SkyHub
All briefings

CAREER MODE

Why hours and money are two different things

Two currencies doing two jobs. Hours decide when you may be promoted, cash decides whether you can afford it, and neither one is for sale.

3 MIN
Coins in low light — the currency that is earned rather than flown for

SkyHub runs on two currencies that never convert into each other. Hours decide when you can be promoted. Cash decides whether you can afford it. You need both, and neither is for sale.

That separation is the load-bearing decision in the whole economy, and it is worth explaining rather than stating.

What each one is for

Hours are recorded block time from accepted sectors. They are the gate on rank, and they are the one thing in the game that only flying produces. Nothing you buy, win, borrow or are given moves them.

Cash is what the flying pays and what everything else costs: type ratings, the final check on the command course, the services the departments sell you. It moves quickly, it can be lost, and it can be lent to you.

The reason for two is that a single currency has to answer two questions at once — has this pilot done enough, and can this pilot afford it — and any economy that lets one currency answer both eventually lets money answer the first.

HOURSproduced only by flyingGate on every rankSummed from accepted reportsNothing else can move themCASHpaid by the flying, spent everywhereType ratings and the final checkServices the departments sellCan be earned, lost or lentthey never convert, in either direction
Hours decide when you may be promoted; cash decides whether you can afford it. Neither converts into the other, and neither is ever sold for real money — a single currency would eventually let money answer both questions.

Neither is bought with real money

SkyHub is a one-off purchase. What it buys is Career Mode on your account, permanently, with every future update included. Nothing else in the game is ever sold for real money: no hours, no cash, no rank, no rating, no shortcut.

That is a commercial decision as much as a design one. The moment rank is purchasable, every rank in the airline stops meaning anything, including the ones that were flown for.

Both are derived, never stored

Neither your hours nor your balance is kept as a running total that things add to. Hours are summed from your accepted flight reports; the balance is summed from the ledger of every credit and debit against you. Both are recomputed from the underlying record whenever they are read.

This is not an academic preference. A counter can drift, and worse, it can silently lose an entry — an increment that runs after its retry has already been recorded is skipped, and those hours never come back. Summing has no such failure mode, because there is nothing to miss. It also means there is no field anywhere that a bug, or a person, can simply set.

The People Department — earnings for the month and the running ledger of every credit and debit
The balance is not a number anything adds to. It is the sum of this ledger, recomputed every time it is read — which is why there is no field a bug or a person could simply set.

What money can and cannot reach

Money reaches the aeroplane you are allowed to command, the training you have to pass, and a good deal of what makes a month comfortable. It does not reach the logbook.

The penalties work the same way round. A bad landing costs a share of that sector’s pay and nothing else. It does not touch your hours, it does not follow you into next month, and it cannot compound into a spiral you have to dig out of. You arrive firm, you are paid less for that sector, and the next sector starts clean.

A career economy that punishes a bad night by making the next twenty nights worse is a career economy nobody keeps playing.