I am currently level 17 and have in my fleet: Fogbuster-P x1 Aeroeagle-P x1 Aeroeagle-C x1 Equinox-C x1 Birchcraft-M x3 Mohawk-P x3 Just random info caus I felt like it
It seems as though there is still a bug with counting jobs for the "remote location" achievements. After I hit the reset button to fix some other broken achievements (grr...) I started on Easter Island a second time. Right now, the airport info page shows a total of 67 flights completed, with 42 passengers and 22 shipments. Already these numbers are suspect, because I am working this airport with two Mohawks from Lima, one C and one P. Every flight has been full with 3 people or cargo, and they mostly take off at about the same time. Therefore, the stats should show an average of 3 items per flight, not less than 1. And the number of passengers should be close or the same as the number of shipments. Additionally, the achievement page shows me at 48% complete, and I have no idea how that number is computed from the 67/42/22 numbers above. I realize there is some lag from the Game Center update, but this isn't close. Should I bother to re-start the Barrow, Tiksi, etc. achievements if I'm going to have to make a couple of hundred deliveries to reach 100%?
Is there any coin difference between taking jobs from A to B to C in one multi-destination flight, versus taking them from A to B in one plane and laying them over, to be picked up by another plane from B to C? Is there a "fixed portion" to flight cost just for taking off, or is it all based on weight and speed (and distance, of course)? If so, would this fixed cost apply to each hop in a multi-destination flight or only once?
The coin that the bitizen pays has no relation to anything other than the straightline distance from A to C. So if in A the bitizen will pay 1000 to go to C and you drop him off in B, he will still pay 1000 to go to C, even though he's now closer. Your plane has a cost-to-fly that's based on weight, speed and distance flown. I don't have the exact equation handy. That number is the same if you're flying from A to B empty or full of bitizens (I guess they don't weight enough to make a difference). So this is why using feeders is effective because you use planes that are cheaper to fly to cover one leg of the total journey before placing them on a faster, more expensive plane.
I think that since everyone keeps saying that slower flights are better. I look at it this way. When you eat something slowly, it tastes better and lasts longer. When you eat something fast, you don't taste anything. Ergo, slower flights gain more. Faster flights gain less. (I know this makes no sense but I tried.)
I progressed quite far in the game before I found these forums and without implementing any kind of feeder strategy. I didn't have much of a plan, but I'm thinking of implementing one now... I did realize the whole straight-line concept early on, so once I progressed up to level 2 and level 3 aircraft, I intentionally chose class 3 airports that were as straight-line as possible. For example, Los Angeles-New York-London-Moscow is pretty good. Intersecting that was Buenos Aires-Rio de Janeiro-Lagos-Moscow, and London-Cairo-Mumbai-Jakarta, and so on. I quickly upgraded everything to max capacity, but not for the extra layover slots but for the extra traffic instead. I avoided the larger planes and stuck with Equinox and Pearjets for a while. Basically, I was looking to get the 25% bonus on every flight that I took. If my Pearjet from Los Angeles landed in Moscow, and there were 5 items to take down to Jakarta, off it went! I could pretty much always take off with a full 25% flight somewhere in a straight line by sticking with smaller planes. But it's hard to get out of that rut. Now that I'm up to level 34, I'm introducing more large planes and utilizing layovers. But I still get the temptation of taking 6 Moscow-bound passengers from Los Angeles all the way in an Aeroeagle, rather than dropping them off in New York and letting a larger plane take them across the Atlantic....
Just reading the last few pages of this forum (very informative btw) and couldnt help noticing in TaylorPunk27's recent post that he has the fogbuster airplane at level 17. I am currently approaching level 20 and do not have access to this plane. In fact, I have not gained access to a new plane since level 15 or 16 (the aeroeagle). Am I doing something wrong, or not doing something that needs to be done? I apologize if it was discussed earlier in the 500+ pages, I'm too busy playing this darn game to read any further back....
Update Does the update add anything important to Pocket Planes? Also is the gameplay tweeked in any way?
