Multi-Task Prioritization Under a Hard-Deadline Battery

Priority rule (not urgency alone): order by consequence × irreversibility, then by deadline.

1. Tracking failure ends the run - irreversible, highest consequence.
2. Missing your own call sign is a discrete, scored communication failure and, in the real aircraft, a safety-of-flight item. Delayed by a second is acceptable; dropped is not.
3. Fuel panel degrade is 10 s and recoverable - lowest consequence, despite having the loudest deadline.

Sequence:

• t = 4 s: error is 10 + 4(4) = 26 m - still under 30. Take a short joystick correction (~0.5 s) to flatten the drift, then immediately reset the fuel panel (1–2 s). Doing the panel now, not at t = 7.9, is deliberate: it burns the deadline before the radio call arrives.
• t = 5 s: acknowledge and read back "Viper 2, zero-nine-zero" (~2 s). Hold the stick steady during the readback; sub-threshold jitter is cheaper than a garbled readback.
• t = 6 s: error crosses 30 m. Apply a larger corrective input and hold it. The 3 s clock starts now, so the error must be back under 30 by t = 9 s - roughly a 10 m/s correction rate, well inside the target's 4 m/s drift.
• t = 7–9 s: re-center and re-trim, then resume the normal scan. Never let the panel reset push you past t = 8; never let the readback push you past t = 9 on the tracking clock.

What not to do: do not reset the panel at t = 7.9 simply because it is the loudest task, and do not answer the radio before the panel - that ordering stacks two deadlines into the same two seconds.

Protect, in order:

1. Tracking - a single 3 s excursion ends the run. There is no recovery path, so no other task can be allowed to buy time from it.
2. Own call sign - a missed or wrong readback is an unrecoverable discrete error in the record and, in the aircraft, a real breakdown of crew coordination. Delaying it by 1–2 s is fine; skipping it is not.

Drop:

• The fuel-panel reset, if and only if it truly collides. The penalty is a 10 s degraded engine model - annoying, recoverable, and self-clearing. Absorbing that is far cheaper than either alternative.

The general principle: urgency (how loud, how soon) is not priority. A 4 s deadline with a recoverable outcome loses to a 3 s deadline with an unrecoverable one. Watchstanders who sort by loudness fail the battery; watchstanders who sort by what cannot be undone pass it.

Caveat that changes the answer: if the panel reset were a real fuel imbalance with a hard limit rather than a 10 s model degrade, the consequence ordering flips and the panel moves to the top. The rule is consequence-based; the ranking only holds while the numbers hold.

Resolution order - aviate, navigate, communicate, in that sense:

1. Comply with the control instruction. In live flight, an ATC clearance is a directive with separation consequences; the simulator score is not. Ignoring or delaying a clearance to protect a tracking number is the exact inversion of airmanship the battery is looking for.
2. Absorb the tracking penalty within the limit. A single excursion past 30 m is survivable if corrected inside 3 s. Comply, then apply a large corrective input and expect the error to peak and recover - do not fight the instruction with the stick.
3. If the maneuver genuinely makes the tracking task unachievable, say so on the radio and request relief - "unable at this time, standby" - rather than silently non-complying. The correct failure mode is a declared deviation, not an undeclared one.

Never do:

• Never let an automated score override an external directive. The battery is measuring whether your priorities survive pressure, and the answer it wants is the one that keeps the aircraft safe.
• Never drop the readback as a way of buying tracking time - that is the same error in a quieter form.
• Never make two corrections at once (stick plus panel plus radio). Sequence them; simultaneous inputs are how a small tracking error becomes a lost target and a missed call.