Airliner Safety Challenge

[Rath]

I'll add you to the leaderboard once I can get to a computer.

[Human Person]

9 hours ago, Rath said:

You can get on the leaderboard if you include a picture.

I'll redo this and try to get more than 300 Points this time! I honestly are that bad with planes.

[TheEpicSquared]

@Rath I'd like to suggest a change in the scoring system. Right now it seems to favor the number of passengers (the x5 multiplier) over anything else. This means that if you have the most amount of passengers, you pretty much win regardless of every other statistic.

I think that more incentive should be given to other statistics, like range and other things that I can't come up with right now.

 

[Rath]

4 hours ago, Hesp said:

Actually, I like the idea of including suborbital spaceplanes.

The only requirement needed for a fair challenge would be to have ONLY airbreather engines to avoid entries like mine  

Or just not orbit.  I love the idea of a rocket-boosted space plane jumping between continents.

1 hour ago, TheEpicSquared said:

@Rath I'd like to suggest a change in the scoring system. Right now it seems to favor the number of passengers (the x5 multiplier) over anything else. This means that if you have the most amount of passengers, you pretty much win regardless of every other statistic.

I think that more incentive should be given to other statistics, like range and other things that I can't come up with right now.

 

That's why I wrote subject to change.  This challenge is still in its infancy.  I think the bonuses should be boosted a lot too because it's a safety challenge.

[Hesp]

2 hours ago, TheEpicSquared said:

@Rath I'd like to suggest a change in the scoring system. Right now it seems to favor the number of passengers (the x5 multiplier) over anything else. This means that if you have the most amount of passengers, you pretty much win regardless of every other statistic.

I think that more incentive should be given to other statistics, like range and other things that I can't come up with right now.

 

That's not correct... As I showed, it's easier to reach 2000m/s than carrying 400 kerbals.

IMHO, I think that all the challenge parameters should be multiplied and not added, i.e.:

Speed X Distance X (Kerbals+Staff) X Bonuses

 

It's the only way to make all the entries consider every design aspect

[Human Person]

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/93853799899003701/B3C78AC91246A3B90E85640B22F8E748B6CC8C6E/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/93853799899035779/DB83355D0774DE1AA6FA5B32374B5CBC964D3A0A/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/93853799899038122/C07AA7A16CFF1F03ACC4095ABACAF0A118FC483E/

Meet Planie Mc Planeface Mark 2! It's an 48 passenger aircraft that looks like a stubby jumbo. I removed the droptanks, removed fuel and put 4 more Wings on. Now it's stable!

It's cruising speed is 185 m/s at 9500m, 230m/s at 7000m. It manages to hold that speed and height without any control input (but with SAS). Top speed (only achieved on a dive) was 364 m/s. It can land on water without damage, but it can't take off from water. Min takeoff- and landing speed is 60 m/s. It's Max Distance is pretty high. Im sure it could circumnavigate kerbin but my longest flight was just about 800 km (it still had 3/4 of the fuel it started with and I tried some stunts on that flight)

Spoiler

Points: (I simply removed everything that wasnt the case)

• Your plane cannot tailstrike no matter how hard you pull up on takeoff (20 points)
• Your plane does not need SAS to fly stably (20 points)
• Your plane has two engines and can fly on one (20 points)
• Your plane has airbrakes (10 points)
• Your plane can ditch in the water with all crew surviving (10 points)
• Your plane can ditch in the water with no damage (20 points)
• Your plane can take off and immediately land back on the runway without turning around, and is heavy size or above (10 points for large)
• Your plane can fly on any two engines.

Point malus:

No Maluses!

 

 

 

364+(800(could do much better)/10)+(48*5)*1+(2/2)) + 110 = 1239

Edited March 20, 2017 by Physics Student

[Cunjo Carl]

1 hour ago, Physics Student said:

Meet Planie Mc Planeface Mark 2!

+++ for making a tri-wing design look good!

1 hour ago, Hesp said:

Speed X Distance X (Kerbals+Staff) X Bonuses

... Mulling over it, I agree this should encourage a wide range of crafts. It also accomplishes that while being a lot simpler than my suggestion, which is great! That said, we're two pages and a half-dozen entries in so it may just be time to play ball. Let's see what Rath thinks.

