I took a plane today and thought that the flight system in Torn lacks customisation and depth, and could be expanded on. I came up with two different routes that the expansion could go down: personal and commercial, which I'll explain further below.
Pilot Licence (New Education Course)
In order to be able to fly your own plane, you'd have to obtain a pilot's licence from a new education course with modules that unlock different types of planes or abilities - narrow-body aircraft, wide-body aircraft, passive upgrades such as increased top speed, better fuel efficiency or a discount on new planes.
After completing the course, you can either choose to stay as a personal pilot who can only fly themselves, or enter a player-made company - Airlines.
A New City Building (Personal Pilots)
Basically like the docks but for the sale of aircraft. "Torn Aviation Group" for example.
The screenshot below shows what it could look like.
The plane would basically act like an upgrade to your private island, boosting it's maximum happiness.
Each plane has a few properties that are unique to the aircraft, meaning players can tailor the aircraft to their style of play.
Range: This is the maximum distance from Torn that the aircraft can travel. For example, the Conquest has a maximum speed of 1400 mph but a range of around 4000 miles, meaning it's good for fast, short haul trips to nearby locations. For the sake of simplicity, there could just be two categories - short haul and long haul
Speed: Obviously, this affects how quick you'll arrive at a destination, which is probably the most favourable stat.
Upkeep: This value can change depending on several factors like efficiency, airport turnaround times and maximum speed.
Further customisation is possible, with liveries and paint jobs which can be changed later. Flag and Registration are also customisable, but are optional. These cannot be changed after confirming.
The value of planes depreciates quickly, meaning you'll lose a lot by trying to sell it back to the dealership.
Commercial Airlines (Player-made Company)
Now, this "phase two" idea seems far-fetched, and I agree. I just thought it would be an interesting concept.
The key factors in a commercial airline are reputation, safety and speed because these determine whether or not a player would want to take a flight with the airline.
Roles in the job include maintenance crew, flight attendant, co-pilot, pilot and senior pilot. You can rise the ranks from co-pilot to senior pilot with a new trainable stat available to your employer: "Flight Hours". The higher your hours, the more experience you have in the Airlines. Senior pilots bring in quicker, more efficient flights for the company. The maintenance crew increase the safety of the aircraft, and flight attendants increase reputation.
Low safety (due to poor maintenance) can lead to crashes which hospitalises most passengers (if not all of them) and sends them back to their origin country. Crashes lead to drops in reputation, which leads to a loss in revenue. Company may also have to pay compensation to injured passengers.
Flights would run on evenly spaced schedules (for example, a flight departs to South Africa every 15 mins, every 5 mins to Switzerland) and the service frequency depends on the demand of the route and how many companies operate on it.
During moments which increase demand to certain destinations such as item restocks or calendar events, the frequency of the plane services will not change, meaning flights can be overcrowded, prone to accidents, cancelled or tickets sold out.
Freight (7 star airline)
Larger number of employee slots and more revenue potential.
Basically the same concept as the above section, but here the focus is delivering cargo. Specifically, the replenishment of overseas goods (such as plushies and flowers). This could be facilitated by NPC contracts which include freight transportation to certain countries. This can lead to a deep ecosystem where infrequent cargo services = higher demand for delivery, therefore higher profit.
A more lucrative strategy could be to smuggle drugs in and out of Torn city via organised crimes in factions. Higher revenue, but much higher risk - penalties such as fines, flying licences being revoked, and imprisonment.
Additional Mechanics
Commercial flights are to replace standard class flights, with a lower expected ticket price. The flight information will be public, meaning this method of travel might not be the best idea whilst in a ranked war. Information includes:
- Registration of the plane eg. "T-GXBR"
- Airport of origin
- Individual info of the passengers on the flight
- 5 minute timeframe of when the plane is expected to land
For personal flights, their information is also public, but can be hidden with an anonymous fee, similar to the one in the item market.
In both commercial and personal, an upgrade to the aircraft such as "In-flight entertainment" could be purchased for a one-off installation fee, allowing users to access more of the website like the casino, bank and education.
Anyways, I just wanted to share my idea. Let me know if you think it'd be a cool feature, or just a waste of time. What would you change?
*no AI was used