What is your definition of air hogging

[Queue]

Fellow Kerbal Engineers,

I have long spent many hours developing space planes; however i have been limiting myself to 2 air intakes per air breathing engine. i have been thinking of upping my number to three just to make things a little easier (so i can spend more time in the air and less in the SPH). Here is the dilemma i really try my best (within the limitations of the physics engine) to keep things moderately realistic without exploiting game mechanics (i don't consider air hogging cheating due to the sandbox nature of the game however it is just not my style) so i guess to wrap things up is 3 intakes per engine hogging?

as always thank you for the feedback.

[TheOsmiumGamer]

I think 2 isnt airhogging but 3 is probably borderline:)

[Liowen]

I would say more than 4 on a small-ish craft would be airhogging, considering larger real jets have more intakes in order to feed their engines. For even a single engine you do three without really airhogging if you used the inline intake and 2 of the tank mounted ones.

[regex]

My definition of airhogging is not using FAR and AJE.

Stock is so ridiculous to begin with that you can't really fault anyone for stacking as many intakes as possible onto their #lolplane.

[Stratoroc]

part clipping. If the intakes aren't clipped, they aren't hogged. This also goes for using cubic octo to attach an intake to an intake.

[merendel]

I'll second the part cliping comment. If you can fit the intakes on the ship without cliping them and looking too outlandish for your tastes its fine. I generaly wont have more than 3 intakes per engien at max but thats my own preferance.

[undercoveryankee]

In addition to clipped or stacked intakes, I try to avoid intakes that are hidden from the air stream by another part or are mounted without a reasonable path for air to take from intake to engine.

[cantab]

Well I don't do many planes anyway. But yeah, if you've got intakes clipping into each other, or on parts that clearly couldn't feed the air (like a girder or the thin edge of a wing), then that gets into airhogging. Radial intakes with obstructed flow, including by other radial intakes, too.

But if you put one engine on a Rockomax tank, then four rams on the other end and six radials around it, well I suppose that is airhogging, but it wouldn't feel so cheaty.

[Moar Boosters]

Don't put arbitrary limits on your plane's performance. The more intakes, the more fuel you can get to orbit, and the more fun you can have in your plane actually going places.

The fun/challenging part, is building a plane that still looks good. Anybody can build a flying wall of intakes, but nobody wants to fly something that looks unaerodynamic and rubbish, so the trick is to find a balancing point.

So I say.... DO clip intakes into each other if that helps you make a nice looking plane, DO build shells out of wing parts and then hide all the ugly beneath them, and DON'T worry about the absolute number you've got, as long as your craft wears them well.

[Frank_G]

I think as long as a craft goes by aerodynamic and aesthetic design, the number of intakes isnt relevant. I usually use between one and four intakes per engine. Four mostly, when it is a single engine craft, where you can use the new intake parts in very good looking configurations.

I consider Air hogging as using clipped intakes, using cubic struts to place intakes all over the plane, placing redicoulus numbers behind each other, stack them or hide loads of em inside your plane.

From my experience i can tell, that using 2.5 ram intakes per turbo jet is enough to build a nice working space plane. FAR makes it easier, or get NEAR if you want the physics model a little less complex. I go with NEAR as i dont enjoy playing under the complex physics model.

[Renegrade]

I'd say two is a good number already (although I tend to count the radial scoops as half an intake, since they have half the intake area and work well in pairs), and I agree with the clipping/stacked/in the airflow comments.

Although as a note, I'd like to add that if you use stock aero, do NOT use the "engine nacelle" or "radial engine body" intakes, except as airbrakes. Their 0.3t+ mass basically turns into a huge amount of drag when they're open thanks to stock #lolaero ~ (thankfully version 14 of FAR does away with stock aero's intake code entirely)

Note that real life aircraft tend to be limited to 1-2 intakes per engine, and extreme speed/altitude craft like SR-71s and Skylons tend to have a single intake per engine.

Besides, Squad may one day limit the effectiveness of multiple air intakes, if they ever decide to take another shot at fixing the airflow problems (the new flow model in 0.23 kinda fell flat).

However, given the sandbox nature of the game and that there really isn't any "cheating", you could just do this:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleResourceIntake]]
{
	@area *= 10
}

..and have a prettier looking plane that saves on part count, with all the same fake of airhogging.

#lolintake

[SkyRender]

Pretty much any quantity of intakes that lets you manage sustained horizontal flight with a jet engine at 22,000m is borderline air-hogging, and anything above that elevation is ever more blatantly so.

