ProPilot

[EHM-2383 Ian]

Hi
 I am obviously not understanding how FAC scores are worked out and would love to know!! How is it possible, for example, for someone to get a FAC score of over 700 with a ProPilot flight time of only 2:54 hours? I can't quite equate this to the fact that when I have a perfect flight I only seem to gain a small number of FAC points.  I am probably being stupid and missing something here but I would be grateful if someone could take the time to explain this as I am failing abyssmally to fathom it out!

Thanks,

Ian

[EHM-2097 Andrei]

Hi Ian,

It's at the same time easier and more complicated than you think And there's a lot to say about it.

First, what you noticed about the tiny score one gets from a (otherwise perfect) flight is true, this is how it works currently. Without any penalties one gets roughly 20pts per flight hour (in fact it's slightly more for online flights).

Penalties on the other hand are very severe; whatever you do wrong, chances are you'll get a negative score. Personally I gave up and re-flew some flights better that let my score deteriorate dramatically - but this is a matter of personal preferences and priorities.

This being said, you may consider this scoring can be improved, and if you do, you will be right. In fact, you may have noticed that there are discussions in the forum about a new ProPilot scoring system. This will probably happen, but for now we are only discussing the concept, no development has been made in this direction.

So everything should happen according to the "small bonus, large penalty" system I described above. Should, but does not always, and this is unfortunately about a bug we cannot correct yet. After some events (and particularly crashes), a pilot's FAC is incorrectly computed. But things get back to normal after his next uneventful flight.

This is why the scores sometimes look bizarre (and change in a still more bizarre manner). And of course, we apologize for the inconvenience...

Andrei

[EHM-2383 Ian]

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my query, Andrei. Your explanation has helped to clarify the system, as it presently stands, for me. One further thing that concerns me, given the high penalties for errors, is the possibility of random faults being created by ProPilot while flying. (I understand that this does not happen in the system at present?) While I have no problem with this as it would obviously create greater realism, can I make the suggestion that, if this is eventually incorporated, there might be developed some advice/training for pilots on how to cope with certain types of faults occurring during a flight. At the moment I wouldn't have much of a clue and would probably end up crashing!!!