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FAR from impossible - making things fly, when they shouldn't [Finished! Now with pics]

tetryds

By tetryds
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

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tetryds

tetryds

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THE CHALLENGE:

On this challenge I will work on your full stock aircraft in order to make it fly using the mod Ferram Aerospace Research (FAR v0.14.6 @KSP 0.90).

This is a different kind of challenge, so, the WORSE your craft ends up, the BETTER.

Many people say it's hard to make things fly with it, and that it's not fun and you cannot make silly designs on it.

So, instead of getting into a debate, I will attempt to demonstrate here that anything can fly, "provided it's balanced well enough." - Harvester

PLEASE DO NOT DISCUSS THE NEW AERODYNAMIC SYSTEM HERE, THAT IS NOT THE POINT OF THIS CHALLENGE.

The plan is to not work more than half an hour on each craft, to avoid a "you worked more on mine than on his" issue.

There will be a rank system, but I will not give explicit points, as this is a very subjective challenge, but some things to bear in mind are:

The more time I take, the better for you.

Bigger crafts tend to fall like bricks more than smaller crafts, so it's easier to be harder if it's big, which is obvious and would not help much.

Exploiting physical effects that don't happen in stock but do in FAR is something very nice.

In FAR, jet engines are cut by 50%, and you know it, trying to use that on your favour is a bit of waste of time.

Something not just plain silly is something interesting, impress me.

There are also super secret rewards, which I will only talk about once the submissions are closed.

RULES:

For the sake of my own sanity, the craft must:

1-Fly stably in stock (include pics of stable flight, at least a few km away from the KSC).

2-Be built using stock parts ONLY.

3-Not drop, stage or break any parts.

4-Contain minimal or no part clipping, nor intake spam (no more than you really need).

5-Have no offsetting of parts placed on nodes, only radially (rotating parts placed on nodes is fine, any doubts just ask).

6-Have less than 100 parts.

7-Be an horizontal take-off aircraft.

8-Not carry any payload inside bays.

9-Not contain any exposed node facing forward (AKA: use nosecones).

10-Not make use of ANY glitch or game engine exploit.

Submission rules:

1-Every member can only submit ONE craft, ONCE, more than one version in a submission or multiple submissions will have all of them denied.

2-Only the first submitted craft will be a valid entry, please don't insist.

3-The craft name must contain it's name and your forum nickname, like: E36 - tetryds

4-Your entry is the craft at the moment I download it (if you want to update make sure to be faster than me and edit your post).

5-You can either submit the craft on this topic or send me via PM, but all crafts (before and after) will be downloadable on the scoreboard when I am done with all of them.

6-If your craft breaks the rules you cannot submit another, unless it's a very special case, then I will ask you to update it.

Every rule is subject to my own will, I may work on crafts that break the rule slightly if I find them worth.

I know that these rules sound a bit harsh, but while this goes I will not have time to review and bear with any issues related to the craft submissions, as I expect many.

Hopefully, things can get a bit more flexible depending on the amount of submissions :)

*I reserve the right of updating these rules at any moment, given prior notice.

RESULTS:

1st:

FarFromLikely - RedIronCrown

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Removed excessive wing spam.
  • Replaced elevators for canards.
  • Added more tail to minimize lateral instability.
  • Added chines for improved lift.
  • Drained fuel.
  • Changed engine type and added one more.

2nd:

HamSandwich - sal_vager

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Moved wings further from each other.
  • Increased wing lateral angle.
  • Increased wing built in AoA for easier piloting.
  • Tweaked COL position.
  • Decreased wing weight.

3rd:

Stupid is as stupid does - regex

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Added canards for stability.
  • Removed excessive wing spam.
  • Angled wings for better lift characteristics.
  • Slightly translated few parts for balance.
  • Rotated engine to fix COT direction.

4th:

far_from_flyable - Nemrav

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Added struts.
  • Replaced control surfaces.
  • Balanced wings position and tilt.
  • Added tail.

5th:

Boatatron - TW1

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Overhauled hull.
  • Replaced and tweaked wings and control surfaces.
  • Lowered ceiling.
  • Balanced fuel.
  • Added more engines and tweaked thrust.

6th:

Starstreaker III - Starwhip

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:​

  • Rebuilt front intake to reduce drag.
  • Tilted and rebalanced wings for better flight proprieties.
  • Improved horizontal stability by adding more tail.
  • Made more small tweaks and adjustments.

Bonus:

SomethingYawful - RedIronCrown

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- Craft

- FAR Craft

- Tweaks:

  • Lost sanity.
  • Added engine to counter drag.
  • Added SAS and RTG modules for low speed control.
  • Added struts.
  • Restored sanity, partially.

Being added:

-Notes

Edited by tetryds
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Nemrav

Nemrav

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But what are *your* guidelines, what are the limitations of how you will edit the craft ?

I know it wouldn't be deleting the craft and starting over, but will it be say Add up to 50 parts and delete up to 10 ? Will you use the translate tool ?

Also, would I be allowed to make a rotary aircraft (craft that go vertical using slightly inclined engines with rotation > 2 revolutions per second as a side effect) ? if so, I may have your first submission already...

edit : the craft...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7dbymshvu312h1/far_from_flyable.craft?dl=0

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wish I remembered how to get imgr working, for now just use the link

edit2: ty and forgot to name the craft... oh well, far_from_flyable, Nemrav.....

