panzerknoef

With the possibility of an improved deal on the table, we couldn't help ourselves but put the engineers to work to implement the necessary changes to match your suggested improvements to our aircraft. While many prototypes were created, 2 very closely related ones stood out above the rest and were made ready for production. I can't deny that some of the other prototypes will also make it to production model, but that won't be for the near future. So let's get started, will we? Zircon P-201DL & P-201DL+ "Cloudsurfer" P-201DL on the left and P-201DL+ on the right. As you can already see, both models are very alike. Let's start by going over the common ground on these 2 aircraft. They both have a passenger capacity of 40, an improvement of 8 over the previous model. Both aircraft also feature the requested swept wing, which we tried to integrate with as few extra parts as possible. These aircraft also still share the same engines and engine setup as the P-201A, making for a lot of common parts, which should simplify the supply chain. We've also taken the effort to implement a larger vertical stabiliser on both aircraft, giving an ever so slight boost to yaw control. Brake power was also increased to 200%, making it easy to land on very small runways. Both aircraft retain a cruise altitude of 7000-8000m. Let's move on to the differences now, starting out with the P-201DL (DL stands for variant D, Long version). This aircraft is nothing more than a stretched P-201A with swept wings and larger vert stab. However, these changes have had some effect on the statistics of the aircraft. For a start, the price has gone up to 28.644.000, not a change that can be ignored, but in return you do get an extra 8 passengers. The change to swept wings also required the adding and removing of some wing surfaces, in total adding up to a slightly bigger area than before. Result of this is a higher drag factor, slowing the cruise speed to 280m/s. The range has dropt as well, going down to 1800km. The swept wings should stand up better against the speeds than the straight wings, hopefully reducing maintenance costs related to metal fatigue. We can also confidently say that the airplane has not taken a hit when it comes to maneuverability and glideability. Part count has also gone up to 52. The P-201DL+ is a version that is barely altered when it comes to looks, but its performance places it in a different category. Basically, we've exchanged speed for range. Making the fuel tanks longer allowed us to add 800 units of fuel, which results in a total of 1900 units. Boosting the range of this aircraft to 2500km, well inside the range of medium-haul airliners. Of course, this extra mass does not come without negatives. The plane is noticeably heavier, decreasing climb rate and more importantly cruise speed. The latter sits at 250m/s for this aircraft. Because of the added weight, we've lengthened the wings and increased the flap count, this results in low speed performance very comparable to that of the other 2 Cloudsurfer models. This model features an increased price of 33.344.000 and a part count of 60. Get your test model for the P-201DL here: https://kerbalx.com/Panzerknoef/Zircon-P-201DL-Cloudsurfer and your test model of the P-201DL+ here: https://kerbalx.com/Panzerknoef/Zircon-P-201DL+-Cloudsurfer Once again looking forward to the verdict on our updated aircraft, hope you will all have a wonderful day. Zircon Aerospace

First of all, my apologies with the inconvenience of the craft file, it's been a while since I shared a craft around here. Secondly, thanks for the quick and great review! We're very glad that our aircraft managed to meet the high expectations of Trans-Kerbin airlines. We shall take your considerations into account while working on a B model of the cloudsurfer, as well as with potential future models.

Zircon P-201A Cloudsurfer Zircon Aerospace is (re)entering the race. It has been a while since our engineers have been up to anything good, but a recent surge in watching airliner related documentaries has given direction to their life once more. Being veterans of the previous challenge, it was quite a different experience building aircraft without all the extra parts that AP+ offers, but also to put some effort into the aesthetics of our aircraft. Our latest experimental models from back in the day were highly efficient, but passengers would have to be boarded through an opaque tunnel since they just wouldn't want to get into the monstrosities otherwise. Anyway though, those are experiences of the past, but here we are in a new time. We have tried our very best to build an aircraft that is more or less pleasing to the eye as well as being a good overall performer, and the final result is one we are relatively proud of. The Zircon P-201A Cloudsurfer is a twin engine, short haul, low capacity aircraft. It's best suited for flights to small and rough airfields, and has the necessary adaptations to do so as well. It features great acceleration, flaps, and high landing gear, all the things you need for small airports. It has a passenger capacity of a lowly 32, but at a price of only 25.244.000, you still get pretty decent bang for your money. With only 46 parts and having both engines mounted decently close to the ground, we're also expecting you to have low maintenance costs for keeping this aircraft in service. Last but not least, some more technical data: the aircraft has a cruising altitude of 7000m (high enough to traverse any mountain range on Kerbin), a cruising speed of just under 300m/s (298m/s to be precise) and a range of about 1900km. Get your test model here: https://kerbalx.com/download/craft/64758 We are looking forward to your review and can't wait for the verdict Zircon Aerospace

Not afaik. At least not in the spirit that this challenge was. There are plenty of FAR bda challenges, but none of them are a counter part of ASCU here.

And here's your space station back with a brand new module! It's a small habitation and docking module that should allow for easy expansion and craft attachment. I've taken the liberty of adding 2 junior docking ports which allows even smaller craft to now dock to the station as well! and here's some launch pictures Updated save file can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oDOo-w7pKudldFJKrSzJy99ApVbmFu_q?usp=sharing

Wait. If you're getting the save file that the space station is in, then you shouldn't have any of the kessler issues that you have in your current save file... It's a separate thing entirely. No need to move the station afaik. Regardless, I claim save file!

I think you've got a local issue there. I haven't noticed any drag changes recently, all the planes that I built back in the day still function fine right now.

My pc doesn't get along with the camera in ksp anymore, can't properly zoom in or out anymore, not to mention that it's just aging too much to record at a more or less acceptable framerate... And for that zoom issue, idk what causes it, but I've already tried everything to fix it, nothing works...

