aircraft tips and tricks you could pass on

[EnderLikesKerbals]

So, I am a well known plane builder in another game and it's forum, and as KSP is a little different(like how I need to fix the yaw and roll controls to ones I use in that game), and I wondered, hey, what if tehe community have some tips and tricks so my aircraft(following Henry Dreyfuss's quote: 'form follows function'. I always follow it) does not end up as a fireball on the runway(even though I try to make it so they do not)

[Geonovast]

Moved to Gameplay Questions

[bewing]

Design a la Burt Rutan, not the others. KSP rewards canard wings.

KISS. Aesthetics don't make your plane fly gud.

Since you understand plane building: add a couple degrees of incidence to your wings just before you finish with your design, then tweak the positions of everything based on your new CoM.

Manually reduce the friction on your front landing gear to improve directional stability while on the ground.

 

[Spricigo]

3 hours ago, bewing said:

Design a la Burt Rutan, not the others. KSP rewards canard wings.

not on my designs for some reason. *shrugs*

[AHHans]

As someone who used trial & error to get to a "meh, good enough" stage of airplane design my first comment is that learning by doing can be fun, so don't be afraid of explosions.

You say that you already know how to design planes in another game, so I don't repeat any basics but point out a probably not so intuitive issue about stock KSP: it doesn't actually have airflow. I.e. it doesn't simulate airflow, any lifting surface that moves through a part of space that has atmosphere will generate lift (and drag) according to it speed, angle of attack, and air density. If you attach a wing part to the fuselage and clip it into the fuselage or clip two wing parts into each other, then they will still generate lift as if they are in free air. The only exception is if they are inside a cargo bay or fairing, then they are completely shielded from airflow. This also means that all the things that make real-life wing design complicated (like wing angling, chord to width ratios, wingtip devices, etc.) are purely cosmetic in KSP.

Another tip - in case you don't know it yet - is that KSP can display an overlay of the aerodynamic forces per part (default key is <F12>). Also the debug- (or cheat-)menu (default key <Alt> - <F12> on windows, <R-Shift> - <F12> on Linux) has a "Physics" section in which you can activate display of even more information.

On 7/8/2020 at 7:18 PM, EnderLikesKerbals said:

(like how I need to fix the yaw and roll controls to ones I use in that game),

If that was an actual question: from the main menu -> settings -> Input -> Flight

Edited July 10, 2020 by AHHans
fixed key description