Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

[open_sketch]

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Stress 0​

Office Stress 0​

XP 5​

Spoiler: Character Sheet

Matsura Asuka
Head Designer for Ohara Airworks
Age 24 (Legally 25)
Year 12 AF (After Flight)

Design Stats
Aerodynamics Engineering - +2
Structural Engineering - +2
Chemical Engineering - +1
Mechanical Engineering - +1
Ballistics Engineering - +1
Electrical Engineering - 0

Personal/Political Stats
Social Skills - 0
Politics Skills - 0
Importance - 2
Income - 1
Investments - Ohara

Resources
Power - 0
Wealth - 2

Designs
Type 1 Series - Military Variation (Designated T1M1)
Type 2 Racer (World Speed Record October 1910-April 1911, 180kph)
Model 2 Scout (Designated T1M2)
Navy Scout Prototype (Drowned Rat)
Dive Bomber B1M1 "Duck"
Machine Gun Carrier R1A "Dragonfly" (World Speed Record May-July 1911, 200kph)
Naval Rescue Water-Landing Supply Plane NR1M0 "Dolphin" (World speed record 240kph)
Rhino Demon Train Hunter
The world's first airliner
The world's first pulsejet airplane

Assets
Slide Rule
Computator (1 Reroll per Routine)

Languages
Albian
Gallian

Familiar Vices
Drinking
Prostitutes
Dancing

Family Life
- Engaged to Arita Yachi, formerly the leading Ace in the Imperial Army. Designated #1 Cutest Army Boy, he's having some serious problems with PTSD right now.
- Taking a second try at dating Mikami Kiho, ex-dockerwork from the south.

Upgrades
- 3 XP to upgrade a stat.

Spoiler: Ohara Airworks

Ohara Airworks
Start Up, Imperial Capital, Akitsukuni

Owner
- Mr. Ohara, Rich. Aircraft Enthusiast. Business guy.

Engineers

Kibe Koume, 26, Office Manager
Tiny & angry, Kibe went to school in Albia, picking up the language, the religion, and a fuckload of swear words. Speaks Albian.
Mechanical +2, Ballistics +1
Office Manager: If Kibe is not assigned to a team, the Office Stress is reduced by 1.

Sakane Jun, 26, Second Team Leader
A soured patriot, Sakane is married and has a young child being raised gender-neutrally. His two brothers who fought in the war.
Structural +2, Aerodynamics +1
Team Leader: If there are any additional projects, Sakane will lead them.
Joinery: Sakane has training in the traditional Akitsukuni carpentry art of joinery, creating complex self-supporting joints with no fasteners or glue. When working with non-monocoque wooden spars or ribs, +1 Structural.

Tezuka Kenji, ???
A stoner with occasional flashes of insight. Nobody really knows what he does, but he's probably useful?
Aerodynamics +2, Chemical +1
Flashes of Brilliance: Each natural 10 rolled by any team Tezuka is assigned to gives +1 forward to the next research roll.

Hasegawa Morio, 26
A hopeless nerd with a photography habit, mostly on account of developing his own film, Hasegawa seems to do nothing but work and stack card houses, but somehow has an incredible attractive boyfriend. Speaks Gallian.
Chemical +2, Ballistic +1
Silent Workhorse: Hasegawa can work on two different projects at once for no cost to Office Stress, providing they use different stats.

Kawamura Yosai, 25.
Serially successful womanizer and incredibly attractive, Kawamura doesn't seem to have much of a personality outside of seducing women. Well, except for that time he seduced Asuka, which nobody talks about. Speaks Dyske.
Structural +2, Electrical +1, Social +1
Easily Distracted: If Kawamura is working on the same team as a female or non-binary employee, the team is at -1d10.

Koide Hatsu, 24.
One of the few female graduates of an Akitsukuni engineering school, Koide is brilliant and incredibly driven, but her first job at Akibara was both humiliating and exposed her to an abusive coworker. Her father is a rich businessman with factories in Joseon, and she's engaged to Ken from Castles of Steel. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +2, Structural +1
No Sleep: If you let her, Koide will work herself to death. She can work a second project for no Office Stress, but all her stats will be reduced to 1 for the routine.

