Why was adding aerodynamic stability removed?

[adinfinitum]

Perhaps another way to fix this problem would be for the game to check if air is able to flow both under and over the wing. If it can't do either one or the other, then the wing won't produce any lift.

[Kegereneku]

The above solution is one of those things that is easier said than done...

...if it even was a good idea to do.

The error is to assume that realism in the physic-model will lead to realism in (in-game) design as based on reality.

But in game development the good way is to work backward, you have a range of design you want to allow to fly and you create the medium to make these design fly as you think they should. Your goal is to create the illusion of realism.

The new aerodynamic model is good so far (or at least should be once the game get out of BETA...wait... until they fix the Release). But we lost in creativity in the process as many of us here proved, starting from OP, quite angered by it.

Realism have nothing to do with it.

Piloting-skill have nothing to do with it.

Most of us wanted loopholes that allow to make anything we believe to be a sensible "REALISTIC" design to fly. We didn't wanted them too obvious/easy to keep the game balanced, but we wanted the physics to allow cool-looking design.

And until a solution is found, we are entitled to say that compared to 0.90 we lost in creativity.

So far, I think tweakable wing into purely-aesthetic part seem a workable cheap (but good) solution.

ps: I doesn't support procedural wing, they wouldn't give the LEGO satisfaction.

[BmB]

Let's adress the real problem here. Lack of flexibility in the existing parts. If you have to jerry-rig parts to look like something else of course they won't be very functional. The better solution is to have the tools to actually create the thing you want in a way the game can understand.

[Kegereneku]

Easier said that done.

I've seen more than enough "Let us build our own part", but none of these suggestion address the balance nor the radical change in the game-dynamic it imply.

Jerry-rigging part into something else it much of the appeal of KSP, "the entire point of it" for many even.

[adinfinitum]

While what I suggested is a realistic mechanic, it isn't realism for the sake of realism. I've been going off the pictures of pre-1.0.0 craft in this thread, and what they've got in common is that the wings are bring used to encase the fuselage, or create a flying wing type structure.

Like you said, in game design you work backwards. Those crafts should definitely be able to fly, but they can't because the every wing adds lift and drag. Adding a tweakable to wing parts would work, but what happens when you've got 30 wing parts, and you missed one of them and don't know which it was? Sure, what I suggested is easier said than done, but if done right it would accomplish the same thing as tweakables while being less clicky. It's just coincidence that it's realistic

[Cebi]

@Roflcopterkklol

I am new here, and i realy dont get how new atmo physics and rebalance can upset people in forums so much that they will spend time to make infographics about it. After all there is still debug menu. If you dont like it, you can mod it or simply go to debug menu and tweak drag coeficient. If you want to go to Duna with STTO plane without refuel use infinite fuel. You can do anything you want in this game and you choose to complain?

As i took a peek at dev. version of nuFAR it wont save your designs i fear.

[KSK]

I don't think, under any circumstances, that wings with that shape would be viable for a spaceplane.

Probably not but it's nice to have the creative freedom, no?

Yes. The superficial resemblance to a sci fi craft is also what bothers people. Numerous posters have said, "I dont want x wings in the game/I dont want 80s cheesy sci fi spaceplanes in the game"

Hmm, the only person I've seen complaining about the X-Wing is you using it to make a point. Feel free to point me at anybody else's comments though.

- well, you can already have those, so why shouldn't I be able to add 30ish more wing parts that are out of the airstream, actually make the craft look more aerodynamic, should not contribute to drag or lift, and are not intended to exploit the aero model? I don't even want to build X Wings, because they look unrealistic. But I can. So why can't I build my more detailed and fleshed out spaceplanes?

Woah - hang on a minute here. Adding parts that make the craft look aerodynamic but are also out of the airstream? I'm not sure how good part occlusion in KSP is (so I could be entirely wrong here) but surely if the parts really are out of the airstream, they won't be contributing to lift or drag? So if they are causing drag, presumably they're not out of the airstream? For example, so far as I can tell, your fighter plane example where you add the wing parts to box in the fuel tanks - those wing parts are still going to be in the airstream.

Edit: Sorry - getting myself muddled here. Sure - if your extra parts really are out of the airstream then they shouldn't contribute to drag or lift. Agreed. Your fighter plane example is still a bad one though since the extra parts (to me) look very much in the airstream and so should contribute to drag even if they were modded to eliminate their lift.

