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.

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, maintenance). No manual refueling — dispatch auto-tops-up the tank to 150% of the leg requirement (capped at capacity) when cash allows
Middle — Map: world airports as markers (one per metro area), 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)
View is flat 2D only (zoom-driven tilt and terrain were removed in v0.3.0 as over-engineered)
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–1000x (discrete ladder 1/2/5/10/25/50/100/250/500/1000) + 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 + world 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
Multiplayer (shared world, contract races)

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