11 hours ago, Eidahlil said:

With that out of the way, I present a deathtrap plane from HDAY airlines: HDAY 1. Proven to be "technically capable of landing",

Nice "wings"  How do you show the Kerbals inside a pod by the way? I've heard about it but never figured it out.

 

@DoctorDavinci I am duly impressed you got a plane that big to splash down nicely!

[DoctorDavinci]

1 minute ago, Cunjo Carl said:

@DoctorDavinci I am duly impressed you got a plane that big to splash down nicely!

Go big or go home they say ... and seeing that I was already at home I had to go big 

[Human Person]

4 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

How do you show the Kerbals inside a pod by the way? I've heard about it but never figured it out.

There's a little circle left of the IVA-screens that toggles internal view.

[Rath]

Anybody else have some ideas on how to improve scoring?  Recalculation will be easy because you have to post your base statistics.  Otherwise I think the scoring will change soon.

[rockets-don't-make-toast]

if its super sonic or not.

[Rath]

47 minutes ago, rockets-don't-make-toast said:

if its super sonic or not.

What are you asking?  Aircraft can be supersonic.

[rockets-don't-make-toast]

if it can go super sonic, extra points if it can. some of my planes can't go super sonic and I bet the kerbals didn't like the fact that it couldn't.

[Rath]

If you look at the scoring formula, speed is included.  You get 2000 free points if you can hit 2000m/s, which is much easier than carrying 400 kerbals at any speed..

[Human Person]

12 hours ago, Rath said:

Anybody else have some ideas on how to improve scoring?

Remove the plane's range, or make range categories like 100 km, 1000km, 10000km

Edited March 21, 2017 by Physics Student

[TheEpicSquared]

13 hours ago, Rath said:

Anybody else have some ideas on how to improve scoring?  Recalculation will be easy because you have to post your base statistics.  Otherwise I think the scoring will change soon.

I'd say something like:

MaxSpeed + ( Range / 1.5 ) + ( PassengerCapacity * 3 ) + ( FlightAttendants * 2 ) + ( BonusPoints * 3 )

 

Not sure how balanced that is though  

[Rath]

I want range to be a viable way of accumulating points too, and I'm afraid that reducing the value of range or putting it into brackets could harm that.  If it is too good I would prefer dividing it by two or something.

[TheEpicSquared]

3 minutes ago, Rath said:

I want range to be a viable way of accumulating points too, and I'm afraid that reducing the value of range or putting it into brackets could harm that.  If it is too good I would prefer dividing it by two or something.

I though dividing by 2 was too much for high-capacity, low-range planes, and multiplying it would give an unfair incentive for high-range planes, so I went in between, resulting in dividing by 1.5.

Untimately it's up to you of course, it's your challenge  

[Hesp]

38 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

I'd say something like:

MaxSpeed + ( Range / 1.5 ) + ( PassengerCapacity * 3 ) + ( FlightAttendants * 2 ) + ( BonusPoints * 3 )

Not sure how balanced that is though  

Try to multiply all them together rather than adding up

Something like this:

(MaxSpeed/10) * (Range/100) * (PassengerCapacity + (FlightAttendants*3)) * (1+(BonusPoints/1000))

Edited March 21, 2017 by Hesp

[SaturnianBlue]

Here's my (first) entry.

The plane is capable of taking off without a potential tail strike.

Capable of landing in the water perfectly intact (as you can see with no difference in parts according to KER).

It can take off an land on the same runway.

It can fly (albeit quite slowly) on any two engines.

IN summary: There is no chance of tail strike (20), No SAS to fly stable (20), has 4 engines but can fly on two (20), airbrakes (10), can ditch in the water with no damage (20), can take off and land on same runway without turning around (20). Power generation is via fuel cells.

1280 M/s + (112 Passengers X5) + (1659 KM/10) + (2/1) + 110 (bonus points) = 2116.9 points! 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 3/20/2017 at 7:16 AM, TheEpicSquared said:

@Rath ...Right now it seems to favor the number of passengers (the x5 multiplier) over anything else...

I have to second this. With the current rules I could haul this ugly and very unsafe monster out of my hanger and get 1600x5 = 8000 points just from the passengers. 

At which point it becomes "Computer Melter Danger Challenge" which isn't quite as fun.

I don't particularly want to do that, but I could.

