Casey Opens The Mailbag

CEO, this is a big one. Mods arrive with the Steam Workshop to share them, routes can island-hop the Pacific with the airmail paying the way, airports want their gates used, and every option on the order form now does what it says. Underneath all that, Casey put every aircraft on its real numbers and worked through the mail: reports, saves, and lists from HvM, ftn1984, Pneumonositosis, Joney-F, Frederick, Rover, dennisbroek98, Sahmed_93, andoblock, and ugur_sertok.

Expect some numbers to move. Most planes fly less far than they used to, multi-stop routes now earn the way they did in each era, city pairs draw travelers the way real ones do, and rivals keep the same books you do. Here is what changed.

Mods

Casey cleared a hangar for your own creations.

• Bring your own content. Open MODS on the main menu and press OPEN MODS FOLDER. A mod can add aircraft, makers, cities, airports, research, Historical Challenges, world events, and liveries.

• Plain data, nothing runs. Mods are data files. The game never runs code from a mod, and a mod can't change or replace anything in the base game. If an entry is wrong, it is skipped and listed in the panel, and the game still starts.

• You set the order. Switch each mod on or off and arrange the load order. When two mods add the same thing, the one lower in the list wins.

• Saves remember their mods. Load a campaign without its mods, and Casey tells you what is missing while everything else loads.

• Fair play. Campaigns with content mods post no leaderboard scores and unlock no achievements, eras, or modes. Liveries are free to wear.

• Steam Workshop. Subscribe to a mod on the Workshop, and SkyChart loads it the next time it starts. Publish or update your own from the Mods panel, which checks the mod's files before anything goes up. Workshop mods play by the same fair-play rule.

• The Modding Guide, in the game. Help now carries the whole guide: how a mod is laid out, every field each kind of file takes, and how to publish. INSTALL EXAMPLE MOD drops a working mod into your folder to take apart.

Island-Hopping the Pacific

Casey packed the life vests.

• Eight-city routes. Routes can now chain up to eight cities. Each leg only has to fit your plane's range, so a 1930s flying boat can cross the Pacific one island at a time.

• Every leg counts. Chains fly every leg for trip time and fuel, and pay a turn and a landing at every stop.

• Chains through the eras. Casey read the old timetables. A chain charges the full fare between its two ends, as airlines did, and each leg sells the seats a nonstop between those two cities would. Once a plane of the day could fly the ends nonstop, travelers start to prefer it, so each stop costs some of the end-to-end passengers, and a rival nonstop takes more.

• Stops count. Every city on a chain now counts toward the regions you serve, for era goals and achievements alike.

• Flying boats only. Midway and Wake join the map. They, Guam, and Manila Bay take flying boats only until their airfields open, and the Route Builder says so before you pay.

• The China Clipper. A new Historical Challenge starts you in 1936 with a Martin flying boat and asks you to string San Francisco to Manila.

• Airports open on time. Islamabad's airport is now Chaklala in Rawalpindi, open from 1948, and twenty more airports, from Brasília to Sharm el-Sheikh, open the year their first airline arrived.

• Rivals cross oceans too. Rival flag carriers now build long chains of their own.

• A cleaner map. Chains bend through their stops at world zoom, and Pacific routes no longer grab clicks from across the whole map.

• The mail pays. Until 1960 the post office pays every route to carry the mail, by the distance it flies. It pays most in the 1930s, which is what kept the real ocean Clippers flying, and fades after the war.

• Real city pairs. In new campaigns, two big cities still fill planes, but a giant beside a small town no longer sells like two giants. A chain through tiny stops earns accordingly.

• Another Clipper. The Meridian S-42 Clipper joins the fleet, and Shannon, Stansted, and ten more airports open in their real years. Phuket opens in 1952, the earliest year a timetable shows flights there from Bangkok.

• Legs count as nonstops. A chain that flies two cities on one of its legs now counts as a direct flight between them, and a chain linking two of your hubs carries connecting passengers like a nonstop would.

• Your nonstops keep their passengers. Add a multi-stop route over two cities you already fly nonstop, and the nonstop keeps its travelers instead of splitting them with a leg that sells nothing.

