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.​

 

[Crasian01]

Clearly we need a Seaworthiness Consultant, and honestly a boat person isn't the most unreasonable person to bring on for one project.

...You know, that's not actually the worst idea in character, all things considered. I seem to recall that being an issue that's popped up before.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I agree tbh. We're still solidly in the "flying boats are a reasonable idea" stage of history after all.

we've done on wood-silk composites for future planes

Click to shrink...

Some decades in the future, during a course about the Akitsukuni modernization era:

Spoiler: Akitsukuni Modernization textbook omake

Chapter 9: Industrialization and the Environment

Introduction
Akitsukuni environmental policies are generally considered to have been significantly ahead of their time during the period of modernization. Akitsukuni culture traditionally placed significant emphasis on natural spaces, but a major contributor was the country's relative resource scarcity and small territory, especially compared to its regional rivals of Grand Caspia and the Cathay Empire. Lacking as it did the resources to simply reach out and snatch away what it wanted, the Akitsukuni Empire was compelled to manage what it had very carefully...

.....

Forestry Management
Lumber formed a major component of the Akitsukuni economy during the modernization period. Besides its obvious uses for home construction and as a fuel, luxury lumbers were also exported and high grade wood formed the backbone of the Akitsukuni aeronautical industry. Indeed, Akitsukuni aeronautics would become one of the major drivers of the lumber industry within the Empire for many years. The sheer demand for lumber and other forestry-related products during the period of modernization would form a serious problem for the Akitsukuni Diet, and indeed the ramifications of the decisions made, or not made, during modernization are still felt to this day.

Initially, aeronautics were a relatively small component of the demand for lumber. Even as the industry grew and became increasingly important to the Akitsukuni military, aircraft were typically designed using canvas stretched over wooden frames, as was typical of most aircraft from the era. However, demand for lumber would spike in the wake of the First Caspio-Akitsukuni War.

The First Caspio-Akitsukuni War demonstrated to Akitsukuni high command just how important air power would be in future conflicts, and post-war military spending on aircraft jumped significantly. Aircraft proved to often be critical for the war effort, providing key bombardment and intelligence gathering capabilities which enabled new strategies and tactics to be employed to great effect. While the exact level of import is still very much up to debate, complicated by intra-governmental politics of the time, it is undeniable that the war would have gone very differently for Akitsukuni were it not for its excellent aeronautical industry and said industry's capacity for innovation.

Following the conclusion of the war, Akitsukuni high command began demanding new aircraft with greater performance in great quantities. Competition between the Army and the Navy for access to the best designers to provide the best new flight vehicles was fierce, with significant political activity that occasionally resulted in literal bloodshed. As performance requirements increased, so too loomed the structural limits of wood framed, canvas covered structures. New methods of construction became necessary, ones that did not require the shift towards metallic structures seen elsewhere. Akitsukuni's lack of available aluminum and iron ore deposits within their territory at the time made such structures prohibitively expensive, and slowed production to boot. Instead, the Akitsukuni aeronautical industry, spearheaded by Ohara Airworks and its lead designer, Matsura Asuka, began developing new ways to use wood to achieve the performance requirements of the Akitsukuni high command.

The most important technologies developed would ultimately be clinker-type monocoque hulls and the development of wood-silk composites. Both of these techniques would allow aircraft to sustain stresses never seen before, and initially with only somewhat higher cost compared to their canvas-covered ancestors. Clinker-type monocoque hulls were especially popular for their relatively low price tag, while wood-silk composites were expensive but well worth it for their strength benefit.

There was, however, a hidden cost to the expansion of the Akitsukuni aeronautical industry not initially captured by simply the price tag. First, while clinker-hull structures do not weigh appreciably more than frame and canvas structures of similar strength, the amount of aircraft demanded by the military meant that the sheer amount of logging required increased significantly. As clinker-hull structures are made of comparatively thin pieces of wood, losses due to the thickness of a bandsaw meant that the proportionate amount of waste generated to create clinker-hull aircraft would end up being higher than their frame and canvas cousins. These losses meant that additional logging was required to make up the difference. At the same time, rapidly increasing demand for silk caused an expansion in silk plantations, both in size and in actual number. These plantations require mulberry trees which do not grow in the wild to the extent required to match production demands, and thus required the clearing of land specifically to replant the area with mulberry tree monoculture. The combination of these two factors resulted in rapid deforestation of much of the old-growth forest in core Akitsukuni territory.

