Simulation aspects of Planet Coaster

[Flying Hawkic]

Following this https://www.reddit.com/r/PlanetCoas..._there_any_management_simulation_aspects_yet/ reddit thread, I wonder whether Frontier has already disclosed some details on how the simulation will work, or what their intentions are regarding the depth of the simulation, as their slogan is "Simulation evolved"?

This is what I'm most interested in. I like the fact of carefully choosing which ride to build taking your budget en the estimated profits into account. Personally, I think this aspect will make or break the game for me, as only nice graphics won't give me that satisfying feeling of running a business.

I also hope that they will add interesting and challenging scenarios to the game.

 

[Scott1]

As long as it meets or exceeds RCT3, I'm happy. If they did something spectacular though, I'd be over the moon[yesnod]

 

[breezerHOG1]

I'm hoping for RCT3 mixed with a little Thrillville, maybe some objectives for "playing as a guest" or a security guard would be really cool. But yes please hurry up and bring on the management stuff [big grin]

 

[Restless Bohemian]

Should be EASY to exceed RCT3 since the actual game play was really weak. PC is already more satisfying as the roller coasters and rides now have big, long lines like the original RCT! Can't wait to see game play.

I hope we have the option to go deep with game play as well. I'm going to list a few ideas I would really love to see in theme park simulation. These request/suggestions are for those who want serious game play that matches serious park design -- not just the facades but actual traffic flow and layout. The flaw of RCT3 gameplay was that it was too easy to reach a sweet spot where you could endlessly generate money and simply grow without challenge. Nobody want too loose and have the game shut down their park, but the illusion of going out of business is where the fun is. Perhaps we can be forced to put a park up for sale if it is run badly, we are "locked out" but have the option of buying it back from the game by running a separate park successfully? Could be fun.

Crowd control. A new roller coaster and/or attraction should be so popular that the line spills into the midway and disrupts how the entire park runs. You have the choice of adding to the que line or let it take down your park rating. Guest should be angry if bored, or hot and thirsty. I won't use the front of the line pass feature if it happens to be added as I hate them in real life lol. I'd rather the challenge be focused on running things right over greed. Perhaps the ques could have the option of trigger points. If the line reaches a certain level, overflow que is opened and if that que runs empty, it closes again. It's a bit advanced, but this post is for those looking for advanced management game play. Only a signature attraction would need this level of que detail. Also, props and entertainers placed in or by the que should effect guest "patience" and help keep them happy. Line vendors would be welcome.

Signature Attractions. These are attractions are somehow marked and added to a list to make them a priority for guest. If there is advertising, a general park advertisement would automatically include everything marked. Guest coming to park would have a prior agenda that favors these marked rides. Their popularity would be longer and stronger than any general attraction. A guests ability to experience ALL the signature attractions (if they fit his preference criteria) impacts the park rating. Obviously, if you choose to have more than 5 signature attractions, it might effect your park rating in negative way.

Length of guest visit. Since game play is not in real time, if you have a high ranking guest experience guest might be tempted to extend their stay. Rather than just have them visit the park for years, they can choose to either stay at a resort or by a season pass. You can have a preset price for season pass and will you simply see a graph where a certain percentage of guests participate or not. If you click on a guest, you can see they have purchased a family pass and have been in the park 5 days ect. Will need ATM's lol. If you only 500 rooms available at your resort, once it is full guests must leave. Resorts can be completely handled off screen or in an often mentioned outside of park set-up. Or this can just be limited to a season pass until resort features are hopefully integrated.

Coaster Management. Would like to the game automatically add cars if a que line is 3/4 full, or exchange them if there is a maintenance issue. You could choose to have extra cars or run with less to save money -- but the cost savings would effect how the park runs and it's rating. I would even go so far as to have to replace a train due to wear and tear.

Souvenirs. Would like to tag merchandise with a popular new attraction (or signature attraction) and have it effects sales.

Weather. If a line is long and the heat is blazing, people should occasionally pass out (park medics/first aid come into play) and should leave by the droves if there are not water rides and expensive air conditioned attractions and dark rides. Rain should send people looking for cover, sweater, jackets, ponchos and umbrellas. Wind should close down cable gondolas and high attractions. I wouldn't go all crazy with weather but just enough to vary the game play a bit. A big storm or heat wave could come into play once every 10 years of game play, not every minute, but very random.

