Kerbal Express Airlines - Regional Jet Challenge (Reboot Continued)

[neistridlar]

2 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

@neistridlar Yeah the Skots Long was a Skots Small relabeled essentially. I will fix it, and start reviewing again, once I get this leaderboard stuff outta the way. It is very time consuming to do the leader-board.

My first planes kind of sucked, but they did provide a very good base to expand to ludicrous sizes.

Pro tip to starters: Consider costs of cabins, and intakes, and all the stuff. You can reduce costs a lot by a few simple substitutions. Also don't put engines near passenger compartments.

I can imagine it takes a lot of reading and double checking to update the leaderboard. It will be nice when it's done though.

PSA:

I have a little pro tip of my own too. In my quest for ultimate fuel efficiency, I have discovered that almost all of the hollow parts from APP have issues with the drag calculations. So structural fuselage type parts as well as cargobay type parts. There are two parts to this issue. Most of the cargobay parts don't actually shield the parts inside of them, and some have the animation and drag profile reversed, that is they have less drag when the door is open.

The second part, and I think this is more important, is that they don't interact with the drag calculations of the parts in front of and behind them properly. In KSP when you attatch two parts by nodes, the game checks how much of the front/back of the parts they cover, and deduct this portion of the drag on any given part, so a long thin fuselage has less drag than many short stubby ones. This is also the reason nose cones work. With the hollow parts from APP however this calculation is wrong, the game only calculates that a small part of the parts in front of and behind is covered. For instance if you put a passenger door inline in your fuselage this should add very little drag, but instead it adds almost as much drag as putting a fuel tank of the same size, and radially attaching it to the fuselage without nose cones. If your plane is reasonably aerodynamically efficient to begin with this might as much as double the drag of your plane, and consequently halve your fuel efficiency and or speed.

I suggest that until this issue is resolved people avoid these parts if they are going for fuel efficiency, and substitute them with empty fuel tanks. Just make a remark in the submission that the tanks have been repurposed as [insert imaginary awesome feature here], or maybe leave some fuel in and just disable fuel flow for that tank if you think your feature should have some weight to it (airborne swimming pools anyone?). To offset the increased fuel consumption I think I will at least make the hollow parts count positively in the review. Passenger doors for instance would make boarding faster and easier, increasing passenger comfort, and decreasing turnaround times, while cargo bays or structural fuselages provide extra cargo capacity, so we can charge extra for those oversize beauty bags that the ladies tend to bring, or something like that. Quantifying how much these should count is difficult though, so I will probably err on the conservative side, that will also ensure that new reviews are not entirely out of line with the old ones.

Just to make an example of how much of a difference it makes I replaced the structural fuselages in the recently reviewed Skots Long with an empty tank. It retained the same fuel burn rate, but the cruise speed went from 155m/s to 208m/s.

Edited March 26, 2018 by neistridlar
typo

[Eivuii]

Is JATO allowed?

[CrazyJebGuy]

31 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

Just to make an example of how much of a difference it makes I replaced the structural fuselages in the recently reviewed Skotsk Long with an empty tank. It retained the same fuel burn rate, but the cruise speed went from 155m/s to 208m/s.

It's spelt Skots, there is no k. I am quite surprised at that difference.

[neistridlar]

2 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

It's spelt Skots, there is no k. I am quite surprised at that difference.

Huh, I've been reading it wrong all that time. Anyways yeah, drag is king when it comes to fuel efficiency. I have a pair of turboprops getting ready for submission that I think will make people surprised how efficient you can get if you just pour in hours and hours of drag optimization. 

[Kebab Kerman]

On 3/24/2018 at 12:55 AM, Steel Starling said:

The wars are starting again! Quick! Prepare the shelters! *Puts on a military helmet and runs away*

Look out for dem flying cruise ships!

[CrazyJebGuy]

29 minutes ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Look out for dem flying cruise ships!

Hold on, here comes mine!

(I'm planning a big plane, my plan is to build it like how I played with a pencil and rubber in class and pretended it was an aeroplane.)

Edit: I just realized the first of these monster planes was literally named after an ocean liner, and I'm working on one now that is named after the sister ship! (But they won't be sister planes)

Update: I have expanded the fueselage to beat the current record by a hair, 2688 passengers so fair! (I like that at this point an extra medium regional jet is "a hair")

Edited March 26, 2018 by CrazyJebGuy

[CrazyJebGuy]

Oh, the landing gear just explodes eveything for no reason. Guess that's scratched.

[neistridlar]

3 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

Oh, the landing gear just explodes eveything for no reason. Guess that's scratched.

Just put more landing gear on it. Mine has a ton. 9 of the big ones right next to each other, and an other 9 mediums at the front. That seems to be the key to not exploding things with the landing gear.

