Sequencing & cooldowns
Every gate that involves waiting — failed tests, board refreshes, mission expiry, disconnect grace, completion ticks. One reference page so you know what's happening when the UI tells you to come back later.
Why we have cooldowns
Cooldowns aren't there to punish — they're there to give individual actions weight. A test you can spam through has no value. A board you can refresh infinitely loses the "the board is live" feeling. The cooldowns are tuned to be felt-but-not-painful: minutes for board actions, hours for tests, days for missions.
Theory-test cooldowns
| EVENT | COOLDOWN | NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| Entry test (failed) | 1 hour | Same class, same test. Pass = no cooldown. |
| Tier-up test (failed) | 4 hours | Per-class. Passing T2 resets your T3 attempt cooldown. |
Test fees are partially refunded on retry: a failed entry test charges
the full ∀1,000 on first attempt and 50% (∀500)
on retries inside the same calendar day. Tier-up tests follow the same
50% retry-fee rule.
Board refresh + completion tick
| EVENT | INTERVAL | NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| Board refresh (manual) | 5 minutes | Auto-refresh on login if last refresh > 1h. |
| Mission completion check | 60 seconds | Background tick over all your IN_PROGRESS missions. |
The completion tick is the heartbeat: every 60 seconds, a background job reads your recent VATSIM position samples (sampled every 15s during accepted missions) plus your VATSIM session record, and re-evaluates each accepted mission's state.
Mission expiry
| STATE | WINDOW | NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| Mission offered (on board) | Until next board refresh | Pre-accept; the slot churns with refreshes. |
| Mission accepted | 7 days | Hard expiry — auto-fails after this if not completed. |
| Time-sensitive window (if attached) | 60 minutes | Depart within this to keep the +15% bonus. |
| Disconnect grace period | ~10 minutes | Reconnect same CID + callsign in this window and the mission stays IN_PROGRESS. |
Abandonment
You can abandon an accepted mission at any time from the mission detail page. No reward, no penalty beyond the lost slot. Abandon freely — the generator will give you more on the next board refresh, and there's no daily limit.
Completion verification window
Once a mission is accepted, we watch your VATSIM activity until either completion or the 7-day expiry. Position samples persist in our database for 90 days after the mission reaches a terminal state, then are deleted; only the outcome remains.
A mission can transition IN_PROGRESS → COMPLETED,
COMPLETED_DIVERTED, FAILED, EXPIRED,
or ABANDONED. Terminal states are immutable — once a mission
is FAILED, completing the same route later doesn't retroactively rescue it.
Crash & disconnect
- Disconnect within ~10 minutes, reconnect with the same CID and callsign: mission stays
IN_PROGRESS. Position pipe picks up where it left off. - Disconnect longer than that, or reconnecting under a different callsign: mission transitions to
FAILEDand a small crash penalty fires (∀5,000 + 0.5 × forfeited reward, clamped at your balance). - No XP loss on crash — you've already lost the time, no double punishment.
- Diversion (landing within 75nm of the filed arrival under deteriorating weather): partial reward, no failure.