How does economy model work in career mode?
For example, cargo missions. Does a payout depend on the airplane you use? If there are multiple aircraft of the same category in your fleet, how do you choose the right one for the mission to maximize profits?
Does it make sense to “upgrade” Cessna Caravan to, say, Cessna SkyCourier? Will it be able to haul more cargo per mission increasing profit or will it make maintenance more expensive?
From my experience with med cargo missions (Caravan and SkyCourier) the payouts seem to favor the larger SkyCourier. Caravan was making about 800-1.0mil per mission, the sky courier is about 900-1.2mil depending on the listed pay amount for the mission. This also depends on your Reputation bonuses as well. I fly the SkyCourier, its faster, flies higher and farther while burning a reasonable amount of fuel for its size and speed.
I upgraded from the caravan to avoid its autopilot hunting issue in cruise. love the caravan in general or hand flying, but all the med cargo missions are hours long and like 500ish miles, not great for hand flying at 175KTAS. The SkyCourier doesn’t have the autopilot issue and cruises at 235KTAS at FL230 burning 100lb/hr more than the caravan cruising at 12,000ft
the right plane for the mission between those two is whichever is closer. since I have the caravan on crew mode I only fly the SkyCourier
You get paid more on the class of work than the plane you used.
Flight Seeing: 30k
Light Cargo: $100k
Medium Cargo $1 Million (If base pay is 500k)
Heavy Cargo: ??? not spawning.
Medevac: $500k
VIP Executive with Vision Jet: $250k
VIP with CJ4: ??? not spawning
I don’t have passenger pay except for 737: 500k to 22 million based on base pay which is loosely based on trip duration.
I think it’s pretty clear there’s supposed to be a middle step between medium cargo and the 737. It’s just disabled for some reason.
I’ve worked out that if you are flying the plane, it seems to pay the same no matter what you chose to fly, but if you set it to autopilot while you fly something else, the value of the plane plays a big role in how much money is paid. So the game rewards you for flying a ■■■■■■ plane and giving the expensive one to the fleet. To me, this is a broken system. Like most of career. There’s no incentive to fly big expensive planes to fly yourself other than the reward of saying to yourself that you earned it and bought it. It becomes more of a company/management simulator and less flight simulator at this point. But it’s really poor how pay is rewarded if you get to unlock skycrane missions after fighting all the bugs to get an S rank in hoist missions, when the top mission you can unlock pays about 6k per mission as an employee when that helicopter costs 38 MILLION. Like WTF?? Who worked out this risk/reward system?
And don’t get started on how many Medivac missions you have to grind to be able to afford a simple Boeing.