I am very close to buying AirHauler to give my flights (with the RealAir Lancair Legacy) a bit more purpose. However, I just discovered that the addon uses real world time: if you don't use the program every day or two your results/reputation will go down...? So if you can't play the game for two weeks or so all the progress you made with your reputation will be down the drain...?

 

Is this correct? I can't find the definitive answer on this. This would be a real dealbreaker for me because I don't like being forced to fly. I like the overall idea of AirHauler (even though the Legacy isn't the most logical plane for it but I've heard it will do fine) but if this real time stuff is true, I won't buy it.

 

If this is true, is it somehow possible to 'pause' the game...? So that if I don't feel like flying for a week or two, that my company won't be down when I start AirHauler again?

I am very close to buying AirHauler to give my flights (with the RealAir Lancair Legacy) a bit more purpose. However' date=' I just discovered that the addon uses real world time: if you don't use the program every day or two your results/reputation will go down...? So if you can't play the game for two weeks or so all the progress you made with your reputation will be down the drain...?

 

Is this correct? I can't find the definitive answer on this. This would be a real dealbreaker for me because I don't like being forced to fly. I like the overall idea of AirHauler (even though the Legacy isn't the most logical plane for it but I've heard it will do fine) but if this real time stuff is true, I won't buy it.

 

If this is true, is it somehow possible to 'pause' the game...? So that if I don't feel like flying for a week or two, that my company won't be down when I start AirHauler again?[/quote']

 

Your reputation will only go down the drain if you accept jobs and don't complete them.

 

But yes, the game does run in real time, so expenses will still be deducted from your account regardless if you fly or not.

 

Fees such as base rental, lease costs etc are still deducted even if you don't fly any jobs. It cannot be paused.

 

The best thing to do if you aren't going to fly much is set the game in "easy" mode where you start with a bank balance of $500,000, a Learjet (which you can sell right away) and a reputation of 60%

 

This will give you plenty of funding and time to take things slowly.

Ah, thanks, so that's how it works.

Wow, I was seriously looking at getting this, but now there's no way! One of the great things about simming is being able to fly when you can. I'm surprised they've built this software to work like this. While I truly look forward to the day I retire and can sim every day, this is surely impossible for the vast majority of us.

One thing to note is that you can hire AI pilots. You can accept jobs for them and schedule their days. Doing this you can bring in money even when you can't fly! You can still fly yourself, but when you have the AI guys hustling around doing jobs, the income comes in pretty quickly.

It can give you plenty of short hop flights depending on the size of your aircraft, area you choose your base in, etc.

 

Some days I fly 5 flights, somedays 1, samedays 0. Sometimes I don't play for a week. Reputation only goes down by .5% every time and only when you don't deliver something on time (or your AI crew). Just don't go accepting things you know you can't complete and you'll be fine.

 

You can start in easy mode if you just want to fly decent sized regional turbo props and jets. At 60% reputation you can take out loans, hire AI crew, lease planes, and schedule your AI crew to fly and make money for you while you sleep! So really, you don't even have to play AirHauler to make money with in. Infact, you've got a stock market, too, so if you dump your money into that, you're bound to make some money so long you aren't investing in stocks like Microsoft (Yeah, I just went there lol).

 

I'm playing in career mode and I really enjoy it. It gives you pilot ratings based on how many flights you've completed, which gives me some great pacing as I'm a relatively new and inexperienced pilots. It starts me out in small single prop planes with 40% reputation. As I gain reputation at 55% you can hire AI to fly for you (they'll get you money but not reputation) and at 60% you can take out a loan. Every flight gets you .5% reputation, so 40 successful flights and you'll be there. You can take multiple cargo hauls at once for increased gains, split hauls up if they are too big for the plane you are flying and fly them out in chunks, and it gives you goals to work for which I think is the idea of this.

 

If you want something more relaxed try FSPassengers - it won't give you directions to fly in, but it can rank you and you can fly when and where you want without limitations (so long as you make enough money to pay for the gas) or FSEconomy. I'm also using FSAirlines which is similar to economy, but more planes, less functionality I think though as in Economy you can own airports, select where flights go, and create a nice monopoly around short hop flights if you are a smart player.

 

Any who I would love to see more players in AirHauler for some more love from the developer. It's already awesome, but I'd love to see more awesomeness from it... or an AirHauler 2!

