Sorry if I've missed this somewhere, but I see various ranks for pilots, in the pilots roster, and was wondering; what are the requirements for each rank?  If it is all down to pilots skills etc I'm going to be a first officer for a very long time!!

As in real life it's based on hours flown (including transferred hours although that could change) but I can't remember the specific hours required for each rank (looking at the code I think Senior First Officer could be 100 hours). That's probably because we haven't really looked at it since we first set it up, the only thing I recall was saying many VAs have lots of ranks but in reality there's only four main ones (First Officer, Senior First Officer, Captain and Training Captain), which is what we adopted. To be frank we didn't think people were paying much attention to their rank, so we focused on other areas.

However, the ranking system is due to be overhauled once we have ACARS v2 sorted, which will result in it being replaced or supplemented by a new awards system (hopefully it'll be retrospective) which will reward you based on various criteria (e.g. airports visited, hours logged online, plus monthly awards for the pilot with most hours). Chris had an alpha version of this working, but that broke when we changed forums.

ACARS v2 is a tad behind schedule at the moment as none of us have had time to get any testing done (I've been busy with Chinese New Year).

Quote from: Chris Liu on Feb 03, 2014 09:59
To be frank we didn't think people were paying much attention to their rank, so we focused on other areas.

I thought this was the case I must say I don't think rank is necessary, or for that matter carrying over hours from other VAs.  Never can see the point. What is the point?  What I do like is a good route system/logging system,  and an easy to use website plus an excellent community/support.  That is why I like it here;  plus the fact we have some very knowledgeable  simmers.....can't wait for shared cockpit in the Q400 pro edition with some of our more experienced pilots,  just to see how it should be done.  Thanks Chris

Oh nearly forgot happy new year Chris I can tell you it's mad here in Malaysia at the moment......cheers

According to the code....


  if ($thours >= 500){
  $rank = "Captain";
  } elseif ($thours >= 100){
  $rank = "Senior First Officer";
  } elseif ($thours < 100){
  $rank = "First Officer";
  }



First Officer 0-100
Senior First Officer 100-500
Captain 500+

Thanks ChrisH for the info...