SasquatchM

The issue in this challenge isn't going faster - there is more than enough thrust to go around - it is avoiding the "X crashed down hard and was destroyed" messages that cruising on the water at those speeds cause. Weighing impact resistance vs buoyancy is the issue.

187 m/s from a Wheesley and a couple Junos. At this speed the slightest course change makes the pontoons disassemble front to back. I just noticed that the front of the near pontoon must have came off at the exact moment I took this screenshot.

Well, it doesn't quite qualify, but I liked the design so I'm going to post the video anyway.

Uh.. name? How about the Ferret. No idea why.. just cuz.

Here is a Division 2 entry. We might as well as consider it for a speed run even though I am sure I could do much better swapping the engines out.

I think a minor amount of wing clipping for aesthetics is fine - like a tip of a winglet being embedded into another just to make it flow a bit better. If you want ducted wings, that is up to you, go for it if you want. my personal irritation is the free floating control surfaces, it's one thing if something gets blown off and leaves a flap floating next to the plane apparently by magic, but to start that way annoys me.

Personally I like the classic plane idea. More challenge to it.

Personally I understand the concerns about the flying boxes, but there was no rule posted that said 'Must look classically plane-like". This being the case, personal preferences aside, the box type planes would seem to be perfectly valid entries as long as they do not violate any of the other rules.

I've made several more capable craft at this point, but I am curious to see how my original entries perform, so I am just going to roll with them. I think it would be interesting for the next tournament to have a submission cutoff day posted from the get go. Would anyone submit early? Would those people be at a disadvantage as others took that time to tweak craft to counter specific other entries? Would it be worthwhile to have the submissions be private, so we are going in blind against other people's craft?

AWIMBAWE Vulture 2 1 Vulcan Hidden = 7pts 1 Ammo Can = 4pts 4 AIM 120 = 16pts 2 AIM 9 = 12pts 2 Flare = 6pts 2 Chaff = 4pts TOTAL = 49pts Pixie 3 1 Vulcan Hidden = 7pts 1 Ammo Can = 4pts 4 AIM 120 = 16pts 2 Flare = 6pts 2 Chaff = 4pts TOTAL = 37pts

After coming out of some of the faster time warps, physics seem to stop. Basic animations play, like engine exhaust, rcs jets and control surface movement but they have no effect. Even current velocity doe not actually alter the ships position. Here are the mods I am using output_log

Still a work in progress. It started as an exploration ship, but keeps getting bigger. I think of it now as a somewhat mobile station.

I think I will try to make a version with modified MSI hinges

Is the edge split not set up correctly?

The main advantage I can see is that you can set up all of your attachment points ahead of time without having to figure out coordinates. I am currently reworking my old sms plane parts pack and to define all of the node manually for 50 or so parts takes forever.

Well, it was supposed to work as of .20, but I haven't tried it yet

If you are using a transform to define an attach node, which axis will the node connect along?

way back in the days of ISA I used a program called Quick grid to get results like these:

s2cockpit (click to view in 3D) I thought I would start to rework my old SMS plane parts now that I have gotten a bit better at modelling. This is still a very early WIP with no textures as of yet

anyone? Racer1 (click to view in 3D) obviously no real textures yet

Anyone have a.blend of a rover wheel I can poke around at to get a better idea of how they are set up?

Back in the dawn of Damned Robotics I made TONS of folding, bending or moving things. Most of the time I ended up editing parts to get much smaller parts for probes and what not and also changed movement amount and speeds. Here are some old videos highlighting that sort of thing: Ideally, if there were tweakables to set the range of motion for each part as movement speed, that would be ideal.

It helps to have your center for mass as low as possible as well.

Now get it around the track course without wrecking

It is not purposely using control surfaces; however, having any control surfaces, even if they are designed just to provide stability, still give you boosts in speed when they provide lift that goes against the direction of cornering. For example, any horizontally aligned control surface mounted to a buggy of any sort will provide thrust just by pitching down in standard control mode. Perhaps the solution is to have 2 classes, a Barebones class and Stock Unlimited. I would suggest that you disallow any sort of fuel burning engine however and possibly RCS as well in the latter class. Finally, after a certain point your wheels will break just from contact with the ground at speed.