PIP on the leaderboard: a badge by your name and a season board
PIP has been flying with pilots for a day now. Until today the only way to see how far someone's PIP had grown was to meet it in the air, flying next to its owner. Now it follows your name around the site.
The badge
Next to a pilot's name there is a small PIP head with a number on it. The number is the stage: 1 is a Chick, 2 a Scout, 3 a Radio, 4 a Navigator and 5 an Ace. An Ace gets a gold ring around the badge. Hover over it, or hold it on a phone, and you see the PIP's name and stage.
You will see it on the leaderboard, in the online list, in the lobby, in chat, in the feed and on station pages. Anywhere Skydex prints a pilot's name in a list, the badge comes with it. Your profile already has its own PIP section, so the header there stays as it was.
The badge only appears once PIP has hatched. If you hid PIP (the "Hide PIP" button on its card, or Settings → General), the badge goes away too. Switch PIP back on and it returns within a few minutes.
The With PIP board
The season leaderboard has a new chip next to Ships and Aircraft: With PIP. It ranks PIP's score for the season. Every new card (an aircraft or ship you had never caught before) caught while PIP was flying with you earns points by rarity: a common card is worth 1, an epic aircraft 10, an epic ship 25, a mythical aircraft 40 and a legend ship 60. The first card from a new flag country adds 5 more, and a new aircraft type or ship class adds 2. Repeats earn nothing. These are the same catches that grow PIP, so climbing this board and growing your PIP go together. The badge next to your name shows PIP's total score after its stage.
Seasons reset every month, so a pilot who hatched their PIP yesterday has the same shot at the top as someone whose PIP is already an Ace. The head start that older collections get applies to PIP's stage, not to this board: everyone starts the season at zero.
There is no season title for this board yet. We want to see how one full season of it plays out first. The archive pages of past seasons also keep their four boards for now.
What's next
Next up is paint: colours that unlock as PIP grows, flags of the countries you have flown to, and a metal finish that follows your pilot rank. If you have not met PIP yet, the first post explains how to get the egg and hatch it. Then take off and catch something new.