It's because a few players feel like everyone should play the game in their way. They think aesthetics building is cheesy, or lame, or unrealistic (which as I've demonstrated over and over again, it isn't)... and so think it's fine to limit creative freedom.

Or they're OK with trading off a bit of creative freedom for a bit more realism. Which is just as valid as insisting on changing the aerodynamics to suit your playstyle. "because a few players feel like everyone should play the game in their way" is a complaint that cuts both ways.

Well, it isn't. Because we can have both realism and more creative freedom than 5-minute X-wings. We can add drag modules to wings. We can add structural parts without either lift or drag. We can turn down the drag value a notch or two. We can specifically reduce the drag of wing parts... see what I'm getting at?

Personal opinion - adding structural parts without lift is OK - not every part of a plane is intended to generate lift. Parts without drag is just a hack. Unless the part is so thoroughly occluded that it is out of the airstream, it's going to be causing drag.

Edited May 6, 2015 by KSK

[Guest]

I don't think, under any circumstances, that wings with that shape would be viable for a spaceplane.

KSP glosses over wing shape because the aero system is an abstraction. IIRC at low speeds it treats all wings as straight for better lift and stability, and at high speeds it treats all wings as swept for less drag (or whatever the reasons are for straight/swept wings). This not only simplifies calculations but allows for greater creativity since you don't have to obey area-ruling and other aerodynamic laws.

Yes. The superficial resemblance to a sci fi craft is also what bothers people. Numerous posters have said, "I dont want x wings in the game/I dont want 80s cheesy sci fi spaceplanes in the game" - well, you can already have those, so why shouldn't I be able to add 30ish more wing parts that are out of the airstream, actually make the craft look more aerodynamic, should not contribute to drag or lift, and are not intended to exploit the aero model?

Well, to be fair, from my eye, most "panel van" style spaceplanes look very unaerodynamic. Most have some sort of enormous drag area going on at the back of the craft, have numerous little nooks and crannies to generate drag, and tend to be a bit fanciful about how the wings are shaped. Maybe I'm just not seeing the forest for the trees there. But really, that's besides the point. As Red Iron Crown has rightly pointed out, and I earlier observed, your X-wing is basically an air-breathing rocket. The objection to X-wings, as I see it, comes from fanciful sci-fi engines, not from aesthetics.

[BmB]

Easier said that done.

I've seen more than enough "Let us build our own part", but none of these suggestion address the balance nor the radical change in the game-dynamic it imply.

Jerry-rigging part into something else it much of the appeal of KSP, "the entire point of it" for many even.

Adding additional parts is pretty easy.

[Aanker]

Makes it to orbit lel.

-> it's not particularily creative though. It took me about ten minutes to plunk together the parts and the rest was just finetuning. Minimalism or building with fuselage sections seems to be the new thing.

Probably not but it's nice to have the creative freedom, no?

It's not creative - it literally took me five minutes to throw together and the devil is in the details, which I cannot add.

Hmm, the only person I've seen complaining about the X-Wing is you using it to make a point. Feel free to point me at anybody else's comments though.

Nope, plenty of posters throughout the aero threads made that point clear enough. Hence why I demonstrated it in the first place. I won't sift through the probably 50-60-ish odd pages of those discussions so you'll simply have to trust me on that one. Cheesy sci fi designs were specifically mentioned.

Woah - hang on a minute here. Adding parts that make the craft look aerodynamic but are also out of the airstream? I'm not sure how good part occlusion in KSP is (so I could be entirely wrong here) but surely if the parts really are out of the airstream, they won't be contributing to lift or drag? So if they are causing drag, presumably they're not out of the airstream? For example, so far as I can tell, your fighter plane example where you add the wing parts to box in the fuel tanks - those wing parts are still going to be in the airstream.

Edit: Sorry - getting myself muddled here. Sure - if your extra parts really are out of the airstream then they shouldn't contribute to drag or lift. Agreed. Your fighter plane example is still a bad one though since the extra parts (to me) look very much in the airstream and so should contribute to drag even if they were modded to eliminate their lift.

They wouldn't knock off 550+ m/s though. And even then, I can sink them further into the fuselage, but that starts to eliminate even their aesthetic purpose and still won't take away the drag. Better build an X-wing instead.

