Rank System Upgrades

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joefremont
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Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:26 am

I have been hearing a number of requests for different things that at first seam disconnected and too complicated to manage but today I had a brain wave that I think may be a useful feature and may not be too complex, it revolves around a few updates to the pilot rank system and these are the parts of it I think would be of interest.

Type Ratings by Rank

Some have complained about the type rating system being too complex to manage, especially for large airlines, so maybe we can make it so type ratings can be attached to a pilot rank, and when the rank is assigned to the pilot they automatically get them. You could always give additional type ratings to a pilot but if a rank had ratings attached you could not take them away.

Routes allowed by Rank.

Right now you can define what fleets a pilot is allowed to fly by rank, and you can define what fleets are allowed to use a route, but why not allow you to assign ranks to routes directly , say you have a VA that uses only 737's or A320's (like the real world southwest or jet blue). But you want to restrict a pilot by rank to only flying the shorter routes, then as they advance you can open up the longer routes, even though all the aircraft are in the same fleet and same type.

Automatic Promotions.

Just what it says, you can define some conditions what when satisfied the pilots rank is automatically changed to a different one. Only one set of rules could be defined per rank and those conditions may be thinks like:

Number of flights required
Number of hours required ( we would have to use some standard hour defined as distance / cruise speed)
Minimum ratings (90, 95 or 100%)
Flight Type: (Regular/Training/Any)
Aircraft Types: (A list of pre selected, or if not the type ratings attached to the rank or any if none are)
Next Rank:

There would have to be some time delay to make sure the flights don't have to be reviewed by the admin but other than that the pilot would be automatically promoted to the next rank. I figure if a VA wants to review the pilots performance manually before promoting, they can do that already.

Any Opinions?
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Cat
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Mon Apr 20, 2020 3:04 pm

Sounds like a plan for those looking to really limit their pilots in their career advancement programs.

One thing tho - with "flights" count, be aware of those who only like to take off and land. We have a pilot who got his 1000 flights award fairly quickly as he only flies GA planes for very short distances .1 - .3 hours per flight is typical. In many cases what he does makes no logical sense in the real world, but it's what he likes to do and we will not prohibit that in our VA. The whole purpose is to have fun, and not everyone enjoys the same things.

This caution is more geared to VAs who would use the new system, not in coding or applying it.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Mon Apr 20, 2020 3:49 pm

I not thinking of this as a way to limit there pilots but more as a way to automate and make things a little easier to manage. Since in the proposal you can specify both number of flights and hours lets say you specify 5 flights and 10 hours. So if someone does 5 2.5 hour flights that qualifies, but if they are doing only 0.25 hour flights then they would have to do 20 of them.

The routes by rank feature would limit pilots but its all optional of course.
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Serret
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Serret » Mon Apr 20, 2020 4:19 pm

It seems to me that to automate the VA it is quite good, but in VA where there are few pilots I think it would be of little help.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by zeke78 » Tue Apr 21, 2020 10:47 pm

Personally, type ratings by rank...not a big fan. I'd like the idea more of type rating by experience (e.g. total hours or hours by type), but I can understand how some others might want it....and hey, is it's doable system wise...why not, guess that's what it's all about, giving diff people diff options.

Routes allowed by rank..it's not a bad idea...I'd throw in the idea, as in real life, of airports by rank. Many airlines limit some airports to trainers only, others limit cat c airports to captains only.

Automatic promotions...that actually sounds like a good idea, especially for big VAs that want to automatize/simplify more their operation.

Again, my personal opinion...the more people you can make happy, the better. As longs as by making it better you're not creating ways to cheat or defraud the whole system.

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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by AMV228 » Mon Apr 27, 2020 1:02 am

I am certain we would use the feature, especially as we seem to be gaining pilots. Allowing a combination of factors for criteria would work nicely.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Tue Apr 28, 2020 6:42 pm

The more I have thought about it, the more I like the idea of type ratings by rank, especially for new pilots as I always seem to remember everything to get them started except their type rating! LOL
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by ABVG » Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:01 pm

Great Idea would stop a lot of arguments with people that want to jump straight into a B747.
How soon do you think this can be implemented ?
Last edited by ABVG on Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:04 pm

I have pretty much finished the rating by rank code and am turning my attention to the automatic promotion rules, and I want to get them clear before starting. My current idea is a long the lines of:

Number of flights: (0 - 1000+)
Number of hours: (0 - 1000+) this would be a 'standard hour, distance / aircraft cruise speed
Minimum rating: (85, 90, 95, 100) Minimum rating for the flight to count, default 90.
Aircraft Type: Select from a list of types the VA operates. If none selected and the rank has type ratings attached it would be one of those, If none are attached then any aircraft.
Flight Type: (Normal/Training/Co-pilot/Any)
Return To Base: The pilot would need to be at that airport for the rank to be awarded.

All flights would have to take place after the pilot earned there current rank. The 'Return to base' idea came to me so airlines can say the pilot has to fly a circuit of say four flights that start and end at some point, three of the four have to be of a certain rating and you get the rank when you return to base.

Not sure how I should handle sim rates, at first I though if the VA cares that they fly at x1 or x4 or lower they will set there routes appropriately, but I would like to get some other opinions on that, or if there are any other opinions on how this should work.

