Reduce wear rate in career mode, maintenance UI needs clarity

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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Firstly, I am not opposed to wear rate in this game. However, with the current state of things, the wear rate on some items, like brakes, is crazy high to the point where you need to check the landing gear subsystem after every single flight to maintain your tires and brakes. You have to do this manually, as the game will give no feedback on the issue, even if you check the landing gear subsystem, it will show green when it’s really not.

This is further compounded by the fact that the subsystem will say “good” and show a green circle. This tells the player that they are fine. The technician also says the plane is “good to go”. This also tells the player that things are great. This is not true however.

Individual items within subsystems, such as landing gear, can need maintenance, and the overall subsystem will show as green, as well as the technician being green. The player has no idea something is wrong unless they dive into every single subsystem to manually see if something needs maintaining.

The UI needs to be more clear about if there are items beneath a subsystem that need maintenance when it is checked Also, the wear rate for certain items needs balanced because it’s ridiculous to check and maintain items every single flight on the C 172. Before anyone suggests it, yes I’m landing slow, and no I’m not locking up the brakes.

The entire maintenance and wear systems in this game need a UI overhaul and balance IMO.

EDIT: I think what is happening is that subsystems are taking the average of the conditions of the items underneath it, and the technician does the same with the entire aircraft.

This is not intuitive because, for example with a car, if the brakes need maintaining, but nothing else does, a person does not say their car doesn’t need maintenance. This should be updated so that if any individual part needs maintenance, the subsystem it is under should say it needs maintenance, and the technician should also say it needs maintenance. This is how people think about vehicles in real life. Knowing the average condition is not useful in any capacity.

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I think large parts of the maintenance system are absurd.
It is true that all parts are listed somewhere.
But it is completely WRONG that EVERYTHING wears out.
That is not the case at all.
Only WEARING PARTS should wear out and not all systems.
Tires and brakes are wearing parts.
But the engine is not. It would be a horror if that were the case.
Why should I buy a new engine every few days???
Completely absurd.
Why does an oil tank wear out??? I suspect that there are planes out there that have never had to have an oil tank replaced.
Lightbulbs do not wear out, at least not in a way that can be measured, except that the brightness decreases or then no longer works at all.
There are maintenance intervals and things that should be replaced, such as oil filters, fuel filters, engine oil and hydraulic oil.
Or that you have to top up the oil. A valve is not a wear part and does not cost 10,000 Cr or more.
This is also completely absurd. A valve can break and then have to be replaced during maintenance. But it doesn’t wear out so that I have to keep replacing it.
Electronic systems wear out??? Good Lord.
As I said, everything can break SOMETIMES, but it doesn’t wear out so that I have to keep replacing it.
The way the maintenance system is at the moment, I have to replace the entire aircraft every few days or weeks.
So let’s be honest, who comes up with something like that…
And why do almost all parts in a category cost the same???
Absolutely ridiculous for the most part.

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In airplane ownership the engine is actually probably the most discussed/thought about maintenance item. Sure you need to replace the brake pads, the oil needs replacement but, the engine, it’s very expensive and it does wear out. So, any maintenance model of airplanes most certainly needs to model engine wear.

I agree about the maintenance system updates of the OP. In real life, you wouldn’t check one subsystem. You would quickly check all the planes high wear but easily checked items at a low cost. Brakes, oil, etc, should be able to be checked with a single click and then fixed as a single click.

Maintenance schedules on planes are actually pretty standardadized and it would have been better if the system had followed that more in the game (obviously with significantly reduced hours).

Overall wear rate is ok but engine does seem to wear out too fast (although I wonder if that is also modelled based on how people use the engine).

BTW, hard landings will wear out your landing systems way faster. I did a hard landing and I went from 100% to 25% in one flight. However, normal soft landings only wear about maybe 5-10%.

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Sorry, but the engine is by no means a wear item, or do you replace the engine in your car every 100,000 km because it is worn out? If the engine wears out, then there is something seriously wrong. I would like to know if the entire engine of a Cessna or any aircraft with a combustion engine needs to be replaced. What needs to be done is constant maintenance and replacement of the operating fluids and filters. But as I said, something can always break. For example, engine failure due to a blocked oil line. But that has nothing to do with wear and tear. Even a jet engine is not completely replaced because it is worn out. Jet engines are replaced for maintenance purposes because parts wear out, such as the blades.