Or they're OK with trading off a bit of creative freedom for a bit more realism.

But that's the point! It's still not realistic. X-wings, battlecruisers built out of mk2 fuselages... But we can't build aerodynamically-looking craft using wing parts because wing part count is arbitrarily one of the most important factors of drag regardless of wing assembly. So effectively, they've sacrificed creative freedom for... nothing.

Which is just as valid as insisting on changing the aerodynamics to suit your playstyle. "because a few players feel like everyone should play the game in their way" is a complaint that cuts both ways.

I don't think you understood my argument then. I said we could have both realism and be able to use more wing parts in our designs. That's not me making everyone play my way, that's me saying I should be able to play my way and you should be able to play your way. Liberty. Freedom. Democracy. America. Because it's more realistic, it offers more creative freedom and we can share our craft with each other without bothering with drag settings, mods, or whatever else.

Personal opinion - adding structural parts without lift is OK - not every part of a plane is intended to generate lift. Parts without drag is just a hack. Unless the part is so thoroughly occluded that it is out of the airstream, it's going to be causing drag.

It's not a hack. They would have no practical purpose except aesthetic. Even then, I am OK with (very) low levels of drag, as the current model would not take into account the placement of those same pieces.

Well, to be fair, from my eye, most "panel van" style spaceplanes look very unaerodynamic. Most have some sort of enormous drag area going on at the back of the craft, have numerous little nooks and crannies to generate drag, and tend to be a bit fanciful about how the wings are shaped. Maybe I'm just not seeing the forest for the trees there.

That's the point. With the lack of (very) procedural fuselages and fuselage/wing modeling to our satisfaction, we have to use the wings to approximate the shape we imagine. That means a lot of aesthetically placed parts, sometimes not perfectly, but on the whole the general shape that is modeled for is more aerodynamic than an x-wing.

I can survive the new drag model. I can build spaceplanes in it. But I find less enjoyment doing so because I can't craft them the way I like to. I'm limited to fuselage mashing, which I did before too - but I also added small wing parts to create more realistic surfaces and transitions between fuselages and wings. Now, wing parts are drag chutes and as such doing so will simply punish my finished spaceplane. And it is totally unnecessary. We could have wing drag models, we could have a simple button that eliminates the lift and drag of a wing part... The possibilities are endless.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Aanker

[KSK]

it's not particularily creative though. It took me about ten minutes to plunk together the parts and the rest was just finetuning. Minimalism or building with fuselage sections seems to be the new thing.

Cobblers. It would take me far longer than five minutes to build that X-wing. Does that mean it becomes more creative if I make it because it took me longer? Or does it mean that you're just more skilled at building X-wings than me.

Nope, plenty of posters throughout the aero threads made that point clear enough. Hence why I demonstrated it in the first place. I won't sift through the probably 50-60-ish odd pages of those discussions so you'll simply have to trust me on that one. Cheesy sci fi designs were specifically mentioned.

So point me at the thread. I'm not asking you to sift through all 60 pages looking for a choice quote.

They wouldn't knock off 550+ m/s though. And even then, I can sink them further into the fuselage, but that starts to eliminate even their aesthetic purpose and still won't take away the drag. Better build an X-wing instead.

Probably not. Which is one of the reasons I agreed that non-wing structural parts were OK. If wings are generating more drag per unit area than say, a girder or a structural panel, then yes, having alternatives to wing parts is a good idea.

But that's the point! It's still not realistic. X-wings, battlecruisers built out of mk2 fuselages... But we can't build aerodynamically-looking craft using wing parts because wing part count is arbitrarily one of the most important factors of drag regardless of wing assembly. So effectively, they've sacrificed creative freedom for... nothing.

See my earlier point. If wing parts have arbitrarily higher drag per unit area, then yeah - lets have some alternatives. But otherwise - it's entirely possible to build aerodynamic looking craft using wing parts - as wings. Using them to build panelvans, not so much. There's also big difference between looking aerodynamic and actually being aerodynamic. You can build a beautifully streamlined panelvan - chances are that streamlining won't be enough to compensate for the fact that you've just bumped up the cross-sectional area of your aircraft by sticking a dirty great box around it.

It's not a hack. They would have no practical purpose except aesthetic. Even then, I am OK with (very) low levels of drag, as the current model would not take into account the placement of those same pieces.

