Inspired by this Reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/1v9icgx/devs_should_spend_more_time_building_aircraft/)

What to users here prefer? I personally do not have failures turned on to happen randomly but I have practiced emergency landings with the manual failures triggered after a certain time option. Even if you know its coming, you aren't always in a good spot so it does help teach you to scan for potential landing spots more than you'd normally consider.

I do a lot of career mode so I keep random failures turned off to limit exposure to reputation loss. Interesting as its two of MSFS systems working against each other. If a successful emergency landing still awarded you rep and some credits for time flying, I'd turn them on for the immersion/realism/change of pace. But then there's something off-putting about paying for the maintenance in career mode, but still getting a "random" failure anyway. I've always felt this feature was not properly addressed for career mode - HOWEVER, I have once or twice aborted a mission after the walkaround revealed medium or lower condition on the landing gear/skids.

From that reddit post, apparently Justflight removed failures after the metrics showed only 10% of users had them turned on. They decided to focus on other features, which makes sense.

Follow up question for those who do have it turned on, what % chance of failure do you use?

Failures and maintenance are the principal reason why I keep returning to my A2A fleet. If I know that there's a smaaaaaaaaaall chance that something might go wrong It works in my brain. I do my flows checking the parameters, I do my run up checking the engines, I do my flight plan taking into account possible diversion airports. I check my systems during flight to verify there's nothing sinister developing. I crosscheck my fuel against my flight plan to make sure everything is ok and there's no fuel leak.

Real world aviation is build around the fact that things will go wrong and you have to be ready. If I know that nothing will go wrong, that there's no penalty for bad/sloppy flying, the simulation turns boring very fast for me as it is just reduced to flipping switches with a guarantee outcome. My brain knows that I can fly at wide open throttle the entire flight without thinking about ITT or anything etc etc. Having just a small chance that something might go wrong changes the whole game for me.

Justflight decision to remove failures is the main reason why I didnt purchase the fokkers. So for me? Yes, Failures always on. Service based failures, I love that.

Failures in real world (aviation related or not) are more than enough for me. I fly in the sim for relaxing. So, for me, it's 0%.

Edited Wednesday at 05:24 PM2 days by Luis Hernandez

1 hour ago, xender said:

If I know that there's a smaaaaaaaaaall chance that something might go wrong It works in my brain. I do my flows checking the parameters, I do my run up checking the engines, I do my flight plan taking into account possible diversion airports. I check my systems during flight to verify there's nothing sinister developing. I crosscheck my fuel against my flight plan to make sure everything is ok and there's no fuel leak.

I'm with you on this as I want to feel more immersed and emergency and failure conditions are part of that. It just bugs me that MSFS doesn't seem to want you to do that in career mode - there's an already steep drop in Rep Score and payout for simple things like Taxi Overspeed, or spawning at an Airport with no taxiways (-25% performance for not getting clearance to enter the runway, even though you spawned on it). Full throttle on turboprops will also ding you on the rating (Engine Overspeed) but not necessarily cause a maintenance issue that needs repair afterward. Most of the repair costs are either hard landings or 'random damage' from AI pilot use. Flaps down when going too fast absolutely should cause damage, and often doesn't.

2 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Failures in real world (aviation related or not) are more than enough for me. I fly in the sim for relaxing. So, for me, it's 0.

Right! this is also for me a relaxing passion, not a stressful hobby, enough with real world hassles and for that I would play combat sims. But I understand completely people who want all the possible immersion out of the sim.

It depends on the context and application.

I will always fly with MTBF failures turned on in the A2As, Black Squares and FSW Legacy. I have them set at '1x' rate, always. I'd never accelerate the chance of failure to '2x' or '100x'. I want the chance of failure to be similar to that in the real world aircraft that I fly (eg. very rare but occasionally bulbs, tyres, etc). As @xender said, the fact that there may just be an issue helps influence me to properly manage the aircraft.

But I have zero interest in manually triggering failures - to occur either within a given flight or immediately - to 'practice' emergency checklists, etc. I've never set a system to fail in flight sim in my life. But I do value the mean time between failures approach of the above developers and would not turn that off.