Wow' date=' I was seriously looking at getting this, but now there's no way! One of the great things about simming is being able to fly when you can. I'm surprised they've built this software to work like this. While I truly look forward to the day I retire and can sim every day, this is surely impossible for the vast majority of us.[/quote']

 

Its really not the big deal you are making it out to be.

 

Air hauler is great.....and I haven't flown a job in over a week. No reputation loss as I didn't accept any jobs and only one base rental payment (which is monthly anyway)

 

 

JvE,

 

Just thinking, (especially as its on the front page of Avsim), you may be better off with Ideal Flight than Air Hauler...

Haven't flown for over a week (and not even put AI pilots to do the job), and no problems with money. Those costs are after all pretty small when compared to what you can quickly generate with couple of planes and AI pilots, so truly you don't have to fly often.

 

It is great addon, I use it when I feel more like flying some GA, but now again I am having some airliner flying for a change.

Your reputation will only go down the drain if you accept jobs and don't complete them.

 

This is not 100% accurate. Yes you will lose reputation for not completing jobs. However, once your reputation goes above 70% you will lose reputation for being inactive but your reputation will not fall below 70%. So, once your rep goes above 70% you must stay active or you will lose rep.

 

The higher your reputation, the higher paying the jobs will be that are offered to you.

 

 

Jeroen,

 

As stated above you may want to take a look at Ideal Flight it is very nice as well although very

different than AirHauler. I use Ideal Flight for most of my GA flights.

What Sargeski said plus to maintain rep above 70% you have to have one of your pilots (or you) complete a job every two weeks. Honestly, if you're only after getting different places to be sent to fly to and not that worried about bragging rights, I wouldn't worry about it. It's doesn't really affect the game once you've paid off the Lancair, providing you can pay the bills. Mine's been bouncing around in the 90s since February last year through various lengths of time off. It took a big hit in early Flight days and when the video card was broken for three months...

 

Might have to check out Ideal Flight, thanks.

I enjoyed Air Hauler a lot for some its aspects (I bought it when it was released), but I must say that this precise aspect of how you have to handle your company was what did put me off. The fact is that sometimes I would accept a job, prepare to fly it, and then real life would come in the way and prevent me from doing the flight - I would then fail with this job, and possibly fail more jobs if I had accepted some for my AI pilots but had to cut short my session before I assigned the jobs to AI pilots...

 

If you want to do simply do a job when you want, I suggest FsPassengersX, which is still what I'm using most of the time, it's awesome, and possibly FsCaptain, which seems to be a bit of the successor of FsPx, although more oriented towards the pilot career than the company boss aspects (which is more what I'm into).

FsPassengersX is great with the big number of failures that can happen randomly, from minor to major ones, once in while you get a stuck landing gear, or instruments failing etc, and therefore I'm always rather alert when flying with FsPx which adds to the immersion.

I just had a look at Ideal Flight. (I wouldn't even have bothered reading that site if you guys hadn't pointed me to it: that site looks cheap and fake... some free advice for the creator: don't put that much info on one page; keep it short and to the point; don't make almost everything bold to stand out because this way nothing stands out at all anymore; don't post that many bullet lists: don't praise your own product too much but let the feedback to the praising; don't give an approximate price... amongst others) Anyway, it seems Ideal Flight mainly creates flight automatically: there seems to be no 'story' at all like in AirHauler, where you make money and have to take care of things. FSCaptain seems interesting too but it looks horrible with those Windows 3 style screens. Yeah, I am a bit picky when it comes to looks...

 

After reading the comments about not playing the game only has an influence when rep is above 70 and it doesn't totally ruin the game, I think I will go for AirHauler.

Shoot... So I decided to try AirHauler: I download the demo and after installing it I immediately get a Demo expired message?!? How crap is that! I also noticed their site is offline...? Don't know if I trust all this...

Shoot... So I decided to try AirHauler: I download the demo and after installing it I immediately get a Demo expired message?!? How crap is that! I also noticed their site is offline...? Don't know if I trust all this...

 

I bought AirHauler at a local store a few days ago. The full product works absolutely wonderfully for me. It even prompted me to check JustFlight's support site to download the latest SP. I don't think you'll have a problem with the full version.