Aircraft designer - should there be landing gear module?

[Barón Hnida]

Hi!

In the tank desinger, you have to choose one of several suspension types (such as torsion bar, bogie, etc., not to mention poor-man's choices such as wheeled or half-track suspension).

In the airccraft designer, there is no such module, even though there were planes with fixed landing gear even on relatively new airframes (most famously Stuka, but there are also japanese, french etc. designs, which also saw combat in the war).

The reason was, that sturdier fixed landing gear, and the ability to land on a rough terrain, was considered as an advantage, even though it caused more drag, thus negatively affecting speed and agility. It was also lighter and cheaper to manufacture. Needless to say, increased drag becomes really problematic only at higher speeds.

Thus, should there be an option for a landing gear?


For example:

Fixed landing gear:
+ increases reliability (as the airplane can land on a harsh terrain)
+ cheaper to manufacture
+ lighter
+ no prior research needed

- penalty to agility

Also, floatplane and flying boat characteristics are now listed among "special modules". It would make more sense to add them to the landing gear category.

 

[Nephandus]

I wouldn‘t recommend that. The key to the designer concept is still the abstraction to essential parts. The more parts the less the AI is able to used the designer effectively. We have seen that with the first designer: the ship designer. While is allows for more flexible designing it also caused a heavy inflation in number of required techs and caused issue with the AI using the ship designer. This basically lead to the decision to take a second look at the ship designer. I expect it to be redesigned according to the guidelines set by the tank designer which are apparently also applied to the aircraft designer.

Historically in World War 2 fixed landing gear was used either in early planes which only had rudimentary hydraulic and electric systems and weaker engines or those planes that were designed to be either cheap and/or discardable and not built for high speeds.

In regards to adding variety one might consider adding the option mono plane / bi-plane but I consider this somewhat superfluous as well as it can be abstracted into the given model.

I think it will be possible to mod this in (it has been possible with both other designers) but not everyone really wants this granularity.

 

[B24 Liberator]

I would like to see some sort of organizational structure to the air force, with officers leading different squadrons and generals leading entire air forces (like a field marshal for the army).

 

[Nephandus]

I would like to see some sort of organizational structure to the air force, with officers leading different squadrons and generals leading entire air forces (like a field marshal for the army).

The HoI Aircraft aficionados wet dream for more than a decade.

 

[Anaraxes]

You also might add tricycle gear and tailwheel gear as options. I imagine tricycle gear costs some weight and maybe IC, while reducing the accident rate. Tailwheels are cheap.

The fixed gear would probably cost speed rather than agility. But it really depends on what winds up being modelled in the air combat stats.

 

[DukofDeth]

I identify as an airplane, a B24 to be precise. My pronouns are propeller/wing/fuselage.

I can see bb's art... "Noooo! Airplane-coomer-san!"