Cities: Skylines 2is a game about moving things around. Residents need to reach their jobs and stores, goods need to reach industrial and commercial zones, and tourists need to reach attractions and hotels. To help this movement along, players can access all kinds of public transportation.
Air travel is perhaps the ultimate way to get people to their destination, at least based on the development points players must spend inCities: Skylines 2. Players must pay four pointsto unlock a basic Airport, and another eight points to get to the International Airport. But while airports aren’t useful for local commuters, they can still be valuable for city planners to add.
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How to Set Up an Airport
A basic airport costs 750,000 and takes up a lot of space. It doesn’t generate any noise pollution on its own, but the airplanes that use it do. Be sure to follow the lead of real-world city planners and place airports far away from any residential neighborhoods.
On its own, an airport comes with five terminals that can serve air routes, and it boosts all office businesses' efficiency by three percent while boosting the city’s Attractiveness by ten percent. This means offices need fewer resources (and can be upgraded more easily), andall city entertainment venueswill bring in more tourists.
Airports also come with a small integrated parking lot. Like other parking lots, players can set a parking fee and adjust the fee up or down. However, a better way to handle airport traffic is to builda tram or subway terminalacross the street so that visitors and tourists can reach the rest of the city without filling the roads with vehicles.
Airports can also accept three upgrades. The Business Lounge adds another five percent attractiveness, Airport Services increases the building’s utility use but offsets its upkeep costs, and the Cargo Terminal adds two more terminals for cargo planes along with a train connection.
With the Cargo Terminal, an airport can move both people and goods from a single location. The integrated train station works with both cargo and passenger trains, but players must build a rail yard and either outside connections or other train stations to put this part of the building to work.
How to Set Air Routes
Like most other transportation methods inCities: Skylines 2, players must create air routes to put their airport to work. However, air routes work a little differently.
First, air routes don’t need any infrastructure aside from the airport itself. Second, players can’t create their own outside connections even if they own tiles at the edge of the available area. Instead, each map starts with several air connections. Fortunately, players can select these connections when creating air routes, even if they don’t own the tile underneath them.
The best way to put an airport to work is to choose a terminal, click on an outside air connection, and then click on the same terminal to create a loop. An airport can use the same outside connection multiple times, but to support the most air traffic, players should include each outside connection at least once while putting every terminal to work. Players can also create air routes between multiple airports, butthere are more efficient ways to move peopleand cargo across the map.
Something else to note is that cargo planes and passenger planes use different terminals. The cargo expansion adds two special terminals just for cargo planes, and only cargo routes can connect to them.
The International Airport
The International Airport costs eight development points,4,000,000 in cash,and quite possibly the largest amount of land of any building in the game. In exchange, the city gets a ten percent boost to Attractiveness, a ten percent boost to university students, and a ten percent boost to software demand (and thus office businesses).
Unlike the regular airport, the International Airport has no upgrades. Instead, it comes with 18 passenger terminals, 6 cargo terminals, an integrated parking lot, two bus stops, two taxi stops, and a train connection.
Between the price tag and the size of the building, the International Airport isn’t particularly necessary for the growth of a city. Players should only bother building one when they have money to burn on prestige rather than necessary services.
