Whatiffery

[Commander Stormwolf]

my ART folder doesn't have any planes subdirectories [X(]

[Commander Stormwolf]

quest for the missing folder.. only gun art is present

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
speed is most definitely affected by weight

Acceleration is affected by weight (F=MA), maximum speed is determined by the point at which the total drag (the sum of form drag, parasitic drag, lift-induced drag etc) reduces acceleration to zero. Increasing weight will lower acceleration and simply mean the aircraft gets to its maximum speed more slowly. There is a limited weight input into drag via lift-induced drag, increase the weight to be lifted and you need either more wing area or greater angle of attack to maintain an equal rate of climb, or you can just settle for a lower rate of climb - it's not an absolute. And just to be perverse, weight can actually limit drag effects, objects with a greater sectional density decelerate slower than those with lower sectional density (consider the difference between throwing equal weights of confetti and lead shot...)

All these effects are levels of complexity that the game engine just doesn't get into. It might make some sense to consider them in a flight simulator, but this isn't a flight simulator.

[Commander Stormwolf]

please help if you can, anyone?

use this bitmap as a reward [:D]

[8D]

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


my ART folder doesn't have any planes subdirectories [X(]

So create one

You might want to read through 'AE Art Modifications.rtf' in C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\Docs\AE Art Mods (think that's the standard install), which explains how the system works.

[Commander Stormwolf]

airplane wing flies at angle and has x and y components

[Commander Stormwolf]

plane with more weight will cause more drag, require more energy from the engine to defeat gravity,
making it slower than a plane without the extra weight in order to maintain level flight

(now if you want a rock to fall to the ground, yes more weight can help defeat air resistance [:D])

[Commander Stormwolf]

I have a lot of experience in ac design

If you are interested in ac design of the ww2 period however,
you can read about the making of the zero

Jiro Horikoshi was presented with a paper from the Yokosuka flying corps
about how they objected to the idea of a long-range fighter, demanding
a lightweight short range dogfighter

so he went about designing a variant of the zero, removed the wing 20mm cannons,
and decreased the fuel load significantly

and he got it more maneouverable than a claude (93 kg/m2) and about 15 mph faster than the A6M2

pilots loved the idea, but IJN supreme command demanded a long-range escort for the G3M / G4M

[Commander Stormwolf]

speed definitely is a function of weight, P-39N as an example

reducing the fuel load by half gave it a top speed of 373 mph versus 360 mph

--------

soviets went even further normally removing the 4x7.7mm wing guns, and
sometimes replacing the 37mm gun with 20mm hispano

so they could get about 380mph out of the P-39 and turn it into a fast, mean, short-range dogfighter

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
plane with more weight will cause more drag, require more energy from the engine to defeat gravity,

If you notice I did discuss Lift Induced Drag. Lift is proportional to AoA, but also to speed (and airfoil factors), if you increase the aircraft weight, then for a given amount of lift you either need to increase the AoA, increase the speed, or increase the lift of the airfoil, for instance by deploying flaps or slats (or even altering the wing design). It's not a simple issue. Unless you're flying at the ceiling of the aircraft, you don't need to max out lift, so what you're going to see is a decrease in the efficiency at which you're flying, and more sluggish acceleration, but not necessarily gross changes in maximum speed - there will be some, but in comparison to the other factors the engine doesn't consider, most particularly variation in performance with altitude, I don't think they're significant.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
I have a lot of experience in ac design

So which projects have you worked on?

and he got it more maneouverable than a claude

Manoeuvrability is a product of a whole range of issues: stability (or lack of) in each of the three axes, instantaneous and sustained turn rates, roll rate, stall characteristics, nose-pointing ability, acceleration, whether or not you have combat flaps and so on. The factors that lead to an aircraft being highly manoeuvrable are not necessarily the same factors that contribute to it having a high speed or ceiling. Consider the LF variants of the Spitfire, with clipped wings for increased roll rate, but that factor simultaneously limited their ceiling by reducing available wing area, meanwhile the HF variants increased wing area with extended tips in order to maximise high altitude performance, but at the cost of reduced roll rate. And each had an engine optimised for their primary operating altitude, but necessarily less efficient outside of that altitude. Aircraft design is the art of compromise between mutually antagonistic factors.

[Commander Stormwolf]

atlas cheetah

[Commander Stormwolf]

turn rate is mainly based on wing loading

less weight per wing area = more maneouverable


but you are right that while wing loading reduces in a linear way with weight,
speed increases only by about the root of 2 of weight

so it is harder to increase speed than maneouverability,
and you need to do some drastic weight reductions to have a significant impact

reduce fuel = less range
reduce firepower = less damage to the enemy

Here is an example of what the IJN land-based pilots wanted,

a plane that can't go very far, or hit very hard, or use a carrier

but it sure can dogfight and control the sky (sort of like the spitfire)

[Commander Stormwolf]

And if the Japanese took the reduction of fuel to the extreme,
you could have a fast, maneouverable, and heavily armed interceptor

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
atlas cheetah

F-16, C-17, 757RT, 777, Typhoon, Tornado, with odd bits and bobs on other aircraft such as Nimrod and AC-130J and exposure to a bunch more.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

turn rate is mainly based on wing loading

less weight per wing area = more maneouverable

As I already pointed out, manouevrability is more than simply turn rate, c.f. the major attention paid to roll rate.

[Commander Stormwolf]

wing loading is the fundamental variable in Mvr for all planes

it determines how fast you can enter a loop and how tight that loop will be

even some bombers are more maneouverable than some fighters (like Avro Vulcan versus F-104)


in AE speed and climb are the main variables, Mvr has little impact


rate of roll is misunderstood
it is always said the zero had a poor rate of roll,

that was only on the early models that had servo tabs on the ailerons that increased roll at low speed
and decreased roll at high speed

that was omitted on later models

and remember, even if you roll quickly it doesn't help if you are bleeding energy and airspeed in a 500kg/m2 plane

[Commander Stormwolf]

remember a plane can be fast but not maneouverable
and a fast plane trying to maneouver will lose airspeed, and probably lose the dogfight

if you reduce fuel, guns, and armor you will have both speed and low wing loading,
and you create an excellent fighter like the Spitfire

performance, firepower, armor, and range were interconnected features
increasing one would decrease the others

so the best designs have an extreme amount of one, at the expense of the others

- sturmovik
- bearcat
- B-17
- reisen
- tojo

the more extreme a design, the better it will be for a particular role

then again, if you completely neglect maneouverabiliy (like the P-47 and FW-190)
then you can have a fighter that can do everthing except dogfight
and it can become a pretty useful plane in the arsenal for other roles (like ground attack, escort, and anti-bomber)

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
remember a plane can be fast but not maneouverable
and a fast plane trying to maneouver will lose airspeed, and probably lose the dogfight

It depends on a whole host of factors. The modern focus on energy management shows that manouverability is not the sole issue and that engine power has a major part to play.

However the primary issue to consider for AE is that manouverability is not measuring simple agility, but also the ability to conduct energy-management based boom-and-zoom operations, as increasingly used by allied pilots as the war progressed. Some of those high maneuvrability ratings actually represent aircraft that aren't classically agile, but instead are able to exploit boom-and-zoom tactics. The air combat model simply isn't sophisticated enough to consider them separately, so has to treat them as the same thing.

[Commander Stormwolf]

in AE

speed and climb and altitude are 80 or 90% of the calculation

this representes the "boom-and-zoom" aspect


Mvr is only high for the low-wing loading planes (like I-153, Ki-43, and A6M2)