Pocket Planes Plane Slots
There are two common questions in Pocket Planes. 1) How much experience do I earn from a flight? 2) How is profit and flight cost determined?
I answered the experience question in a previous post, which I’ll elaborate on more in the next few days. Today I will explain flight profit and cost, how it is calculated and how it all breaks down.
Profit
Profit = Revenue – Expense
That’s pretty simple right? The profit you earn on a flight is a result of the total revenue from the flight, minus the total cost to get the aircraft to it’s final destination.
From the creators of Tiny Tower comes Pocket Planes, a casual airline sim that fits right in your pocket! - Manage and grow your fleet of planes as they fly interesting people and cargo to over 250 cities around the map. Unlock everything from tiny prop planes to jumbo jets and small town airports to mega cities.
- A plane's speed is listed in miles per hour, but the 'hour' that it is referring to is actually only about 10.9 minutes in the real world. Layovers If you take a passenger or cargo to an airport other than its destination, the payment will not change from what it was when you.
- Adding Plane Slots Tap the Plane List button in the bottom right. Scroll to the bottom of the plane list and tap Add Plane Slot to spend the displayed number of coins to add another slot to put a plane in. If you do not have an available plane slot, you can't build a new plane.
- A plane's speed is listed in miles per hour, but the 'hour' that it is referring to is actually only about 10.9 minutes in the real world. Layovers If you take a passenger or cargo to an airport other than its destination, the payment will not change from what it was when you first picked up that passenger or cargo.
- The absolute maximum amount of plane slots a player can have is 100, as the price of the 101st slot will exceed the maximum integer value of coins the game can hold. If the player attempts to save up enough to buy said slot, their coin balance will reset to 0 after it exceeds 2,147,483,647 as that is the maximum value supported by the game.
So how is flight cost, i.e. expense from the equation above, calculated?
Flight Cost/Expense
Expense = Distance * Speed * Weight / 400
The total flight cost from point A to point B is a direct result of distance, speed and weight.
Distance is determined by a straight line between the two locations and is about 1/4 to 1/5 the “real world” distance.
Speed and Weight are determined by the aircraft itself. Each aircraft has it’s own statistics and speed and weight can both be enhanced by upgrading the aircraft.
Distance Between Two Cities
Distance = Revenue per item – 50
Distance is actually very easy to determine in Pocket Planes. The revenue per item you are transporting from A to B is 50 coins more than the total miles traveled. So if you are transporting a Wedding Cake for $247 coins, the actual distance traveled is 247 – 50, or 197 miles.
Revenue Per Item
Revenue = Distance + 50
This is directly tied to distance, which you can see above. Revenue is the total distance plus 50. So If you are carrying cargo 200 miles, your revenue for that item would be 250 per item.
Maximum Revenue Per Flight
Since we now know the basics on how revenue and flight cost is calculated, we easily apply this to the number of slots in our aircraft to determine it’s maximum earning potential between two cities.
Max Revenue = Number of Slots * (Distance + 50)
So a Class 2 Pearjet with 5 slots traveling 500 miles can be represented as:
$2,750 = 5 * (500 miles + 50)
Calculating Profit in Pocket Planes
With all of the information above we have the basics behind the calculations in Pocket Planes. So taking that information and putting it all together, we can calculate our profit per flight between two cities:
Profit = Number of slots * (Distance + 50) – Distance * Speed * Weight / 400
An example below shows a Birchcraft Class 2 airplane carrying 4 pieces of cargo at $197 per item. This aircraft has a speed of 183 and a weight of 4 and is traveling a distance of 147 miles.
$591 = 4 * (147 + 50) – 147 * 183 * 4 / 400
Increasing Profit Per Flight
Since we know the calculations from above, it’s plain to see that we can increase our profit by reducing the weight of a flight. This is done because it decreases the Distance * Speed * Weight / 400 portion of the equation. A lower weight means a lower overall cost of the flight.
Conversely, increasing the speed of a flight actually decreases the profit earned on the flight. However, it increases the long-term earning potential of the aircraft, known as “profit rate.” This is because we can complete more flights per hour with a faster speed, and thus generate more revenue over the long haul.
With this in mind, the aircraft receiving the highest boost in profit from reducing weight can be calculated via the following equation:
Profit Increase Per Flight = .05 / (((400 * Number of Slots) / (Speed * Weight)) – 1)
If you plug the numbers you’ll find the Fogbuster aircraft receives the highest boost per weight decrease, coming in around 18%. It’s followed by the Tetra, Cyclone and Pearjet. I’ll have a detailed breakdown per aircraft posted in a few days for your reference.
Summing Up
I hope you all find this information helpful. I have a handy spreadsheet I am putting together for everyone to download and easily calculation all of this information for you automatically. It will also calculate your experience as well. Check back in a few days and I hope to have this information ready for you!
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Keeping in line with the Achievement Series of videos I have been posting, today’s topic is achieving The Longest Journey. This is the longest flight you can make in the game, from Nome to Wellington.
The first thing you want to do is purchase Nome, and purchase (or reactivate) a Class 1 aircraft with the longest range. I recommend the Supergopher with the fuel tank upgraded completely. This will give you the ability to make the flight by purchasing the fewest number of airports along the way.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lySpV7qla2I]Pocket Planes On Pc
Next, you want to slowly verify the range of your aircraft hopping across the globe from airport to airport. This will let you know the range of your aircraft and the next airport you need to purchase. Purchase the cheapest airports so you don’t waste your money, and also try to get the airports furthest away from the current city, but also closest towards Wellington.
Pocket Planes Tips
Using these tips you should be able to make The Longest Journey.