Balance of income (Medevac vs Medium Cargo)

[PhoenixCephalid]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:
Payout for missions seams pretty unbalanced. I noted this especially comparing medium cargo missions vs. Medevac missions as freelancer.

• A typical medium cargo mission as employee generates about 20k income, a medevac around 36k.
• While freelancing medevec missions, the creation of the company and the airplanes are more expensive. (PC12 Cargo: // PC12 Medevec: )
• Income for a freelance cargo mission, no skip, generates then about 900k up to 1M
• Income for a freelance Medevac mission is only about 400k to 500k, although the creation of the company and the airplanes are more expensive. An income of 1.5m to 2.0m could be expected.
• Same actually applies for flight seeing. A mission with a helicopter should be worth more then one with a plane. A H125 is much more expensive to purchase and maintain.

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?
-Yes

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

• Always

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

1. Flying medevec or medium cargo missions as freelancer compared to flying those missions as employee

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

• not relevant

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

• no

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

• not relevant

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

• not relevant

MEDIA

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[MERK7]

ya it legit looks like someone just forgot a 0 in what ever multiplier they are using. or how ever they do the calculation. I too see this issue payout not correct for time or mission access level

[Andreas0196]

I’d even widen this topic. In general many things do not make sense to do from a monitary point of view in career. Progressing does not always mean making more money. Whenever I buy a new plane it is unclear, if i’ll get my money back withing 2-3 flights (eg. Cirrus Vision Charter) or within 15 flights (PC-12 Medevac). That adds a gambling feel to buying any new aircraft/company, you never know if it’ll make sense to do so.

Currently playing medevac feels like actively losing money. I’m excited to see what passenger missions will pay, once Ican unlock them. Will it be 100k per hour? Or a million? or 10 million?

[PhoenixCephalid]

I fully agree. So far, only cargo missions provide decent payouts when using tier 2 planes.

From my experience:

• Start with light cargo
• Then progress to charter service (private)
• Followed by medium cargo

Skip everything else until you have the funds, but don’t expect any significant payouts. I made the mistake of starting with medevac missions—repairs and upkeep costs were endless.

While medevac missions are more demanding than medium cargo, the latter’s payment scales with runway length. The shorter the takeoff or landing, the better the pay. A 400m takeoff with a PC-12, for instance, is quite a challenge.

And now, after the update, the so-called air ambulance missions are the only ones still displaying the employee income instead of the freelance payout, unlike all other missions.

[iHK47]

Quite annoyed that the search engines are inundated with garbage threads and posts because I’ve been trying to find an answer to this question and similar questions for a while. Would have been nice for this to pop up in any of the 20 previous searches I’ve made before taking the leap of faith.

It really makes no sense that employee Medevac missions can often be 50, 60% more than medium cargo, in many cases 300% more, paying 70, 80, even 90,000cr. I really wanted to fly a half decent jet and the PC24 “mostly” works for me so I took the leap of faith, expecting 60-300% increase over medium cargo missions as the employee payouts would suggest. This would put my 6-10 hour flights somewhere around 1.4m-3m per flight.

Trust me when I say my face sank pretty low looking at the map and not just seeing it be lower than expected, but that every single mission listed is under 50,000cr. That is absolutely in every way unacceptable. The balance for this is atrocious. I wouldn’t be incredibly peeved if it was 450,000. Whatever, still going to end up getting medium cargo money but with a nicer plane and new places to visit. But THIS?

Asobo, this needs fixed ASAP. 6mil for this plane and 6 hours flight listings is insane.

[M3ID0]

Yes, the only good paying career paths I’ve found so far is Medium Cargo and Passenger Airliner although I’ve only tried 1 passenger airline mission and I crashed as soon as I entered the plane because it’s broken. I’ve even tried to start a firefighting company and the payout is just as bad as Medevac.

The massive pay difference is not letting me enjoy the entire career mode because I find myslef not doing those missions since they’re not worth my time. I get sightseeing and light cargo having lower payouts but the more advanced career paths should pay more especially if they cost more to create.

[DayTradingHippy]

Howdy folks! 70+ hours of flight time on Microsoft 2024 so far. Reading this thread and seeing the shared frustration has made me create an account in order to help y’all out. I’ve bought nearly every company so far and their corresponding available aircraft in order to test payouts so I could maximize my time spent and progress as fast as possible.

Medium cargo in the PC12 is the quickest way to make money as of this moment. Doing missions with skips but increasing sim rate for around 2 minutes after reaching cruising altitude and getting skip option will create the best R:R ratio in terms of a time spent flying to credits earned ratio. But if you get lucky and are allowed to skip right after taking off then that’ll be a better time to credits return, it just doesn’t happen all the time.

VIP in the Cirrus has the cheapest start up costs in comparison with returns, it also seems to allow for slightly quicker flights and easier approaches (this is a good route to go for buying your first PC12 or Grand Caravan for medium cargo) Now if you buy the CJ4 thinking, hey I can carry more passengers and have a massive range, I must make more money than Cirrus, well you’d be very wrong. The CJ4 for me wouldn’t spawn a single mission. I’ve run into this problem before and selling all my aircraft in my other companies is what got missions to start spawning on the map, but the CJ4 has no such luck. Lost millions figuring that out which sucked caused the CJ4 is one of the best planes to fly in the game imo.

