Patch Notes 0.2.41.6 -> 0.2.42.2

v0.2.42.2 — Casey Files Paperwork With Steam Review

• Casey came back from a meeting at Steam HQ, waving a clipboard and looking thunderous. 'They told me players couldn't SCROLL the help guide with a controller! TWO HUNDRED PAGES of expertly-curated wisdom and they could only see the first screenful?!' He stomped over to Help & Controls, ripped open the Help tab, and bolted a right-stick scroll handler directly to the inner content panel. Sidebar still navigates with the D-pad, content now scrolls with the right thumbstick, and a controller hint sits at the top so nobody has to guess. 'Read every word, Captains — I labored over those.'

• 'And then — THEN! — They said the BUTTONS in my own Flight School don't work with a controller!' Casey was speechless for a full second, which is some kind of record. The track selection dialog and scenario prompt were both showing up while the registered tutorial card was hidden, so the Steam Input action set silently slipped back to MapNavigation, and the controller stopped accepting menu input. Casey taught the WindowManager to scan for ANY visible window in the tutorial overlay's neighborhood — not just the one it knew about by name. 'If you can SEE a button, you can PRESS a button. End of debate.' Also wired the focus chains explicitly so the title-bar close button is reachable from the d-pad.

• Casey also tightened up the Steam Overlay auto-pause connection. 'They mentioned — POLITELY this time, like a footnote — that the game wasn't pausing when the overlay opened.' The signal was being connected before Steam had finished initializing in some cases, so the wire was never live. Casey now waits for Steam to confirm it's ready, retries on the next frame if needed, and prints a friendly tower notice when the connection actually goes through. 'I want to SEE the green light, not assume it.'

• Bonus: Casey marched up to the Cloud Saves desk and discovered the Steam Auto-Cloud config was pointing at a folder that doesn't exist with a file extension SkyChart never writes. 'WHO set this up?! It's looking for .sav in the install directory, and we save .json to AppData!' He left a note for the human pilots with the correct Steamworks Auto-Cloud paths for Windows, Mac, and Linux. (No code change needed — just go fix the Steamworks config, Captain.)

v0.2.42.1 — Casey Closes the Route Recommender's Hangar Door

• Casey was halfway through a pot of coffee when the whole tower went dark. 'A pilot reported the game just VANISHED on him in mid-1970, and another captain says it crashes the moment he tries to start a fresh game on the Steam Deck!' He grabbed the flight recorder and traced the route recommender's background scanner sneaking into the active flight manifest WHILE the main crew was sorting routes and saving the books. 'You can't read the passenger list while someone's still SHUFFLING IT, you absolute menace!' He boarded up the entire hangar — every single piece of game state the recommender needs is now collected on the main desk before the worker bees are even allowed near it. No more midair manifest swaps. No more phantom Array refcount crashes. The route AND slot scanners both got the same treatment.

• Casey also nailed the busy-wait door shut. 'You were spinning a worker thread in a tight loop, peeking at the cache every ten milliseconds like a kid checking the oven door!' Replaced the entire setup with a proper async callback chain — when the scan finishes, the worker hands results back to the main thread via a deferred callback, the cache updates safely, and any UI panels waiting for results get notified at once. Way calmer in the tower.

v0.2.42.0 — Casey Manages the Order Book

• Casey marched into Boeing's front office and demanded to know why new planes just materialized on the tarmac. 'You can't build a 747 in five minutes! I don't care WHAT the simulator says!' Aircraft now have realistic delivery delays — 1-6 months depending on model size, with a global backlog system. Order the same hot new jet as every other airline? Get in line, Captain. Hangar aircraft still deploy instantly because Casey already inspected those rivets.

• Leased aircraft arrive in 1 month — the leasing company keeps the inventory. New purchases scale with difficulty: Glider captains get express shipping (0.5x), Supersonic veterans wait in the full queue (1.3x). The delivery countdown ticks down each month, and Casey sends a delivery notification when your bird finally touches down.

• Casey added an 'On Order' tab to Fleet Overview so you can track all pending deliveries, see progress bars, and cancel orders if plans change. Cancellations cost a 15% restocking fee — 'You think Boeing gives refunds? They've already cut the aluminum, Captain!' Fleet additions on existing routes arrive without grounding the operation — your current planes keep flying while the new one is built.

• The world map now shows a delivery progress ring at the midpoint of waiting routes — a circular countdown that fills as delivery approaches. Awaiting-delivery routes glow in a distinct blue rather than the usual suspended gray, so you can spot them at a glance from 30,000 feet.

