Each world is a separate, persistent economy with its own settings, chosen when the world is created. That is why this wiki keeps saying "by default (your world may differ)": the numbers you play against are the world's, not the game's. This page tells you what actually varies, so you know what to check before founding.
The clock#
Every world has a genesis date and a time scale. At 1× a game day takes a real day; accelerated worlds run faster; a manual world only moves when an operator advances it. The world picker shows each world's clock, status (active or paused) and speed before you join, and the strip at the bottom of the game screen always shows your world's date and time scale. Everything in the game (bookings, maintenance, loan payments) runs on game time.
Rules that change how the game plays#
Some systems are switched on or off per world. The big ones:
| Setting | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Traffic-rights regime | Generous worlds default-grant routes touching your home country; restrictive worlds make most international flying a negotiation with the map. See Scheduling gates. |
| Slot ledger | Off: airport capacity is a shared hourly check. On: slots are owned property in 15-minute buckets, with use-it-or-lose-it seasons (180 days by default). See Slots & curfews. |
| Operational delays | Off: flights run exactly on schedule. On: departures pick up noise, lateness chains through a tail's day, and punctuality feeds your image. |
| Reserve substitution | Off: a broken or checked aircraft simply cancels its flights. On: an idle reserve can take over the whole rotation. See Reserves & substitution. |
Numbers that get tuned#
Beyond on/off switches, worlds tune the economy: how far ahead passengers book (3 days by default), demand seasonality and weekday rhythm, maintenance costs and check intervals, loan pricing, lease bands, staffing costs, and how many AI carriers fly alongside you and with which personalities. The mechanics in this wiki hold everywhere; the constants do not.
A world's airport footprint is set at creation and never changes. It can be a simple count (300 by default), but it can also be locked to whole regions or continents, banded by airport size, or built from an explicit list, which is why one world spans the globe and another is Europe only. Whichever shape it takes, the airports that exist on day one are the airports that will ever exist.
Reading the actual rulebook#
You do not have to infer any of this. World → Configuration prints the world's live ruleset in full (demand, the choice model, image, regulation, maintenance, staff, service, finance, lessors, operations, reserves, alliances and AI) straight from the server, with no fog gate. It is the world's actual configuration rather than documentation of it, so when a wiki page cites a default and your world disagrees, that screen is the one telling the truth.