# Flight Ops — Game Design

Browser game, pure economic gameplay: run a small airplane transport company in Europe.
No manual flying — planes auto-fly assigned routes; you manage the business from an ops dashboard over a 2D map (lite 3D terrain if it stays lightweight).

## Layout (single screen)
- Left pane — Assets: fleet list (plane type, status, fuel, location), wallet, reputation
- Right pane — Jobs & Market: contracts between airports (reward, deadline, cargo/passengers) with accept/dispatch actions; market actions (buy/sell planes, refuel, maintenance)
- Middle — Map: EU airports as markers, animated plane positions along routes, active contract routes highlighted; click airport → info (runways, local time, weather); click plane → status

## Core loop
Accept job → dispatch a plane → watch it fly the route on the map → earn money + reputation → buy better planes / take bigger jobs.

## Map & rendering
- MapLibre GL JS with vector tiles (OpenFreeMap/OSM-based) — crisp detail down to ~10–100 m/px at city zoom, smooth continent overview; no Cesium needed
- Camera: top-down when zoomed out, tilts to ~45° as you zoom in (zoom-driven pitch transition)
- Lite 3D once tilted: terrain/hillshade from free DEM tiles + building extrusion if it stays lightweight, otherwise flat 2D
- Game-logic data (airports, runways, countries/regions): downloaded CSV dataset cached in `data/`

## Simulation engine
- Server-authoritative state: sim ticks on the server, client polls and renders
- Time scale 1x–60x + pause; sim clock persisted across sessions
- SQLite via Drizzle ORM — schema designed to switch to Postgres later
- Demand/revenue/cost formulas per contract leg; fuel burn by distance/plane type

## Weather (display-only for now)
- Generated per airport (wind, visibility/fog, conditions)
- Shown on map / airport info; no gameplay effects yet

## MVP slice
Starter plane + EU airports + contracts + buy/sell + map visualization + weather display.

## Later
- Weather effects: delays, fuel burn changes, closed airports
- More aircraft types, upgrades (fuel efficiency, cargo capacity) — money sinks
- Multi-region packs (non-EU airports)
- Multiplayer (shared world, contract races)