Rank System Upgrades

You are missing something, or have a cool idea for us ? Tell us here !

Moderator: FSAirlines Staff

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:55 pm

For flight reviews when checking hours we use a simple formula of distance / speed + 30 minutes. For the standard hours we could do something like that where its distance / speed + some sliding factor.

As for how to factor in the sim rate, I think about how I normally fly. Take off until the autopilot is on i'm 1x. Once autopilot is on its x4 till I reach cruise and then x16 until its time to start descending when it goes back to x4 till about 30 nm from the airport then its x1 till I am at the gate. So maybe when we calculate 'standard hours' we can assume the first 30 minute are always x1, the next 60, but not more than half would be x4 and the rest would be maximum rate used on the flight.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

User avatar
Cat
Chief Pilot
Posts: 818
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:56 am

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Wed Jun 17, 2020 1:05 am

LOL you can make anything you want for accelerated time, I have no experience with it as it is not allowed at Fly Vegas. :shock: We play "hardball" and don't have a lot of long distance flying so anything I might add would be without any basis at all so I shall keep my lip zipped on the subject of accelerated time. 8)
Image

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Wed Jun 17, 2020 4:06 pm

Sam, on your sample flight, assuming we the DB had the correct cruise speed of 174. 142 nm / 175kn = 0.81 hours, yours took 0.9 hours so 0.09 hours or 5.3 minutes more than that, pretty quick turn around. I am sure in the real world, the size of the airports would have a lot to do with the time, but not sure I want to take that into account, lots of pilots just start and end their flights on the runway.

So one idea I am thinking for the 'standard hours' is we start with 'base hours' which is just distance / cruise speed. The standard hours would then be either five minutes plus base hours * 1.20 or base hours + 30 minutes, which ever is less (the two formulas are equal at 125 minutes).

So Sam your 142 nm flight in the Kodiak would earn 0.98 hours using those formulas.

As I am typing this it occurs to me we do have cruise altitude and climb rate in the DB, should we use that in some way in this formula, an aircraft that cruises as FL340 would take longer to get up and get down that one that cruised at FL50, but that may be too complicated.

BTW: I edited the cruise speed and altitude for the Kodiak.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

User avatar
Cat
Chief Pilot
Posts: 818
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:56 am

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Wed Jun 17, 2020 6:33 pm

When in doubt, KIS (Keep It Simple) ....

We are only talking about making this for automatic promotions so I don't think there is much need to get too complicated. If VA owner/operators think people are advancing too quickly or too slowly in their organization, they can always adjust their flights/hours thresholds accordingly. You will never get a system that is perfect for everyone, the variety in FSAirlines is far too great, from little Cessnas to the largest jumbo's and everything in between.
Image

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Thu Jun 18, 2020 3:45 pm

Doing some work on the calculations, for the hours after acceleration I am thinking that for flights longer than 3 hours the first 30 minutes would be assumed to be at 1x and then next hour would be at 4x, and for flights less than 3 hours the first 1/6 would be at 1x and the next 1/3 would be at 4 x.

Been thinking about the 'flights at 1x' test condition and not sure how useful it is, Sam in your VA it would be someone redundant since all your flights are x1 anyways. In general if a VA does not want to count flights above a given sim rate, don't let them fly it in the first place.

What I am thinking instead is something along the lines of something that would indicate the hours and flights should be evaluated as adjusted or raw, ie do you want to count that '10 hour' flight at x16 as 10 hours or 1.28 hours, and that flight that got a 90% rating, should it be 1 flight or 0.9 flights.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

ABVG
Ticket Agent
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:13 pm

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by ABVG » Thu Jun 18, 2020 6:57 pm

joefremont wrote:
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.
I have just tried this out, I am assuming that for the lowest rank you have to enter 0 Flights and 0 Hours.
Looks like a winner for me, great work guys.