Kobayashi Ayao, ???
Disowned heiress of the Kobayashi family, all Kobayashi wanted was a career and to be a modern woman. For her trouble, a cousin threw acid on her, scarring her face, neck, much of her torso, and her left arm. Despite appearing serene and above it all, she's actually an avowed communist activist and baseball player.
Aerodynamics +2, Social +2

Adachi Ren, 24
Adachi learned chemistry from her father, one of the most famous chemical engineers in the country, rather than through formal schooling. She's married, has a kid, and takes spirituality very seriously. Yes, you did the math right, she had Yuki when she was 17. It's 1912, folks.
Chemical +2, Electrical +1
Young Mother: Adachi will cause double Office Stress if she has to work multiple tasks.

Uyeno Sei, Ballistics Engineer, 31.
The oldest member of the crew, this is Uyeno's second career. Her first was as an officer in the Imperial Navy with specialized technical training: her very promising career was cut short by her transition. Her work in a naval arsenal on machine-guns landed her the job here. Briefly dated Satomi (the age range is a bit creepy but again, 1912), she's missing a piece of her ear and is deaf on that side, from an exploding cannon. Recently returned from Varnmark from experimental surgery, she's known for her skill navigating gendered bureaucracy.
Ballistic +3

Mi Kyung-Jae, 23
A recent graduate of the Imperial College of Heijo, Mi is from the recently annexed territory of Joseon. For those keeping track at home, that means he's a Korean national living in Imperial Japan in 1912. We haven't seen much of his personality because he's rightfully terrified of everything around him. He has a specialty in endurance engine design and modification. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +1, Chemical +1
Endurance Engines: Mi has an excellent understanding of metallurgy and tolerances. Any engine he works on gains +1 Reliability if a 16+ is rolled.
Pulsejet Wizard: Mi is now one of the world's leading experts on the pulsejet engine. He can be given his own project to custom-craft pulsejet engines, and he gives +1 to any pulsejet-related project.
Joseon National: Mi does not have security clearance to work on any top-secret projects.

Miyoshi Shigeri, 23.
A non-binary person and admirer of Asuka's work, they were in an support role in the Army before joining the company.
Structural +1, Mechanical +1, Aerodynamic +1
Mechanic: Miyoshi has some experience repairing and refurbishing aircraft. They get +1 if assigned on the clean-up phase.


Other Employees
- Ohara Satomi, 22, Mr. Ohara's niece and the company test pilot, Ohara is a general lesbian disaster. She's good at flying planes, driving cars, and kissing girls. She's bad at being patient, being respectable, and sticking to literally anyones conceptions of gender roles. Deeply in lesbians with Coralie D'Amboise.
- Fujkikawa Sotatsu, old, modelmaker. He's an old man and toymaker and we don't see much of him because he locks himself in his workshop a lot. He's friends with Kawamura?

Assets
- Engine Test Rig (Allows engine tweaking and optimization.
- Wind Tunnel (+1 Aerodynamics)
- Rapid Prototype Lab (+1 Clean Up)

Spoiler: Expanded Cast

Expanded Cast

Akitsukuni Industry
- Homura Mohoko: Head Engine Designer for Kobayashi. First female engineer in the country. A lot of sex appeal.
- Okumura: Head of Akibara aircraft design.
- Yamanaka Hajime: Kobayashi engineer. Young and eager.
- Igarashi Masazumi: Kobayashi engineer. Reserved and experienced.
- Admiral Akibara Toru: Imperial Navy Admiral. Maximum nepotism. Maximum douchebag.
- Lt.Cmnd Akibara Shinzo: The above's son. A hottie but very forward.



Character Families
- Matsura(?) Mizuko: Asuka's sister. Was paralyzed in an accident in Asuka's first flight. Lives Elsewhere and is married now. Can't forgive Asuka, even though she's tried.
- Adachi Motoki: Adachi's husband, an accountant. Legally blind.
- Adachi Yuki: Adachi's 7 year old daughter and wannabe pilot. Very adorable.
- Yachi's Brother: Exists.
- Sakane's Wife: Exists. Drives him a bit crazy, but he loves her.
- Yachi's Brother's Wife: Exists. Is statistically likely to be pregnant.
- Lt. Coralie D'Amboise: Gallian pilot in exile. Satomi's girlfriend. 25. Accomplished bisexual duelist. She flew in the war for a single day, and for her troubles got a hole blown in her cheek and had her left arm paralyzed.