In what way is a zero drag part not a hack? If something is forming part of the skin of your aircraft it's going to cause drag. Doesn't matter if its there for structural, lift generating or aesthetic reasons - it's going to cause drag. We can argue about how much drag it should cause and whether too much drag is too limiting - that's a fair discussion. Zero drag parts though are just a hack. Can't get the panelvan to fly because it's too draggy? Just switch off the drag! Presto - your creativity can fly unfettered. Except why bother. Or at least why bother worrying about aerodynamics at all - just Hyperedit the thing to orbit.

That's the point. With the lack of (very) procedural fuselages and fuselage/wing modeling to our satisfaction, we have to use the wings to approximate the shape we imagine. That means a lot of aesthetically placed parts, sometimes not perfectly, but on the whole the general shape that is modeled for is more aerodynamic than an x-wing.

As has been pointed out before on this thread, the X-wing is a bad example. One - it is fairly aerodynamic, two it's an airbreathing rocket with enough thrust to brute-force past any aerodynamic deficiencies it does have.

Edited May 6, 2015 by KSK

[BudgetHedgehog]

Honestly, @Aanker, I've been following this thread for 16 pages and I still can't figure out what your argument is. You don't like 'hotdog SSTOs' (whatever that means), but you don't like other shaped SSTOs like the X-wing you posted either. Ok, so a boxed fuselage plane can get to orbit with 200 m/s ÃŽâ€V left vs a non-boxed with 500.. so what? Both still got to orbit, you're still not going anywhere else, you can still refuel both to full capacity and have a huge range, you can recover both for full refund.. you're complaining about 300m/s difference because what used to work (using magic lifting things aesthetically) doesn't anymore? You're saying that an SSTO is now really easy, ok that's fine, but it's still more than what real life has encountered. A single stage to Laythe or whatever is completely ridiculous and I've never seen an SSTO (hotdog or otherwise) do that without massively exploiting shortcomings and faults in pre 1.0 KSP (intake/wing spamming).

Also, if you think you're creating an aerodynamic fuselage with wing panels, hahaha oh wow.. download the dev build of FAR and check the voxels and cross-section area - you'd be sorely disappointed. So you're complaining that it's too realistic? You just built an SSTO in 10 minutes. Yeah, because SSTOs are totally realistic, especially those that can be thought of and built in less time than it takes to get them to orbit. So you must be complaining that it's not realistic enough then, right? Well, you just demonstrated that adding more cross-section and fairly bulky craft can't fly as well as a Sears-Haack body. Sounds pretty realistic to me.

Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness.

[Aanker]

So now, because the meme word is 'panel van', adding the wings means the aircraft resembles a shoebox. OK.

So much judgement, so little time. No, my spaceplanes did not resemble boxes. No, they did not have significantly larger cross sections than tubes with wings. They did not resemble flying bricks or whatever other presumption you might throw at me. Honest to god, I am also sick and tired of people who assume that the use of the wings was to exploit lift, in spite of me repeatedly saying that this was not the case.

The case was always: wing parts currently add too much drag individually. Let's fix that. Surely you can see the logic in adding at least a drag box for wings - otherwise I'm not quite sure what you're doing here. You wouldn't then be interested either in realism or aesthetics. One poster got bogged down in resentfully hating on my suggestion of adding purely aesthetic parts with significantly less drag because I mentioned that a no-drag option would be simpler and not at all an exploit if the part was otherwise practically useless. But there wasn't actually a sensible counterargument to the former. So I guess we're stuck with wing parts for the job.

Again, I stand by my assertion that wing parts could be realistically simulated without making them drag chutes. I think people take the "more wings" expression too literally - for the lack of parts better suited to the job, more wing parts does not translate into a riddiculous and random placement of wings across the fuselage in an attempt to get 'moar lift', it was one of the few ways to lego-style build planes into the shapes we liked. Now I'd love to have procedural fuselages and wings, nuFAR-style voxel simulation, being able to mold the shapes into the form that looks most aerodynamic... But we can't. We're stuck with the lego construction style, which doesn't go well with the higher drag unless you like mashing together fuselage sections and severely reducing the wing part count.

At least try to construct sensible posts instead of attacking strawmen or the poster or using childish accusations of exploits.

