Aircraft Design, help needed

[Culthrasa]

Hey Guys, Need your help

Aircraft design remains arcane mystery to me. Trying to design a 2 engine Heavy Aircraft on the following planet:





But can't to seem to make it work. I don't have the Aircraft council yet, so no techs (so it's a 2 engine prop plane).

Anyone got any suggestions?

[Daza99]

What is the air pressure for the planet? look in the Biosphere window in Help. The higher air pressure the better, so maybe 600-700+ is ideal. In the Planet Statistics overview window it says at the bottom for advise on ideal engine type. I might be wrong, but on low mbar planets Thopters would be worth investing in once you have discovered it.

[Clux]

Well, we need more info in order to know what do you want to achieve.

Do you want an interceptor? a long range fighter? a CAS fighter-bomber?

There are key elements in the building of a plane:

*Engine: Don't brother using regular propeller engines unless you have a good mbar/gravity ratio, stick to turboprop/turbo jet and plasma engines

*Wings: Normally the bigger they're, the more payload and further you can go (due "gliding"), however, if you increase it too much it will slow down a lot the aircraft and it will severely shorten its range

*Fuel: You need at least 3K fuel if you want to achieve a +10 hex range, you can increase or decrease it depending on the final weight of the plane (due payload)

*Air to Air Weapons: You will always use missiles if available, they have the best attack score (for air and hard targets) and don't have a handicap for the first three combat rounds

*Air to Ground Weapons: If you want to kill tanks I suggest you to use rockets, they're kinda cheap, light and effective, precision bombs aren't bad but they get expensive to use fast, if you want to kill infantry the ordinary bombs payloads get very heavy and expensive to use extremely fast, I would suggest you to use tanks instead. If what you want to do its strategic bombing, you're way better using rocket/missile launchers since they do waaay more asset damage per attack and cost a ton less ammo wise.

Also, applied science techs are necessary if you want good planes, if you're going to use turboprop for a while (or chopters) invest into propeller optimization, if you want your planes to go further invest into lightweight alloys (it reduces the overall weight of the plane, minus payload), if you want more firepower invest into payload optimization.

PS: As a rule of thumb, a good multirole fighter has the following components (depending on the mbar/gravity ratio you will need to increase the wing size/fuel load, also if you have invested into applied science techs the plane will be faster and fly farther)

* Heavy Turboprop
* 10mts wings
* 3K fuel
* Medium Missiles and medium rockets

[Culthrasa]

@daza, that's the atmospheric density number in the first screen shot, the precise number is:

So 384mbar

@clux, yeh sorry, could have mentioned that... I'm looking for a basic CAS fighter-bomber (some MG's and tank killing, nothing fancy). Only have access to bombs in the design I think.
But yeh, think you gave the answer, don't use prop in low grav/pressure that might be why all my designs where either invalid or had 2 range (even after 20 minutes of furious redesigns

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Culthrasa

@daza, that's the atmospheric density number in the first screen shot, the precise number is:

So 384mbar

@clux, yeh sorry, could have mentioned that... I'm looking for a basic CAS fighter-bomber (some MG's and tank killing, nothing fancy). Only have access to bombs in the design I think.
But yeh, think you gave the answer, don't use prop in low grav/pressure that might be why all my designs where either invalid or had 2 range (even after 20 minutes of furious redesigns

Divide the pressure in Bar by the gravity. If hte result is <1, aircraft will not be feasible on this planet. Even a small drop below has a massive impact.
0.384 Bar / 0.4g = 0.96
So, this is not a planet where you should consider heavy aircraft.

Light recon planes can work, but nothing heavy.

[Culthrasa]

@zgrssd, cheers, that is very helpful. thanks!

[mattpilot]

I dont understand.

I have 0.669 Bar and 0.98g which is = 0.682.


I have plenty of planes that fly well - including a transport that carries 250 up to 33 hexes (medium 2e). Other light aircraft fly up to 20-25 hexes, including thopters. Helicopters get up to 7-8 hexes.

My relevant AP techs are all around 50-70% done.


Why are aircraft working on my planet despite it being < 1 ?

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: mattpilot

I dont understand.

I have 0.669 Bar and 0.98g which is = 0.682.


I have plenty of planes that fly well - including a transport that carries 250 up to 33 hexes (medium 2e). Other light aircraft fly up to 20-25 hexes, including thopters. Helicopters get up to 7-8 hexes.

My relevant AP techs are all around 50-70% done.


Why are aircraft working on my planet despite it being < 1 ?

You got 50-70% in the Airplane techs.
With that kind of investment/development, we could fly a helicopter on mars.

[mattpilot]

yea but even before i got the AP techs, my ultralight and light aircraft did 10 hexes easy

I'm just saying the < 1 ratio thing doesn't seem to apply in this case - i'm wondering why? what other factors are important?

[Clux]

ORIGINAL: mattpilot

yea but even before i got the AP techs, my ultralight and light aircraft did 10 hexes easy

I'm just saying the < 1 ratio thing doesn't seem to apply in this case - i'm wondering why? what other factors are important?

The rule for 1000mbar/1gravity its not a hard rule, sure, you can make planes and they will fly, but they require more investment in order to get a decent range, and most of the time, it ends up meaning than you will be able to use them in mid-late game