Tridents for new aircraft types, fewer for shipyards
Two changes to how Tridents come out of spotting, both live today.
A Trident for every new aircraft type
The first time you catch an aircraft of a type you don't have yet, a Boeing 737-900, an Embraer E175, an Airbus A350-1000, you get 1 🔱 on top of the usual first-type XP. Each type pays once per player. The bell gets a row naming the type, and tapping it opens the airframe you caught.
Until now aircraft spotting had almost no steady way to earn Tridents. Apart from achievements, only the curated legends paid them: the Beluga, the Dreamlifter, the Ruslan and a few more. A spotter who worked through a busy airport every evening could go a week without a single one.
Shipyard world-firsts pay 2 instead of 10
When a ship you catch turns out to come from a yard nobody on Skydex had uncovered yet, it still counts as a world first and the XP for it stays at 40 plus 60. The Trident part drops from 10 to 2.
We looked at October. Shipyard world-firsts paid 960 Tridents, three quarters of everything spotting paid this month. There are thousands of yards in the records we draw from, about twenty new ones turn up every week, and the count is not going down. The yard arrives on its own a few minutes after the catch, so a lot of it comes down to which hull happens to be in front of you. It was the fastest way to climb the prestige stars, and it rewarded luck more than spotting.
Per catch, aircraft were already paying a little more XP than ships, so the XP tables stay as they are. The other gap was pace in busy harbours, and the pause between catches handles that.
What stays
Tridents you already have stay yours, including the ones from shipyards. Nothing is recounted. Legend world-firsts still pay 25, and achievement tiers pay as before.
Your shipyards are on the shipyards pages, and your aircraft types are in your collection.