Open campaign — every sortie on the board from day one, flight school now optional

The campaign board is open. Every one of the 19 missions is selectable from your very first launch, and flight school has gone from a gate to a recommendation.

The numbers made the case: most pilots were never getting through the syllabus, so most pilots never saw a mission. The fleet no longer makes you earn your way to the board:

1. All 19 missions open. The old rules (graduate flight school, then clear each mission to unlock the next) are gone. Pick any sortie and go straight to the briefing.
2. School is the recommended road in. FLIGHT SCHOOL still sits at the top of the menu, still reads NEW PILOTS START HERE, and the missions board now says so in plain amber: NEW TO THIS? FLIGHT SCHOOL T-1 TAKES FIVE MINUTES. The school's own sortie-by-sortie syllabus is unchanged.
3. Deep links just work. A pasted #m5 from a friend now lands on the briefing, not on a locked board.

Carrier landings are the cliff, so if the boat bites you, T-3 is the cure. The retention numbers will tell us in a couple of weeks whether open doors beat locked ones.

Try this: open MISSIONS, pick M1 and fly it cold. Then see what Earn your wings was trying to teach you.

— HB