Akisukuni Army & Ex-Army
- Lt. Torio Tanaka: Yachi's former observer as an enlisted man. Was jumped up to fly Ducks and lost a leg on his first mission. A trained painter, married to Torio Saya.
- Captain Amari Shiro: A Dragonfly pilot who ended up flying as Yachi's partner. Kind of delightfully twinky. They sorta slept together at one point, which wasn't great. He lost his previous boyfriend in the April Offensive and turned his plane into a shrine. He was shot in the gut and is still recovering.
- Major Izuhara: Logistics officer, Imperial Army, this bespectled officer stood up to the Caspian Crown Prince and accidentally kicked off the Akitsikuni-Caspian War. The guilt was so much that, after almost a year of running Army procurement, he shot himself in a phone both.
- Captain Nakai Sekien: Army scout pilot. First person to drop a bomb from an airplane, later head of the Duck Squadrons.
- Captain Teshima: A Desk pilot that fought with Yachi. Lost an arm in the process, took over for Major Izuhara after his death. Seems cheery despite it all.
- Captain Nashio: A real piece of shit dude and probably a rapist, he's also a war hero as the second-highest scoring ace on the Akitsukuni side. He was a young shitty kid in way over his head but it's no excuse.
- Lt. Kinjo: Kind of a dumb lump and Nashio's friend, one of the desk pilots. Dead at 19.
- Lt. Okazaki: Yachi's friend from before the war and pilot, he died in a spin in his dragonfly. His death probably hit Yachi the hardest.

Westerners
- Rose & Antoinette Sears: Pioneers of flight. Sisters. Black in 1910s not!America. Yikes.
- Timina Guasti: Famous aircraft designer from Otrusia. Likes big planes and green.
- Prince Protasov Vasilyevich: Crown Prince of Great Caspia. Real dick. You gotta hand it to him though, a decent flier.
- Count von Zeppelin: Invented rigid airships. Runs a successful airline business. Damned impressive.
- Bennhold: Aircraft Engineer. Experimenting with metal aircraft.
- Aileen Middlemiss: Albian reporter for the Artimis Times. Well meaning and oblivious.

Spoiler: Technology

Available Tech

• Materials: Wood, Duralumin, Molded Wood, Wood & Silk Composite, etc
• All engine mounts
• All wing types
• Basic reinforcement
• Wing warping and ailerons
• Basic water radiators
• Flying Wings
• Semi-Monocoque design (requires at least half the slots have frame pieces)
• Valved pulsejets
• Basic weapon mounts and turrets

Tech not Yet Developed

• Custom engines
• Monocoque construction
• Cantilever Wings and associated tech
• V and T tails
• Tailless designs
• Aluminum and titanium
• Cellulose surfacing
• Any kind of radar
• Weapon accessability mods
• Interruptor gear
• Geared propellers
• And Maybe Other Stuff

Spoiler: Akitsukuni & World

Akitsukuni
Island Nation

Government
Constitutional Monarchy
- The democratic portions of the government are dubiously legitimate.
- The head of state is the Empress of Akitsukuni. She gives her blessing to newly formed governments.
- The Navy and a small number of families have undue influence on politics.

Economy
Developing Mixed Market
- Most industry is controlled by a small number of wealthy, family-owned companies.
- The state provides most contracts to industry. Consumer good market is anemic.
- Exports are few, mostly cultural.
- Imports are raw minerals, food, oil, and expertise.
- Currently suffering an economic crash after the last war.

