Flight

Flight
Traveling through the atmosphere. But you knew that; you're a Skyrate! The vast majority of travel in Skytopia is via plane or airship.

Flight in Skyrates is simple. All you need to do is plot a destination and go.

Action Queue
From the Skyland, you can click on the World Map icon and begin flight planning.

Here you can see the Skylands of Skytopia, along with the island you're on circled in green. There should also be a white circle around the Skyland to show you your effective range from that Skyland.

You can zoom in either with the scroll wheel of your mouse (for Windows machines), or the magnifying glasses in the upper right.

The white circle around a Skyland represents the range of your plane.

By clicking on another Skyland, you can queue up a flight to that location. Once your next destination is selected, you can see the green circle has moved around the Skyland itself, as you're projecting where you will be. Note, you won't actually be flying there until you click on "Start Flight." Note that an action queue has begun forming on the bottom of the screen.

When queuing, you can queue up services (refilling fuel,) trades (which perform similar to the trading post, except they need to be projected in the future,) or you can hunt around a Skyland. Hunting is used when you want to find more combats.

The "Use Waypoint" button can be used to make more complex flight paths. If you click on Show Danger in the upper right you can see the black areas that represent dangerous pirate filled areas. Waypoints are handy for when you realize that the straight path may not always be the best one! For the most part though, you should be safe just clicking on the Skyland you want to go to, and clicking "Plot Flight" there.

When you're ready to start your action queue, click "Start Flight."

Travel Screen
So now that you've started your flight, you're in the air! Skyrates travel in real time, so if a flight will take 1 hour and 20 minutes, it will take your Skyrate 1 hour and 20 minutes of real time to get there. You can click on the Map icon in the quick nav to return to the map to edit your Action Queue if you wish.

You may see an icon in the lower left marked 'Combat, Click to Fight!' which means your Skyrate has encountered a combat while flying. Here, if you click on it, you will be taken to the combat screen where you can fight the battle yourself. If you don't want to deal with the combat, just let it sit there, and your Skyrate will take care of it when the current leg of the action queue finishes. He may not be as good as you are, but he'll certainly try his best!

Your Skyrate will continue executing the action queue even while you are away from your computer. While you are away, the auto-resolver will take care of your combat, just as if you had ignored it on the travel screen.

Types of Flight
Once you obtain the services of a Navigator, you will be able to plot 2 additional types of flight legs, Risky and Safe. At first they will take longer than a "normal" flight leg, but as your navigator levels they will actually be faster, eliminating the need to ever use a normal flight leg.

Risky Flight
Risky flight will have your skyrate encounter more pirates during a flight leg. The flight line will be plotted in red. The current mechanism of how combats are generated during the risky flight leg is unknown, except that the server checks in five minute intervals to determine whether a player has found a combat. However, it seems dependent on the level of your navigator (with higher levels having a higher chance to generate combats), similar to how Perception affects the probability of combats while Hunting.

This type of flight is geared towards players who want to combat while on a trade route, and generally will be more effective (and profitable) than hunting, if your Perception level is lower than 4.

Safe Flight
Safe flight will have your skyrate encounter fewer pirates during a flight leg. The flight line will be plotted in green. The level of your Navigator seems to work in a similar way to Risky Flights; the higher the level, the less likely you will encounter a combat.

This type of flight is great for players who trade expensive goods, or travel through dangerous areas, such as Tortuga. However, it should be noted that in many cases the Autoresolver will be able to flee combats fine with a high flee % set, and thus Risky flights are generally more profitable, even for a trader. Only use Safe flight if you think you need to.

Flight Experience
Skyrates earn 1 Flight Point (FP) per half-hour of flight time. Accumulated Flight Points count toward flight ranks. Flight Points also allow Skyrates to acquire flying and navigation oriented skills in the Skill Tree.