Your Order Form, Your Fleet

• Every option counts. Premium seats sell on long business routes, and Basic seats pack more in. IFE and the galley lift your fares and win passengers from rivals on the same route. Freighter builds carry more in Cargo and Combined campaigns. The form shows what each choice does on your routes.

• Spares step in. A breakdown or an in-flight fault grounds only the plane that broke, and with Auto-cover on, a spare from your hangar takes its place. Thanks to andoblock and ugur_sertok for asking.

• Company value at book value. Company value counts every plane you own at its depreciated value, hangar included and leases left out. Your share price moves with it, and rivals now keep the same books.

• Real seats and engines. Every plane flies its real seat count, and the 747-100, DC-10-40, and TriStar 500 come with their engines.

• Room in the hangar. When Upgrade All swaps a route to fewer, bigger planes, it offers to sell the old ones your hangar can't hold.

• Cabins in bulk. Set Cabin in the Route Manager gives every route you tick the same seat layout, each on its own aircraft. Planes swapped in by Upgrade All or Bulk Replace bring their type's saved layout, and so do leased planes. Thanks to andoblock for asking.

• Seats that add up. Right-sizing counts the seats a plane will really fly, so a swap onto a saved Business or First layout buys enough planes to carry everyone. A route flying two types keeps its layout on the type with the most planes, resized to fit. Leased, charter, and air taxi routes start with your Route Defaults from Settings.

• Leased stays leased. Upgrade All no longer turns leased planes in your hangar into planes you own, and selling the hangar overflow on a delayed swap sells only the planes it quoted.

Real Aircraft, Real Numbers

Casey checked all 276 aircraft against their makers' figures, under one rule: range with every seat filled, as the plane was first built.

• Real ranges. 116 aircraft changed, and 108 of them now fly less far. A 1947 Constellation stops at Gander on the way to London, as the real ones did, and a 707-120 tops out around 3,350 miles.

• Engines and brands no longer stretch range. Engines still differ in fuel burn, maintenance, and price. Several aircraft lost engines they never flew with, like the Trent on the 777-200LR, and the 757-300, 777-200, and first A320 got the engines they really launched with.

• Real seats and speeds. The Il-14, Viscount, Bandeirante, and Tu-154 seat what their first versions did. The DC-4, Martin M-130, ANT-9, Fokker F.XX, and VE-200 cruise at their real speeds, and makers' brands no longer change speed.

• Range upgrades count everywhere. Composite materials research, extra fuel tanks, and winglets now add range at every check, route creation included, and for rivals too. The heavy-weight and extra-fuel options on a custom order still stretch a plane further.

• Your routes keep flying. Routes already in the air stay where they are. New routes and aircraft swaps use the new numbers.

Subsidiaries Grow Up

Frederick asked for the real Divest button, and here it is.

• Hand routes over. Give a subsidiary a route, aircraft, and all, and it flies from your gates wherever it has none of its own. Take a route back whenever it meets your own airline's rules.

• Spin it off. Sell at least half of a subsidiary to the market, and keep up to 49%. It becomes a rival in its own right, and your shares collect their part of its dividends.

• One route per pair. You and your subsidiaries never fly the same city pair twice, and that now holds for air taxis converted to scheduled service too.

Your Reports

Pneumonositosis, Joney-F, Rover, dennisbroek98, Sahmed_93, and andoblock sent saves and lists, and Casey ticked every line.

• Shared planes in New Route. New Route lists your shared planes by name, with their free days. Pick one, and the route opens on those days with nothing bought.

• Seats you order fly. Basic and Premium seating and the weight variant's fuel saving now apply on every route, and every buy screen shows the real seat count.

• Estimates that match. The New Route estimate runs the same monthly math as the game, and Route Info's swap picker shows what a different plane would earn on a route.

• Planes are an investment. Quarterly profit charges each plane's depreciation over its life instead of its whole price on the day you buy it. Purchases and hub spending get their own Capital Spending section with a Cash Flow line.

