I didn’t even need to wreck my plane. I thought I was clever buying the discounted plane and selling it for 140k..then I learned that I’d need closer to 240k to buy it back 
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I somehow managed to find a 6k, 7k, and then 9k employee based skydive mission in a row which brought some hope. After about 6 hours so far this morning upon the rest of grinding yesterday. I was able to get the cub x as the cheapest plane in the used market. Finally got a freelance mission done. Wooo! $35k for a single mission is so much better than the 500 credits per mission I was getting. Upward and onward.
Just to show… selling your first plane without doing any freelance missions is a bad idea. Do not do it! Just shy of level 60 now and was finally able to do my first freelance mission for my first company I created at level 25 (when I sold the plane).
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vip charter airline missions that pop once a day show as 150k will give a successful trip nea ra million dollars; 20mil xp.
Now I’m a child of floating blue rectangles in the sky 
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If you haven’t purchased a 2nd business, keep grinding flightseeing for money to get a new plane instead of used. The repair costs on used planes add up to the cost of a new one and you can net 150k/hr flightseeing vs 100k or less /hr for cargo for example.
You can crank out a flight in 20 mins and earn 50k and have infinite respawn of missions in that same area. Cargo, you need to fly between 1-2 hours to earn 100k and then PAY to get yourself to the nearest job.
Flightseeing is a better money grind than buying a 2nd company. Get your money up on flightseeing and invest in only new planes for your new companies and skip used altogether.
Are you sure you’re in the Freelance tab and not the Employee tab?
Because the rate at which already worn parts degrade is fast enough that you’ll tank that extra 100-200k into repairs within a handful of flights.
Click through each category of parts and see the individual grade of every component and you’ll see that green is far from green, sometimes everything is barely hanging on for dear life but you still get a green dot.
I think they need more than green and orange to get a good idea of the aircraft condition at a glance. They need red, orange, yellow, green.
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the economy is for lack of a better word, ■■■■■. even on straightforward cargo missions, you lose up to 40% of ‘cargo integrity’ points because the turbulence is so crazy it might as well be called “microsoft downdraft simulator” or “microsoft 20kt crosswind while landing in a C172 simulator”. It’s ridiculous. Even so, just to buy the next plane it’s at least 15+ missions with little to no mistakes.
I love that people wanted realism and now that there is realism, people hate realism. Although people want real crash realism too, so many we should get when you have a fatal crash, you can’t play the game anymore. I’m sure people would love that level of realism in the sim for once.
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I was being sarcastic and that was my point because people complained about crashes not being real enough in 2020. Many also said it was strictly catered towards casual simmers.
My one wish with the mode and the sim in general is that they have more tutorials to explain the ins and outs of what happens and how to use certain features. I feel like enough has changed from MSFS2020 that an in menu tutorial would be ideal for all users (with the option to turn off).
Same goes with career mode. I’m an old school kind of guy on these things so while I know many games now offer a level of “have it your way”, I do like that it’s difficult and challenging. I think the only thing they could do is maybe have a difficulty of flight and maybe difficulty of penalty option so that while it’s still difficult, maybe the penalty is slightly easier for those that aren’t looking for a full blown realistic option. But I don’t think it should be easy.
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And what if you disable crashes and damage ?
I’ve been wondering if the optional inspection stuff during walkaround (besides just taking off the covers) shows anything like that. I guess if I found something I’m supposed to abort the mission and go fix it?
Heh, for me the detailed wear & tear is the main reason I’m interested in this built-in career mode. External addons like Neofly have a general “hull health” but not things like individual brake pads and such, as far as I know.
That aside, for “just flying,” the employee missions already give exactly that, right?
Do you have something else in mind?
How are they going to cope with this stupidity. Strangely the aircraft rolled over moments after the screenshot and I crashed! by-by reputation!
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Walking the dog and loosing a plane is big difference to crashing an invisible wall or get smashed by another bug.
In regards of all the bugs - the consequences are way too drastic.
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I’m not even that casual and I JUST crashed my first plane because the runway bugged and shot my plane in the sky. Yeah ffs, now I gotta play like 15hrs(?) to get another one..?
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“GA reality” - good term. That’s the best part of the sim when you have it - following the magenta line gets boring very fast. Of all the challenges, etc from MSFS 2020, my favorite for the GA reality factor, was I think called Breckenridge to Mariposa or something like that. Unless you cheat with an add-on GPS or use Little NavMap, the pilotage challenge of that scenario felt very real - reminded me of the challenge of finding landmarks (and even some airports) when I was learning to fly in the mid-90s,
That’s what ETS2 does.
ETS2 career system is pretty well done, and much of fs2024 career modes seems inspired by it.
In the real world your Cessna 172 doesn’t park upside down on top of the hangar.
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It actually is a lot of faff - I did firefighting before starting any companies or buying any planes.
You are totally free to just pursue the non-company contracts - the discounted plane is offered to you when you start your first company, whatever that company may be.
The company ownership is the high risk high reward route - you bet a lot more on not encountering bugs, but also stand to gain more money - however besides more planes all you stand to gain is just money, and money is only useful for certifications and more planes. Which you can save up for just grinding ordinary missions.
I think from money point of view it is totally worth it if you don’t crash frequently - even with all the bugs eating your planes (lost two planes in a row last night taxiing into collision box of a trees growing outside airport and ragequit).
Also, the “grinding” part is the enjoyable part of simming! I want to fly lots of missions in C208! This is why I got this game!
So, it is totally up to you - just for firefighting the non-company route is probably easier. If you want to gamble a bit on your ability to pilot and avoid bugs open a company and risk your plane.
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There is a career mode without plane condition - don’t buy planes! Certifications are pretty cheap, even without the uber-profits from the owned planes. It is totally viable to play career and unlock certifications / mission types without engaging in the company-owning side of things.
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