So point me at the thread. I'm not asking you to sift through all 60 pages looking for a choice quote.

60 or more pages spread over 5-8 threads. I have no idea where the first post to that effect was. Frankly, the first time I showed the creation it was as an open reply to that and other posters who made similar arguments. Now it's more of an example of a basically 4x straight winged aircraft making it to orbit.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Aanker

[BudgetHedgehog]

No, my spaceplanes did not resemble boxes. No, they did not have significantly larger cross sections than tubes with wings.

Seriously? That does not have a significantly larger cross section than, say, an X-15?

I am also sick and tired of people who assume that the use of the wings was to exploit lift, in spite of me repeatedly saying that this was not the case.

Ok, I believe you - you wanted to use wings as structural aesthetic parts only. That doesn't stop the fact that they were still magically producing an upwards force. Regardless of intentions, your pre 1.0 spaceplanes exploited pre 1.0 KSP faults. I don't care that it wasn't intentional, I don't mind that they did, the fact remains that they did. That's why they worked. And you're complaining that they no longer work - well, yeah. They're made with wings, not structural parts. KSP treats wings and structural parts differently*. You were unintentionally exploiting a weakness in 0.90 and now you can't unintentionally exploit it any more. Cry me a god damn river.

*I agree, this is one failing of KSP - you should be able to toggle between something being structural and something that's designed to produce lift. I would love for that to be a thing. But you can't. Not yet, anyway.

Edited May 6, 2015 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Aanker]

Smaller cross section than this

or this

Tell me more about your cross sections.

Yes, I've learned more and more about what gets stuff into orbit and what doesn't in 1.0.2, but that doesn't mean I think we should rapier spam instead of just adding drag boxes for wings (as they should have, mind you, regardless of aesthetics).

Edited May 6, 2015 by Aanker

[Guest]

So now, because the meme word is 'panel van', adding the wings means the aircraft resembles a shoebox. OK.

Hey, y'all started it with the "Hot Dog" moniker, turn-around is fair play.

Anyway, aesthetic parts without lift modules and with an actual drag cube, or a way to "tweakable" wings into those sorts of parts, would and should be perfectly fine additions to the game. I use wing parts for dedicated radiators and I would really like to be able to lift a massive tug into orbit without fighting the lift on all the wing parts, thank you very much.

Edited May 6, 2015 by regex

[BudgetHedgehog]

Smaller cross section than this

http://i.imgur.com/umlMiZH.png

or this

http://i.imgur.com/rso6LyT.png

And, as mentioned, those are basically air breathing rockets and have enough thrust to brute-force their way through any aerodynamic hurdles thrown their way. Yeah, let's put 16 jet engines on a plane and then complain that it goes too fast, solid idea.

Again - I don't understand your argument here. You're complaining that the aerodynamics are not realistic enough? Ok so KSP increases aerodynamic realism - now getting to space is too difficult and the only ones that make it are hotdogs when it should be shoeboxes instead. You're arguing against both sides at the same time.

Like I said, I wash my hands of this weirdness.

[panzer1b]

I don't think, under any circumstances, that wings with that shape would be viable for a spaceplane.

Yes. The superficial resemblance to a sci fi craft is also what bothers people. Numerous posters have said, "I dont want x wings in the game/I dont want 80s cheesy sci fi spaceplanes in the game" - well, you can already have those, so why shouldn't I be able to add 30ish more wing parts that are out of the airstream, actually make the craft look more aerodynamic, should not contribute to drag or lift, and are not intended to exploit the aero model? I don't even want to build X Wings, because they look unrealistic. But I can. So why can't I build my more detailed and fleshed out spaceplanes?

It's because a few players feel like everyone should play the game in their way. They think aesthetics building is cheesy, or lame, or unrealistic (which as I've demonstrated over and over again, it isn't)... and so think it's fine to limit creative freedom.

Well, it isn't. Because we can have both realism and more creative freedom than 5-minute X-wings. We can add drag modules to wings. We can add structural parts without either lift or drag. We can turn down the drag value a notch or two. We can specifically reduce the drag of wing parts... see what I'm getting at?