It is also completely fine for something to wear out more because it is subjected to greater stress, such as the undercarriage with the wheels and the brakes. It’s no different with a car. If I’m constantly driving at full speed and slamming on the brakes at every traffic light, the brakes wear out quicker. And the tire tread wears down quicker. No problem.

And what exactly wears out on the electronic devices? Why do I constantly have to replace the radios, navigation devices, etc. with new ones? Completely absurd. My computer has been running for 10 years without me having to replace anything. But here too, something can always break. But it doesn’t have to be replaced all the time.

Why do I have to replace the control surfaces with new ones??? What exactly wears out on the control surfaces??? I don’t constantly fly through sandstorms that require sandblasting the surfaces. What needs to be replaced are the wire cables.

The way the maintenance system is at the moment, is it like buying a completely new machine every few days? I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands I’ve had to spend on maintenance. An engine for the Diamond DA62 alone costs 164,000 Cr. Times 2, that’s 328,000 Cr. A wire rope for the control surfaces costs 59,000 Cr. 59,000 Cr??? And so on, and so on.

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No one is saying replacement is the maintance. An airplane engine needs an overhaul every 1,200 to 2,000 hours. The cost is significant and often a big portion of the operating costs of an airplane. Please do some research before you make such confident responses to a question.

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If you’re going to be so cocky, you’ve probably done your own research. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to talk so big.
Then tell us what you found.
I’m curious.

By the way, I found something.

And as you wrote yourself, 1200 - 2000 hours.
And not 164,000 Cr for about 10 - 20 hours!!!
If that were 164,000 Cr for 120 - 200 hours, I wouldn’t say anything at all. But that’s not the case.

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Do you get $800k for a 3 hour cargo shipment? The economics are not aligned with real life and shouldn’t be. Everything is accelerated, as it should be. My point is engine is a major operating cost of an airplane in real life and so it should be in the simulation.

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Nobody says anything against that. Did I say anything against that?
My point is that the wear and tear and the costs are too high.

For a Cessna 172, at ~12,000 Cr, that’s still ridiculous.
But for a Diamond DA62 with 2 engines and 328,000 Cr, things are completely different.

For 328,000 I get six engines.
And then they say, “No one is saying replacement is the maintenance.” Where does it say after maintenance behind each individual item?
I read NEW. And not serviced 100% OK.

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Your specific statement was “But it is completely WRONG that EVERYTHING wears out.”
and then “But the engine is not. It would be a horror if that were the case.”

I’m not sure what you had implied with this, it seemed to me that you were implying that we shouldn’t have to have any wear or maintenance costs for engines because they aren’t a wear item.

First, engines are a wear item, that’s why they need to have a major overhaul every 1,200 to 2,000 hours. Note that the maintenance system does have a wear rate indicator so does model that some things wear faster than others and engine is supposed to be slower. Sure, it says “new” after you maintain but I always just read that as “like new.” After a major overhaul engines are generally considered like new. Most people won’t value a complete engine replacement (and this does happen sometimes at the overhaul maintainence time) and an overhaul that much differently.

I do think there is some modelling of wear rate based on how you use the function. Turbo prop and jet engine planes in real life can wear much faster if you run them too high for too long. I suspect that some of that is modelled here. On the 208, I was maxing the power during takeoff and having very high power during cruise. I was notice the engine wearing a lot. I read the POH for the plane and it indicated that you shouldn’t actually max the power for take-off and also have lower power for cruise. When I changed the style of take-off and cruise I found the wear rate slowed down significantly. I think it’s very good that they modelled this aspect.

Now like everything in the game right now, it may be bugged, it may go faster and the wear rate may still be too quick even if you fly properly. I did say in my original post that I thought engine wear might be a bit fast. However, if you are finding that you need to maintain the engine every couple flights then you may want to check how aggressively you are using power on the engine and see if that can improve the rate.

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Brake degradation on the C172 is just way too high.
Need to maintain them after about 2-3 flight hours (maybe 6 landings)…

Its extremely unrealistic

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Are you guys using the brakes too hard?

