The hourly costs for Grass Stands is $100. For Asphalt, it is $67. The Grass Stands should be lower. Otherwise, there is no reason to build them. Here’s the math:
Building Grass Stand: $20,000. Building Asphalt: $30,000. Difference: $10,000
Break-even point: $10000/33 = 303 hours, about 12.625 days
Obviously, the airport will pass that 12 day mark quickly. Therefore, why waste money building Grass Stands. Reduce the Grass operating costs to something far less than Asphalt.
This same logic applies to Grass Runways vice Asphalt Runways. Break-even point for delta costs ($50,000) is 24 days. Reduce Grass Runway costs as well.
Sidebar: I started a new playthrpugh to experience the new features. I really love the new R&D as it provides additional depth. The simplified hiring is greatly appreciate, especially reducing applicant to a single Skill ( I never looked at the other attributes in the old system) and the slider bar.
I would expect the operating costs for grass to be higher than asphalt - asphalt requires limited maintenance whilst grass needs to be cut/fed/watered etc.
Repair and construction for asphalt, however, would be much higher than grass - in reality, a grass airfield just needs to be cut and painted then you can operate, so maybe it’s the initial purchase and repair costs that are too high.
But that should not be the point really. Some regional airports I guess can be very expensive but in this game grass stands are supposed to be an easily and affordable way to start a new game.
Great input! The costs are very much up for debate. I think grass could be both cheap to purchase and operate but at the sime time I do think asphalt and concrete should be even cheaper to operate. They would require mch less maintenance like @ls4a535 described. Grass stand/runway would also break earlier which is another reason to upgrade. What we want to achieve is motivate people to upgrade.
So what we can to is to keep the operation cost difference but reduce the build cost?
I guess it depends a bit, pre balancing I set up a 5 stand GA airport according to the tutorial instructions and was losing money. After the balancing, it made a little but at least some money. I would like to see test your airport if possible.
Agreed. Operating cost of grass stand could be lowered, a majority of the cost of maintaining these stands should be the repair costs. On that other end, asphalt should perhaps have a higher initial build cost.
What we want to achieve is motivate people to upgrade.
If an airport is rewarded with better ratings because concrete or tarmac is used instead of grass stands then that is a trigger already, right? To be able to make it through to another airport level you should be able to make some money also from only GA grass fields, but if that is the case now then lowering the cost under tarmac/concrete will help to progress a bit earlier. Mowing grass and painting lines can never be more expensive than repairing/laying concrete/tarmac as you need quite some heavy machinery for that compared to a mowing machine
Not really big difference in the construction costs, but higher operation cost of the grass infrastructure made me skip the grass altogether, even for the first few GA stands, while previously I was building grass stands for GA and concrete for commercial, later upgrading GA stands to asphalt after some year. Now I start with asphalt for both GA and small commercial, later upgrading commercial to concrete (the latter if small commercial stands are on different part of the airport from GA stands), but I don’t find any use for neither grass stands, nor taxiways, nor runways, and that is moderate difficulty non-sandbox game.
Maybe if the construction cost difference was much higher I’d think about using grass again.
