Service based failures

[mikeng]

Afternoon, I don't know whether it has been suggested or if it's actually possible, but have you considered a service based failure model that works with all aircraft. Nothing in as great detail as the NGX or Triple 7, but a few select areas with a service life that is also affected by how you fly. It could be customisable to each aircraft. As always this is great product, loving each new release.

Regards
Mike

[Travis]

Thank you kindly for the good words, Mike.

Yes we've had plans for such as this, and we may be able to implement something one day, but trying to cover "all" aircraft would be a challenge for several reasons.

Looking at this thread, the fact that the simulator only allows us to "fail" individual gauges, but only fail entire systems is clearly not adequate. Then there's the fact that certain aircraft work outside of the MS-SDK rules and certain failures simply aren't possible.

But when it comes to our Airline Expansion product, we could ground a particular aircraft for an indefinite period due to wear-and-tear (as well as for normal maintenance). So in FSCaptain if you want to fly tail-number N12345 each and every day - you can. But with FSCompany (?!?) feeding the flight information into FSCaptain, you will find that every so often N12345 will be "unavailable to you" for maintenance reasons. Fly it too often and too hard and things will break. Etc.

Regards,

[mikeng]

This sounds great. So in theory if I was to fly my A319 too heavy, I could find that the engines or gear etc are more likely to fail ?

[Travis]

We've yet to settle on a model for an "FSCompany" wear-and-tear, but that would be a possibility.

And again, since "FSCompany" & FSCaptain can work independently, you could have a "FSCompany"-only airline with which such wear and tear would be randomly modeled.  Since you wouldn't be actually "flying" these aircraft, you could bean-count and penny-pinch and do what you have to make things work.

Or you could have an integrated airline where you (as the PIC) would have direct influence over the result of a flight you would take... but also realizing that depending on your status in the Company, you might be influencing other PICs to follow your example.

So if you want to take risks and "rawhide" your aircraft on your first month at the job - you might not advance too quickly in the Company ranks, but your fellow pilots won't notice. However if you're on the top level of your Company and decide to start flying recklessly... well you may notice other pilots following your example... and suddenly your Company's image begins to tank... and you find that your maintenance department is working overtime to keep your airplanes in the air.

Personally, I think it would be a bad thing if a reputable airline could not field enough owned-and-operated aircraft to meet a day's flight schedule, and had to lease new (and possibly unreliable) aircraft for the next day's operations.

[mikeng]

That sounds brilliant, this is why you guys have the best fsx add on and also the most promising and exciting for the future. I cannot wait to see where this goes

[Travis]

Mike,

Thank you again for your kind words. We do our best, and it's most welcome to receive positive feedback. That does encourage us to "sally forth" and try to keep up our standards....

Regards,

--Trav, for the entire FSCaptain team.