Anyways, I have a question: can I enter into more than one category? I've just about finished a plane which can be either heavy or superheavy depending on the number of fuselage sections installed (might even be able to chop off sections and get medium too, but it would look weird and stubby). Got it

Edit: @Rath2 more questions:

1: do batteries count as an alternative power source? I added 4k in extra batteries, which is definitely enough to power it until landing if the engines go out.

2: what kind of engine out fly-ability bonuses would apply to an aircraft with say, 6 engines? My plane can fly on any 3 engines. Is this equivalent to a 4 engine plane flying on 2?

Edit2: ugh: that belly-land-without-damage bonus is almost within my grasp! The little glitch ridges between runway sections keep messing me up!

Edited March 22, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139
Questions

[Rath]

You can enter however many times you want.  Be reasonable though.

 

EDIT: You can only submit once in each category, but submissions can be replaced.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Rath

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Ok I'll be entering the Super-heavy category with the PassTranz 106.

Spoiler

It has airbrakes on the tail. +10

Apparently I missed the takeoff picture, but she won't tail strike (comes close though). +20pts

Cruises at a measly 176m/s with an estimated range calculated at 3200km. The actual range when taking into account the fuel economy gained through a cruise-climb is probably a hundred or so more, but I didn't feel like waiting to find out. Could probably improve significantly by removing safety features lol.

Obviously it won't melt itself at this rate.

Can fly with any 3 of it's 6 engines out. Not sure what I get for this... 20pts?

I didn't get a screenshot from approach as I was concentrating, but it can bellyland without damage. You can see why in the next screenie. +40pts

(I-beam skids) This is in fact the same flight, I simply deployed the gear and took off again.

Here a malfunction of the fuel dumping system resulted in the aircraft being flipped normal to the airstream, and it didn't break up (lost quite a bit of altitude though), so I guess that satisfies the integrity requirement.

Basically the incident involved me having tried to increase the rate at which a modified Juno dumped fuel.

I had edited it to have 15000 thrust limiter, to get the correspondingly high fuel consumption, and covered it with a radiator to block it's thrust (I didn't want to use it as an actual engine, that would be OP and silly). In this state it worked fine, slurping fuel at 8-9 units/sec when activated (I figured this counted as a fair mod). But I was greedy, and wanted it to work faster, so I boosted the thrust limiter another 1000. This turned out to create just too much heat, and the radiator cover exploded a few seconds after I turned the thing on for demonstration. Immediately the plane had the thrust equivalent of a mammoth rocket engine shoving backwards on its wing... So... Uh... Yah... No fuel jettison points for me for now. Wait! I can put half my engines in reverse and use fuel at 1.1 units/sec at low altitude! +10pts! No? Ok fine

Anyways, on the opposite side an unmodified Juno will not blow up anything and acts as an APU for backup power. In the event of complete fuel exhaustion, there is a full 4k of storage in non-cockpit emergency batteries, more than enough to hold through a glide to the ground.

Anyways, it can ditch without losing parts. +20 points

(I would include the F-3 menu to prove this, but it was filled with the usual unrelated DMP spam of "x Kerman was killed" and was excessively long).

It can fly easily without SAS, and cruise straight and level without trim. Furthermore the natural altitude it hangs out at can be changed by throttle.  +20 and +10. The stability doesn't change noticeably through fuel burn.

Flies below 50m/s. +5pts. Might even be able to stay aloft at 30m/s. Will have to test over water where it is more forgiving and less likely to blow anything up if I tail strike.

I forgot to mention it can immediately land back on the runway after takeoff.

So that gives 176 + (3200/10) + (16*8*5) + (2/2) + (10+20+20+40+20 +20 +10 +10 +5) = 1458pts

That's 3rd place!

Edit: I goofed up. I got 1302 points. Sorry people! The math on the original example in the challenge is messed up too though.

Edited March 27, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139
Either there was a glitch or someone played a practical joke on me. All the text inside the spoiler was crossed out :o

[notsodeadjeb]

Can i make a Super heavy, that is powered by Nervs? 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 3/23/2017 at 0:25 PM, notsodeadjeb said:

Can i make a Super heavy, that is powered by Nervs? 

I can imagine it being able to get a pretty absurd score if you fly it how I think... Not sure if it would be fair for the challenge, but I would love to see it.

Anyways, this is the OP's decision.

Edited March 27, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139