I found it you bind the brakes to a button, everytime you hit the button it’s applying 100% brakes wearing things out faster

Once I moved brakes to an axis, I have to repair maybe every 6 or more flights?

Outside of that, I don’t have repairs very often.

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It’s a real life issue for C172. It was a pet peave of my CFI. It’s common for students to leave the throttle high and just ride the brakes when taxiing. Not sure that’s a problem here but I didn’t need to do my brakes very often on the C172. You should only be using your brakes when you stop at the stop short line, when making a sharp turn or when landing.

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Does it shock anyone that tire air is more expensive than engine oil? air is normally free

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I do find the maintenance to be rather expensive and much too frequent. A week or two’s worth of maintenance and I have spent enough to purchase a whole new plane.

Also, why does a category say Good, all of the subitems are Good/New, yet Maintain on the top level item wants 800K to “maintain” the subsystem? There seems to sometimes be a disconnect there.

Also, many of us may not have an axis to use for brakes so a on/off button is all we have, so I guess we’re screwed for brake, tire, landing gear maintenance.

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I have a plane, I check it and it remains outdated. another still requires maintenance even though everything is good

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Here’s my take on it.

First, I do agree with @jponline77 in that everything seems to be accelerated, but I don’t see that as a reason to leave time/money/wear so out of balance and governed by ambiguity.

Give me less Cr per mission, but make maintenance feel less like extortion, no?

Moreover, with everything that’s wrong, I don’t really care about the Cr in general anymore. I think I’ve spent more on maintenance than on a brand new 208, and I try and be very gentle on my girl. Looking back at it, it’s cute to think of videos that suggested to grind until you have enough to buy a new one instead of getting a used one and spending Cr on maintenance.

Side note; Without going into too much philosophy, try and decouple Cr from $ in your mind. They do appear to be on par for some things in the game, but with others, well…

Next, there are debates out there about maintenance in general and how it’s subpar at the moment.

  1. Unable to delegate maintenance in bulk (get your 10 Cessnas and enjoy clicking your mouse between missions).
  2. Check up schedules. (Perform a 24h check up. Fly a 5 hour mission. Come back and discover that you’re 17 hours past due.)
  3. Everything in the discussion here about separate systems wear. I’m not going to jump in and debate what’s W&T and what’s not, but even an ignorant button smasher like me suspects that electrical has a better lifespan than, say, gear. I may be wrong, don’t fight me on this. We’re not all pros here.
  4. Everything here about the brutal wear and tear rate, regardless of the system.

Bottom line until this is fixed, from the economics perspective stands as follows - slam your plane onto the runway at 1000fps and replace the gear that you would replace anyway trying to feather her in. It’s an exaggeration to show the absurdity of the system in its current state. Accelerated rate or not.

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Aircraft tires are filled with nitrogen.

Aircraft engines are definitely a wear item, hence why TBO (or time before overhaul) is such a major consideration in aircraft ownership.

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The cost of maintenance are exorbitant
The 737 hit you for over 600k just to check the systems.
Engine maintenence is 9 million each, which is completely unreasonable. It would be acceptable if the engines were completely broken but, maintenance should be in the low 100k each.
Also, the wear and tear of the vast majority of the components needs adjusting, all the components need maintenance way too often. Airplane mecanical checks should be flight hours based and not every 24h

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Is there an indication of how the wear bar correlates with increased chance of failure? Does a 90% green bar mean the component fails at a 10% higher rate than one that is 100%? Or is it 2x more? Or is the component 10% less effective than one at full strength? Is the pattern of degradation normal and though showing the reduction, it will last several hundred hours of normal use before needing overhaul?

How much risk are we taking on here?

I don’t like meaningless measures.

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I agree with you 110%. I think this is enshrined to what you are saying. We need a very Clear and Concise Breakdown from OSOBO/MICROSOFT on how EXACTLY Passive Income works. I suspect I must have spent millions already on “To Be Maintained” and or Details that didn’t really need maintenance. But because I don’t really know whether a plane is airworthy/flyable or not I became obsessed with maintenance on the planes. I noticed at times it shows “To Be Maintained”, but when I go into Details it shows Good. Other times it also shows “Good”, but when I go into “Details” a lot of parts needs Maintenance. It is very confusing, thus frustrating.