As the country was not prepared for a war of territorial expansion, the Akitsukuni Diet was forced to create stringent environmental management policies to ensure a steady, if slow, supply of wood products and aircraft especially. However, further unintended consequences would quickly become apparent...

 

[FrangibleCover]

Yeah I agree tbh. We're still solidly in the "flying boats are a reasonable idea" stage of history after all.

Click to shrink...

Here in 2020 we haven't left it

The combination of these two factors resulted in rapid deforestation of much of the old-growth forest in core Akitsukuni territory.

Click to shrink...

Holy fucking shit, how many planes do you want to build?

 

[xthetenth]

Here in 2020 we haven't left it

Click to shrink...

I don't want to know anyone who doesn't love the Shin-Meiwa US-2. It's all the best parts of an amphibious plane and those absurd kitted out bush pilot special STOL cubs (sure, it might be the sort of short run expensive boondoggle only Japan can justify). Incidentally, I can't wait till the winner of the torpedo flying boat contest gets licensed by the Albians for use as a hydrophone platform (As if westerners would even deign to acknowledge we design indigenous planes). I don't have the reference on hand, but that is something they did in WWI, though it might have taken a bigger plane.

Apparently in our timeline, Japan was doing quite well with forests due to a general tendency of keeping places forested to reduce the landslide risk until around WWII. Then demand for wood for the war and postwar needs for wood for replacing a country's worth of buildings led to shortages and eventually a desire to replace the depleted forests but, well, airpower wasn't involved in that demand in the direct sense.

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Yeah I agree tbh. We're still solidly in the "flying boats are a reasonable idea" stage of history after all.

Click to shrink...

I would argue that flying boats are still reasonable in certain niches. There's a lot of parts of the Canadian wilderness where a seaplane or flying boat could be more useful than a wheeled plane, for example, just hopping around the backcountry moving people and cargos in and out of remote spaces.

Certainly, the arguments in favor of flying boats now are not the same ones that applied in the past, but they still have a place I think.

 

[Crasian01]

Here in 2020 we haven't left it

Click to shrink...

Certainly, the arguments in favor of flying boats now are not the same ones that applied in the past, but they still have a place I think.

Click to shrink...

Ah yeah, I could have phrased that better. What I meant was more that flying boats are just way more common in ACDQ's era of history.

By the way, you guys seen the crazy photos of California/Oregon/Washington state lately with the wildfires?

---

Holy fucking shit, how many planes do you want to build?

Click to shrink...

Apparently in our timeline, Japan was doing quite well with forests due to a general tendency of keeping places forested to reduce the landslide risk until around WWII. Then demand for wood for the war and postwar needs for wood for replacing a country's worth of buildings led to shortages and eventually a desire to replace the depleted forests but, well, airpower wasn't involved in that demand in the direct sense.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I mostly was having fun with the idea, but at the same time I do seriously wonder about how silk plantations impact the environment. It's definitely the case that you can't just pick cocoons off trees in the wild and expect to achieve post-Industrial scale textile production. I haven't done a great amount of research into deforestation for the sake of agriculture, but we know that cotton/hemp plantations suck up a huge amount of land and the Dust Bowl is famously the result of "just plow harder". I also don't really know what you actually need in terms of actual acreage to actually make lots of silk, but I found this random article from 1987 that says:

A total of about 1.4 million acres is given over to mulberry trees in China, which during the five-year plan through 1985 produced 1.35 million tons of silkworm cocoon, according to official figures.

Click to shrink...

