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How far can you go?


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Simple. How far can you fly on 100lf units? 

RULES!!!

No more than 100lf units

No rocket engines

TWR must be under 0.5 

Wings required

No flight above 10km

No drones

No killing kerbals, please. (No, not even 1)

All stock parts.

Any autopilot mod.

FAR is allowed. 

NO rover wheels.

No unreasonable part clipping

No reaction wheels. 

No exploiting bugs, krakens, or rules.

POINTS!!!

Base points=total distance flown in kilometers. 

Using FAR? Add 15 points

Used less than 50lf units? Add 30 points.

Carrying more than 4 kerbals? Add 30 points.

Any explosions? Subtract 30 points.

Wingspan less than 15m? Add 15 points.

Weighs more than 20t, and less than 50kn of thrust? Add 40 points. 

Break the sound barrier in level flight? Add 15 points.

More than 2 engines? Subtract 10 points. 

LEADERBOARD:

1. @Marschig 2061 points. 

2. @Wanderfound 1556 points.

3. @Aetharan 1416 points

4.

5.

FAR LEADERBOARD

1. @Van Disaster 5264 points.

2.

3.

4.

5.

HAVE FUN!

Edited by Guest
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I've seen a very similar challenge to this before, but it's long enough ago that the embedded imgur albums in the posts are messed up.  Might be worth making another attempt, with the new rule-set.

Edit:  I should ask, is MechJeb allowed for maintaining attitude over the course of long flights?

Edited by Aetharan
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1 hour ago, Aetharan said:

I've seen a very similar challenge to this before, but it's long enough ago that the embedded imgur albums in the posts are messed up.  Might be worth making another attempt, with the new rule-set.

Edit:  I should ask, is MechJeb allowed for maintaining attitude over the course of long flights?

Hmm... maybe I will allow kramnx (kranx, krmanx whatever!) Autopilot continued. 

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Crud.  I just realized that I've spent the last 45 minutes on a flight built having misread the first post, with a starting TWR of just under 1.5 instead of 0.5.  Time to re-start.  :/

Edit:  That limitation is killing me.  Keeping a Panther limited so far that it doesn't break 0.5 TWR is preventing the plane from crossing mach 2, and it's by far most efficient above 650 m/s (at which point it's sipping fuel at less than 0.01 u/s at full throttle.)  Frustrating, but I'll continue the flight and see how far I get this way.

Edit 2:  Having failed the landing (explosively, poor Val), I'm giving up on the current design (derived from my last plane in the thread I linked).  I'll give things another shot tomorrow.

Edited by Aetharan
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Neat. I've got a craft from an old circumnav challenge somewhere that's dying for reuse.

So, FAR+5pax+low wingspan+supersonic ( what counts as supersonic btw? it varies with altitude ) would give 75 bonus? will get working.

Edit: presumably part-clipping is honour-based? ie do it to make a nice shape, but don't be an ass and hide 500 wings somewhere.

Last q: how about thrust-limiting bigger engines?

Ed: preliminary investigatory flight:

39235174812_acf08e9c6d_c.jpg
39235176352_131385058e_c.jpg

So that's 5234 + FAR + <15m wingspan + >4 crew and I guess - explosions: 5264. Now to build a real plane.

Edited by Van Disaster
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Well, @Van Disaster took some of the wind out of my sails with that last edit.  I've finished a flight, largely to establish a base-line for myself.  Final report: 1,386 km covered, +15 points for wingspan under 15m, +15 points for exceeding Mach 1 in level flight, for a total of 1,416 points.

Imgur Album

Clearly, with the differences between our flights' total times and distance covered, you pulled off a much more efficient machine than I did.  What I don't get is how, given the similar ceilings and top speeds with the same engine.

Edited by Aetharan
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@Aetharan: quite possibly FAR, although I don't know enough about current stock aero to know how different they are ( for this sort of stuff, not terribly different anymore, I'd imagine ).  We might need a seperate class for FAR - I'll give the craft a shot in stock aero sometime to compare. Otherwise, plenty of wing to get low AoA & high L/D, optimising transonic drag ( that is a FAR thing & quite an issue for endurance craft ), minimal thrust & lots of patience. Also make sure your craft has good static trim so it's not pitching up or down in cruise.

Edited by Van Disaster
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1 hour ago, Murican_Jeb said:

FAR makes drag less drastic and has way different properties of how craft will fly.I think this challenge might be a bit unbalanced

Yeah, having tried the same plane in current stock air, stock is still as ridiculously soupy as it ever was post 1.0 with default physics settings. Separate FAR table needed ( it's a good challenge in FAR too, just a bit different ).

FAR endurance stuff tends to go on a bit - look at how much fuel was left, I got fed up with it & landed :P I think i won that one just out of bloody mindedness.

Spoiler

28119850681_b0221448a8_c.jpg

27916361730_719f64508d_c.jpg

 

 

Edited by Van Disaster
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8 hours ago, Marschig said:

682 km on 40 LF. Do you think 30 points for 50 units is ok?

 

Yes, that is ok.

 

7 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

Neat. I've got a craft from an old circumnav challenge somewhere that's dying for reuse.

So, FAR+5pax+low wingspan+supersonic ( what counts as supersonic btw? it varies with altitude ) would give 75 bonus? will get working.

Edit: presumably part-clipping is honour-based? ie do it to make a nice shape, but don't be an ass and hide 500 wings somewhere.

Last q: how about thrust-limiting bigger engines?

Ed: preliminary investigatory flight:

39235174812_acf08e9c6d_c.jpg
39235176352_131385058e_c.jpg

So that's 5234 + FAR + <15m wingspan + >4 crew and I guess - explosions: 5264. Now to build a real plane.

What is the TWR? Under 0.5 I hope...

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8 hours ago, Wanderfound said:

If you're using Panthers, does TWR need to be below 0.5 with afterburner, or on dry thrust?

If you never use AB, then dry. As long as it never exceeds 0.5 in flight.

On 12/24/2017 at 1:18 AM, Wanderfound said:

You'll probably want to ban reaction wheels and cockpit torque. With it, it's too easy to make a finned missile fly.

Actually, that is the main reason I limited TWR

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Having messed around a bit, this might actually be a nice intro to FAR if people are considering having a try: it's a simple challenge with a plane that has to fly in a straight line & pretty much at a steady height. If you do, a couple of things:

* Make sure you've got enough fin: flying sideways causes unnecessary drag - might even do that in stock, but the flying forwards drag seems so huge it's hard to tell. You can see in the FAR window, just under Drag is SideForce; if that's not near zero that's a real unnecessary waste of engine thrust.
* Have a look at the fourth panel in the FAR SPH dialog, and find the critical mach number. If you don't know how to minimise wave drag, just go a bit slower than that & make sure your AoA isn't too high ( which might mean extra wing ). As a general hint, making it longer helps quite a lot of the time, structural fuselages are only 0.1t now.
* Try different intakes, some have more drag than others when open.

You can go a lot further using FAR, so all the little details add up - which is why it's an interesting & different challenge to stock. As I said above, I took my FAR plane, removed FAR from the game, reset the control surface assignments and it just flew - so it's likely it'll work the other way these days, although you'll probably want a little refinement.

Edited by Van Disaster
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