Edited March 26, 2018 by neistridlar
me best grammar

[neistridlar]

8 hours ago, Eivuii said:

Is JATO allowed?

JATO as in the jets are pointed downwards? As long as it is still a rolling take off that still gets most of the lift from the wings, I don't see why it would not be allowed. If you are thinking about putting small rockets on your plane to help it get of the ground though, that would not be allowed I think.

From the rules:

On 20/03/2018 at 12:24 AM, CrazyJebGuy said:

A rolling runway takeoff is required.

On 20/03/2018 at 12:24 AM, CrazyJebGuy said:

No rocket engines. Aircraft engines only

[CrazyJebGuy]

11 hours ago, neistridlar said:

Just put more landing gear on it. Mine has a ton. 9 of the big ones right next to each other, and an other 9 mediums at the front. That seems to be the key to not exploding things with the landing gear.

I put large landing gear on literally every of the bottom cabins and fuel tanks, it's got about 70 large ladning gears. It just blows it up for some reason,  when I take them off it sits on the runway perfectly fine, without exploding.

[Agent Awesome]

2 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I put large landing gear on literally every of the bottom cabins and fuel tanks, it's got about 70 large ladning gears. It just blows it up for some reason,  when I take them off it sits on the runway perfectly fine, without exploding.

Have you autostrutted the crap out of it?

[CrazyJebGuy]

9 minutes ago, Agent Awesome said:

Have you autostrutted the crap out of it?

Just manual struts. I will try autostruts, I will probably need them to actually build anything big enough to win.

[neistridlar]

6 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I put large landing gear on literally every of the bottom cabins and fuel tanks, it's got about 70 large ladning gears. It just blows it up for some reason,  when I take them off it sits on the runway perfectly fine, without exploding.

That's weird. Oh well, I suppose that is what happens when you start exploring the limits of the game engine. Anyways, I can't help but feel that this discussion belongs in the size wars thread.

[Agent Awesome]

4 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

That's weird. Oh well, I suppose that is what happens when you start exploring the limits of the game engine. Anyways, I can't help but feel that this discussion belongs in the size wars thread.

Maybe…

[Kebab Kerman]

I win the passenger war. Interior cabins. 6,744 PASSENGERS.      I. WIN.

yes I already put this in the size war thread

Edited March 27, 2018 by Kebab Kerman
without passenger fuselage mounts or cabins, it would be ONLY 51 PARTS!

[CrazyJebGuy]

1 minute ago, Kebab Kerman said:

I win the passenger war. Interior cabins. 6,744 PASSENGERS.      I. WIN.

yes I already put this in the size war thread

Does that even fly well at all?

[Kebab Kerman]

2 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

Does that even fly well at all?

It didn't get off the ground.

It lagged my game more than a planetary collision kills all life on one of the planets.

EDIT: I don't know if it can get off the ground, I aborted the test five seconds after the lag started. Forgot to mention that!

Edited March 27, 2018 by Kebab Kerman

[CrazyJebGuy]

1 minute ago, Kebab Kerman said:

It didn't get off the ground.

It lagged my game more than a planetary collision kills all life on one of the planets.

I'm impressed it's so big, but I would say it has to actually fly to be a legit win.

This is where we wait for computer technology to advance so we can build bigger planes.

Dear AMD/Intel,

  Please give me more jiggahertz in my processor!

Thankyou,

Some guy on the internet

[Kebab Kerman]

3 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I'm impressed it's so big, but I would say it has to actually fly to be a legit win.

This is where we wait for computer technology to advance so we can build bigger planes.

Dear AMD/Intel,

  Please give me more jiggahertz in my processor!

Thankyou,

Some guy on the internet

I'm going to be building my own computer in this month's/next month's computer fair! Well, I say building, but I really mean stealing parts from the trash, three 5 terrabyte harddrives, and about a terrabyte worth of RAM. I just hope I can get it to work... Also, somebody needs to develop an operating system that only runs KSP. Basically, KSP but an operating system. With chrome, because we need to be able to install mods!

[CrazyJebGuy]

1 minute ago, Kebab Kerman said:

I'm going to be building my own computer in this month's/next month's computer fair! Well, I say building, but I really mean stealing parts from the trash, three 5 terrabyte harddrives, and about a terrabyte worth of RAM. I just hope I can get it to work... Also, somebody needs to develop an operating system that only runs KSP. Basically, KSP but an operating system. With chrome, because we need to be able to install mods!

What system do you have currently? I have a 10GB RAM, i7 2600 and a GTX 1060. It struggles to run some of my huge stuff, so currently I am just trying to make a practical 800 size plane.

[Kebab Kerman]

6 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

What system do you have currently? I have a 10GB RAM, i7 2600 and a GTX 1060. It struggles to run some of my huge stuff, so currently I am just trying to make a practical 800 size plane.