• Your shares stay yours. Shares you buy back stay with your airline. Hold more than half, and no rival can launch a hostile takeover.

• Cabins on early planes. A plane flown before its type's service date, like the A380 in Two Floors of Trouble, can be refitted like any other.

• Bulk buttons. Hub Investments has Max All and Zero All; an equal merger takes a typed price, and the hangar has Sell All.

• Cargo Mode unlocks from the checkmark. A finished era opens Cargo Mode even if its save is gone.

• Objectives that keep up. The panel on the left switches to the new era's goals as soon as you advance, and it counts new routes straight away in every language. Sandbox no longer shows campaign goals.

• Overwater rules start on time. Twin-engine overwater limits begin in 1953, the year the real 60-minute rule did, so 1930s twins can cross straits again. Tenerife and Majuro now count as the islands they are.

• Ignore Hostile Relations. A new Sandbox option lets your routes skip diplomatic relations, sanctions, and the Cold War wall, so Tokyo to Moscow can open in 1930. Rivals still follow every rule.

• Plain unlock rules. Era Objectives, Help, and the mode screen now say what really opens Cargo and Combined: get through an era, by meeting all three objectives or by carrying on past its end. The unlock lands the moment you move on.

• Mergers at scale. andoblock's merger with Trans Globe Airways froze the game at the end of the month, with 1,413 planes parked in the hangar. Hangar lookups are instant now, the aged-fleet swap keeps the game responsive on a big network, and a merger or buyout sells the other airline's spare parked planes first and tells you how many.

Smarter Rivals

• Shared planes. Rivals now fly one plane across two quiet routes on different days of the week, the way you can. Their panels show those routes as flights per week.

• Research that counts. Rivals' research, cabin product, and hubs now reach their routes and their company value.

• Your Sandbox stays full. A Sandbox keeps the number of rivals you chose. When one merges, folds, or is bought, a new airline takes its place, and no airline turns up twice under the same name.

• Planes picked for profit. Rivals now choose aircraft by what they would earn on a route instead of seats per dollar, so they stop flying half-empty jumbos. In a 1990 start, they grow to 30 or more routes in their first five years.

• Mergers in small games. The Airline Merger shock now happens in three-rival games too, and a new airline enters the market to take the empty seat.

• Paid for their gates. Buy a rival's gate, and the rival gets the money. Rivals also pay in full for the factory orders they park in their hangars.

• Honest books. Buying a rival now means taking on its debt along with its cash, and the price is what its books show plus a premium for each route it flies.

• Tidier hangars. Rivals keep a few spare planes instead of hundreds, and sell the rest.

• Only the gates they need. Rivals buy and negotiate only the gates their routes will use.

• A changing field. Rivals merge at any size, a new airline turns up every few years to fill the board, and replacements come from airlines you haven't met yet.

• September 2001, as it was. Traffic drops about a third and recovers in a year and a half. Rivals park planes and cut flights to ride it out instead of folding.

• Regulators read the room. In a deep slump the antitrust regulators stand down, since your share is only big because the rivals parked their planes.

• They read the whole chain. When rivals price a new route, choose where to fly next, or review their fares, they now count a chain that flies the pair on one of its legs. Rival chains also earn prestige on every pair along the way, and Frequency follows demand counts them as competition.

• Money for the era. Every rival starts with cash that fits its era, whether it opens the game or joins later: about $10 million in 1930 and $100 million from 2000.

Loans, Takeovers, and the Books

Casey sharpened a pencil.

• Real loan rates. A bank loan now costs the going rate of its year plus a margin for your credit rating: about 6% a year for an A-rated airline in 1960, and over 20% in 1981, when money was dear. Finance shows it as a yearly rate, and it moves with the calendar.

• Every airline has its own bank. Rivals pay a rate set by their own credit rating, so your borrowing no longer raises theirs. Bond coupons follow the same era rates.

• Pay for profit. Buying a rival costs its net assets plus about three years of its profit. A money-loser sells for what it owns.

