Just curious on others’ thoughts about the new maintenance program (A Check / B Check / C Check / D Check). I’m all for the added realism instead of the maintenance costs per flight, but I think the A Check costs may be a little much for some of the older and smaller aircraft.
For example, on my first (failed) play after the reset I noticed that the Beechcraft 1900D “A Check” was nearly 500k while the aircraft cost itself is only about 1M. So with about 15hr daily usage, your maintenance costs exceed the value of the aircraft about every other month (not including B, C, and D checks). Obviously older aircraft incur increased maintenance costs, but for reference a new E195 jet’s “A Check” is 50k, about 1/10th the cost of the Beechcraft. The costs for these older aircraft seems a bit steep and unrealistic to me. Should the more involved checks (C and D) reset or significantly lower the A and B Check costs?
The maintenance cost is indeed way too high. I did some research and couldn’t really find a fixed value for the maintenance checks.
Increasing the check costs when a plane is getting older also isn’t really realistic. It is true that the hourly variable costs are increasing as the plane will need more maintenance. Parts need to be replaced in a shorter timeframe etc…
I found this for the fixed and variable cost for the B-1900D:
I just checked for you guys and it isn’t based on aircraft type so you are roughly paying what I pay for a MD-82. Needs a fix but that is a huge topic.
I just checked for you guys and it isn’t based on aircraft type so you are roughly paying what I pay for a MD-82. Needs a fix but that is a huge topic.
Not necessarily… I mean yes technically it is not based on aircraft type. It is based on aircraft size, and the data the game uses to determine the “size” is the maximum seat limit. A “D” check for an aircraft with 20 seats is absolutely not the same cost as the “D” check for an aircraft with 150.
The maintenance cost is indeed way too high. I did some research and couldn’t really find a fixed value for the maintenance checks.
Increasing the check costs when a plane is getting older also isn’t really realistic. It is true that the hourly variable costs are increasing as the plane will need more maintenance. Parts need to be replaced in a shorter timeframe etc…
It’s true that IRL the cost of each check doesn’t increase, it is the frequency of the checks that increase. We were trying to implement this by simulating aircraft breakdowns which would increase in frequency with the aircraft age, but until we can get that working, as a game balancing act we decided to just increase the cost of the checks for now. A huge problem in the last version was that used aircraft had almost 0 downsides; they were instantly available, cheap, and operating costs were the same as new aircraft. that is what we were trying to address by adding these checks.
Here are the current formulas for check cost:
A Check Cost: (100*max_seats)+(0.05*aircraft_housr)+(aircraft_hours^1.1)+(max_seats^1.85)
B Check Cost: (200*max_seats)+(0.10*aircraft_hours)+(aircraft_hours^1.1)+(max_seats^1.85)
C Check Cost: (1000*max_seats)+(0.50*aircraft_hours)+(aircraft_hours^1.1)+(max_seats^1.85)
D Check Cost: (5000*max_seats)+(1.00*aircraft_hours)+(aircraft_hours^1.1)+(max_seats^1.85)
Perhaps something we can do is add a modifier to decrease the check cost for prop aircraft.
Hmm the formulas do look good. For a 777-300ER I saw on the auction the D cost would be just under $3 million which would be around 1/100th of its value. And seems reasonable when you look into the manhours needed for a D check and what is replaced etc… It was a relatively young 77W, so it would be higher on older frames as big parts would need to be replaced.
With the same data for a B-1900D, it suddenly would be 1/10 to 1/20 of its value so something doesn’t work there for the smaller planes.
I totally get the goal here of simulating breakdowns, increased checks, etc. But IMHO something needs to be done to drastically lower the maint costs on these used aircraft - especially smaller/vintage planes (the A check on a DC-3 is insane).
Perhaps a solution is to have aircraft over a certain age require checks more frequently, but keep the cost for checks the same or add some modifier for props as well.
Maybe something like:
10-20yr old aircraft have checks 1.5x times as often checks (~350hrs for A Check)
20-30yr old aircraft have checks 2x times as often (~250hrs for A Check);
30-50yr old aircraft have checks 2.5x as often (~200hrs for A Check);
50+yrold aircraft have checks 3x as often (~175hrs for A Check).
As it stands now, I just don’t see how you could ever turn a profit flying used aircraft, and using vintage aircraft - which is a big draw for this game - is now financial suicide.
Hmm considering that older planes normally would have to make a maintenance visit, that would be a great idea in my opinion. Just look at the 767 fleet of American Airlines for example… there is a reason why they are called hangar queens.
But the formulas for small regionals need to be altered somehow. I’m sure Unk can do it, they work for large jets just fine, so just some tweeking of the formulas should do it.
If I may be so bold, after sleeping on this, perhaps a solution lies in modifying the portion of the maintenance that exponentially increases with aircraft hours, i.e. “(aircraft_hours^1.1)”, to be multiplicative instead of exponential.
The reason I suggest this in instead of a modifier for prop aircraft, is because older aircraft, of all types, have prohibitively expensive maintenance. Changing the exponential function to multiplicative would still meet the goal of higher costs for older aircraft without making the maintenance go off the charts for vintage planes.
Just a thought, there are a lot of different ways this can be addressed, I’m sure.
Support Us