Firefighting in the Mustang is not worth the time or credits if you’re looking to earn money, however, this is the best route in terms of reputation increase. (I keep a P51 in order to always stay at S reputation. 2 missions takes about 1 hour and gets me from rep. C to rep. S in the event of crashing when the game decides to lag only after you flare on final)

Medevac is worthless at the moment, takes longer than medium cargo and VIP while only paying out 50 - 200k per flight depending on skips. That was frustrating to see after spending 5 mil on that beautiful red and white liveried Pilatus. 1 flight away from extended attack freelance, will update once I buy that plane and test it out.

Airliner Passenger in the Heart Aerospace payed out 100k for a full 5hr 30m flight with no skip. Again seems like the medevac mission where we have a coding problem and we’re being rewarded employee payouts and not freelance payouts.

I’ll keep testing and updating as time goes on, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me here, I’ve dealt with most of the bugs and found workarounds for getting the game to run better on console. Safe flying out there folks, God bless.

[M3ID0]

Great info and I agree with all of it. I avoided the firefighting missions because the payouts suck but then I tried it and saw it’s very easy to get an S score if you manage to put out the fire in the first try which is very easy to do. I already had S reputation doing medium cargo with the PC-12 but I would lose it and go down to an A sometimes becasue I would get dinged for random things I didn’t do like missing ATC requests or not landing on the runway when I clearly landed on it. Have you unlocked extended attack? how are the payouts?

One tip to add if you don’t already know: go into flight plan and modify cruising altitude so you don’t spend a ton of time trying to get up to 29,000ft. I thankfully always get the skip option as soon as I reach the cruise altitude and just skip to landing

I’m surprised to hear that the passenger airliners make so low. I’m hoping it’s not the same kind of payout for the 737.. I have enough to buy one but holding off until a patch comes so I don’t crash as soon as I enter the plane.

[Friday225]

what about the 787? Is it really only 15 million to buy it like it says?

[M3ID0]

I think only the 737 and the heart electric plane are in career mode. The 737 is 99 mil new and over 40 mil used in bad condition so I doubt the 787 woulld be anywhere near 15 million.

[iFlyRealHigh]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

In the Career Mode, the money rewards for different types of missions and specializations with similar complexity are very different currently. At the moment, cargo missions, especially medium-sized ones, pay more than other types of missions that need similar aircraft and levels of operational complexity.

Important Points:

Cargo Missions: Missions to fly medium-sized loads using planes like the Cessna Grand Caravan, PC-12 etc. pay well, making this a lucrative company.

Medevac Missions: Even though medevac missions have a lot of similar operational requirements, they pay about 2x less than medium cargo missions, even when they require the same kind of planes AND some of them are actually take longer to complete. So Medevac company at this point is a waste of time.

I am worried here about the current reward system because it makes players more likely to choose cargo missions over other companies. This imbalance could mean that different types of missions aren’t used as much as they could be, which would take away from the all-around aviation experience that MSFS 2024 wants to offer. You guys spent hundreds and thousands of hours of developing a career mission, yet because of this slight inconsistency that you could easily fix, majority of your effort isn’t actually appreciated by playing it as much it could have been.

For Balanced Progression, here are some suggestions:

To improve Career Mode and get people involved in all types of companies, think about making the following changes:

Ensure financial rewards across professions/companies reflect mission difficulty, certifications, and duration. Or put it plainly, if you fly the same plane and it takes 5 hours in either company - you have to be paid the same.
Example: missions requiring a medium plane (Grand Caravan, PC-12, etc), regardless of being cargo or medevac or whatever, should offer competitive compensation. I mention medium cargo and medevac in this case because they are very similar length missions and require same category of medium aircraft. This logic has to cover all the companies and types of missions though.

Progressive Reward Scaling: Balance the tiered reward system for each company (for example, Light → Medium → Heavy → Super Heavy) to make it easy for players to see how they can move up and give them a reason to do so. This way ALL the companies will be appreciated since there will be a balance.

Include Extra Incentives: In addition to financial rewards, offer unique incentives like special aircraft, balance exclusive missions to be worth the effort, as well as balance reputation bonuses to get people to join mission types that aren’t often done. Example: At my reputation and level, I get special mission to transport passengers on Boeing 737 Max which is a mission that is several hours long, yet I get paid measly $40K. Why would I spend 3-4 hours of my time flying this airliner if I am pressed to focus on the next plane in line that costs 11 million and I could make about 500K in those 3-4 hours otherwise.

By fixing these problems and making the reward system more fair, MSFS 2024 can make Career Mode more fun and interesting, encouraging players to be involved in all areas of virtual aviation.

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[KiaraLeona]

Good ideas. I would like to see a more equal playfield in terms of mission payouts for equivalent time and risk investment. Currently these don’t seem to be calculated well.

Firefighting is also very low payout (initial attack at least). The mission is not difficult, but the cheapest Air Tractor is about 1mil and you get 20-30k per mission as a freelancer, which is barely covering insurance and maintenance.