Politics
The Diet is currently ruled by a Constitutional Nationalist government. It has a system of nonlocal proportional representation, with representatives appointed by the party in accordance to their share of the vote.
- Constitutional Nationalists: 50%
- Purity Club: 9%
- New Independents: 26%
- Fairness Association: 11%
- United Communist League: 2%
- Monarchists: 1%
- Assorted Fringe Parties: 5%

Demographics
Akitsukuni is mostly very ethnically homogeneous. Around 5% of the population are various minorities, most from nearby countries. Roughly .1% are westerners here for business or in advisory positions.
- Population: 55 Million
- Religion: Mostly Kodo. Roughly 2% of the population follows western religions.
- Wealth: Most wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of the country. Nearly 20% of the population lives in conditions indistinguishable from peasantry.
- Urbanization: Heavily urbanized for a small economy: 35% and rapidly growing.

Military
At Peace
- Imperial Akitsukuni Navy (IAN): The 6th largest in the world, and the most experienced.
- Imperial Akitsukuni Army (IAA): 150,000 highly experienced soldiers, and a considerable reserve.

Aspects
- Poor Resources: Aluminum costs +1.
- Damn Akitsukuni Engines!: Engines have -1 Reliability.

Spoiler: Old Map

The Main Character Of This Quest Is Nonbinary And Uses They/Them Pronouns.

I Am Putting This Here Because The Next Person To Misgender Them Is Getting Yeeted Into The Trash

Also here's the Gayaverse TV Tropes page, because why not.​

 

[Arbit]

[x] Hobgoblin Semi-Radial: This retooled Goblin Engine, running a 100 horsepower, is almost the same beast with some mechanical changes for more power, at the cost of reliability. 4 Mass, 4 Drag, Thrust 4, Cost 5, Reliability -4, 9 Fuel per Tank.
[x] Plan: Give 'Em an Inch
-[x] Light cannon in a forward facing fixed nose mount
--[x] 25mm rotary with electric motor
-[x] MMG on turret mount for rear and side arcs

 

[10ebbor10]

I'm going to gamble that we can push him to writing something cathartic, hopefully get him back to using letter writing to reduce stress rather than add to it. We don't even know what is wrong... But there are too many options to try and guess.

Plus I really want him to know that he is loved, and valued, and someone cares for him

Click to shrink...

Kedp in mind, the censors are likely to remove a chunk of that. Firsr because it leaks detaiks of developmeng, second becayse it expresses defeatist sentiment.

 

[Night_stalker]

[X] Pry. Ask him what is happening directly. Tell him he had a duty to let you know what was happening. (Social Roll)

[X] Hobgoblin Semi-Radial: This retooled Goblin Engine, running a 100 horsepower, is almost the same beast with some mechanical changes for more power, at the cost of reliability. 4 Mass, 4 Drag, Thrust 4, Cost 5, Reliability -4, 9 Fuel per Tank.

[X] Plan Drake's Teeth
-[X] Twin 25mm mechanical guns mounted in the nose
--[X] Driven by electric motor
-[X] No machine guns

 

[Crasian01]

For what it's worth, people should be aware that this aircraft is likely to be very, very weight constrained. There's no room for feature creep (again), and it's going to be very necessary that we keep weight down as much as possible. We should be looking to try and get as much firepower per mass as we can.

Using WW2 numbers, we're looking at a Power to Mass ratio of about 0.53 for the entire aircraft. Power is calculated as Horsepower divided by 10. As a rough guess, I think it's possible to go down to a power/mass ratio of about 0.45 before things get hairy.

 

[Ramble]

Shot himself or "shot himself"?

Normally, I'd assume that he was just being honorabru samurai, but with Purity Club shenanigans going on . . .

 

[noliar]

I could be persuaded to reduce the machine gun to an LMG although there are definitely circumstances where longer streams of fire would be useful. I think we do need some defensive gun because we intend to have a longer loiter time/hunting range than our Dragonflies and we won't be agile enough to dogfight and use our cannon on other planes. Long distances without support are a strain on the pilot - that makes a positive stability and a second crewperson who can spot/ defend/ navigate valuable features.

 

[Artificial Girl]

Shot himself or "shot himself"?

Normally, I'd assume that he was just being honorabru samurai, but with Purity Club shenanigans going on . . .

Click to shrink...