COCOON SHORTAGE HITS CHINA'S SILK INDUSTRY | JOC.com

www.joc.com

So with 1987 techniques you were looking at 1 ton of cocoon per acre over 5 years, but only a fraction of that tonnage is actual silk and I don't know how much techniques changed from ancient times. This other random website says

If you have 30,000 silkworms, you need to provide them with about a ton of mulberry leaves to eat before they start making their cocoons. From their cocoons, roughly 12 lbs (5.4 kg) of raw silk can be obtained.

Click to shrink...

Silk production - Silk-Road.com

Producing silk cloth is a lenghty and complex process, and to achieve a high-qaulity product one must take a wide range of factors into account.

www.silk-road.com

So I have no idea what weight of silk you need in order to make aerospace grade wood-silk composite structures, but I can't imagine it's only 12 pounds per entire ass airplane. The REAL question is number of silkworms that can be sustained per acre of mulberry tree, which I haven't found yet. On top of that, we have to increase the acreage to account for various losses and inefficiencies, and probably also need to account for the fact that only certain grades of fiber are likely allowed for aircraft manufacture.

If we assume that Akitsukuni is a relatively small island nation, I feel like rapid deforestation isn't obviously turbocrazy but I so clearly lack information on the specifics that it's possible it wouldn't be a problem until much later in history. It's definitely not something you can jump to without additional substantiation and research into the industry and how it works. I'm totally down writing it up as a fun omake though!

 

[open_sketch]

The tight budget soon made it clear that some techniques weren't viable. Steam-formed molded plywood, like used on the Dragonfly, wasn't going to be viable because of the high cost of the process: it took hours to shape the pieces to bulky forms, and it wasn't uncommon to have to write off pieces, and hours of work, from cracks or deformation. The factory made a small number of Dragonflies over the winter, and just the change of temperature in the factory had ended up increasing the failure rate almost by two hundred percent, costing money Ohara didn't have.

So it would have to be canvas and wooden spares. Cheap, basic, you knew how to do it. The plane would get waterlogged more easily in a bad landing, but the floats would still be wooden, so that wasn't too much of a problem.

As for wing layout, the math very quickly started to point towards two wings in extreme positive stagger in imitation of the T1M2. Capitalizing on the reputation of the beloved Desk was a good start, and the configuration offered many advantages. Some of those advantages were partially negated by the switched up crew position: the Observer would have a harder time seeing directly beside him, and the pilot would have reduced upward visibility. On the other hand, forward-and-below visibility would be excellent, and you thought it likely most spotting would be done in that area.

Now you just had to take those basic ideas and refine it into the final design of the machine. It would take many iterations, but you couldn't wait to see the results. You also didn't have much time: the machine had to be flying in a month and a half.

---

It is time. Plane nerds, begin your dark work.​

​

You have until next Friday, then a vote will be held for the winner.​

​

Your requirements (and these are requirements, you will be disqualified if you don't mean them) are...​

- Pioneer era​

- Extreme positive stagger biplane.​

- Floats​

- F-Series engine in tractor configuration​

- Canvas and wooden spar construction​

- A tailplane and tailfin​

- Two crew, one with a gun that can shoot backward​

​

I will warn you if anything you want to do is something you'd need to invent or spend special time on, but the following are not yet invented for sure.​

- Bubble cockpits​

- Geared propellers​

- any Flaps but basic​

- Slates​

- Retractable floats​

- Cantilever wings​

- autopilots​

- V or T tails​

​

Do not use any optimizations yet.​

 

[FrangibleCover]

More for the provocation of discussion than as a serious entry, because I think I could do better myself and I tend not to be the most talented engineer here:

The Ohara Dilettante

11.9 fuel uses, Stability 2, Speed 19.

In theory we could outstrip the overspeed of the engine and caution pilots to only open it up all the way in a life or death scenario, which I actually think is a good idea, but given that the best way to get speed is to cut the wings down and this thing already has a rapid stall I didn't want to push it too much. The name of the game is weight saving and minimising lift bleed so that the most can be made of the necessarily tiny wings, 8m span limited. This one is already pretty cheap but I would suggest for other builders that removing the ailerons drops 2 cost if it's genuinely necessary.