8GB RAM, i7 7700K Quad-Core and NVIDIA Geforce Radeon, my bad. I'll check when I get home from school.

Edited March 27, 2018 by Kebab Kerman

[neistridlar]

19 minutes ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Also, somebody needs to develop an operating system that only runs KSP. Basically, KSP but an operating system

I suppose you could make your own linux distro to do this. I'm curious though, what kind of part counts can your computers handle. The biggest I have successfully flown was 700 or so parts, the game runs at ~60% speed though. I don't recall exactly what my pc specs are, and I am away from my regular desktop currently so I can not check it. From memory I think it is something like an i5 6600K overclocked to 4.2Ghz, 32GB of DDR4 RAM and a GTX 680 and a EVO850 SSD for storage.

I'm with @CrazyJebGuy though. It does not count if it does not fly, I think it should even be capable of landing in one piece to count.

[CrazyJebGuy]

Just now, neistridlar said:

I suppose you could make your own linux distro to do this. I'm curious though, what kind of part counts can your computers handle. The biggest I have successfully flown was 700 or so parts, the game runs at ~60% speed though. I don't recall exactly what my pc specs are, and I am away from my regular desktop currently so I can not check it. From memory I think it is something like an i5 6600K overclocked to 4.2Ghz, 32GB of DDR4 RAM and a GTX 680 and a EVO850 SSD for storage.

I'm with @CrazyJebGuy though. It does not count if it does not fly, I think it should even be capable of landing in one piece to count.

For largest plane record yeah, largest to land is good. I mean, @Kebab Kerman you could sell it to a retirement home, it will lag so much they will live forever. They'd probably pay well for that.

[neistridlar]

Test Pilot Review: @TaRebelSheep – Trifecta Aeronautics C5 "RePurpose"  

  

Figures as Tested: 

• Price: 99,566,000 
• Fuel: 1800 Kallons 
• Cruising Speed: 290m/s 
• Cruising Altitude: 7,100m 
• Fuel Burn Rate: 0.40 Kallons/sec 
• Range: 1,305km 

Review: 

A cargo plane? Was this not supposed to be a jumbo? Well on closer inspection the cargo hold seems to be stuffed with passenger cabins. We were not quite able to find the 164 seats promised in the brochure, only 140. It won't do for our jumbo needs, but it certainly could do as a medium regional jet. As advertised the plane does require a competent pilot though.  

The flight manual says to run the plane off the side once the speed reaches 80m/s, and although this works wonderfully, it does require good timing to get a short take off, and of course it only works on raised runways. At 80m/s it just barely meets our take of speed requirements as well, though the take of run is not all that long, so it's not going to pose a big problem. 

In the air we discovered some of the control wires had been tangled. The flaps would only go down, and the rudder would respond to roll. We managed to get them untangled though. We were not quite able to reach the advertised cruising speed of 300m/s, though it cruises comfortably at 290m/s, which is still quite fast. The range calculations came out quite a bit lower than advertised as well. We suspect there might be some air leak in the nose though, because the passengers in the front cabins reported quite a lot of wind noise, that might explain why we were not getting the advertised speed and range. 

Upon landing the aircraft we found the weak pitch authority to be a real problem, it turns out the thrust from the low-slung engines is quite an essential part of the aircrafts ability to pitch up. With the rather long spool up time for the engines, this made for some nasty surprizes. With the right training it is entirely possible to land safely at 60m/s though, and the aircraft stops in about the same distance as it takes off. Water ditching proved quite safe, but the engines seem to be water soluble.  

Apart from the front cabins the aircraft seemed remarkably quiet. With the engines mounted on the wings, and the passenger cabins suspended in mid-air inside the fuselage very little noise and vibrations reach them. The view is not very nice, but the entertainment system is alright. 

Although the plane has been outfitted with passenger cabins there is still considerable space left in the cargo bays, so we can probably use the plane for cargo transport at the same time. Taking that into account the fuel economy should be should be quite reasonable for this aircraft, and with only 72 parts and two engines the maintenance should be quite reasonable as well. The price is not at all unreasonable for a plane of these capabilities, though we will have to set up a special training program for our pilots. With a redesigned landing gear for better take of performance and better pitch authority we think this plane could be quite a workhorse. 

The verdict: 
We will be buying 4 of these for short fat routes, with options for 6 more if the take of and landing issues can be resolved. 

[CrazyJebGuy]

3 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

With a redesigned landing gear for better take of performance and better pitch authority we think this plane could be quite a workhorse. 

 

The verdict: 
We will be buying 4 of these for short fat routes, with options for 6 more if the take of and landing issues can be resolved. 

Just saying, I would order more than 10 if it's a workhorse.