Hey im new to this game and was wanting a bit of help please. I just got my first level 2 plane but it cant stop at a lot of my airports how can i make it so they can stop over there to make it to the next spot? Also when do I unlock some bigger planes most I have at the moment is 4 cargo/people and want to know when you unlock the bigger planes. Only just found out today that red dots and blue dots have more people so I closed nearly all of my black ones and bought 3 red ones instead. I suppose what I am after is just some tips in how to progress faster as im level 10 and it takes a long time to level up. Thanks for any help or advice you can offer!
So last night I was posting about trying out a new double-route layout. I've opened it up last night and have been running it all day and it's working pretty good! I have 20 plane slots and all of them are being used. I have seven airports open, L.A., Chicago, N.Y., Istanbul, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo. I keep advertising up on Chicago, N.Y., Shanghai and Beijing at all times. All of my big planes are fully weight and range upgraded. All of my feeder planes are fully weight upgraded. Here's my layout: Blue Route is Chicago <==> Istanbul <===> Shanghai. I don't land in Istanbul ever, I only run full planes from one end to the other. I feed this route with L.A. and N.Y. on the North American side(which is back feeding which is less-than-perfect, I know, but Mexico City is ~way~ to far away. Perhaps later when I have more plane slots I can have the feeder numbers to run just L.A. and Mexico City, but for now I can't) and Tokyo and Beijing on the Asia side. Shanghai to Beijing is less-than-perfect, I could just feed with Seoul, and I might switch to that, more on that later. My bird birds on Route Blue are: 2 Cloudliner-Ps (BLUP1 and BLUP2) 2 Cloudliner-Cs (BLUC1 and BLUC2) Colored blue primarily (thus the name, c'mon now). I have them split into two groups, so a P and a C together on each end. This puts a 34 layover drain on each end every hour. Odds are when I have the planes I'll add a pair of Cyclone-M's to this route and it should be fine. Red Route is N.Y. <===> Istanbul <===> Beijing. Straight line. I feed this route with L.A. and Chicago on the North American side and with Shanghai and Tokyo on the Asia side. Asia is wonderful for layovers and feeders. I never have layover trouble on this end of my route and generally overfill (have my feeder planes full of layovers ready to unload as soon as the big birds fly off). My big birds on this route are: 8 Cyclone-M's in 4 groups of two. They're named RED01 through RED08. I never send them unless their pair plane is also flying or ready to fly. This puts me at a 48 layover drain each time they touch down. For these guys I typically wait at least one new jobs refresh for each pair before sending them off to reduce the drain on my layovers, and typically don't have layover problems in general. All of my feeder planes are Aeroeagle-Ms. I never fly a feeder plane unless it's full and typically hit full on one new jobs refresh. Sometimes that game sticks it to me and makes me wait TWENTY MINUTES FOR ONE STUPID CARGO. SCREWS TO YOU L.A.! YOU'RE AN EIGHTEEN MINUTE FLIGHT TO N.Y.! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?! *ahem*, sorry. Feeding on each side works the same. I have two planes that do nothing but fly between the two fed ports (N.Y. and Chicago and Shanghai and Beijing). These are called Rebl1 through 4. I have odd numbers in the U.S. and even numbers in Asia, that way I can tell where I'm going to be by the name, generally. All four of my main ports also get one Aeroeagle that is dedicated to heading to the off-feeder and back. So in the U.S. I have one that goes L.A. to Chicago, and one that goes L.A. to N.Y. These are BFEED and RFEED. Color coded too so I don't get mixed up. So that has me at 4 feeder planes on each end. So far I haven't run dry once in about 10 or so total back and forth trips. But North America comes uncomfortably close from time to time, depending on how nice the game is on giving me natural jobbers at the big airports. Asia ~never~ runs dry. There have been times when I've had both ports in Asia overfull with a good 30 mins left on the big plane flights. My avg. daily with this setup is 1,455,209 currently, and I would assume it's going to increase as the week plays out and I continue working this route. My future plans are that my next two plane slots (I should be able to afford slot 21 in one or two more flights) are to add another N.Y. to L.A. and Chicago to L.A. feeder. Since the flight time to get from those ports and back is at least 2 new job refreshes (13 and 18 mins) I feel having two feeders going back and forth would work for the best. Plus the bonus of having those being my highest-paying jobbers so I should see a jump in income. After that, if I can maintain a full or overfull layover pool in North America I'll likely add a pair of Cyclones to my Blue Route. After that I might explore a third route going from South America (Rio Janeiro) to Asia (Ganzhou). Probably with Cyclones. I'm not terribly impressed with my Cloudliners. Oh and those of you that were wondering what I was doing with my 20th plane the other day, someone else recently posted the same. It was a Pearjet-C that was parking in Honolulu, picking up Tokyo cargo. I flew that cargo to Seoul. When I had 17 I built my Cloudliner-C, fully upgraded its weight, and had it take the trip from Seoul to Tokyo for the full bonus. Profit on the flight: 47,322. It gave my Cloudliner-C a profit-per-hour of like 365k and change until I moved it into the route and real play. It also put me at #20 on the leaderboards for Most Profitable Flight. Any questions or comments or suggestions or criticisms are always welcomed!
Awesome to see this set up does actually work. Still in process of converting mine back to new York and Chicago (wanted Madagascar achievement first). Also encouraged to see cyclones can remain a valid part of route, was worried I'd have to sack them all for Cloudliners. Only question I have regards bux jobs. How do you take care of bux jobs to Tokyo that appear in North America (or LA in Asia)? Do you just skip Istanbul jobs entirely?
Special planes have been added to the Pocket Planes Tools page so you can see just how great the Sea Knight is and how slow the Hot Air balloon is. As the Hot Air Balloon has a weight of 0 my calculations show it costs nothing to travel any distance. Until people get one I guess we won't know for sure.
I don't pick up any istanbul bux jobs, maybe when/if I have more planes I can have one doing bux gathering again. I also don't take any of the Tokyo bux from NA to Asia. Or L.A. from Asia. On the plus side since my feeding is so focused I tend to get most of the bux jobs that want to end up at one of my four big ports. My bux gain has certainly dropped off since I started dual-routing. I added my 21st plane last night and decided to try using a Sequoia for feeding from L.A. to Chicago. So far it works really well. Since the travel time from L.A. to Chicago is like 13 mins I tend to not have any kind of back up in feeder planes. I might shift all my LA to Chicago and N.Y. feeders to Seqs in the not-to-distant future.
Am I the only one that is going to buy a stormtrooper costume for the pilot when we get the starship??? lol
Spare Parts Hi Guys Can anyone provide me the link to the swapping thread, I have some parts to give away and a few requests UPDATE: Found it (search FTW) http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=141231
No end in sights... There is no end to this game right? Can't pry my iPad from my wife's hands... Amazing work NimbleBit
As far as I know layovers stay forever. Be sure to clear all your layovers for a specific airport before you are going to close it since otherwise layovers will block layover spots forever.
Don't forget you can always click on the little red X to remove layovers for closed airports. (I try to clear them but sometimes miss some)
Thank you so much for taking the time to put these tools together, much appreciated!!!! I'm waiting for a hot air balloon. I still think it would be neat to do Nome-to-Wellington in one of those, even though I know it would be more efficacious to use a Supergopher.
