Career mode is just a glorified random mission generator

Discussion Hub Activities, Career & Challenges
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Ok, the title may be a little bit of a clickbait :innocent:, but listen to me.

TL/DR: Career mode is just a glorified random mission generator, where no checks are conducted for aircraft mission capability or airport suitability as regards mission type and weather conditions, so that they are often impossible to complete.

I had started to write a bug report but then my report started to sound like a rant, so I decided to post here instead: Mods may move it where they think is better.

I believe that such bugs as https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sar-missions-want-you-to-land-in-unsuitable-locations/681934 or missions where you are not given enough fuel or which you find you must abort, are often just special cases of a much wider problem which is that career missions appear to be simply randomly generated. While this may be fine in itself, itā€™s evident that no checks are made for aircraft mission capability or airport suitability, so that assignments are often impossible to complete.

Let me relate an experience Iā€™ve had at the beginning of my career.

I get a charter mission in the Corvalis, with weather reported as VFR, so I accept it, but halfway through I enter IMC conditions. Ok, I think, it happens. But then I encounter sleet and ice, and the airspeed indicator freezes (the Corvalis has no pitot heat, and IRL it only had an optional ice protection system that was not certified for flight into known icing).

ATC refuses to let me change my altitude to exit icing conditions, so Iā€™m stuck in there, but luckily ATC then decides I should cancel IFR because Iā€™m now VFR (!). I wish I had taken a screenshot to show you how black was the cloud I was still flying in, but at least I can now change may altitude without being penalized, so I finally exit icing conditions, the ice thaws, but Iā€™m still in the clouds.

Ok, I think, weather is going to improve at my destination as they told me to cancel IFR, but no, itā€™s solid IMC all the way to the airport. Now Iā€™m still in the clouds over the Swiss alps, and itā€™s time to descend. I try to setup an RNAV approach, but no, the destination airfield is a grass strip in Switzerland, with no charts or IFR procedures. Mission Abort.

If you have flown a few of the career mission you must surely have found yourself in similar situations. I canā€™t count the number of times I have been offered absurd missions.

Private charter missions constantly appear for the DHC2, which may make sense if they were short island hops in Alaska, but no, they are four hour flights in Italy.

Iā€™m constantly offered a cargo mission in the Zlin Norden (!) from Miyake Island to Saitame Japan, and itā€™s a 106nm flight over the Pacific Ocean at 90kts! Yes, it can be done, but who does it?

The other day I was offered a cargo mission from Joigny (in central France, south of Paris) to Kinross, Scotland, in the Cessna Caravan. Who flies cargo from France to Scotland in a C208, a 551nm flight lasting almost 6 hours! Again, yes, technically feasible, but what about the destination airport? Itā€™s EGYV, Portmoak Glider Field! A grass strip glider field, home of the Scottish Gliding Centre! And itā€™s reported MVFR, and has no RNAV procedures. No thank you, Iā€™ve learned my lesson.

AI may be great and all, but at the present state of that technology, itā€™s garbage in/garbage out. Unless the prompts are well written, with some kind of way to filter mission types according to aircraft capability or airport suitability, and possibly with some regard of real life procedures, we will always get assignments which are absurd at the very best, if not impossible to complete.

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106nm at 90kts is a very short flight so I find it really weird that you seem to think it is long. 551nm in a C208 is much closer to 3.5 hours so it seems your trying to pad your rant.

As for ā€œrandom mission generatorā€. Yep, thatā€™s what I think of all the third-party ones too. So, Iā€™m not surprised at that.

As for other bugs, especially ATC. Yeah, itā€™s ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– . But unfortunately par for the course. I had high hopes for it in 2024. Hopefully they will be back from leave soon and get some good fixes in for ATC and missions. But Iā€™m not that hopeful.

Fortunately for me, I find all mission generators boring so it doesnā€™t bother me. I just plan my own flights.

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I think it would be a nice addition if we could just create missions we want, after all, we own the companies. Since its random anyways, it wouldnā€™t make a big difference and payment seems to be calculated from the parameters as well, so it would just calculate as it does now (of course with some balancing that still needs to be done, like low paying medevac and firefighting). We would still need to maintain and fly, so the gameplay would be the same, just everyone could decide where and what they would like to do. This could be upgraded to have some sort of logistic and planning in it, like available passengers, cargo etc. Maybe SAR and firefighting would be in certain areas only.
This could be an alternative to generated missions. I donā€™t mind them too much, but its very random, currently quite sparse, no filters in the map. It would be nice to have some control over the missions.

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There seems to be nothing random about the missions other than when they appear on the map. If you concentrate on trying to fly in an area you will figure this out rather quickly. Same flights over and over.

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It randomly generated missions once, and the results are permanent. Or at least very persistent.

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You really have to check the departure and destination airports in the EFB before accepting a mission because it often sends you to unsuitable airports. One time I was sent to a ~250 m runway in my PC-12 which has a landing distance of ~650 m. Needless to say I couldnā€™t land. The mission system should really take this into account and a given type of mission should never include unsuitable sized airports.

Most of these bugs can be worked around but you need to do extensive research to make sure you donā€™t end up in a bad situation.

I wonder how later missions will work. Will the game send airliners to grass airstrips and such?

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5h30ā€™ was the time given by the mission briefing for the C208 mission.
For the Zlin, the mission brief reports 2h.

But true, missions times as stated in the briefs seem to be excessive, in fact Iā€™ve submitted a bug report here.

But itā€™s not about the time, itā€™s about the choice of aircraft to fly the missions.

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Yes, lesson learned here :sweat_smile:.

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This is also my experince.

Think they where rondomly/procedurally generated once, but there is only a finite number of them, that always respawns randomly.

Still nobody seems to have done a rough check if they make sense or are at lest viable, the airports are usable/suitableā€¦
There seems also zero crosscheck with live weather.
(Same with license flights, gold missions imo, those should really have fixed enviroment conditions)

Very shallow, yet still severely buged.

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Welcome to real life. Working until 65. Although I wish we could get some new mission types like aerial pursuit for helicopters or aerial surveillance for both aircraft and helicopters

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I fully agree with your premise. I found some workarounds to the above that make these shallow, randomly generated missions a bit more playable:

  • Just donā€™t use the ATC. File VFR or cancel your IFR as soon as possible. IRL, youā€™d tell ATC unable, or declare an emergency, and just descend (or climb) out of the icing. IRL, ATC is a necessity and a valuable resource. In Career Mode, it is a lifeless facade. There is no other traffic and there is no one on the other end of the line. Youā€™re talking to a robot in an empty room. Other than mindlessly going through some procedural routine, itā€™s utterly pointless to use it at all.

  • Youā€™re a bush pilot on your own. Given the airfields it throws at you, the sheer loneliness of it, and the futility of ATC, Iā€™ve approached these missions as back country bush missions. And itā€™s gotten quite a bit more fun as a result. Especially if you actually fly in rural and rugged areas where this is plausible.

  • Setup vectors to final. If youā€™re in the mountains and thereā€™s an RNAV approach that helps with terrain, great. Otherwise, I always just program in the automatically generated vectors to final, and fly direct to the Final faf. It sets you right up to land every time. If you find yourself in IMC, you can even track the glidepath down to the runway. No need to abort unless the terrain is really hairy or the airfield is way too small to be usable.

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