E: Dilettante v2 added.

 

[samdamandias]

I present the Danio

More expensive, slower, and with slightly worse climb, but better armed, lower stall, and comes with a signal light. If we drop the ailerons completely to trash the handling, we can afford an intercom.

I would like to see if we can research clinker build, just so that the pilots aren't dealing with wet canvas all the time.

 

[Tetragramm]

I present the Danio

More expensive, slower, and with slightly worse climb, but better armed, lower stall, and comes with a signal light. If we drop the ailerons completely to trash the handling, we can afford an intercom.

I would like to see if we can research clinker build, just so that the pilots aren't dealing with wet canvas all the time.

Click to shrink...

A very slight improvement on the Danio. Different structural elements trade a slight decrease in max strain for less drag and more toughness.

This design is nice because it lets us alter wing area to trade top speed and stall speed to whatever we desire, basically.

 

[Dessard]

It's an old image so I'm not sure if it's been noted before, but I think someone found Matsura's descendant

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

A very slight improvement on the Danio. Different structural elements trade a slight decrease in max strain for less drag and more toughness.

This design is nice because it lets us alter wing area to trade top speed and stall speed to whatever we desire, basically.

Click to shrink...

This is better than most of what I managed to cobble together brainstorming; unless we can somehow manage to get clinker researched and somehow offset the increased cost it has my vote.

EDIT: The Dilettante ain't bad, but that stall speed is just so high... these things don't need to take off from stable, level ground, they need to get off the sea, and preferably in conditions that aren't just millpond smooth.

EDIT EDIT: okay, not bad by the standards imposed by this terrible engine

 

[me.me.here]

This is better than most of what I managed to cobble together brainstorming; unless we can somehow manage to get clinker researched and somehow offset the increased cost it has my vote.

Click to shrink...

Clinker isn't even an option at this point.

Your requirements (and these are requirements, you will be disqualified if you don't mean them) are...- Pioneer era- Extreme positive stagger biplane.- Floats- F-Series engine in tractor configuration- Canvas and wooden spar construction- A tailplane and tailfin- Two crew, one with a gun that can shoot backward

Click to shrink...

Anything not canvas and spars is flat out disqualified for not meeting requirements*.

*Requirements here meaning both the ones the navy laid down and the design elements the thread voted to go with - we might change some of these in a later phase, but for this vote they're ironclad.

 

[FrangibleCover]

EDIT: The Dilettante ain't bad, but that stall speed is just so high... these things don't need to take off from stable, level ground, they need to get off the sea, and preferably in conditions that aren't just millpond smooth.

Click to shrink...

It's easy to run out of runway and hard to run out of ocean

In seriousness, it's a dangerously high stall speed. But it's a dangerously low price and the rest of the performance is pretty cracking so... Eh? My biggest fear is the take off run requiring going into a wave at 110kph, my second biggest is someone deciding that 90 odd handling means they can dogfight in it and then hanging in the turn until it exhibits a most undesklike snap stall into spin. Like I say, I think I can do this better later.

 

[Inquiring Mind]

Here's my attempt*. The Dunlin, named for a small wading bird because we are rapidly running out of D names.

Highlights are 17.9 fuel uses, 4 stability, 17 speed and a signal light. Stall speed is 10, so not ideal but decent.

* Actually a team effort, but such is the nature of my existence.

 

[Crasian01]

In seriousness, it's a dangerously high stall speed. But it's a dangerously low price and the rest of the performance is pretty cracking so... Eh?

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As a brief note of caution, I'm pretty sure that one of the modifiers that deducts from our rolls at competition is in fact how dangerous the aircraft is. We already have a slew of other negative modifiers when it comes to Navy contracts, so skewing a little more safety-conscious isn't necessarily a bad thing (obviously balanced against getting the performance necessary to win).

Also, yes, I acknowledge you said you'd take a second take at it later, but eh, I dunno, I guess this is more a general comment than it is directed at you specifically.

