Nerv engine shroud

[farmerben]

 

How come a shrouded Nerv engine has more than twice as much drag as an unshrouded one?  Surely it is supposed to be the reverse.

 

 

 

[Gargamel]

Try flipping the order of the engines.  Ie, shroud the bottom engine and not the top one and compare numbers again.   IIRC, and I don't know the maths here very well, the order of the occluding parts affects drag numbers, but in that I could be wrong. 

[farmerben]

I tried that and got the same result.  The shrouded one has twice as much drag.

 

The vessel in the photo was created simply to prove the point.  I was trying to make planes with structural fuselage behind the Nerv engine when I discovered this.  Discarding the shroud reduces drag by at least a factor of 2.  

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Classic KSP drag bug/oversight... it's like the one where the Mk2 cargo bay has less drag when opened...

OP can you also test out empirically if the different drag readouts correspond to actual drag? Something like max height or distance in otherwise identical craft?

[Foxster]

Engines and other parts, particularly engines with variants, are a complete drag mess at the moment. None of it makes any sense. 

[Reinhart Mk.1]

22 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

Mk2 cargo bay has less drag when opened...

LOL wut

[Fraston]

I don’t really care about drag. I put nose ones on, but as long as my missions get where they are supposed to I am fine.