Edited by Nemrav
Fixed :)
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tetryds

tetryds

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Posted (edited)
But what are *your* guidelines, what are the limitations of how you will edit the craft ?

I know it wouldn't be deleting the craft and starting over, but will it be say Add up to 50 parts and delete up to 10 ? Will you use the translate tool ?

Also, would I be allowed to make a rotary aircraft (craft that go vertical using slightly inclined engines with rotation > 2 revolutions per second as a side effect) ? if so, I may have your first submission already...

My own guidelines is that I will do my best to try to keep the aircraft as similar to the original submission as possible.

So, as I said, the more changes I am forced to make, the better is your submission, thus I cannot limit myself here, that would mean limiting how good a submission can be :)

The translation tool is essential for balancing, but I will not make anything float, don't worry.

Sorry but rule 7 says horizontal takeoff only, so if it does not break any rules, sure.

But even if it does break rules pm me with it, I am curious and will give it a try until we have official submissions.

Edited by tetryds
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tetryds

tetryds

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Edit:

It's very awesome.

Can pull some hardcore stunts, and save itself with the boosters if needed.

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It already flew with FAR as it was originally, then I just improved the performance and stability.

That is not an easy to tame craft, but it's super fun.

What I had to do was:

-Add tail

-Add struts

-Trim wings

-Replace elevators

Took between 10 and 20 minutes of tweaking + flying :)

*I also added a decoupler as a workaround to the FAR drag bug.

Download

I noticed that having more than one stage can be something not that bad, so I will fix that rule.

Edited by tetryds
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Superfluous J

Superfluous J

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@5thHorseman: in case Claw's mod does not work, you could leave the parts by the asteroid in LKO with RCS or with a ship I can use to assembly it, but I need proof that it does not work :P

The original wasn't powered. I just set it up with a re-entry profile that would kill most anything if DRE was installed, then attached everything to it, and then used what was left of my RCS to tweak the periapsis until coming down I was over land.

I've always wanted to do a redo of this with jet engines to see if I could land it on the runway, so maybe this will be my impetus. I'll make one that works in stock, you can try to fly it in FAR. Heck, I may try to fly it in FAR just to see.

But in any case once I've made the jet-engine-enabled version I'll try Claw's mod. If it doesn't work I'll Hyperedit what I DID make (and land) into a nice 70x70 orbit for you and leave enough RCS to deorbit.

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regex

regex

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Entry: Stupid is as stupid does - regex

I wiped out my GameData, only TextureReplacer and Engineer remain. Bone stock otherwise.

Remember to turn off the SAS module torque, it doesn't need it. I tried to keep the craft as near to the original as possible. It has a real problem with yaw, but moving the fuel tank back slightly would probably help that, going slower will as well.

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This is what frightened me when Harv said that old stock craft should still be able to fly...

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sal_vager

sal_vager

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I've never been one for designs as wacky as the above, you can blame a lack of imagination, I like planes to look like planes.

So here's my "general mucking about" plane, I use it for flying between the buildings of the KSC, basic aerobatics and trips to the islands and mountains, it's not fast or long legged but it has bags of lift, essential for leisurely flights with granny, gliding and avoiding the R&D buildings at 50 metres.

I know anything can fly badly in FAR but this plane is designed for fun, so I'd appreciate it if you can try retaining the flight dynamics of this one, oh and I like the way it looks just as it is :)

It relies on a careful balance and centralised fuel, see if you can parkour off the side of the VAB, I know it is able to do it ;)

The Ham Sandwich.

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Edited by sal_vager
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regex

regex

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I've never been one for designs as wacky as the above, you can blame a lack of imagination, I like planes to look like planes.
My entry was a "technology demonstrator" to illustrate just how bad KSP really is (hopefully "was" soon), it is nothing like what I build or fly regularly (using FAR because I don't play stock). Quite frankly I'd be very surprised if it gets off the ground in FAR considering there are five open nodes on the front; a quick fix might involve antennas or simply removing the offending pieces. I've also never tried to see if wing-stacked designs work under FAR (and I see you brought one yourself). Edited by regex
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Tw1

Tw1

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I seem to have misread, my crazy thing already manages to fly in FAR. Just not that well. I'm leaving this entry here anyway, so have a go if you want, otherwise, I had fun building this anyway.

Boatatron.

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When I tried it, I found it stalls at a pitch of 30 degrees. It will take off at about 50m/s, but it's better to let it get as much speed as possible before pulling up from the runway. A little unstable at low speeds. Very difficult to land, have not succeeded. Takes an awfully long time to gain height and speed, making it useless for anything other than showing off.

Edit: Wait, 100 parts? I thought it said 200 hundred. Not reading well tonight. Oh well, I still have a cool boat now.

Edited by Tw1
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Van Disaster

Van Disaster

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I've also never tried to see if wing-stacked designs work under FAR (and I see you brought one yourself).

FAR will nerf lift for each successive stacked surface, so they'll be worse than one wing with them set up like that. That vehicle is frightening :P I couldn't work out how it even got off the ground for a while.

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