Air Intake Changes?

[Sundancer]

I just came back after a break of two months. I seem to recall that radial intakes were next to useless for any sort of high altitude flight.

Logged in to check if anything has changed, since I've been able to get a plane with just two radials up to 26,000ft with no flameouts. Everything seems much easier than it was before. Just playing around I've been able to punch aircraft out of the atmosphere on jet power alone, trivialising (small) SSTO building.

So I'd like to ask if there have been any changes to air intakes/air breathing engines/aircraft in general?

Edit: I'm using FAR, if that has any major bearing on the situation. Although I was using FAR before I stopped playing right after 0.22 came out, so the experience should be the same.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Sundancer
Forgot to mention mod usage.

[LexDavis]

I believe it has something to do with FAR, I just recently started using FAR and it made the intakes usable at 26,000+ meters

[SpaceGremlin]

Sounds more like the FAR turbojet bug. Far is supposed to limit turbojets to 1800 m/s, but a config bug allows them to run at max thrust as long as it has air. Higher velocity means you can gobble up more air, which allows you to reach even higher velocity. Do it right and you can exceed Kerbin escape velocity on turbojets alone.

Ferram posted a fix here.

[Zephram Kerman]

Squad changed something about the way intakes work in 0.23, so that intakes are now able to drain fully before engines start to flame out. I don't use FAR (yet) and all of my old planes got a noticeable performance boost in this version. From the change log:

- Fixed those resource containers not being able to drain fully or store an amount larger than their current available space.

Since there was a change to FAR as well as the stock game, I think you're getting combined effect.

[Geschosskopf]

Squad changed something about the way intakes work in 0.23, so that intakes are now able to drain fully before engines start to flame out.

What happened was Squad automated what used to be the manual, somewhat skill-requiring process of throttling back the engines as IntakeAir decreases with altitude. Thus, IntakeAir and engine thrust decrease together and both go to zero simultaneously at flameout. This happens internally without moving the displayed position of the throttle slider.

Because the automation is better at managing the throttle to the available IntakeAir than even the most skillful old-school SSTO pilot, and because engines now also run IntakeAir right down to zero instead of dying with some amount still left, the ceilings of jet engines has increased for a given number of intakes. Airhogging really isn't that necessary anymore; 2 ram intakes per engine is usually enough.

[Sundancer]

Thank you!

It seems as though both of these things have been at work causing my confusion. You can imagine my surprise when my aircraft ended up with an apoaps of 200km with no rocket engines.

Anyway, thanks once again and I'm marking this answered.