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Addon Maintenance regimen?

Engine failure modes are completed so far. To give an example what you might have to contend with:

Generally, once a system is marked as failed, the exact failure will be decided by a throw of the dice. For each engine, there's the possibility of a fire*, an irrecoverable shutdown and a recoverable shutdown.
I want to test a startup assistant logic for a recoverable shutdown, but despite the four engines of the Dash 7, all I get is fires and totally broken engines, lol.


*Engine fires can be extinguished. The UI gauge makes a provision for that if the plane doesn't have fire suppression systems modeled (like portover planes). You've got 30 seconds to extinguish a fire, otherwise it will damage your flight controls. Flight control damage is a workaround, because I can't simulate a melted wing structure and don't want to fumble with the n+1 possibilites to place engines on an aircraft.
This will also allow you to limp to the nearest airfield.
 
Bjoern, I'm getting excited to see this in it's finished state. Sounds like you've put a hell of a lot of work into it.
 
The remaining failure modes are in. Let's hope I didn't mix up the gear failure modes too much.

I've tried to account for tail draggers and fixed gear aircraft as well as I could. While retractable gear can get stuck (you're lucky if you're in a tail dragger with a fixed tail wheel as I can't account for that), fixed wheelers will suffer blown tires instead (for lack of something better available). Blown tires are an effect of very hard landings and a bit of bad luck as well, by the way.
Steering can lock up, brakes can fail and you can end up with a worst case scenerio for each configuration.

(Asymmetric) Flap failures are in as well. You are in for a fun ride if they get stuck during retraction.

The airframe, i.e. control surface damage will greatly limit the available travel for each surface as a simple lockup would be a bit harsh. Attribute the degraded usability due to control cable slacking or hydraulic pressure dropoff or so.

If you run into failures, the decision is yours to make whether to divert for repairs or try to make it to the destination. The reputation hit at the end of the flight and the repair costs will be there in any case. :)
 
Work has slowed to crawl at the moment as I need to prioritize other, non-FS stuff.

Started to work on the load/save system, but this ties directly into company management mode and the statistics page, so it won't be a smooth ride.

I'm also considering adding an "unlock" feature to aircraft when company mode is turned on. You would have to buy the current aircraft with company funds. A pristine, fully restored/factory fresh version is the safe, but expensive way to buy an aircraft, while a "buy used" mode would give you an aircraft with its systems in a randomly chosen state (but never lower than 50%) at a discount. Prices would scale with aircraft MTOW.

Documentating everything will be the last and biggest hurdle...it doesn't help that I have a bit of a writer's block at the moment.
 
Bjoern said:
I'm also considering adding an "unlock" feature to aircraft when company mode is turned on. You would have to buy the current aircraft with company funds. A pristine, fully restored/factory fresh version is the safe, but expensive way to buy an aircraft, while a "buy used" mode would give you an aircraft with its systems in a randomly chosen state (but never lower than 50%) at a discount. Prices would scale with aircraft MTOW.
Click to expand...

Just an idea that came to me while reading your post...

You mention 'unlocking' aircraft via purchase in order to use them. One very simple method might be to lock out any aircraft that's not purchased, by making it impossible to start it (override mag switch / ignition switch). You could still sit in it (aka perusing prior to purchasing / window shopping / tire kicking), but if no-one hands you the keys, you aren't going flying. :)
 
JimmyRFR said:
Just an idea that came to me while reading your post...

You mention 'unlocking' aircraft via purchase in order to use them. One very simple method might be to lock out any aircraft that's not purchased, by making it impossible to start it (override mag switch / ignition switch). You could still sit in it (aka perusing prior to purchasing / window shopping / tire kicking), but if no-one hands you the keys, you aren't going flying. :)
Click to expand...

Don't they let you take GA aircraft for a spin before you purchase them? So what would be the point of being denied a test flight?
 
Bjoern said:
Don't they let you take GA aircraft for a spin before you purchase them? So what would be the point of being denied a test flight?
Click to expand...

The point being of course that you couldn't take a bird up to earn funds if you don't yet own it...

However, when you're talking about the idea of company funds being available across a range of aircraft and being to purchase a 'factory fresh' vs. 'used' model, there might be required some persistence across aircraft, which, since you've already talked about this being built as a gauge that gets installed, seems to be a bit of a conflict. Unless of course, they write to the same persistent log / config files.
 
JimmyRFR said:
The point being of course that you couldn't take a bird up to earn funds if you don't yet own it...
Click to expand...

Umm. That was the original plan. No wear and tear and no maintenance and funds if you don't unlock the aircraft first.

However, when you're talking about the idea of company funds being available across a range of aircraft and being to purchase a 'factory fresh' vs. 'used' model, there might be required some persistence across aircraft, which, since you've already talked about this being built as a gauge that gets installed, seems to be a bit of a conflict. Unless of course, they write to the same persistent log / config files.
Click to expand...

One of the first things that you will have to do after installing the gauge for the first time is picking the name for your company's save file and for the save file of the aircraft in question. Doing that in the UI is too complex, so you will have to edit the gauge file by hand.

Saving will be done in three ways: Manually, from the gauge UI or whenever you save the current flight or automatically in certain intervals. Each save will update the current aircraft's save file and the company save file. Loading will either be done whenever you load the current aircraft or when you click a button on the UI.
The save files will all be stored in the main FSX folder and each aircraft you equip with the gauge will have to have its own save file.

All this is done by XMLTools, so this rules out FS9 compatibility. I don't know about XMLTools' P3D compatibility. Worst case: FSX only.
 
I still hate myself for it, but I poured another night's worth of work into the toolset. It's feature-complete now (save for a "sell aircraft" button).

Offers for used aircraft are randomly generated, so you can click away all night long until a good one pops up.
 
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