Qwits

@ferram4 I see – the symmetrical airfoil explains much of it. Can you explain in more detail which calculations the "Frac Mach 1 Drag" setting affects and what are its values for the lowest and highest preset? Also, would you have any pointers for someone like me who would like to play with the lift/drag calculations in the source code? Am I right in assuming that vortex lift isn't modelled either, which results in the notoriously abrupt stall when exceeding critical AOA, or is there any other reason for it?

I wouldn't normally make this kind of post, however I want to illustrate to you that not only are you being unhelpful, you're outright sticking your personal opinion into my face for personal gratification. If my suggestion sounds this way to you, you're discussing the wrong mod and should probably go and make your own mod that's intended only for realistic use, because the mod discussed in this thread is supposed to cater to more users by giving them the option to scale drag, change the leniency of area ruling, disable aero damage or turn their atmosphere into soup through cranking up viscosity. I'm here to report the first of these options not having the intended effect – I'm here to report a bug. I'm not here to have people being dicks to me, so if you don't mind freeing yourself from this burden.

I don't think that's the issue. Modern fighters all have supersonic airfoils which doesn't prevent them from having an under-300 km/h take-off speed. In FAR, it's twice that. As for the weight, the wings contribute too small a portion of it to make a difference. Besides, that strength comes in handy to keep your plane in one piece given that it flies at 2 times the speed it should and pulls as much G as your control authority allows (you aren't safe even when using a mod such as Dynamic Controls).

I know about RO, but changing the entire game is not what I'm after (or is there some particular part of it that only tweaks all the masses, a mega-SMURFF?). Modifying viscosity has other effects besides increasing drag and as I have previously said, those effects become too intrusive at values of 0.01 and higher – I suspect flow separation just stops existing. Ideally I'd like to see two independent Cd and Cl multipliers because with stock masses and wing sizes there's a very obvious lack of lift. I could live with a common L/D multiplier. In either case, I feel like giving the user the ability to adjust these values to their particular installation and gameplay preferences would greatly increase the popularity of this mod. There's no reason it should limit the user to total realism – only a tiny fraction of the player base is interested in it. What to me is still left unanswered is: isn't the already existing setting supposed to do just that?

Oh wow, thank you kind sir Mr. @tetryds. I sincerely appreciate your telling me that because you don't agree with the way I want to play the game, this means I won't get any help or support here. I now understand that the only way to play this game with this mod is the way you play it, and also that your view represents the view of the whole KSP community. Your suggestion that I try the AJE modification that I already have installed is also very valuable to me considering the fact that it's with this modification installed that Mk.1 planes blow up at M3 ASL – in stock they merely do so at 50% thrust which is incidentally the 130kN that, doubled, propel a real-life F-15 at best to Mach 1.2 ASL. I bow down at your absolutely rational and not at all logic-defying zeal to rebalance the totality of the game, including all other affected mods, to fit one single modification instead of tweaking one single modification to fit the totality of the game. If I may be so bold as to ask you for the mod you've used to reach this perfectly justified and noble goal? I am deeply sorry for asking if the drag scaling setting already included with the FAR modification not working as I expect is intentional or a bug, and asking whether I understand its purpose correctly. There is no doubt that fixing that setting, or if I misunderstand it, providing such a setting would catastrophically dumb down the modification. Absolutely nobody should be allowed to tweak the drag value to their own liking – I now see how preposterous my idea was. I hope my late epiphany atones for my previous sinful postings and averts your righteous indignation. Thank you again, dear @tetryds, for setting me on the only correct path that exists for a user of this excellent mod – your own path.

Reasonable or not, it doesn't result in supersonic turbofan cargo planes gliding across continents without slowing down, or turbojets exploding from reaching M3 at ground level like FAR stock drag does, and this is all that matters to an end-user like me. I'm not interested in exact numbers as much as I'm interested in the effect they have on game-play.

Does this mod have a possibility of independently tweaking the drag? There's an option called "Frac Mach 1 Drag", but changing it from 0 to 100000 doesn't seem to change anything, neither do the presets (what's its purpose?). Tweaking viscosity does work, but to reach stock-alike drag levels requires cranking it to unreasonable values. I'd appreciate some help on this as at the moment I'm opting for stock aerodynamics as giving me the freedom to set it up to my liking.

@Nhawks17, I registered specifically to suggest adding the warning about this excellent mod resetting the thrust limiter, including in tutorials, to the description. I've spent two good evenings trying to figure out why it breaks tutorials – I was nearly certain that it actually changes the engine's characteristics through some unintended magic before I stumbled on @Graphi's tiny little mention of the limiter issue. I think this could save quite a few people the headache.