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A very slight improvement on the Danio. Different structural elements trade a slight decrease in max strain for less drag and more toughness.

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Can you remind me what the difference is between max strain and toughness?

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More expensive, slower, and with slightly worse climb, but better armed, lower stall, and comes with a signal light. If we drop the ailerons completely to trash the handling, we can afford an intercom.

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I think that aileron will be a desirable thing and we should keep it if possible. Can you trade armament for the intercom? How expensive is "more expensive"?

 

[samdamandias]

Can you remind me what the difference is between max strain and toughness?

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Toughness is damaged first, and is easy to fix. Max strain sets the limit for when the plane falls apart.

I think that aileron will be a desirable thing and we should keep it if possible. Can you trade armament for the intercom? How expensive is "more expensive"?

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it's cost 15, so right at the limit for the budget for this project. It's possible to trade armament, either by switching the MG for an LMG, or by turning the ring mount into a post or pintle mount.

 

[Crasian01]

Toughness is damaged first, and is easy to fix. Max strain sets the limit for when the plane falls apart.

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Hmmm...

So max strain basically is the instantaneous flight load, and toughness is vaguely analogous to a HP and "wear and tear"? If so, I feel like more toughness is good for a scout plane that might need to spend more than desirable amounts of time within range of enemy gunners and takeoff/land in rough seas.

Thoughts from others?

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it's cost 15, so right at the limit for the budget for this project. It's possible to trade armament, either by switching the MG for an LMG, or by turning the ring mount into a post or pintle mount.

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Admitting that I haven't actually looked at your design, is the armament pilot and observer, or just the observer?

If it's just the observer, I think switching to an LMG is possibly acceptable. Can you provide a link or copy-paste the text for the differences between ring mount, post, and pintle mount?

 

[samdamandias]

If it's just the observer, I think switching to an LMG is possibly acceptable. Can you provide a link or copy-paste the text for the differences between ring mount, post, and pintle mount?

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The other designs have a mount that does up/rear, the Danio has up/rear/left/right. Armament is for the observer only, we still haven't figured out interruptor gears.

I'm hesitant to take advantage of the mass that frees up with a microtank, because this gives the Navy wiggle room to use a MG or BMG (balloon guns, which fire bigger shells with less energy, useful for doing things like lobbing an explosive incendiary onto the deck of a ship)

 

[Crasian01]

The other designs have a mount that does up/rear, the Danio has up/rear/left/right. Armament is for the observer only, we still haven't figured out interruptor gears.

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I would have thought that pintle/post mounts would give you some amount of left and right aspect shooting? I guess the system might not model that.

I'm hesitant to take advantage of the mass that frees up with a microtank, because this gives the Navy wiggle room to use a MG or BMG (balloon guns, which fire bigger shells with less energy, useful for doing things like lobbing an explosive incendiary onto the deck of a ship)

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You know we could just offer a lot of that stuff as options. Much the same way that car manufacturers go "but if you spend an extra 500 dollars you get these SWEET RED BRAKE CALIPERS". The way to market it would be to have a configuration we bring to the actual competition and then pitch how the MG can be replaced with either an LMG, a microtank, or a balloon gun, and then show sketches of how the plane would end up being modified to accommodate those changes. Of course, we can either deliver vehicles configured as desired or provide the conversion service later at their convenience.

 

[samdamandias]

I would have thought that pintle/post mounts would give you some amount of left and right aspect shooting?

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No hard numbers, but there's a little bit of wiggle room, maybe 30 to 45 degrees total horizontal traverse. Left/right/rear gets somewhere between 240 and 280 degrees total horizontal traverse, able to fire at things abeam. (And left/right/rear/forward gets you the full circle of horizontal traverse.)

 

[Crasian01]

No hard numbers, but there's a little bit of wiggle room, maybe 30 to 45 degrees total horizontal traverse. Left/right/rear gets somewhere between 240 and 280 degrees total horizontal traverse, able to fire at things abeam. (And left/right/rear/forward gets you the full circle of horizontal traverse.)