[Skyler4856]

That's my definition...

[Wanderfound]

It's inevitably subjective.

For me, it just comes down to "does this thing look like it could possibly fly in the real world?".

My personal limits tend to be no more (and often less) than one nacelle/ramscoop combo per engine, and any radial intakes need to have unobstructed airflow in front of them (I often skip radials entirely, and rarely use more one pair per engine).

Adding more intakes would mess up my suspension of disbelief and reduce the immersiveness of the game. And I enjoy the challenge of making effective planes that don't rely too much upon exploiting the places where the reality of the simulation breaks down. Once you get the knack of building 'em, airhogging just isn't necessary. Big planes, fast planes, efficient planes...all of these things can be done without intake spam.

But, y'know, that's just how I like to play. Whatever anybody else wants to do in their own game is cool. It's a game; if you're having fun, then you're doing it "right".

Edited August 12, 2014 by Wanderfound

[Wanderfound]

Pretty much any quantity of intakes that lets you manage sustained horizontal flight with a jet engine at 22,000m is borderline air-hogging, and anything above that elevation is ever more blatantly so.

Are you talking about basic jets or turbojets here? Stock aero?

With FAR installed, it's trivial to keep a turbojet running indefinitely in the high 20's with only a single intake.

[magnemoe]

Is it only me who uses the radial intakes? they are much easier to place, put an second wing on top over them and you have something who look good too.

[Doge]

For me putting on more than 4 air intakes counts as airhogging, but I don't really care because if you really want to make cool spaceplanes that can actually go anywhere besides Mun/Minmus, you pretty much have to airhog. Just look at the amazing things Overfloater has done with airhogging.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Doge

[SRV Ron]

For a turbojet rocket launching a payload into orbit, a ring of eight intakes and a careful flight profile can get you an orbital speed near 2,400 m/sec at a ceiling of over 36,000 meters.

[Levelord]

Don't put arbitrary limits on your plane's performance. The more intakes, the more fuel you can get to orbit, and the more fun you can have in your plane actually going places.

The fun/challenging part, is building a plane that still looks good. Anybody can build a flying wall of intakes, but nobody wants to fly something that looks unaerodynamic and rubbish, so the trick is to find a balancing point.

Some small planes can be made to look good with a 4:1 ratio while not clipping the intakes over each other. Wings look clipped due to some clever manipulation and rotation.

[MartGonzo]

Aesthetics without part clipping.

[Jouni]

If you add more intakes in order to get more air for the engines, that's airhogging. 1-2 radials, 1 circular intake, or 1 ram intake per engine is fine, and you can add a nacelle or a radial engine body as well, as long as the design looks reasonable. Anything beyond that is probably airhogging by my definition.

[StevenJ]

My definition of airhogging is not using FAR and AJE.

Stock is so ridiculous to begin with that you can't really fault anyone for stacking as many intakes as possible onto their #lolplane.

Well they help. I want to try AJE but I don't want to have to install real fuels as a pre-requisite.

[regex]

Well they help. I want to try AJE but I don't want to have to install real fuels as a pre-requisite.

Well, yeah, that's kind of the point... Realism is a slippery slope.

[StevenJ]

Well, yeah, that's kind of the point... Realism is a slippery slope.

It's like TAC life support a lot in a way. It's an awesome mod but it needs other mods to allow you to build sustainable off Kerbin bases to do things like grow food so they don't die lol. Real fuels would mean for me possible conflicts with other mods like KW rockety and b9 that add other engines etc then what about kethane and ksp interstellar that allow for off world mining?

[regex]

It's like TAC life support a lot in a way. It's an awesome mod but it needs other mods to allow you to build sustainable off Kerbin bases to do things like grow food so they don't die lol. Real fuels would mean for me possible conflicts with other mods like KW rockety and b9 that add other engines etc then what about kethane and ksp interstellar that allow for off world mining?

Depending on the engine config you use for Real Fuels KW and B9 are supported, as well as NP2 and FASA, for instance. I'm not entirely sure if Real Fuels has a stock-alike engine config that isn't designed for Real Solar System, but it's not all that hard to make one. Also, Kethane isn't realistic by a long shot and KSPI has its own problems, but if that's how you want to play KSP, that's how you want to play. At some point I bet we'll see some sort of ISRU for the Realism suite but it won't be anything like what we've seen in KSP so far; it'll be very specific to each planet/situation and you won't be able to do everything everywhere or have access to some One-Size-Fits-All-Magical-Princess-Pony-Resource.

Also, on-topic: #lolintakes