And no one has so far managed to produce a good counterargument to any of those suggestions. Why? They're too busy accusing me and others of whining or being newbs or whatever.

i completely feel this way, right now that SSTOs need basically a fuselage, intake, and rapier, with small control surfaces on back to well be able to control it, there is little reason to have any wings at all. Sadly, im nolonger able to use wings on a SSTO styled craft as aesthetic panels (and those structural panels are crap as they are both too small, a single shape that may or may not be useful for what you want, and heavy). I am all for more structural type things, larger panels (would make it possible to make a battlecruiser below 2000 parts), more variety (for example triangle panels), and in general perhaps the ability to check a flag saying i dont want x part to act as a wing, but just as a structural/for looks part (and perhaps make such parts lighter weight too).

As much as i wanted it not to, my SSTO Normandy SR-1 is dead, yes it still works, but its basically nolonger able to fly as i use wings for its fuselage and you know what that means from a drag perspective, even if its actually balanced with regards to the CoG/CoL.

Also, to anyone who insists on 100% realism, NOONE IS FORCING YOU TO MAKE SCI-FY! One argument i always make against those insisting that part clipping is cheating and unrealistic is that noone of forcing you to clip parts. if you deem a clipped control surface inside the fuselage a cheat or unrealistic, move it somewhere where it isnt deemed unfair to you, but there is no reason to make it unable to function there just because its quote "unrealistic".

I never understood the whole limiting creativity and must look and function exactly as a real life craft crowd. Please stick to your 100% realistic crafts and stop trying to impose extra limits upon creative designs, heck even sci-fi builds have their place imo. Im primarily a sci-fi builder, and i tend to use alot of SSTOs as the whole staged rocket isnt exactly as cool and badass as SSTLAB (single stage to laythe and beyond) concept. yes we all knopw no real single stage craft would make much if any sense past LEO, but hey, why limit us in a creative and fun game liek KSP.

At least there are always mods for us creative types.....

Also, i actually dont mind the jet nerfs, yes it sucks for SSTOs, but some realism is nice, or well i shouldnt say realism but plausibility, and its actually WAY harder to attain crazy performance outta craft. That said, id love to see some ways to give craft better looks (and perhaps even allow creating aerodynamic shells) without every part having major drag. Then again, drag model is extremely simplified. Occlusion ONLY works for parts stacked node after node, radial anything always suffers full drag, ect ect ect.

Edited May 7, 2015 by panzer1b

[NathanKell]

I have a modest proposal. Why don't you open a wing file, change its dragModel from none to default, and then remove the ModuleLiftingSurface MODULE.

Try that, instead of talking about how wings are ~~dragchutes~~. See whether they actually produce less drag.

[razark]

I went to my bank today. I told the teller I wanted to withdraw $1 million. The teller said "You don't have that much in your account."

I told the teller, "Just take it from other people's accounts. I'm being creative."

After the bank threw me out, I went to the store to pick up some stuff. I grabbed some things, stuffed them under my shirt, and walked out the door. When they stopped me for shoplifting, I told them I wasn't stealing anything, I was just being creative in how I purchased things while avoiding the consequences.

For some reason, reality doesn't care how creative I want to be. It still insists that I follow some set of rules.

[KSK]

i completely feel this way, right now that SSTOs need basically a fuselage, intake, and rapier, with small control surfaces on back to well be able to control it, there is little reason to have any wings at all.

And here we are back to this nonsense again. No need to use wings at all. No sir. None at all.

Anyhow, until somebody runs that little test that NathanKell suggested, I'm out of here too.

[Kegereneku]

KSK, ObsessedwithKSP & regex.

I think you are being obtuse if you don't understanding Aanker point.

The realism of the new aero have little to do with the problem.

All in all, KSP's goal isn't to be realist, it is to look realist yet keep design balanced.

But as we all know Aesthetic has always been a big part of KSP and attempting to do so with 1.0.2 is now trickier/impossible. Hence the problem.

Yes, this spaceplane should fly if it was only for the appearance and not the way KSP simulate things.

Cross-section is too big you say ? What I see is a cross-section smaller than a Skylon surrounded not by "BOX" but by streamlined INTAKE, realistically one would assume this spaceplane to be faster than other, in the game one would expect the needless Intake to -at least- not create so much drag, yet apparently they does.

The way I see it Aanker, Roflcopterkklol, Allmhuran and other did not complain that KSP 1.0/1.0.2 weren't realistic because they doesn't allow their aesthetic design.