Service based failure when possible on the addon = yes all the times

Trigger a failure = sometimes for applying good correction but it’s rare

4 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Failures in real world (aviation related or not) are more than enough for me. I fly in the sim for relaxing. So, for me, it's 0%.

I feel the same for the most part - however, I want my flights to be realistic in performance and I expect to be penalized if I do not operate the aircraft properly.

If I exceed flight parameters, the airframe should fail. If I exceed operational parameters for the engines or fail to operate them properly they should fail (or lose performance).

17 minutes ago, RandallR said:

I feel the same for the most part - however, I want my flights to be realistic in performance and I expect to be penalized if I do not operate the aircraft properly.

If I exceed flight parameters, the airframe should fail. If I exceed operational parameters for the engines or fail to operate them properly they should fail (or lose performance).

The maddog is a good example: You can be confident that your flights will be issue-free for the most part, but if you try to do an "Italian tuneup" with the engines at takeoff you wont get the chance to turn the landing lights off.

I need to feel that I have to do the things properly. The DC-6 is another example: You need to do the things properly or you will end up with a glider.

Triggering failures also wont work for me, because I know they will happen and I know when.

6 hours ago, Kristofski said:

From that reddit post, apparently Justflight removed failures after the metrics showed only 10% of users had them turned on. They decided to focus on other features, which makes sense.

JustFlight removed failures from what? I didn't see it in that Reddit post but maybe I missed it.

The presence of failures are an indicator of quality to me. You will never see Carenado advertise "hundreds of failures" because their systems are almost entirely default. That's why Black Square is the winner on systems for me. When you read that the individual magneto grounding wires can break, it means the ignition system is actually simulated. Having failures on is a gamechanger for me personally. Makes it feel almost 100% real.

Some interesting takes here - we seem split on the issue, some prefer it for accuracy, some disable it for enjoyment.

I think my issue remains in the risk/reward of having them on - if failures are turned on, I risk losing my flight at any time and having to redo it, which might not always be possible given time IRL constraints. Most of us want to spend the sim time in the air, not on the ground, and not repeating what we just did. Turning off failures gives me an implicit guarantee that my flight is going to be fine, as long as I do my part correctly, which is better for time management.

It would be nice to see the sim acknowledge a successful emergency landing. I think BATC and SI can handle emergency procedures for ATC but the base game ATC does not. You can tell Asobo doesn't care about failures and emergencies at all given how there's absolutely nothing to support it in career mode, and in free flight, you just respawn if you crash and try again from the air, its not exactly punishing or anything. I don't recall any of the tutorials for the PPL mentioning emergency landings or giving any instruction on that either.

15 hours ago, Bennet Hill said:

The presence of failures are an indicator of quality to me. You will never see Carenado advertise "hundreds of failures" because their systems are almost entirely default. That's why Black Square is the winner on systems for me. When you read that the individual magneto grounding wires can break, it means the ignition system is actually simulated. Having failures on is a gamechanger for me personally. Makes it feel almost 100% real.

That's the way I see it too. Lets think about an airplane that doesn't support failures. When you do the fire test, what do you think its happening behind? Maybe just a simple if-then. If fire test button pressed? Then turn light on. It doesn't have to simulate more than that because the engine will never be on fire. It doesn't need to simulate hyd fluid quantity because you will never have a leak or a pump fail. It just have to show you the values, but with nothing really happening behind.

Most of those warning lights are just cosmetic. If the aircraft doesn't implement failures, the simulation doesn't have to be that complex.

On the other hand, if your systems are deeply simulated, implementing failures after that should be trivial because the components should react in cascade if one system fails.

Randomized failures can be fun, but only if they're done well.

Same with maintenance. It needs to have an impact to be enjoyable. I've seen planes with "maintenance" requirements, and if you don't do them nothing happens. At that point it's like the MSFS walkaround - dumb because nothing you do regarding it will have any impact whatsoever on the flight.

33 minutes ago, eslader said:

At that point it's like the MSFS walkaround - dumb because nothing you do regarding it will have any impact whatsoever on the flight.

Have you tried taxying with the chocks still in place? Or a pitot cover left in place? Most walkaround items do have an impact on the flight - even in default planes 🙂