Core: Balancing

[DennisLent]

• Airplanes do not reach far enough
• A lot of times, first airplane cannot fulfill any orders as they do not go to the right airport or are too heavy (fix idea: rework the weights)
• Balance pricing

[DennisLent]

Approach

Instrument + Simulate by adding lightweight telemetry and a scripted “autopilot” to run thousands of seeds quickly and report on player achievements.

Basic targets for balancing

• Starter plane: 55–70% of visible orders are feasible (range + weight)
• Net margin per flight-hour: starter ~$200–$400/h, mid-tier ~$800–$1.5k/h, late ~$3–$5k/h
• First upgrade: 1–2 in‑game days with active play.
• Average route length: 200–800 km early; longer routes unlock with better planes.

Orders

Order Destination Distribution

Currently random, better might be sampling destination with distance decay (e.g., P(d) ∝ exp(−d/λ)), with λ growing for larger airports.

Order weights

Currently random (100..=20000), might be better to condition weights on origin/destination runway class.
Example:

• Small runway: 20–400 kg median (occasional up to 800).
• Medium: 300–3,000 kg median.
• Large: 2,000–20,000 kg median

Pricing

base ton‑km model + urgency multiplier + cargo rarity multiplier (WITH A CAP)

Deadlines

Tie to actual travel time with slack
e.g. deadline_hours = ceil(distance/reference_speed) × slack_factor + handling_buffer

Cost

Apply per‑hour operating cost during flights

Map:

generate clustered regions to guarantee local networks?
add rare long‑haul inter‑cluster orders for bigger planes?