AT-Leviathan (stock 0.16) Massive plane

[xvdBanksbvx]

Just want to show everyone the massive plane I built and see if anyone can fly it as my machine can\'t handle it, only get 1-2fps while its on the runway so I have never flown it. These are the specs

Total mass: 115.54

Dry mass: 65.54

Fuel: 10,875L

Parts

352 Struts

144 Wing surfaces

70 Fuel tanks

23 Control surfaces

15 Structural pieces

8 Turbojet engines

1 Mk3 command pod

So let me know what you think of it and if it will even fly.

Update: The AT-Stratoliner is a slightly smaller craft that can actually get of the ground and uses a lot less parts so peoples machines can handle it.

[Daishiknyte]

Massive structural failures on engine ignition. My i7 just cried itself to shutdown.

[xvdBanksbvx]

I get the same issue, but I have noticed that if I turn the throttle to zero and start the engines then I can sit on the runway indefinably without structural problems. After waiting on the runway like this for 30 seconds with engines on but zero thrust you should be able to throttle up and it shouldn\'t break. Might even be able to take off.

[BraveDude8 - La Volpe]

I\'m gonna try this plane, I\'ll tell you the results.

(Predicting a crash. Computer or plane, not sure.)

[xvdBanksbvx]

Thanks, if you do manage to get it flying i would like to know what its range is as I\'m trying to beat 1500km.

[Mikemc]

There should be wheels under the engines and at the tips of the wings

[xvdBanksbvx]

I don\'t think adding more parts to it at this point will help.

[wildkittyv1]

I\'m not even gonna try this because I doubt my laptop could handle it, but you might be able to resolve some issues by removing a bunch of the struts. You say there\'s like 300 something and I definitely don\'t see that many, so I\'m assuming you have a bunch between the engines and individual wing sections. You don\'t really need more than 1 between each section, the parts connected to each other with normally strong joints should hold themselves up. You could probably cut that number down to like 50, tops. It might not be as aesthetically pleasing, but it\'d make it easier on your PC. I\'m not sure how the game renders parts and how size makes a difference of how much memory it takes up, but it couldn\'t hurt.

[xvdBanksbvx]

I will give it a try, never really know how many struts are necessary so I just went with what looked right. did the maths on the struts though and out of the total mass of the plane of 115.54, 17.6 of that is struts.

[wildkittyv1]

Yeah, that\'s a lot of struts man. And it\'s not even necessarily the weight of them that\'s the problem, it\'s just that there\'s so many and the game has to render each individual part and calculate the physics for it, so it adds up in terms of performance hinderance. Like all that cross bracing you have on top of the first wings there, you don\'t need like 90% of those. Move the wheel base out a bit so it\'s better supported on the ground, tie the engines to the hull, and then tie like the center and outside panels of each 'strip' (depending on how

you connected them) to the hull. Take off a bit of the outside of the wings and reduce the struts there too. I know it\'s more for aesthetics (lots of us do the same thing), but there\'s no point in having a massive plane if you can\'t fly it.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Thanks, I am cutting down on struts now. I have never known how many struts are needed on things like this so I always do box frames etc. but if I don\'t need that much then I might be able to make it fly.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Here is a version with a lot less struts, just under 100 instead of 352 and 4 less engines and the fuel tanks for them. should run a bit smoother now.

[swiftgates24]

R.I.P. High FPS. Nice plane though I wish I could fly it but my computer can\'t handle it. :\'(

[wildkittyv1]

I tried flying the thing earlier and was unsuccessful because my laptop can\'t handle it, but I can offer a few suggestions to help reduce the number of parts even more.

You have the outside sets of the large fuselage just kind of hanging there on the wings and have them attached to the main hull via struts.

1. Try to attach the extra fuel directly to the hull of the craft. I\'m not sure if they have the capability with their node placement, but that would allow you to remove even more struts from the design.

2. If the above idea works, then remove the wing connectors and other structural/delta wings you have covering/connecting them. If it doesn\'t work, consider removing the outside fuselages entirely, as you should already have enough fuel to get you around the globe and enough lift with what you have strapped on to it. I know this is for aesthetics, but if the craft can\'t be flown then there\'s no point for it to be there.

3. Shorten the entire craft by 20-30% and reshape the wings to accommodate it. You have plenty of fuel on board already and shortening it as a whole will reduce the number of parts drastically. Move the main wings up a bit and take off one or two of the fuel fuselages on each of the wings.

4. Don\'t worry so much about the wings being properly angled/curved. It\'s nice to look at and you did a good job, but having them shaped that way increases the number of parts you need. Redo the wings with delta/structural/wing connectors and you should be able to take about 20-30% of the entire parts of the wings while keeping a similar look, but it won\'t be as fluid.

You did good with removing the struts, but it seems like the engines attached to the wings are still too heavy. I can\'t tell what\'s causing breakage (it exploded on the runway but my fps was too low to determine what was causing it), but the whole thing is just too big. You can have a beast of a computer and the game still might not be capable of handling and processing all that information until performance is better optimized.

The main problem to me it seems is all of those extra fuel fuselages you have strapped to the main hull. They\'re hanging on the wing connectors, which means you added struts to support them, but that means that the wings and everything attached to them is pulling down on the wing boards/fuel and just exacerbating the issue. If you can remedy or remove those fuel tanks in the middle then I think it will help the craft as a whole in terms of stability, strength and lessening the amount of parts.

Great build and it\'s unfortunate that it\'s so difficult to get it working because of frame rate issues, but like I said, if you can\'t fly it then it\'s worthless. The only other thing you can do is hold onto the designs and see if performance issues are addressed in the future, and hope that .craft files become transferable between versions of KSP. I\'m sure you don\'t want to rebuild this thing from scratch, but it doesn\'t seem like the game can deal with it atm.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Thanks for the tips they have helped and I have managed to make it work a little better with fps, still needs a lot more redesigning though. I\'m not sure if it because the craft is so heavy the wheels want to sink into the runway and that causes it to rip itself apart, but when I have overcome this problem by throttling up and down until it moves I still need to be able to make it take off without hitting the back end on the runway. So I am going to spend today doing some redesigns and try to make it so at least others can fly it as I want to try and keep it as large as possible. Also do you or anyone reading this thread know about standard sas, does more equal better control while sas is engaged and does it matter how they are placed?

[wildkittyv1]

One thing you can try, and it\'ll be a pain because you\'ll basically have to rebuild the wings, is check out the rescaled plane parts in the mod forum. I know this is all stock and you\'d probably prefer to keep it that way, but as a temporary placeholder until the game runs better as a whole, you could probably use the large swept wings instead of having to use a bunch of the smaller ones - that\'ll reduce the number of parts right away and keep the swept look you have going.

As far as the SAS is concerned, I\'ve never really used them with planes at all. I put the nosecone and nose avionics package/ASAS on pretty much all of my planes, but I always try to balance them and make them capable of flying without them. I don\'t have a joystick, so I mostly use the ASAS as a sort of autopilot for longer trips since we can\'t set trim yet. My understanding is that regular SAS modules and the avionics ASAS work with different parameters, and that they should be used only with their respective craft - SAS/regular ASAS for vertical rockets, and the avionics package for horizontal rockets/planes.

Again, good build, and I hope you can manage to get it workable while retaining most of the aesthetics.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Well I have done I have done a bit of a redesign and still cant get it to take off but I don\'t have any fps issues now, still a step in the right direction. One problem is I still can\'t get the wings from bowing even though they are not supporting any extra weight.