Location. A sea side park should be more likely to be subjected to high winds and storms. A park in a dry climate is more prone to heatwaves. Ect.

Crowds. I hope "it's too crowded here" has an effect on park rating -- as well as long lines for food/drink/restrooms.

Behind the scenes: Would love to see a warehouse and have hidden roads for stock distribution. I don't want to order stock - that should be automatic as well as the actual stocking - but we should be responsible for having a fluent system in place. As the number of locations to be stocked grows it should require additional warehouse structures. In addition, there should be a few required park operations buildings in place before a park can be opened: Office/Staffing, Security/Maintenance -- all could be generic and pre-rendered with the option of customization. If a guest see's a warehouse from the Pirate Village, his opinion of your parks landscaping/theming takes a nose dive.

Parking lots: see other thread. People seem torn, but if you are interested in serious theme park management simulation this is a must. Hopefully full on resort simulation will eventually follow.

 

[Flying Hawkic]

Perhaps we can be forced to put a park up for sale if it is run badly, we are "locked out" but have the option of buying it back from the game by running a separate park successfully? Could be fun.

This would be a great idea! I would suggest that you first have to take several loans, and then the park can be shut down for a indeterminate term, with the possibility to buy it back.

Crowd control. A new roller coaster and/or attraction should be so popular that the line spills into the midway and disrupts how the entire park runs. You have the choice of adding to the que line or let it take down your park rating. ... Perhaps the ques could have the option of trigger points. If the line reaches a certain level, overflow que is opened and if that que runs empty, it closes again. ... Also, props and entertainers placed in or by the que should effect guest "patience" and help keep them happy. Line vendors would be welcome.

Indeed, people should not be deterred form queuing just because the line is "full", but I understand that this is technically more difficult to implement.

Signature Attractions. These are attractions are somehow marked and added to a list to make them a priority for guest. If there is advertising, a general park advertisement would automatically include everything marked. Guest coming to park would have a prior agenda that favors these marked rides. Their popularity would be longer and stronger than any general attraction. A guests ability to experience ALL the signature attractions (if they fit his preference criteria) impacts the park rating. Obviously, if you choose to have more than 5 signature attractions, it might effect your park rating in negative way.

This relates a bit to the marketing functions of RCT, which would be a nice addition.

You can connect this maybe to the fact that if a guest cannot ride those five signature attractions in one day, or an equivalent of the duration of one day (because of mechanical down time, weather or long que lines...), he will be disappointed and eventually your park rating might drop if this is happening to a lot of guests.

Length of guest visit. Since game play is not in real time, if you have a high ranking guest experience guest might be tempted to extend their stay. Rather than just have them visit the park for years, ...

[up]

Coaster Management. Would like to the game automatically add cars if a que line is 3/4 full, or exchange them if there is a maintenance issue. You could choose to have extra cars or run with less to save money - but the cost savings would effect how the park runs and it's rating. I would even go so far as to have to replace a train due to wear and tear.

This is again a nice example of business strategies in the game: do you want to have higher costs and shorter queuing lines, or vice versa with an impact on your park rating and customer satisfaction (and possible future visits).

Souvenirs. Would like to tag merchandise with a popular new attraction (or signature attraction) and have it effects sales.

[up]

Weather. ... Rain should send people looking for cover, sweater, jackets, ponchos and umbrellas. Wind should close down cable gondolas and high attractions.

Definitely [up], would be nice if the paths are empty when it's raining. Or wet or cold weather should influence the popularity of water rides.

Parking lots: see other thread. People seem torn, but if you are interested in serious theme park management simulation this is a must. Hopefully full on resort simulation will eventually follow.

Not a priority for me, but certainly a good idea if it's possible to implement. I would rather like to see that the park is opening in the morning and closing in the evening, and determining your own opening and closing hours.

 

[Shief]

++++++++++++++++++++++++9000 to all Restless Bohemian said.

I'm waiting to see the management aspect of the game. Building coasters is fun but gets boring fast, while management and evolving a park over time is much more exciting to me.

The guests are already behaving in interesting ways with groups and reactions . I'm hoping Frontier intends to build a lot of interesting systems on top of this. A few misc. thoughts:

Guest Systems I'd love to see:
Reactions to weather (seek cover from rain, ride water rides in heat), reactions to "behind the scenes" aspects, awareness of previous rides / order of ride (ride high thrill then gentle to calm down).