They argued that the way KSP 1.0.2 simulate things now is much more finicky on what can fly without it being justified by realism.

The X-Wing and other 'bad' design were meant to show you can fly ridiculous contraption to orbit, but not design who were made streamlined using wing-part.

(sorry for all the repetitions, I wish to keep it clear)

Personal opinion on this :

I actually think this is a good news that you cannot easily exploit the system to make anything fly, giving the requested challenge/balance. (Now if only the Tech-tree didn't ....ed this up...)

But to retrieve the Aesthetic-aspect we LOST, something need to be done (drag-less structural parts/tweak...etc). And that's why people complain, not because "they don't know how to fly/design in a REALISTIC model".

Especially since mindless realism don't make a game nor a simulator good.

While what I suggested is a realistic mechanic, it isn't realism for the sake of realism. I've been going off the pictures of pre-1.0.0 craft in this thread, and what they've got in common is that the wings are bring used to encase the fuselage, or create a flying wing type structure.

Like you said, in game design you work backwards. Those crafts should definitely be able to fly, but they can't because the every wing adds lift and drag. Adding a tweakable to wing parts would work, but what happens when you've got 30 wing parts, and you missed one of them and don't know which it was? Sure, what I suggested is easier said than done, but if done right it would accomplish the same thing as tweakables while being less clicky. It's just coincidence that it's realistic

I see what you mean, I guess I should have been more explicit that I think your suggestion will lead to unmanageable "unexpected consequences". We are not actual Rocket-scientist, so the more complex you make a game-mechanic, the more likely it is going to be broken or exploited.

This is why realism-in-the-process isn't the best solution to obtain the illusion of realism.

Adding additional parts is pretty easy.

If you are talking of simple failsafe parts purely meant for aesthetic, I agree with you.

But many on this forum (as one of the post above mine) would imply/claim that with procedural-wing and an even more complex aerodynamic everything would be easier/better. Hence my remark.

I do also hope SQUAD start mass producing parts (and a real tech-tree to go along) once UNITY get upgraded.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Kegereneku
fixing double negative typo

[Roflcopterkklol]

To be fair its a style preference, I actually put effort into making a nice SSTO and i do actually kinda like how it looks, in saying that id still rather be building something like white lightning, its more creative in my opinion.

The Nuclear Comet mk1

120kmx120km orbit remaining resources

Low alt flight

Description:

Cost: 216,566

Part count: 243

Weight: 126.2T

Quite maneuverable in the atmosphere and capable of 1,000,000km+ orbits (More if you add more fuel in the cargo bay, less if you put a load in the craft other than spare fuel) the Nuclear Comet is about as good as it can get when it comes to single stage to orbit, With a choice of Nuclear or Rapier engines depending on how far out you need to go, once refueled this craft is an interplanetary explorer.

As an added bonus there are emergency parachutes for easy landing.

Flight instructions:

On launch it is easiest to just let it fly off the end of the run way before touching the controls, once in the air pitch up to 40 degrees until 12km.

At 12km bring the pitch down to 5 degree and gain speed until 1200m/s, at 1200m/s pitch up to 30 degree until orbit, at 22km engage nuclear engines, at 24km switch rapier engine mode. once apoaps is at 100km you can kill the Rapier engines and use the nukes to orbit.

If returning to kerbin after orbiting without refueling you will need to move fuel into the forward most fuel tanks for stability.

Action groups:

1- Toggle Rapiers

2- Toggle Rapier mode

3- Toggle turbo jets

4- Toggle Nuclear engines

5- Toggle solar panels

Download link:

http://www./download/9q7m4i8s3ymdit5/Nuclear+Comet+mk1.craft

- - - Updated - - -

I went to my bank today. I told the teller I wanted to withdraw $1 million. The teller said "You don't have that much in your account."

I told the teller, "Just take it from other people's accounts. I'm being creative."

After the bank threw me out, I went to the store to pick up some stuff. I grabbed some things, stuffed them under my shirt, and walked out the door. When they stopped me for shoplifting, I told them I wasn't stealing anything, I was just being creative in how I purchased things while avoiding the consequences.

For some reason, reality doesn't care how creative I want to be. It still insists that I follow some set of rules.

In reality more creativity would have allowed you to be a better thief.

[Commander Jebidiah]

You know a hotdog is quite an aerodynamic shape.