Aircraft Maintenance

[Carde]

Well if the game is in real-time it would make the most sense to have maintenance in real-time as well I think. But maybe not. From wikipedia this is what the checks consist of:

A check | 400-600 flight hours | 10 Hours downtime
B check | 6-8 months | 1-3 days downtime
C check | 20-24 months | 1-2 weeks downtime
D check | every 6 years | 2 months downtime

I mean how often are you going to have a D check or a C check in a real-time game like this? Not very often. In games like AE it is more pronounced because of the accelerated time. One of my goals for maintenance is to add an element of strategy and planning to the game, making sure you have replacement aircraft in place when maintenance comes up.

Like this, but you would need to point out maintenance bases (or have people build at for a fee at airports). If you use your own it is much cheaper, you can use an general existing one for a lot more money or you could even have players compete with theirs, but that sounds like an advanced feature for down the line.

Of course A and B checks can be done anywhere, most of the time A checks are done overnight and B checks can be done at hangar space, again on your own HQ and such it should be cheaper than elsewhere. This adds a bit more planning to everything

Also I would like to see cycles introduced and not just flight hours. Should not be to hard to make a system that tracks both and once one hits the mark flags the plane for a check.

Finally we should have the option to conduct the checks in advance. I might have 50 hours to go, but I just took the plane out of rotation so I am going to put it through the check now because I have the time



After each flight all you have is: Cleaning, refueling and restocking of the plane. Maintenance would only be done if the pilots or plane computers say something is wrong. This could be a random event of course reflected by your airlines spending on maintenance and what not.