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I would probably argue that strictly speaking, the Navy didn't ask for that kind of sideways shooting capability, though obviously it's useful for them. Maybe we should do some variations to see what the cost and capability trades are?

 

[FrangibleCover]

Yeah, I think that offering extras is nice but the thing that we should fit for the trial is the microtank, which they asked for, rather than an incendiary ammunition firing BMG on a ring mount that we have some crackpot plan to use in an anti-shipping role, which they did not ask for. I feel the same way about electrical systems traded against price. Fit the aircraft for but not with them and offer it for 12Th instead of 15Th.

 

[xthetenth]

As far as this thing's needs go, I like the idea of having a lower stall speed than the DIlettante, the sea gets a chance to veto any flight ops, and if it turns our plane aside or breaks it up it's just as ineffective as if an enemy turns it away or downs it, if not more so (the plane in sector 2 didn't come back is a better bit of information than the plane for sector 2 got turned into kindling by a wave)

That said, speed is vital for three other aspects. Three. Those are speed itself for how quickly it covers ground (wow, such insight), range as a product of how long the engine can be run times how much ground it covers during that time, and defense in that it's got more ability to get away from whatever interceptors fly up to meet it.

Then there's armament. Frankly I'd just as soon not take the extra mass for a belt-fed. The firepower disparity isn't apparent until it's time to reload, and honestly, there's a full human being with two functional hands and an attention span to reload the thing back there. This plane wants things that can only be bought with lightness. Heck, I've even taken a longing look at what happens when you trim the Dilettante's tail down to stubby. You can get more fuel, some sort of technofuturistic gimmick like a light to signal reports rather than writing them up and dropping them on a ship and then landing and debriefing if the thing doesn't land right, or potentially just less weight to try and reduce the stall speed and raise the top speed. I think all of those are more important than firepower.

Honestly everything other than removing stuff to adding lightness is debatable when the plane is struggling to take off and fly around with its engine, fuel and crew.

 

[Crasian01]

Well also, to some degree, if the observer's armament can't actually down an enemy aircraft in a few seconds, you may as well not put the gun on at all (except maybe as a placebo to make the crew feel better (which in fairness isn't that crazy -- human psychology tricks etc.)). The problem is that we can't really quantify it that well: even if we have stats for rounds per second fired and damage per bullet, we don't actually know the mean engagement window for the observer and we also don't know what kind of damage the enemy aircraft can absorb.

Saying all that out loud makes me think that the most critical armament trade is probably going to be the mounts. It doesn't matter if you use an LMG or an MG, both will attach to the same mounting hardware. We know that the ring mount gives the best firing window, which means it also gives you the most time to put shots on target, which maximizes both the engagement window and the damage you can do to the enemy. What do we gain if we switch out the ring mount for a post mount and for a pintle mount (are those not the same thing btw?)?

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Fit the aircraft for but not with them and offer it for 12Th instead of 15Th.

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The DLC model of selling airplanes, except we ship an actually complete game without 6 hours of Day 1 Updates.

But actually though, creating a list of additional content we can add to the airplane is probably worthwhile once the airframe is more solidified. Being able to bring such a list to the Navy is potentially a good way to persuade them about what capabilities we know are possible and we can achieve for them (for only a small fee).

We do want to avoid anything that we don't have direct control over though. We shouldn't sell them on this great thing that can be easily added to our plane that Akibara manufactures. At least not until we cut a deal with Akibara to get a cut of the profits.

...And I think I actually just described the business path the modern aerospace industry followed to get to where it is now...

 

[FrangibleCover]

The post/pintle/ring thing is just narrative, a mount costs 1 and covers two directions. +1 for two more, then +1 for per. Making it a Medium mount for the MMG instead of the LMG is +1 again and the MMG itself is +1 Mass.

These are not good trades IMO. If you're whacking around at speed 19 when the current air speed record is about 23 and the best fighter aircraft we know about is 20, you're not likely to get shot at from the side much. Instantaneous firepower between the LMG and MMG is the same and the BMG cannot possibly set a ship on fire.