You can read the formula here: http://pocketplaneswiki.com/Upgrades cost per mile = speed × weight / 400 cost per flight = (cost per mile × distance) So basically, the faster & heavier the plane is, the more it costs. Aeroeagles and Sequoias are really great at that. If you look at the last column here: http://pocketplaneswiki.com/Planes You can check, which plane has the lowest operating cost. Now if you lower that with the weight upgrade, you can make an even more decent coin per flight.
Tap and hold the "Load/Unload" button to unload and load all cargo and passengers going to the same destination. Thats what mostly everyone thinks is important.
That makes sense. Thankyou for the reply. Has anyone compiled a list of what levels the planes are available at? Just curious to know what I'm aiming for.
Cost aside, is everyone who has that many airplanes able to juggle them all without going crazy? I've got 19 planes (plus one open empty slot) and that keeps me busy enough. Not sure I'd want to add too many more planes.
Surprising. So if anyone read my post last night regarding conclusions about my sequoias method, I posted a day too soon. http://i1057.photobucket.com/albums/t386/Pezmage/photo3.png This method appears to be more profitable than feeding, which is amazing. Not-quite-full attention Sequoias is equal in not slightly better than full-attention feeders. I had my Cloudliners running for a brief stint that might be distorting that graph, but I wasn't non-stopping them by any stretch of the imagination. I have 2 more planes now than I did back when I was feeding so that might account for some of it. But to be perfectly honest I think it's the fact that every single plane I'm flying is flying for profit with none flying at a loss to feed is what's making this work.
I've got 28 planes running. Or HAD, I should say... Update pretty much killed my revamped flight sytem. I was running an all Bux flight set up. 12 cyclones working in pairs backfeeding in paired cities when full. 16 aeros and pearjets running around everywhere delivering the bux. I think that was the max planes I could run though. I would take me all 4 minutes to sift through the 12 cyclones' joblist for bux, loading and unloading them. Unfortunately the update pretty much grounded my airline. I had a feeling they would limit the bux a bit. I was willing to sacrifice some bux for the new features (alert dismissal, unload-all), but: 1) I did not think they would make the bux rarity so severe. It has crippled my revamped airlines. 2) I have only made the alert dismissal only work ONCE. every other time I try to tap the X, it moved me to the newly landed flight. 3) Unload-All is buggy. A third of the time it doesn't unload all. The temporary fix is to load the one I just unloaded, and Unload-All again. Like Pez, I really don't know what else to do in this game. I'm level 34, with no goal. The only reason I did the Bux only system was because I was bored with the normal profit flying. There doesn't seem to be an end-game goal. I wish you could include Automated Flight Routes. Simple scripts, like: 1) Setting the start/end points of a route, and the route itself. 2) Setting what the jobs that the plane is supposed to load/unload at the endpoints of the route. That way, you can actually expand your airline, without an insane amount of micro-managing. Lots of ways Nimblebit can slowly implement this at higher levels: 1) starting at a certain level, more and more classifications of planes can be automated. 2) starting at a certain level, a certain amount of planes can be automated (Automated plane slots) 3) or Bux can be used to buy "computer systems" for planes for automation. Each upgrade of automation allows the planes to do more connecting cities for longer routes. Of course there has to be limitations: 1) automation only works for X amount of hours (then needs to be relaunched, forcing the player to "check in". 2) automated flights stop when layover slots of a target city is full 3) automated flights have X amount of hours that they HAVE to run (you can't just set the automation, then stop it) Since it takes a while for app to "calculate" what your planes have done when you launch the game, there are implementation issues. You could probably: 1) make automated flights not interact with the 4 minute job refresh, and just have them launch every X minutes upon landing with a full load. (like a 15-60 minute boarding time depending on capacity). Should be easy enough to calculate in one go. The reason I thought of all this, is because I thought the endgame would be to create (or recreate) an actual airline. Like make a fleet that does all the Virgin Atlantic flights (with actual flight numbers), etc. If this was a possible endgame result, I would probably keep playing. As is, I'll probably just play the few days a rare plane is on the Global Event.