Specialized Parks / Marketing (guest expectations)
I'd love if there were management strategies that didn't involve a "perfect blend" goal. That is, I don't always want to cater to all kinds of guests: sometimes making a kid park or thrill/coaster park can mix up the experience.

A marketing system, like Bohemian suggested, could allow you to appeal to certain kinds of guests.
Here is an example in Jurassic Park Builder on GBA: https://youtu.be/XYQOJjoKcgs?t=3m46s
He flips through the options quickly but each page is a particular magazine, tv show, or search engine you can advertise on.

That way you could market for kids and have only gentle and mid thrill rides and because you are attracting the right customers (e.g. marketing on kids shows) then guests are happy. Or, if you incorrectly advertise in extreme thrill magazines then you could attract coaster friendly folks who would be unhappy in your kid park.

Advertising signature attractions would help draw certain kinds of guests as well.

Parking Transportation Resorts
While not essential to what excites me about the game I'd love to be able to build my parks with an eye towards how my guests come in and how they might stay: a day park is different than a resort park. It would be fun to plan how guests travel between parks, parking lots, and hotels on disney style monorails.

However,
The big complication here is time scales: I definitely want to evolve my park over multiple years without spending real life years playing. If in-game days are short (e.g. around ~10sec in RCT1) then either guest animations/behaviors are out of sync with the in game time or they get sped up and we've got a bunch of fast moving ants flying through our parks. Neither is ideal and it's a tricky problem.

That's why its a bummer that the alphas aren't putting as much focus on management: there are lots of systems that could be added that have complicated interactions. It'll be a tall order to get all of those working really well while at the same time pleasing the folks are still complaining about coaster realism/freedom.

I have great hope that Frontier pull it off! Good luck to the team. I'm very excited.

 

[widlanquebec]

I understand that they want to finish the other game aspect before integrates management aspect, but I really hope that they've improve a lot comparing to RCT3. I always find the management part too basic and simple... There's no difficulty at all. I always succeed to make a profitable park without effort. I would like to have challenges and see new ideas. For example, having to hide staff building, having to deal with rides aging, real queue line and impact on the rating and mood of the guests, food/stocks delivery to restaurant and shops, etc.

The building part and visual parts have had a lot of time put in, let's hope that it's also the case for management. Because with so many improvements on the others parts of the game since previous RCT, it will be a disappointment if the management part is the same as before without great ideas and effort put in.

 

[Flying Hawkic]

...
The building part and visual parts have had a lot of time put in, let's hope that it's also the case for management. Because with so many improvements on the others parts of the game since previous RCT, it will be a disappointment if the management part is the same as before without great ideas and effort put in.

Indeed, in my opinion, they should put the same kind of effort, originality and level of detail in the simulation part of the game.

It is great to see that there are a lot of other people with the same concern and with great simulation ideas! I woud say, keep posting those ideas to attract the attention of the developers. I hope to get some information about this aspect of the game in the coming months.

 

[widlanquebec]

This thread don't have a lot of attention and I'm surprised. Maybe we're just a few to have questions about simulation aspect and want to know more about this [uhh]

 

[Croongetuige1]

Thing is, they (Frontier) kept a lot of things close to the chest regarding 'the simulation' part...nothing really to discuss before we're gonna have a bone thrown towards us! *har*[pirate][cool]

 

[Lurker1]

We've seen staff members get angry, guests already look ill, and we've seen guests needing the toilet.

I expect all of the simulation aspects are therefore being considered and worked on, just turned off for the alpha so that we have a playable game.

Hopefully we will see lots of new simulation/management aspects coming to this game, as well as the graphical upgrade. I don't think it's fair to assume because you can't see it it isn't happening.

 

[widlanquebec]

I don't think it's fair to assume because you can't see it it isn't happening.

I don't think it's not work on, but we don't know almost anything about this part. We already test a lot of things about buildings/coasters/terrains tools, etc. and they improve it and will continue to improve it. I understand that it's difficult to work on management and simulation aspect if the basics are not stable and always change... I just hope that we'll enough time to test and give feedback on this part also.

The game will be release at Q4 this year and there's not so much time left, so I just hope that this part will not be too much simple and too much of the same as before.