Purity Club probably thinks of Izuhara as a hero since he sliced up the barbarian prince who was trying to lay hands on a pure Akituskuni flower.

 

[brmj]

Would people accept a somewhat cheaper aircraft with a forward facing machine gun that handles well enough to dogfight in a pinch? Because that might be a viable alternative to a defensive gun. Not as good for keeping fighters off since it means interrupting an attack run, but it might be cheaper and good enough.

I continue to strongly favor a single, water cooled engine and I think going to twin engine for no reason beyond a probably false intuition that we can make more plane go faster that way seems really unwise. We can't afford feature creap. Even if we want a turret gun, we ought to be modeling this off of a WWI light bomber with a big gun instead of bombs. That should be a good guide to what we can reasonably put on this and what aircraft designs would support it well. There were a lot of extremely successful single engine designs with a bomb load in excess of our gun weight.

Even if we go twin engine, can we please not drive the guns electrically? Unless Sketch disallows it or adds a cost for the engines being farther away, mechanical drive is quite a bit cheaper in every way and no worse.

 

[Artificial Girl]

What if we put the attack gun in a downward facing cutout, either forward or rearward, so that it can be brought to bear on ground targets without having to point the whole plane at them?

 

[Himmelhand]

What if we put the attack gun in a downward facing cutout, either forward or rearward, so that it can be brought to bear on ground targets without having to point the whole plane at them?

Click to shrink...

Good luck aiming that, mostly. A rearward mount would also likely eat into the AP of the gun, because you'd be trimming something like 10-20% off the muzzle velocity.

 

[Crasian01]

Alright so, I have done a little bit of back of the envelope analysis:

2x Hobgoblins for a Power/Mass Ratio of 0.45 gets you 36 mass to play with after engine installation. As best as I can tell, the lightest weapon configuration that can make it through enemy armor is going to be 2x 25mm rotary cannon, one hooked up to each engine via some kind of clutch mechanism (and hopes and prayers). This will weigh 10 mass, meaning you have 26 mass to work with. You need 2 fuel tanks to get 9 uses out of the aircraft, and 1 tank is 5 mass, so that's 10 mass of fuel.

So at this point, with just your weapons, fuel, and engine, you're looking at 16 mass available for structure and armor. This includes frame sections, skin choices, armor plating and the like. Judging by the Dragonfly and the Duck, we're looking at around 11 to 15 mass just for structure, and more than likely we'll be looking at 15 as a minimum just because robustness is key for this aircraft. That leaves you with 1 mass of playing room for armor, fuel, or extra ammunition.

This analysis doesn't account for the mass of the mechanism that does the spinning. Dynamos are one mass per, and for the sake of argument we'll assume that a mechanical linkage is the same weight. So that eats up the extra mass, and I'm not sure that you can actually do 1 Dynamo for 2 guns. There is no armor on this aircraft.

2x Hobgoblins seems underpowered to me, as a result, but some caveats:

1) Assuming a 0.45 Power/Mass Ratio isn't necessarily a good idea, and dropping the P/M Ratio to 0.43 or 0.40 may be entirely reasonable. We'll take a performance hit, however.

2) Assuming 15 mass for the structure isn't necessarily correct either. If we can get down to 11 before optimization then this things look a lot rosier.

As for liquid cooled configurations:
It's doable, but it's very clearly a performance trade. I can't get anything to actually work under the above structure mass assumption unless I drop the P/M Ratio down to 0.40, and it really wants to be at P/M Ratio of 0.35 for the sake of armor or extra fuel.

For the 2x OgreZ configuration, there's roughly 9 to 7 Mass available for armor/fuel/reinforcement if I go for 2x37mm at P/M 0.35 or 2x25mm at P/M 0.4. This otherwise uses the same assumptions described previously.

For the 1x OgreZ configuration, you can get 2x25mm with exactly 1 mass of armor if you do 2x25mm, more if you go to only 1x25mm, but you have to do it at P/W of 0.35. This otherwise uses the same assumptions described previously.