Another thing I am thinking about is say someone creates a promotion rule and some number of pilots would already qualify, do they get promoted or should it only count flights that happen after the rule was created or edited last.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:16 pm

I personally would make it much simpler and quite "user friendly" where the VA owner/operator has control within VA Settings / Rank

Simple little workset to fill out for each rank in the automatic promotion (career mode) of the airline:

Rank Title:
Flights Required: [0 or leaving this field blank will cause the system to ignore the field]
Hours Required: [0 or leaving this field blank will cause the system to ignore the field]
Number of 1x flights required: [0 or leaving this field blank will cause the systme to ignore the field]
Restart rank clock after Crash: yes no
Flight type: as noted above in Joe's Post
Return to Base: [dropdown menu of all fleet bases]
Promote to: [dropdown menu of the airline's existing ranks - leaving this field blank indicates the rank is the airline's highest level]
Type Ratings: (check all that apply)
Fleet Permissions: (same as currently)
Package Permissions: (same as currently)
Other Admin Permissions: (same as currently)

This simple system would allow VA managers to set ranks for GA divisions, jet divsions, etc. without penalizing either type as GA pilots fly far more flights than hours typically and jet pilots just the opposite, flying far more hours than flights.

Having type ratings by rank would really help in allowing VA managers to create a full "career mode" within their airline where the new pilot starts out flying smaller planes and then as he/she is promoted, those promotions "unlock" bigger aircraft and the routes associated with those aircraft.

Instead of grading flights on their minor infractions to determine if they count or not, I'd just put in a crash "clock reset" whereby the pilot in question is back at 0 hours 0 flights in that particular rank. If you wanted it more complicated, then perhaps a 50% reduction of current flights/hours due to 4 point infractions like running out of fuel or a wrong airport landing. I don't think any airline administrator would want a pilot to keep their current progress in any specific rank after logging a crash. The other infractions, well stuff happens and can be dealt with directly to the pilot via "letter from the Chief Pilot" LOL aka somebody's in the dog house.



Yes, we would for certain use a "grandfather clause" for our current pilots who have attained a Line Captain status or greater.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Wed Jun 10, 2020 7:19 pm

I agree that simpler is better. Sam after reading your post I think selecting aircraft types for advancement is unnecessary. I do think there should be a way to not count a flight when there are major penalties, maybe rather than reseting the rank clock on just crash it would be reset on crash, wrong airport or running out of fuel.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Wed Jun 10, 2020 10:35 pm

Yup, I'd be OK with that too, as they affect not just the pilot but the airline reputation and should slow career advancement. I would not be OK with letting a pilot keep their current hours/flights status in their present rank after a crash. Just ignorning the flight is not the answer, there needs to be repercussions for logging major negative events to the official record.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Thu Jun 11, 2020 4:30 pm

Just had an idea, rather than having minimum x1 flights or minimum ratings for flights. Flight hours are always reduced by sim rate and number of flights is reduced by the rating.

So if you need 10 hours and you fly them all at x1 you really need 160 hours to advance.
Likewise if you need to fly 10 flights but you got a 5% penalty on each one you would really need to fly one more as 10 * 0.95 would only count as 9.5 flights.

Thinking about this as I type I like the rating idea more than the hours idea.

Brain storming, since hours is going to be a 'standard' hour rather than actual the hours, the first hours is always assumed to be x1 and the rest is at the max sim rate.

so it would be something like:
standard hours = distance / ac cruise speed (from db)
if standard hours < 1.0:
effective hours = standard hours
if standard hours >= 1:
effective hours = 1 + (standard hours - 1) / sim rate.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Tue Jun 16, 2020 4:48 pm

I have finished the UI for editing the ranks for both promotion rules and type ratings by rank, you can play with it on https://beta.fsairlines.net, although the logic behind it that would make it work is not done yet.
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Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:55 pm

So if you need 10 hours and you fly them all at x1 you really need 160 hours to advance.

Hoping that's a typo regarding sim rate..... should read "So if you need 10 hours and you fly them all at x16 you really need 160 hours to advance" ??

The idea of standard hours for advancement is a good idea too, thus keep pilots from circling aimlessly to "build hours". heh heh. So if they want to fly a normal 1 hour trip in 2 hours, oh well.... they only get credit for the hour it is supposed to take. The other nice thing is the fact that XP11 hours are taken out of the equation as that has been problematic since day one.

The only suggestion I would have to the "cruise speed" rule is take a percentage of it to allow for taxi, climb, approach, taxi. There is no way a pilot is going to "average" the cruise speed for any typical flight unless they have juiced their airplane performance to actually fly faster than the real airplane is capable of flying.

As an example, I just completed a 142nm trip in the Quest Kodiak taking 0.9 hrs. If we were to go on the basis of the speed in the database 190 kts (which is wrong, it tops out at 183 and normal cruise is 174 KTAS), that trip would only credit me for .747 hours to promotion. So based on that incredibly small sample size of ONE, you would have to "derate" your speed calc by 17% to allow for taxi/climb/approach/taxi during the flight. Doing so you get 190 x 83% = 157.7 142 / 157.7 = 0.90044 hrs The flight took 56 mins, rounded to the nearest would be 0.9 hrs.

I'm liking the idea of this upgrade more and more and am already plotting out our career path from 0 hours to Senior Captain with jumbo jet type ratings. 8)

NOTE: Before the haters start screaming foul about being cheated out of flight hours, this should be noted the above only applies to the formula's for the new automated promotions feature. The individual pilot hours shown would not be affected.
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