8 hours ago, Kristofski said:

Career mode has been improved - I'm getting less moving hold short lines, fewer missed ATC/Quick Reply hangups, and it looks like night missions spawn more frequently.

It's really the luck of the draw... My first 3 career missions in SU6 all had issues with the hold short lines showing up in completely the wrong spot (at a runway intersection, in the displaced threshold, at a midpoint exit taxiway). The ATC hangups seem to be 100% related to ATC/sim load. I got them multiple times during approach in high traffic areas. You are basically guaranteed a break in ATC quick reply flow by landing anywhere on the east coast of the US.

Actually, I consider the hangup a feature: If you spam the quick reply button, you can sometimes stump the ATC flow and get silence during cruise instead of handoffs every 30 seconds, sometimes to a controller on the other side of the country. I then just contact the nearest center again when I'm close to TOD. ATC has gotten better with descent management, but that started before SU6... I think it was a server-side tweak that Asobo never told anyone about.

14 hours ago, Funky D said:

It's really the luck of the draw... My first 3 career missions in SU6 all had issues with the hold short lines showing up in completely the wrong spot (at a runway intersection, in the displaced threshold, at a midpoint exit taxiway). The ATC hangups seem to be 100% related to ATC/sim load. I got them multiple times during approach in high traffic areas. You are basically guaranteed a break in ATC quick reply flow by landing anywhere on the east coast of the US.

I did notice that VFR works a lot better than the IFR missions, Sometimes its better to just cancel IFR if the ATC isn't making sense and just use your instruments, GPS, EFB map etc. I know that's not going to work for airliners and I suspect they have the most issues, since they rely more on ATC comms. While I do play with AI and Live traffic on, I dont often run into traffic issues as I'm not flying into international airports in my SAR helos or my Vision Jet lol.

I find some of the breaking on arrival is dependent on if you have the pattern correct or not. Teardrop pattern entry almost never works right for me, but the others do. I'll manually update the EFB flight plan if I see it default to a teardrop arrival. Departure procedure seems to be completely irrelevant to the mission steps updating, but arrivals can picky about rather or not you reached "final" and it updates for you to quick reply for landing clearance.

14 hours ago, Kristofski said:

Sometimes its better to just cancel IFR if the ATC isn't making sense and just use your instruments, GPS, EFB map etc.

The only drawback of this is I have been penalized for flying over Class B airspace after canceling IFR (as I should be, but I also shouldn't be able to cancel IFR above FL180 in the first place). The update apparently no longer penalizes for flying through "prohibited" airspace... not sure what that all entails, but the sim shouldn't be penalizing for anything ATC or "procedure" related at this point since it's all so broken. Sometimes manually doing things through the ATC menu negates the penalties. Usually, it does not.

I bite my tongue and deal with it, but I have gotten frustrated enough to end my career session short more than once.

6 hours ago, Funky D said:

The update apparently no longer penalizes for flying through "prohibited" airspace... not sure what that all entails, but the sim shouldn't be penalizing for anything ATC or "procedure" related at this point since it's all so broken.

Fully agreed, and as usual, the solution is often just a menu with sliders and checkboxes to turn off ATC scoring or allow the user to customize their level of penalty, threshold for errors. The Sim has so many accessibility and assistance features anyway. One checkbox in the assist menu for "Mission Performance bonus only" so that you get extra for doing everything right but don't lose rep for mistakes would go a long way to improving the experience.

Nothing worse that getting an A rank instead of an S rank, due to IFR conditions or high winds slowing you down. Safety is more important than speed, but so many of the performance calculations are based on how fast you do something, like retrieval time for Hoist SAR missions, or VIP charter bros who get cranky when your flight into a headwind took 5 mins longer than expected.