Flying two planes at once!

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I only just found out that you can change your active ship quickly with the [ and ] keys. Very useful for rendezvous - but it also got me thinking. If you can swap quickly enough can you keep multiple planes in the air at once?

Take off is pretty scary

Chasing is fun

Annyone want to guess how this ended?

So it is possible - but several things make it very difficult:

Problem 1) Anything in the air which gets futher than 2000m from the active ship will vanish, I guess the game dosen't want to simulate spent stages falling all the way down.

Solution: Keep your planes within 2000m, a little tricky but not impossible.

Problem 2) Swapping from a plane in the air to a plane on the ground will make the one in the air vanish (air-to-air and ground-to ground are ok). This a major issue becuase you can't launch one plane then swap to one on the runway and launch that.

Solution: Get your 1st plane moving down the runway and trimmed so it will take off, then swap to the 2nd plane before it acctually leaves the ground.

Problem 3) This is a really wierd one. Anything moving on the ground will stop dead once it gets 350m from the active ship. As if the game freezes it. The engines still burn but it just sticks there. Once you move back within 350m it has to accelerate from 0 again.

Solution: Make a plane which can take off within 350m.

Problem 4) The throttle and trim settings carry across when you swap planes. Annoying because this sometimes makes a plane spin out of control when you swap to it.

Solution: Have two similar (or even better identicle) planes

I hope someone else tries this out and has some fun with it.

[kevinlacht]

This belongs in challenges.

[sal_vager]

Except it's not a Challenge, it's a novel observation, Fuzzy Dunlop could make it a Challenge though

[Nori]

That is just crazy... I mean I have a hard enough time flying one ship....

[praise the suuun]

imagine the synchronised aerobatics one could film when throttle and trim are shared in the atmosphere!!

[urablahblah]

Holy 10 month necro batman!

[cesarcurado]

I noticed this would be possible when I made a plane with xenon tank bombs.

As I kept the SAS on my plan on, I dropped the bombs and focused on them.

The plane kept flying absolutely straight...

Maybe I will make a plane with missiles to take down another plane I made, while it is mid-air.

[stupid_chris]

Indeed, that thread is really old. Waking this one up wasn't really necessary.

That being said, thread locked.