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:13 pm

ABVG wrote:
Thu Jun 18, 2020 6:57 pm
I have just tried this out, I am assuming that for the lowest rank you have to enter 0 Flights and 0 Hours.
Looks like a winner for me, great work guys.
You have to enter some number of either flights or hours before automatic promotion is active. So I would expect the lowest rank would have something in those values in addition to a next rank. The top rank however, since there is no place to go from there, would be zero.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Fri Jun 19, 2020 5:56 pm

I have been working on this some more and am getting close to finishing, one question in my mind. The question is how to start things off, where is the 'promotion clock' when I turn it on, does it start at when they joined the VA or the time when I turn on the feature.

I had assumed that once you get promoted the clock resets to the time you gained the rank, so if you have ranks setup something like

Pilot 1 0-50 hours (Promotion rule, fly 50 hours)
Pilot 2 50-100 hours (Promotion rule, fly 50 hours)
Pilot 3 100-200 hours (Promotion rule, fly 100 hours)
Pilot 4 200+ hours

And you have a pilot that up to now has had 300 hours. Well if the clock defaults to when they joined the airline the system would see they have the 50 hours needed to move up to Pilot 2 and then the clock would reset and there 'promotion hours' would be set back to zero.

Part of me thinks that for that pilot, promoting to just Pilot 2 would not be satisfying and TPTB should just manually put them into the rank they deserve.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

ABVG
Ticket Agent
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:13 pm

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by ABVG » Fri Jun 19, 2020 9:55 pm

joefremont wrote:
Fri Jun 19, 2020 5:56 pm
I have been working on this some more and am getting close to finishing, one question in my mind. The question is how to start things off, where is the 'promotion clock' when I turn it on, does it start at when they joined the VA or the time when I turn on the feature.

I had assumed that once you get promoted the clock resets to the time you gained the rank, so if you have ranks setup something like

Pilot 1 0-50 hours (Promotion rule, fly 50 hours)
Pilot 2 50-100 hours (Promotion rule, fly 50 hours)
Pilot 3 100-200 hours (Promotion rule, fly 100 hours)
Pilot 4 200+ hours

And you have a pilot that up to now has had 300 hours. Well if the clock defaults to when they joined the airline the system would see they have the 50 hours needed to move up to Pilot 2 and then the clock would reset and there 'promotion hours' would be set back to zero.

Part of me thinks that for that pilot, promoting to just Pilot 2 would not be satisfying and TPTB should just manually put them into the rank they deserve.
I would prefer that existing pilots start from when they joined the VA, or when they joined FSAirlines with the hours and flights that are in their logbook. So if they have enough hours and flights for top rank, then they get top rank automatically.

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:26 pm

ABVG wrote:
Fri Jun 19, 2020 9:55 pm
I would prefer that existing pilots start from when they joined the VA, or when they joined FSAirlines with the hours and flights that are in their logbook. So if they have enough hours and flights for top rank, then they get top rank automatically.
I was struggling on how to make this happen when it finally occurred to me, when automatically advancing a pilot to the next rank, don't use the current time to start the clock for the next rank, use the time of the flight where they qualified. Now I can think of one side effect of this that I am not sure how to fix. It starts from the fact that the flights/hours needed to get to the next rank are the number of flights/hours earned after you got your current rank and if initially the rank start clock starts at zero then all the flights at the VA count toward advancement. Maybe it would be better if I start with an example.

You have these ranks and the number flights to advance to the next level

Pilot 1 - Advance to pilot 2 with 100 flights
Pilot 2 - Advance to pilot 3 with 100 flights
Pilot 3 - Advance to pilot 4 with 100 flights
Pilot 4

And you have two pilots both have 250 flights but one is currently pilot 1 and the other is currently pilot 2. When I turn on the system both will advance two levels, so the pilot with rank 'Pilot 1' will have the 100 to get to pilot 2 and the 100 to get to pilot 3 and has 50 flights toward getting there pilot 4 rank, while the other has 100 to get to pilot 3 and 100 to get to pilot 4 so will be at that top rank already. You can't always look at the sequence of ranks because they way they are set up may not start at the same point. I was thinking of setting up the ranks for my VA as

Student1 -> Student2 -> Student3 -> Junior Jet Pilot - > Senior Jet Pilot

and an alternate

Junior Prop Pilot - > Senior Prop Pilot

You can't just add up all the requirements for each level because some may have requirements others may not.