• Casey updated the tutorial to teach new captains about delivery delays hands-on — place your first order, advance time, and watch the delivery notification pop. 'Every pilot needs to learn patience, and I'm the bird to teach it!'

v0.2.41.12 — Casey Rewires the Cockpit

• Casey was mashing the D-pad on the Steam Deck trying to pick an era, but nothing happened. 'The buttons are RIGHT THERE, and they're not doing ANYTHING!' Turns out Steam Input was swallowing the D-pad signals and dumping them into a black hole — no output mapping at all. Wired all five controller configs to pass the D-pad through properly. Menu navigation, era selection, and difficulty picking — all working with D-pad and joystick now.

• 'Where's the settings button?! I need to adjust my font size, and there's no way to get there without a mouse!' Casey discovered the Select button was mapped to Speed Cycle — handy, but not nearly as important as being able to reach Settings. Remapped Select/View to open Settings on all controllers, in all screens. Added on-screen hints so pilots know it's there.

• Flight routes were vanishing into thin air during zoom and pan. Casey traced it to overzealous fuel-saving — the renderer was skipping routes outside the viewport, but only recalculating which routes to show on zoom changes, not pan. 'You can't just STOP drawing a flight path because the passengers can't see it!' Removed the CPU-side culling entirely — the GPU handles clipping just fine with our route count.

• The left joystick was double-dipping on the save screen — moving the cursor AND scrolling the save slot list at the same time. 'Pick a lane, stick!' Disabled the ScrollContainer's built-in joystick response since DraggableWindow already handles right-stick scrolling properly.

v0.2.41.11 — Casey Recalibrates the Compass

• Casey was testing the 'Zoom to City' button and ended up staring at an empty ocean. 'I clicked TOKYO, and it took me to the BERMUDA TRIANGLE!' Turns out the navigation computer was reading the city's screen-wrapped position instead of its true map coordinates — so the zoom target shifted depending on where you'd scrolled last. Like asking for directions and getting yesterday's answer. Casey swapped in the original chart coordinates, and now every city lands dead center, every time.

v0.2.41.10 — Casey Rewires the Autopilot

• Casey was reviewing the rival airlines' flight logs and found something shocking: 'They haven't opened a SINGLE route in TWENTY-FIVE YEARS?! What are they doing with ten million dollars — building a swimming pool on the tarmac?!' He traced the problem to the navigation computer, which was calculating route costs in kilometers instead of degrees — making every route look 111 times more expensive than it actually was. A $500K setup fee was showing up as $55 MILLION. 'No wonder nobody's flying — the accountants think a puddle-jumper to Osaka costs more than the airline itself!' One decimal conversion later, rivals are back in the air.

• Casey also found the difficulty dial was wired backwards. 'On EASY mode, the rivals barely move, and on HARD mode they're everywhere?! That's like putting training wheels on the race car and a jet engine on the tricycle!' The AI expansion chance table now starts at 20% on Glider (up from a laughable 8%) and scales to 50% on Supersonic.

• 'The early 1930s route planner was picking Tokyo-to-London on a plane that could barely reach Osaka,' Casey muttered, shaking his head at the atlas. The Forge Trimotor has 885 km of range — that's regional, not intercontinental! AI now knows to pick nearby cities when range is limited, triples its candidate search in early eras, and pre-filters impossible pairs before scoring. No more throwing darts at a world map from a biplane.

• Casey noticed rival airlines sitting on the tarmac while the player had 20 routes in the air. 'They have TEN MILLION DOLLARS, and they're waiting for a COMMITTEE MEETING before opening their first route?!' AI now establishes 2–4 routes immediately at game start (scaled by difficulty) and dynamically ramps up expansion when falling behind the player. The more routes you open, the harder they push to compete.

• 'The cash register was broken on day one — routes were flying full, but the money wouldn't start flowing until the first month closed!' Casey found that route income only began to drip after the first-month boundary. Now the economics engine fires immediately when the game starts, so your treasury reflects real earnings from the very first day.

• 'While I had the hood open, I upgraded the whole avionics suite,' Casey announces, unfurling a blueprint the size of a runway. Rival airlines now scale with difficulty across the board: fleet caps (4–10 per route), pricing aggression, market war triggers, cash reserves, maintenance levels, and demand multipliers. AI adjusts maintenance quarterly, invests in city infrastructure, and competes with difficulty-scaled demand bonuses (1.05x–1.40x). Every knob now turns when you turn the difficulty dial.