• Debt comes along. A rival's debt becomes its own loan at the rate it was paying, so a big takeover doesn't wreck your bank rate. Pay it off in Finance.

• Keep a stake. When you go public, you choose how much to sell. The rest is your founder stake, and holding more than half keeps raiders away.

• Honest books. Gates count as capital spending. Route setup fees and loan interest show up as operating costs, and rivals now charge depreciation the way you do.

Use It or Lose It

Casey has been counting empty gates.

• Idle gates cost money. A gate with no route through it is free for six months. After that, it pays a holding fee that rises every month, and after a year the airport takes it back. Rivals play by the same rule, and they hand theirs back before the fee starts.

• Sealed-bid auctions. When a gate opens up at a full airport, it goes to a three-month sealed-bid auction instead of the first buyer through the door. Find them under Rivals, Gate Auctions. Casey only pings you about airports you fly to.

• Your call. Turn the Idle Gate Rule off under Campaign Options. Campaigns started before this update keep the old rules unless you turn it on.

• Unclaimed gates go to auction. Negotiated gates nobody buys go to sealed bids at a full airport, and Casey tells you when your reservation runs out. Rivals now bid for routes they're about to open.

• A slump waiver. When world traffic falls below 55% of normal, airports stop the idle gate clock until travel recovers.

Money, Weather, and the Map

• Six new lines in the books. Dividends, partner payouts, crew absences, frequent-flyer redemptions, the alliance share, and one-time spending now show in Finances and count in the monthly total.

• Storms where you see them. Storm costs follow the storms drawn on the map, the Pacific included, and the monthly bill counts where each storm was on every day of the month. A storm anywhere along your flight path, on every leg of a chain, now burns extra fuel as your planes route around it or hold.

• Fairer quotes and fees. Bulk Replace quotes include your launch-customer and alliance discounts, and hub investment caps follow the era. A contract route can be sold when the sale covers its buy-out, Automation's gate rebid stays inside its spending caps, and acquisition auctions charge only for the shares you don't already hold.

• Fuel hedging arrives in 1989. In realism campaigns, fuel hedging and the Fuel Hedging Desk research open in 1989, when airlines began hedging their fuel. Contracts you already hold keep running.

• The fine print. Three seasonal challenges now boost their cities' demand by what their cards say. The quarterly report counts your alliance revenue share, and Close All Negative lets each route's sale pay its own buy-out.

• Deals that deliver. Launch-customer deals now hand over the option they promise, and a pre-order for a type that leaves the game refunds its deposit.

• More of the game in your language. About 130 more lines from the order form, the Advisor, and the cabin screens are now translated.

• Older saves. Saves from before the October balance pass no longer get a cheap first HQ move or a full-price maintenance check on every plane.

• Kinder to the map servers. The OpenStreetMap style downloads only the tiles on your screen, as its usage policy asks, and a tile that has moved to a new address still arrives.

• Fuel to the cent. Fuel is billed to the cent, so storms show up on short hops too.

• Routes you can fly. The Advisor and the CONNECT TO list stop offering routes into regions you can't fly to, unless your Sandbox ignores hostile relations.

• The price you were quoted. When Upgrade All sells your hangar overflow, you get the price it quoted, even if the new planes arrive after New Year. A modification fitted after the quote adds its value.

• Controller reach. With a controller or on a Steam Deck, every button on the Bulk Replace sheet is in reach, and the Workshop publish form opens the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard has an Enter key; B closes only the keyboard, the Route Builder's city search takes it, and the charter fields are in reach. Every number box now steps with left and right. The merger offer box and the Advisor's hub search open the on-screen keyboard too, and closing the Modding Guide takes you back to Mods.

• Saves that wait their turn. Save & Exit during a long month now waits for the month to land before it saves, so a save never holds half a month.

• Quicker on big networks. The Upgrades panel no longer stalls a big airline every time a rival opens a route, and large saves load faster.

• A clean quit on Mac. Casey unplugged a part the game never used, which could crash the Mac version when you quit.

Thank you for the reports, CEO. Keep them coming: press F8 in the game, and Casey gets your save along with the bug.

-Casey