIVE. That’s because you need to check a Pricing Model. You have two choices. Click on the None (Pricing Model) and change it to Track Market. This means your prices will vary according to the Market, which means your profit margin will also vary. (Profit margin is total profit divided by the total sales and expressed as a percentage. It’s the ‘icing’ on your income. How much extra you want to have.) In this case your prices depend on the market prices. Note that you can set your profit margin %. The default is at 15%.
The other choice is Fixed. This is where you set your profit margin and it stays the same, doesn’t vary no matter what the market is doing.
The advantage of using Track Market is that your demand will remain stable (so you’ll keep your customers coming and happy) but you won’t make the same % of profit all the time. So, you may have dips in your profits sometimes (the icing will be thinner), but you will continue to have customers.
The advantage of using Fixed is the opposite. You won’t be able to rely on your customer interest and demand, but you are sure of your profit margin every time you do make some income. So, choose a Pricing Model and the Resale Status should now say ACTIVE in green letters.

Finally, you need to buy some fuel, either a one-time purchase (for now anyways) or set it to be a regular purchase. For now, click on Buy under One-Time: Buy and Sell. Another menu pops up and you will see a slider. Set it to about 10,000 litres. Below you will see how much it will cost you. Click Buy Fuel. You will now see on the Fuel Services menu that you will be getting an amount of fuel at a certain delivery time. Close.

You now have a Fuel System.

The final touch to this very basic airport that will keep most of your PAX (passengers) fairly satisfied is something to keep the boredom away, a few nice plants to look at and maybe some food and drinks. Oh and some place to rest.

Place a few benches around and some garbage cans. Build – Objects – Comfort – Bench. Notice there are several types. It’s best to zoom in quite close for the Benches so that you can see which way you need to rotate them (R) so they’re facing the right way. That being said, I placed some facing the walls and the passengers did not seem to care one way or the other. Somehow they managed to sit on the benches anyway.

Garbage bins are also Build – Objects – Comfort – Garbage Bin. I put quite a few bins around. You don’t need to hire any Janitors right now for this as there are two hired by default as soon as you start the game. The same with the workmen – you are given 2 at the beginning.

The food and drinks at this stage may only be vending machines. PAX aren’t that keen on machine food but at the same time if the airport is just starting out their expectations aren’t that high yet. So, you can get away with a couple of vending machines – one for food, one for drinks.
To place the machines – Build – Objects – Retail – Drink Vending Machine. Place one or two in the airport. Build – Objects – Retail – Food Vending Machine. Place one or two of these as you see fit.
You could also place – Build – Objects – Retail – Electronics Vending somewhere. I’m assuming this is a machine that sells some electronic items such as earphones, USBs, etc. These machines give you extra income on top of what you get from planes.

Pricing
Once your vending machines have been built click on the Drink Vending Machine. A menu pops up that shows you your price and a slider. You can set your price for the Drink Vending Machine as well as all other vending machines in the airport if you want. The default is $5 per purchase.

DÉCOR
Add whatever other décor you want such as plants, nice floors, etc. It does seem to make a difference to the passengers.

BANK LOAN
Take a look at the top buttons and click on the Bank Balance one. A menu pops up and you can see that you can apply for a loan. There is a slider so you can determine what amount you want up to a maximum of $650,000 at this point. If you want to borrow some money to expand set the slider then click on Apply for Loan and Accept.

PASSENGER (PAX) SATISFACTION
To the left of the Bank Balance button is the Passenger Satisfaction. Hover your cursor over it while the airport is running, and you will see the percentages will keep changing. You will also be told how many people are unhappy about something. This way you can address their needs specifically.

DEALING WITH MISTAKES
If you make a mistake while building something you have some options. You can cancel a project while it’s being built by clicking on it. A little menu will pop up with a button that says Cancel Project. There is also a button below that says Normal. There you can tweak the priority of the project – from Urgent to Low.

Another way to deal with a mistake is the Clear button. Hit ‘x’ and the Build menu will highlight the Demolish button. This button can demolish walls and indoor flooring that you accidentally put down or want to remove. Next to it is the Clear button. It dismantles objects, flooring and interior walls.

There are some things you can’t demolish such as a Queue once it’s built. At least I couldn’t find a way to dismantle or demolish it and had to go back to my last Save.

THAT’S IT FOR NOW.
Your comments on this ‘tutorial’ and playing the game are welcome.