I’ve been playing the career mode in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and I must say, it’s been a lot of fun! It’s a great addition for someone like me who enjoys the challenge of structured gameplay.
That said, it can be frustrating at times. Right now, I’m flying medium cargo missions with a Cessna 208 Caravan. The flights are often around 600 NM, which is a bit too long for me to sit through, so I frequently skip ahead to the descent.
When it works, the skip feature is great— sometimes it spawns me about 30 NM from the destination, which feels manageable. But more often than not, it turns into something out of Star Wars, where they come out of lightspeed too close to the planet!
Sometimes, I spawn directly over the airport or far too close at a ridiculous altitude, always with flaps down and overspeed. Just earlier, it spawned me in a -8000 ft/min nosedive, and I couldn’t recover before the plane crashed. It’s a bit of a mixed bag.
Anyone else having similar experiences? Any tips to make the skip-to-descent feature more reliable?
Yeah, the skip function for cargo missions can be sketchy for sure but I’d rather just loop around the airport and land then sit through a 5 hour mission… I’ve only had one instance where I spawned with the plane on the ground with gear up and I just paused the game and quit the mission.
I’d invest in buying a PC-12 for medium cargo, it’s much easier to fly than the caravan which i’m sure you have already noticed.
Thing I hated about it most is not being able to idle the engine, which makes it very hard to land on short runways and reverse thrust doesn’t always work as intended either. You’ll love the PC-12 after suffering with the caravan
To fly the Caravan at max sim rate set the altitude to 1000 feet higher than you are, then turn VS on and set to 0 FPM. Flies straight as an arrow at mach 2.
ALT-N works wonders for me makes these ■■■■■■ missions at the start go way faster. but does using the ALT N key effect your pay out at the end of a mission?
Yes, it does. As a freelancer, for private charter missions, the no skip bonus is a substantial part of the payout, ~half of the final payout. Starting from medium cargo missions, it could be more efficient if you skip as much as possible as it only constitutes ~30% of the final payout, even compared to using sim rate at 16x. @bombaclatmann
Yeah, skipping cruise makes a big dent in your earnings as @GrumpySpy874058 said. I think you can get away with some of the other skips without losing too much (taxi /parking etc) but I’d avoid skipping the cruise. I do use SimRate but you have to be careful with max SimRate as I’ve crashed a couple of times. I’m not exactly sure what happens but it seems that at max SimRate the aircraft starts to yo-yo. Sometimes it settles down and is ok but once or twice it has gone too far. I think on 2 occasions I went into over speed and stressed the plane out - got a mission failed. I can’t recall exactly but I think it happened at a way point turn so now I slow it down to keep an eye on it, especially when manoeuvring.
When I got a stable connection, I generally find skipping cruise in medium cargo makes money quicker. Even 16x cruise takes ~15mins, enough to complete another mission.
When doing 16x with PC12, I usually set AT aiming at a lower airspeed then use HDG/TRK direct to the dest., instead of NAV w/ waypoints, to avoid excessive rolls and overspeed, which may cause overstress.
I like having waypoints set for a bit more realism, but if I’m going to to be speeding up time I can’t really use realism as an argument. I tend to fly VFR so I sometimes set my own waypoints to avoid terrain. I don’t have auto-throttle in any of my aircraft yet but I’ve learned my lesson and I do decrease throttle now when I increase SimRate. If I had more confidence in the game I’d probably be more happy to take my time and pretty much fly at 1x but I’ve had a few issues with landings (admittedly some were my mistakes, but others were bugs I wasn’t prepared for) so now feel I have to speed things up so I don’t feel I’ve wasted a load if the landing goes pear-shaped. If I just want to grind some missions for credits then yeah, I think what you’ve said is a good suggestion.
Yeah. If it is for realism, it is really good to fly at 1x so you can take your time and do all the procedures right. If you want to push your landing skills, try Alps as I found it pretty rewarding in bad weather bonus and approach/landing planning skills. Sim rate is not perfect cheat though, passive income would be reduced as it is based on the actual time you fly.
Ah yes that’s another good point about passives.
Funnily enough I just saw your post on Alps missions as I posted on that too. My first VIP was there and was a disaster! . My charter company is in Italy and currently I let the staff do those ones. I might need to revisit now! Only got a C172 there atm though which isn’t ideal. Currently I’m flying the C208 around the US, mainly Kansas /Texas etc as the weather has been good and a bit more predictable. Although it’s had its issues I’ve been enjoying Career mode. It could turn out to be really good.
Is using an increased sim rate now being penalised?
I’ve just flown an employee medium cargo mission, which I’m sure should have had a reward of over 10k, yet I got less than 3k when I’d completed the mission, with an “S”. I used a 4x rate on and off during the cruise phase.
I suppose I might have been mistaken with the reward, but surely a theoretical, proper time, 5.5hr mission should yield more than 3k?
As I fly sometimes without sim rate and with sim rate as well, as my time and mood takes me, I can say that it is not penalizing for sim rate. The only thing to know is that your actual flight hours are as much as real time and not in game time. If you speed through an 8 hour mission in 1 hour, your flight time is 1 hour. This counts for wear, insurance and passive income, but not for mission payout.
There was however once that I did a no-skip flight and it didn’t recognize it, so basically took it as I skipped the cruise. Maybe something like that happened with you as well. It definitely should pay the full amount if you didn’t skip. If its any help, when this happened (thankfully only once) the skip to decent option didn’t appear the entire flight, so something must have been bugged.
It was an odd mission as I’d landed it, but it wasn’t recognised, so I skipped to descent and it took me to over 30,000ft and I had to land it again to get the completion. You might therefore be right about the “skip” causing my lower reward.
I had one mission (relocate plane) that was 100+NM and I was pinched for time so I went in knowing I’d use skip to descent.
The skip would put me withing 5NM~ of the airport, with the only problem being I was literally already on the ground. I tried 2 different times to counter-act where the sim would put me post “skip”, but it was the same spot regardless.
Honestly its pretty funny to “come out of warp drive” and hit a cactus, spin 90 degrees to the right, and hit an even bigger cactus to crash lol
It’s still a problem. I never even tried skipping until a couple days ago but in the two times I tried it, I got placed right over the airport and at the FAF on final. I thought skip to descent meant skipping to top of descent.