---

What this really means is that the 2x Hobgoblin system probably has to run at a P/M of 0.4 to be anything reasonable, and probably ends up being less armored than the equivalent 2x OgreZ aircraft, while almost certainly having better range owing to the improved fuel consumption. 1x OgreZ is not something I would feel comfortable going for, owing mostly to the fact that it seems very hard to stack armor on it and I'm worried about pilots being shot at.

Note that the H-Series has 1 more power but also 1 more mass, so it ends up washing out. It's 1 drag less, but it probably isn't that important.

---

Of course all of this is a bunch of speculation so don't take it too seriously. The structural mass assumption is incredibly key: If you can find ways to reduce that down to 11 Mass then the world opens up for you, since it basically wins you most of an entire gun.

 

[open_sketch]

I am curious why the Hobgoblin gets more consideration than the Pegasus.

Anyway I'm off to have a good holiday day today with a cute girl and pagan rituals. When I get back I'll be implimenting some final changes to building, including the new radiator and the final engine power vs mass+drag calculation.

 

[noliar]

Why would you put in two cannon?

 

[brmj]

Alright so, I have done a little bit of back of the envelope analysis:

2x Hobgoblins for a Power/Mass Ratio of 0.45 gets you 36 mass to play with after engine installation. As best as I can tell, the lightest weapon configuration that can make it through enemy armor is going to be 2x 25mm rotary cannon, one hooked up to each engine via some kind of clutch mechanism (and hopes and prayers). This will weigh 10 mass, meaning you have 26 mass to work with. You need 2 fuel tanks to get 9 uses out of the aircraft, and 1 tank is 5 mass, so that's 10 mass of fuel.

So at this point, with just your weapons, fuel, and engine, you're looking at 16 mass available for structure and armor. This includes frame sections, skin choices, armor plating and the like. Judging by the Dragonfly and the Duck, we're looking at around 11 to 15 mass just for structure, and more than likely we'll be looking at 15 as a minimum just because robustness is key for this aircraft. That leaves you with 1 mass of playing room for armor, fuel, or extra ammunition.

This analysis doesn't account for the mass of the mechanism that does the spinning. Dynamos are one mass per, and for the sake of argument we'll assume that a mechanical linkage is the same weight. So that eats up the extra mass, and I'm not sure that you can actually do 1 Dynamo for 2 guns. There is no armor on this aircraft.

2x Hobgoblins seems underpowered to me, as a result, but some caveats:

1) Assuming a 0.45 Power/Mass Ratio isn't necessarily a good idea, and dropping the P/M Ratio to 0.43 or 0.40 may be entirely reasonable. We'll take a performance hit, however.

2) Assuming 15 mass for the structure isn't necessarily correct either. If we can get down to 11 before optimization then this things look a lot rosier.

As for liquid cooled configurations:
It's doable, but it's very clearly a performance trade. I can't get anything to actually work under the above structure mass assumption unless I drop the P/M Ratio down to 0.40, and it really wants to be at P/M Ratio of 0.35 for the sake of armor or extra fuel.

For the 2x OgreZ configuration, there's roughly 9 to 7 Mass available for armor/fuel/reinforcement if I go for 2x37mm at P/M 0.35 or 2x25mm at P/M 0.4. This otherwise uses the same assumptions described previously.

For the 1x OgreZ configuration, you can get 2x25mm with exactly 1 mass of armor if you do 2x25mm, more if you go to only 1x25mm, but you have to do it at P/W of 0.35. This otherwise uses the same assumptions described previously.

---

What this really means is that the 2x Hobgoblin system probably has to run at a P/M of 0.4 to be anything reasonable, and probably ends up being less armored than the equivalent 2x OgreZ aircraft, while almost certainly having better range owing to the improved fuel consumption. 1x OgreZ is not something I would feel comfortable going for, owing mostly to the fact that it seems very hard to stack armor on it and I'm worried about pilots being shot at.

Note that the H-Series has 1 more power but also 1 more mass, so it ends up washing out. It's 1 drag less, but it probably isn't that important.

---

Of course all of this is a bunch of speculation so don't take it too seriously. The structural mass assumption is incredibly key: If you can find ways to reduce that down to 11 Mass then the world opens up for you, since it basically wins you most of an entire gun.

