Maintenance

[bladesinger79]

I'm no aircraft mechanic, and don't plan on being one either.

With that said, every scenario in the game will have planes and helos that are down for maintenance. Could be a few, could be a lot. The Northern Fury campaign has plenty of those that are redlined.

My question is how long does it take to bring an aircraft back to service? Is the maintenance time run on simple things to bring a bird back to operational status? Is it due to damage? Is it because there are too many aircraft and not enough pilots? Is it something more?

I ask this because it feels like cheating if I go into Editor and "repair" a few back to full status. But then again, there is no scripting/LUA that will say, "Hello, captain, Senior Crew Chief here. Three of our fighters will be up in about 3 hours" that I'm aware of. Then again, maybe I should just go with the flow?

Anyone have a say in how real aircraft maintenance works? Dumb it down for me a bit. A bit.

[tylerblakebrandon]

Go here. Search "maintenance" and you'll find some answers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230205034 ... ge_id=2920


Edited as pasted wrong URL

[Dimitris]

Here: https://command.matrixgames.com/?page_id=3262

[bladesinger79]

Thanks folks.

[Mgellis]

I'm no aircraft mechanic, and don't plan on being one either.

With that said, every scenario in the game will have planes and helos that are down for maintenance. Could be a few, could be a lot. The Northern Fury campaign has plenty of those that are redlined.

My question is how long does it take to bring an aircraft back to service? Is the maintenance time run on simple things to bring a bird back to operational status? Is it due to damage? Is it because there are too many aircraft and not enough pilots? Is it something more?

I ask this because it feels like cheating if I go into Editor and "repair" a few back to full status. But then again, there is no scripting/LUA that will say, "Hello, captain, Senior Crew Chief here. Three of our fighters will be up in about 3 hours" that I'm aware of. Then again, maybe I should just go with the flow?

Anyone have a say in how real aircraft maintenance works? Dumb it down for me a bit. A bit.

For scenario designers, one trick is set a long initial ready time for some of the aircraft. For example, if you have a scenario that lasts two days and the player controls a 24-ship squadron of aircraft, you might have eighteen ready to go, two completely unavailable due to maintenance issues, two ready in twelve hours, and the last two ready in one day. This can be used to simulate how a squadron might not be at full strength when a crisis unfolds, but some of the aircraft that were not available at first might gradually become available as repairs are completed.

[Randomizer]

When I wrote Vikrant Goes to War it included events that tried to simulate the aircraft maintenance cycle on a carrier. Every midnight local time, aircraft are checked with a 70% probability that they will be available for the next day or under maintenance with a specified time to ready. They will become available at some random time between (as I recall) 2-hours to 23-hours 59-minutes, which essentially completes the 24-hour serviceability cycle. The scenario description includes a better explanation and acknowledgement those who helped me produce the Lua scripts.

Short version though, it was a lot of work and based upon the complete lack of feedback, positive or negative, is suspect that from a Player perspective, it was time and effort wasted.

-C

[Kushan04]

When I wrote Vikrant Goes to War it included events that tried to simulate the aircraft maintenance cycle on a carrier. Every midnight local time, aircraft are checked with a 70% probability that they will be available for the next day or under maintenance with a specified time to ready. They will become available at some random time between (as I recall) 2-hours to 23-hours 59-minutes, which essentially completes the 24-hour serviceability cycle. The scenario description includes a better explanation and acknowledgement those who helped me produce the Lua scripts.

If I ever did a multiday scenario this is how I would do it. Only thing I'd do differently is change the maintenance roll to be at a fixed time in the morning between 0600-0800. That would allow the player to plan their sorties for the day.