AMA – Kyndra’s Question About Airport XP Rewards

Hi Kyndra, regarding your question in the AMA and the answer in this week’s video:

“Has SimFly considered reviewing airport XP rewards to better align them with the XP earnings of other assets? Today an airport earns just 1 XP for each takeoff/landing, while licenses and aircraft earn hundreds of XP for the very same flight. This makes airport ownership contribute far less to a player’s Sky Ranking, even though airports are among the most valuable assets in the game.”

After reading your message carefully, I also wanted to give you an additional explanation — in case your point was misunderstood — if feasible and especially if the community agrees. This is because, depending on how we decide to apply the potential change (only moving forward or also to historical data), the SkyRanking might change or remain the same.

At the moment, airports receive 1 XP for each rotation (takeoff or landing). This is proportional to the amount of XP required to level up, unlike licenses and aircraft.

For example:
if an aircraft or a license needs 1000 XP to go from level 2 to level 3,
an airport might need only 20 XP for the same level increase.

Even if it wasn’t part of your question, I wanted to clarify this.

So I am evaluating whether it might be possible to increase the XP value for airports (for example from 1 to 100 or more). However, this would mean that if today an airport needs 20 XP to level up, with the new scale it would need 2000 XP.
The result would essentially remain the same — only the numbers (and therefore the SkyRanking) would change. It’s a solid idea, but before moving forward I need to check with the development team whether this change could significantly impact the Brain or any other connected systems. We also need to consider whether it’s feasible to apply it only to new data or also to historical data — because in that case the current SkyRanking would need to be recalculated and could change. If we can do this safely and without side effects, and if the community agrees, we will implement it; otherwise, it’s better to postpone it or not proceed.

I’ll update you as soon as I have a final answer.

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Hello @Karim-CTO-SimFly

Yes - what you describe is exactly what I was proposing - resetting the XP scale for airports so that airport ownership counts towards SkyRanking.

I feel the rate of leveling up airports is already well balanced, so like you describe - if the XP awarded per rotation were to increase by 100x - the amount of XP required for airport level up would also increase by 100x - thereby keeping the airport progression rate the same but having a much more noticeable impact on SkyRanking.

Current system:

Each takeoff/landing awards 1 XP to airport and category 4 airport requires 228 XP to level up from level 1 to level 2.

Proposed system:

Each takeoff/landing awards 100 XP to airport and category 4 airport requires 22,800 XP to level up from level 1 to level 2.

The image below perfectly illustrates the imbalance with the current airport XP system.

A category 4 airport with 40 rotations (40 XP) should contribute far more towards a player’s Sky Ranking than a TBM 850 with 1 completed flight (78 XP).

Thank you for considering.

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