Click to shrink...

Perilously close to talking numbers here, but...

I just ran some numbers myself. With a single gun, I can get just a little better speed with two hobgoblins that I can get with one H-series, at the cost of reduced range and increased cost and mass. The added power mostly goes to offseting the added mass and drag. With two guns, the breakpoints work out such that hobgoblins are more favorable than that, somehow. Two H-series destorys our budget and gives a pretty high takeoff speed, but can give us the fastest plane in the world by a large margin.

Anyway, the upside is that we can do pretty much whatever we want and make it work with tradeoffs that might make sense, and it becomes in some ways a question of whether we want a bit more speed or a plane that's within (or close to) the budget. I was wrong, twin engine people were right. This is me eating crow.

I am curious why the Hobgoblin gets more consideration than the Pegasus.

Click to shrink...

The stability penalty. If we could cancel that out with counterrotating engines, I'd consider it viable. As is, it's brutal on a twin engine design. Also, the huge drag, though we could at least mitigate that with a twin pod. But really, though, it has nothing good enough about it to be worth the downsides IMO in any context other than maybe a single engine fighter.

 

[open_sketch]

(Here's me confirming it does cancel out then)

 

[Crasian01]

I am curious why the Hobgoblin gets more consideration than the Pegasus.

Click to shrink...

They have the same power so it washes out in the math. I basically just picked whichever one was easier to click on.

A 2x Pegasus configuration wouldn't have the rotary engine destabilization problem because you can make them rotate opposite directions to each other. It does have a hell of a lot more drag, which is worrisome given the theoretical long range requirement for this aircraft, but eh? Not sure how much it matters.

Edit: Oh it does have one less mass, but also much less uses per tank. So that's an interesting trade, potentially, but power and firepower are what matter right now.

---

Why would you put in two cannon?

Click to shrink...

To kill things harder.

I mean, you could go for 1x 37mm, for sure. It will have more armor piercing but do less damage per hit than 2x 25mm. I'd have to doublecheck, but personally I'd probably call them interchangable configurations.

Edit: In terms (roughly) of weight, I should note. The tradeoff for the extra damage is much higher drag.

Nevermind, they're literally equivalent in mass and damage, I misread my own notes. Choose the 1x 37mm over the 2x25mm in every case, because it's vastly less drag and only a little more cost.

---

I just ran some numbers myself. With a single gun, I can get just a little better speed with two hobgoblins that I can get with one H-series, at the cost of reduced range and increased cost and mass. The added power mostly goes to offseting the added mass and drag. With two guns, the breakpoints work out such that hobgoblins are more favorable than that, somehow. Two H-series destorys our budget and gives a pretty high takeoff speed, but can give us the fastest plane in the world by a large margin.

Anyway, the upside is that we can do pretty much whatever we want and make it work with tradeoffs that might make sense, and it becomes in some ways a question of whether we want a bit more speed or a plane that's within (or close to) the budget. I was wrong, twin engine people were right. This is me eating crow.

Click to shrink...

Oh hey, good memes. I'm glad that our vague guessing agrees!

I will say that the single-engine isn't actually that bad, but you'd sacrifice a lot. I'm... somewhat sure we'd be able to meet the minimum cruising speed requirement if we didn't have much armor, but the real sticking point is pilot protection for me.

 

[Artificial Girl]

The 20mm does the job fine. Dunno why everyone is stuck on the 25mm rotary.

 

[Rat King]

I'm in favor of twin 20mm, myself.

 

[Crasian01]

Ah, more failures on my part. I got the armor piercing ratings backwards.

The damage the 25mm does is the same as the 20mm, but the 25mm is a little lighter if we assume that the text in the list is correct and it comes synched up to the motor already. The 25mm has less armor piercing than the 20mm though, while I originally thought that it was the other way around.

Generally then for this mission: it's better to go for 2x 20mm over 2x25mm, but: the way the mass works out then you'd be better off with 1x 37mm.

So it's really a question of whether or not you go 1x 20mm with an MMG for tailseat gunner, or 1x37mm with a loader/operator in the nose.