The problem rn is that the mk1 crew cabin is disproportionately cheap compared to the other ones, giving it a massive advantage. At least, that is a problem to me...

Not a fan of this, once again, all work should be done to lighten to load on the judges, not increase it. If you're gonna work without classes, how are we ever gonna set up a system of range requirements etc? Though I do agree that certain kinds of classes could be a sub-class of another one, and those could then be assigned by the judges depending on the plane's ability.

Challenge is basically closed because of technical issues rn

I'm really not a fan of reorganizing the classes of planes to be honest. I wouldn't say we've ever really had issues with them or felt limited by them in any way, not were they unbalanced. Ofc some changes here and there are never a bad thing. The helicopter part though, I would leave that out entirely, these craft are too different from what the challenge started from. Cargo planes... Idk, it would probably not be too much effort to make a plane with a cargo variant. The thing I worry about most here is that we have an overly large amount of classes to choose from, this complicates judging again since there will also be less planes to compare against and more specific stats to remember. Remember, we should do absolutely anything to make judging easier, not the opposite. Judging killed this iteration of the challenge, we can't let it happen again.

Interesting, I'll surely try that out next! I haven't really carefully considered anything of this craft tbh, it's just a quickly thrown together ball of engines and power! Guess now's the time to add some subtlety

okay well, here we go again... adding a few more engines gives me the Speedster mkIII (I did promise overkill so that's exactly what you're getting) It managed a top speed of 3581.5m/s (if you're taking orbit speed that is, otherwise it's 3399m/s). and the surface speed window as well

Time for my second entry The Speedster mkII Maximum speed achieved: 2929m/s I'm pretty sure this behemoth can do better, but this is a quick first attempt.

Oh lmao, we don't even have to stay under 50km all along... That makes excrements a whole lot easier still... Time to strap some overkill together and go for another run

I've been trying around a bit myself the last few days, does indeed seem that a price increase is unnecessary. You need twice as many cabins compared to now. I dunno about the weight, but with that many cabins you'll definitely have quite a lot of drag (unless you go slinky style ofc, but let's just discard that rn). This change would drastically impact plane sizes and prices ofc, so we might need some time before we can say what prices are average again. I do hope these changes would make other cabin types more interesting, should give us more variation in aircraft design as well.

I'm just wondering, can the altitude of the plane never exceed 50km, or does the speed record have to happen below 50km, after which the plane might glide up to an apoapsis higher than that altitude. Regardless of that question though, here's my first record attempt. Presenting: the Speedster mkI Top speed of this little aircraft was 2214m/s, with an apoapsis of 48km. Pictures in the spoiler below.

I agree with pretty much everything @Box of Stardust has said here. As much as I am a fan of a pricing system that could be integrated, it does seem to me like the first plane that is posted should not adhere to any of those rules. Think of every company as one that had massive amounts of economic support from all kinds of places leading up to their first plane. As he said as well, jumbos and supersonics were by far the most submitted classes. They are however as well the most tedious classes to judge since they take a long time to review. I would rather not see people submit entire catalogues of aircraft at once though, even if they would be split up between a primary and secondary queue. My opinion is that people should still be restricted by a hard cap on the amount of planes they can have pending. So if they want to upload a catalogue, let them do it in smaller pieces and it'll be fine. I would also like to keep the categories that we started out with in the challenge, the more we add, the more tedious reviewing is going to become, and that should always be prevented. Now on the topic of cabin rebalancing. I suggest we nerf the mk1 cabin down to 4 people, which will still make it the best price/passenger cabin out there by a fair margin, but it'll at least make it a lot more difficult to spam like before, giving other cabins a chance to actually be used properly. Mk2 can actually stay at 8 people for me, giving it a use other than added luxury. For size 1.5 I would suggest something like 16, size 2 can be 24 and size 3, 32. Oh, and then there's size 3S1 which should keep the 2 passengers that it can actually carry. Perhaps we should consider modding the cost of the mk1 cabin to about 1000 to keep it somewhat in line with the other cabins. Aaand, that's all I have to say for now...

Challenge is currently closed as we are discussing how to revive it in a way that's suitable for everyone. Please hold on to be your plane until that time as it won't be reviewed right now.

Shall we bring up the topic of rebalancing crew cabins as well? Size 1 obv needs to fit fewer passengers, size 1.5 and 2 never got anything assigned iirc and now there's size 3S1 as well

We should however force people to take some margins when it comes to calculating range... I didn't like flying a plane for 20mins just to get the exact right situation in which the plane manages its described range. Perhaps something like a 10% margin that should be taken off the range as you calculate it first. Then what remains should become the advertised range.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Especially since the most problematic planes are usually the jumbos, this system of yours would work pretty well at preventing people from spamming poor quality jumbos.

Do agree on that. Sometimes the bad planes make for the best reviews out there! Still though, if people really want to do that, they could design a good plane first, get the budget to RnD a few planes at a time and one of those can be a meme. Or if you really don't care, just go with the meme from day one and risk being hampered in your plans for after that.

Honestly we could probably use the money to at least stop useless designs from being spammed. Like a good plane would be bought in numbers so a lot of profit and a lot of options to start designing new planes. However if you design poor planes, they'll be bought in smaller numbers or even not at all. That results in less funds for the builder which means they won't be able to design as many planes afterwards since they just won't have the budget. Hopefully that will push the designers to spend more time and effort on their planes and it would save the judges the pain of flying something that's basically a waste of their time. I think that might be a more effective consequence for bad design than just to bad review they get now, along with it giving an actual purpose to the "planes bought" part at the end of each review.