Also there is little incentive to have more expensive aircraft for the same mission type. For example helicopter spraying where the Robinson is way cheaper than the H125 yet it receives the same amount of rewards. (Altough the Robinson is currently bugged so it can’t do missions.)

The same is true for Flightseeing and VIP, the more expensive aircraft (in some cases more seats, like Diamond) does not offer bigger rewards for the missions, so if you want to fly the expensive ones, you will loose money (get less rewards), which might deter people for choosing those.

[ZeekR5430]

Agreed there should at least be these incentives to use a more expensive plane:

• Passenger Capacity
• Payload Capacity
• Speed (faster mission completion)

Not sure if any of those matter at the moment in career mode (I haven’t moved passed the 172) but having the missions be a little more dynamic payout in terms of payload weight for cargo or passenger capaicity for VIP/Pass would make the planes more meaningful.

[KiaraLeona]

Just to see how weird it is with Medevac freelance payout, here are two screenshots showing the same mission as employee and as freelance. The employee mission pays more on paper than the freelance. Of course we know that the employee payout shows the money you would get if you wouldn’t skip the cruise, while the freelance is a base payout, the no skip bonus adds to that. But this is a 20h (!) flight, it should pay way more. It also requires the pc-12 because it is 1850Nm, the caravan has no range for it (could refuel at an airport but we can’t do that in missions, and of course we could add fuel anytime with keybinding, but I don’t count that). So this needs a 5mil airplane, after 20h the payout would barely cover the basic insurance let alone the advanced insurance and maintenance.

EDIT: I took that mission as a freelance, I wanted to skip it but the mission didn’t recognize the cruise altitude, so I just flew it (with sim acceleration). It was 8 hours in game time instead of the indicated 20. And however the base income is much lower compared to the medium cargo base income, the no skip bonus seems to be very big in comparison. Comparing no skip medium cargo vs no skip medevac, the difference is not that much appearently. I would get around the same for a no skip medium cargo that is 7-8h in game. I guess the problem is that if you skip to decent in both cases, then you get much more for medium cargo. Maybe it is like that because in medevac an emergency can occur anytime while flying and redirecting to a random airport?

[PreachingPigeon]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

1. Medevac missions pays way too little.
2. The missions break when the mission system is having problems detecting your correct altitude.
3. The co-pilot should be there, but isn`t.
4. ATC is not helpful when responding to PAN-PAN. Should give direction to nearest airport.

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue? Not the issue.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)? Every single flight.

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

1. Do any medevac missions. Just pick one.

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

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[iFlyRealHigh]

Great post, @KiaraLeona. That mission should pay at least 3 million dollars because it is three times longer than regular missions that pay a million dollars each (5.5 - 6 hours). I can’t wait for them to balance all of these inconsistencies. The game is just full of them. The only solution for us right now is to find the best bang for an hour and just fly those missions, which is grind, and with so much content in the career, grinding makes no sense.

But we have no choice because higher tier planes are extremely expensive, so we are forced to engage in this micromanagement. I’d love to have ALL companies and fly all types of missions based on my mood for the day, but I can’t because the pay is so different, some companies don’t have a medium tier, and others have bugs.

They’ve spent SO MANY development hours on Career and seeing it so unpolished is breaking my heart because the “game” part of this sim is amazing. Free flight is ok, but it’s not any different than it was in 2020. The Career makes 2024 stand out by a huge margin, both how cool it is and how badly polished and buggy it is. They really need to get their stuff together and get to polishing the career mode as much as thy humanly can.

[DirtyStalker224]

Whats annoying is before the map money fixes Medevac used to offer base pay of 300K.

and now it has been reduced to under 100K ( ninja nerf by MS ), now making Medevac worthless.

• C208 is a Tier 2 plane recieving Tier 1 rewards in Medevac
• Medevac has really long flights but is rewards are not worth the time/effort.

[WornSheep1977]

cannot agree more!!!

[nigsnigs]

Yes medium cargo missions seem to be offering good bang for buck, that being said I dont like the Cessna grand caravan, I don’t think its the easiest thing to fly/land for such a small plane, feels like a “heavy” cessna 172 - which I appreciate is basically what it is, but it seems to get tossed around in any sort of wind like it’s lighter version, sometimes it feels worse.

I will save up for the PC12 and buy one of those next.

I also heard (but not yet tried) that if you are literally just trying to make money, buy loads of Cessna 172’s and put crew on them, and then just take time maintaining them (dont use the auto maintain thing) and apparently one guy was making like 4m credits per 24 hours just passive income.

It feels cheesy though, although I can understand with not really any other viable option at the moment.

I’d also love to try the 737 as in some of the employee missions, it is mostly working, but trying to grind 99m even running medium cargo missions it just…

Life is too short basically.

[KiaraLeona]

Thats true for passive income. Smaller aircraft are having a much better ROI. I have 150 aircraft on crew and make about 20 million in 7 flight hours. It is not as cheesy, it makes sense to expand the fleet of your company as you go. The ui is a mess, but you don’t need to maintain all too often.