1x20mm + MMG Tailseat implies you want a conventional configuration, possibly with an H-tail.

1x37mm implies a canard configuration.

 

[brmj]

They have the same power so it washes out in the math. I basically just picked whichever one was easier to click on.

A 2x Pegasus configuration wouldn't have the rotary engine destabilization problem because you can make them rotate opposite directions to each other. It does have a hell of a lot more drag, which is worrisome given the theoretical long range requirement for this aircraft, but eh? Not sure how much it matters.

Edit: Oh it does have one less mass, but also much less uses per tank. So that's an interesting trade, potentially, but power and firepower are what matter right now.

---



To kill things harder.

I mean, you could go for 1x 37mm, for sure. It will have more armor piercing but do less damage per hit than 2x 25mm. I'd have to doublecheck, but personally I'd probably call them interchangable configurations.

Edit: In terms (roughly) of weight, I should note. The tradeoff for the extra damage is much higher drag.

Nevermind, they're literally equivalent in mass and damage, I misread my own notes. Choose the 1x 37mm over the 2x25mm in every case, because it's vastly less drag and only a little more cost.

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Oh hey, good memes. I'm glad that our vague guessing agrees!

I will say that the single-engine isn't actually that bad, but you'd sacrifice a lot. I'm... somewhat sure we'd be able to meet the minimum cruising speed requirement if we didn't have much armor, but the real sticking point is pilot protection for me.

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To be clear, none of the design variants are actually slow and all of them are built with silk composite. All these designs can hit 200kph, it's just a question of exactly how much faster they can go.

 

[Wiadi]

The 20mm does the job fine. Dunno why everyone is stuck on the 25mm rotary.

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Based on the demonstration we just got, the 20mm has serious trouble killing trains, no?

 

[brmj]

Looking at the actual results we saw narratively, I don't see how anyone can say that the 20mm is good enough, or that a single 25mm isn't. It's pretty clear to me that the 20mm is a bit marginal for doing this job. On the other hand, a single 25mm did just fine in the testing. I feel like people only started talking about doubling up the smaller guns to compare them to the 37mm or for rule of cool or something and it just became a meme that we had to do that to get enough power. One 25mm did fine against every realistic target.

 

[Artificial Girl]

Based on the demonstration we just got, the 20mm has serious trouble killing trains, no?

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The 20mm knocked pieces off/through the train fine. It just didn't find the mark when it came to hitting the sensitive bits that are important to making the train work before the ammo on the demo gun ran out.

And I agree that doubling up seems silly, because it adds extra unnecessary mass.

 

[Crasian01]

Based on the demonstration we just got, the 20mm has serious trouble killing trains, no?

Click to shrink...

Looking at the actual results we saw narratively, I don't see how anyone can say that the 20mm is good enough, or that a single 25mm isn't. It's pretty clear to me that the 20mm is a bit marginal for doing this job. On the other hand, a single 25mm did just fine in the testing. I feel like people only started talking about doubling up the smaller guns to compare them to the 37mm or for rule of cool or something and it just became a meme that we had to do that to get enough power. One 25mm did fine against every realistic target.

Click to shrink...

Well it depends if the gun list is in flux or if it's fixed.

Narrative is narrative, but the actual stats provided in the Google Doc show that the 20mm should be better at armor piercing than the 25mm. It's entirely possible that the 20mm broke off enough armor that the 25mm was able to find a gap.

This being said, if the @open_sketchbook intended the narrative to reflect reality and the gun stats list is out of date, then the 25mm would potentially be better, but it's sort of unclear. I agree with @Artificial Girl on that one, personally.

Regardless, it's still always better to go for 1x37mm instead of 2x20mm or 2x25mm under the current set of stats. If the 37mm sees a substantial increase in mass at a later rewrite of the gunlist, then we'd see a niche for twin 20s or twin 25s.

 

[noliar]

Ah, the 25mm is a mechanical gun rather than a light cannon. Adjusting Plan: Give 'Em an Inch. It does seem like the default one on the sheet is smaller calibre than the default light cannon.

(I think that's why I was using the light cannon stats - this thing should be heavier rather than lighter than the cannon.)