I hope you all see how this can get confusing to people, so part of me thinks when I turn the system on everyone starts with zero credits toward advancement and let the VA managers set pilots at what they should be now.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

User avatar
Cat
Chief Pilot
Posts: 818
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:56 am

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by Cat » Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:35 pm

"confused" is a good word for it. LOL

I was thinking it would just be "thresholds" set by each VA regarding total hours/flights flown from day 1.

But that wouldn't work for the following reasons:

Accelerated Time Factor - a big monkey wrench in the advancement math
Major Infractions penalty - a "reset to start of current rank" due to crash, running out of fuel, wrong airport landing.

If the system is going to be too confusing and complicated, we'll just stick to what we do now. LOL The joy of being a smaller airline. When a pilot attains certain hours, they are promoted manually. It would be nice to have the type ratings set with ranks though. AND we don't play the Accelerated Time game, every flight every day is 1x only. So for us the hours flown are actual hours earned and makes things way more simple to figure out when a pilot is due for a promotion. But then we don't fly around the world either, so apples vs oranges. No system will make everyone happy, so make it THE EASIEST FOR YOU, JOE to implement and maintain.
Image

ABVG
Ticket Agent
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:13 pm

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by ABVG » Sat Jun 20, 2020 7:22 pm

Would it not be easier to auto type rate a pilot for each aircraft. eg if a pilot flies an aircraft and has zero hours in the last x number of months, on that aircraft then his first flight is automatically a training flight, if flight is 100% then he gets the type rating.
Then you can just base the ranking system on hours flown in current VA thus encouraging him to stay with same VA. Higher the rank more the pay.

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Sat Jun 20, 2020 8:23 pm

I keep coming back to what I am trying to do which is make things easier not more complicated, so to that end I just made the latest mods.

I added a 'Rank Assign' screen you can get to from 'Rank View' where you can do a bulk edit of pilots ranks. This should make it easier to get all the pilots into their initial level easier. Note in this screen you can't change the ranks or assign ranks that have 'settings' permissions.

In the Rank Edit screen there is a checkbox you can select "Reset promotion progress to zero", if you check this all pilot of that rank have their promotion progress restarted.

When ever a pilot gains a new rank the promotion progress is set back to zero, so in the scenario I described earlier, the pilots will each advance one level but thats all.

Hopefully there is enough options to give VA's the control that they need without over complicating or confusing things too much.

This is all on beta.fsairlines.net, if you assign type ratings to the pilot for now you need to book the flight through beta.fsairlines.net but you can fly it as normal. I will leave this on beta till tomorrow when I will merge it into the main site.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

ABVG
Ticket Agent
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 7:13 pm

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by ABVG » Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:08 pm

How would I be able to stop pilots gaining higher ranks without flying larger planes.
If I do it by taking away type ratings of the smaller planes, they would have to gain the top rank before being able to fly a Cessna again.?

User avatar
joefremont
FSAirlines Developer
Posts: 3694
Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 5:46 am
Location: KSFO

Re: Rank System Upgrades

Post by joefremont » Sun Jun 21, 2020 5:35 pm

ABVG wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 12:08 pm
How would I be able to stop pilots gaining higher ranks without flying larger planes.
If I do it by taking away type ratings of the smaller planes, they would have to gain the top rank before being able to fly a Cessna again.?
Your right, there needs to be a way to do that, so I just added one.

In the rank edit page for the type ratings there is a new checkbox for each aircraft with the header 'Promotion required'.

If one or more of these are checked, then only flights flown by those aircraft count toward the pilots promotion requirements. You are required to give the rating through the rank to if your going to require it for the promotion requirements.
Image
I've sworn an oath of solitude until the pestilence is purged from the lands.

Post Reply