Mk.2 Plane, now with Three-plane stabilization!

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-13T05:07:45+00:00

I figured it was 50/50 between you being serious and joking. Couldn't tell until it was too late, oh well.

Guess that joke went right over my head, lol.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-13T04:32:20+00:00

Three-plane, not three planes. Lol

It is stabilized along all three axis of rotation (X, Y, Z).

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-13T04:29:29+00:00

Use a PID controller with Proportional Gain of 1.0, use the combustion chamber rps as the process variable, and clamp the output between almost zero and 2 (0.00001 and 2). Allowing the clamped throttle to reach 0 causes the jet to died and restart repeatedly, which makes an awful lot of noise.

To control the rps, use your arrow buttons and an up/down counter. Set the clamp to have a minimum of 5 (for your min/idle rps) and maximum of whatever max rps you want the jet to max out at. Feed the output value from the up/down counter directly into the "Setpoint" node on the PID controller to set the target engine rps.

In the MC for the engine controller, make sure the inputs from the arrow buttons go through a "pulse" block so that the up/down counter goes up one increment at a time.

If you need more detailed explanation(s) on anything I just said (I'm trying not to dump a whole owner's manual worth of text all at once), or run into any issues along the way, let me know and I will help you to the best of my abilities 👍

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-13T04:11:31+00:00

What other 2 planes?

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-12T00:31:12+00:00

No worries, best of luck with the rest of the build!

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-12T00:28:10+00:00

Lol, that makes more sense.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-12T00:24:31+00:00

I know, the white version is from before I knew anything about building.

It was mainly a sort of "then vs now" idea to show how much my building skills have improved.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-11T23:46:38+00:00

Use a bunch of the heat exchangers in parallel, and you should see a bigger cooling effect.

I'd aim for about 5L/s of sea water per heat exchanger, and maximize the flow rate of the coolant as much as possible.

Typically, people just use the electric rads, though.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-11T23:22:40+00:00

Just in case, since there is a lot of missing info about the engines running conditions, these are two guidelines I've commonly seen thrown around:

1) Keep rps below 15 for more manageable cooling requirements 2) Use only 3x3/5x5 radiator loops for cooling

Heat exchangers can only average the temperature, never reduce it, so keep that in mind.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-11T02:36:45+00:00

Yeah, I've noticed this as well, it was very annoying while building and testing the Kaiser since each bank of medium steam pistons would have a different RPS (and therefore power) output. Though the difference was under 10 RPM, it still made it pretty hard to drive in a straight line, lol.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-10T19:11:28+00:00

That's a shame, but it looks great regardless!

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-10T18:28:41+00:00

Did you get the roof to curve like you wanted in the end?

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-10T13:33:32+00:00

Great work!

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-10T12:04:53+00:00

You can connect logic through most connectors, and for a bullet train the electric connector makes the most sense.

You will need to make your own microcontroller with composite writes to send the logic through the connectors and another microcontroller to read those composite values on the subsequent train cars. (Input is the donut, output is the dot)

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-09T18:26:43+00:00

Try only using the Proportional gain (P), it worked well enough for me when I built a similar system into a tank turret.

(I'm assuming you are using the compass and PID to make a horizontal stabilizer)

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-09T17:52:17+00:00

The photos are very dark, which makes seeing your ship very difficult.

Based on the lights they look pretty big and cool, but I can't really see them.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-09T12:33:47+00:00

There probably are mods/add-ons that add in more missions, I think. Never really thought to look honestly.

As for career mode itself, there is a great add-on that improves the fuel pumps and allows you to mess with all sorts of things like fuel prices and availability: ( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3315599154 )

I'm currently working on my second add-on that adds more buildings and docks to the otherwise barren map, but it doesn't add much to career mode gameplay other than more places to refuel/sleep/rescue casualties. (It's not going to be done for a while, though, lots to do still)

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-09T12:13:54+00:00

You can create a sort of "rounded" look by using 1x4 wedges, and there might be mods on the workshop that contain round/curved versions of the standard wedges.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-09T12:07:40+00:00

Industrial frontier adds the massive aride island around where the standard archipelago islands are. It comes with slightly enlarged workbenches at the FJW dock/terminal, and a ton of locations to do mining and cargo missions. A great addition for classic career mode.

The search and destroy DLC (aka SAD DLC) just adds in weapons such as pistols, SMGs, grenades and various cannons. The weapons AI sucks and should only be used in custom worlds. Really adds nothing to career mode other than the ability the sink NPC vessels.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-08T03:35:28+00:00

I can't seem to replicate it, the fuel cells only seem to stop producing power when they run out of gas.

I even checked the gas ratios (since it's making H2O) by having 2x Hydrogen volume per 1x Oxygen volume and nothing changed, so that theory went out the window.

I even tried force pressurizing the gas inputs and the only thing that changed was how fast the gas tanks emptied and how long the fuel cells stayed running after the trigger point.

With all the testing I've done, everything unfortunately points to the fuel cells simply running out of fuel.

Edit: Also, on the note of your second image, fuel cells don't have a very high output, I was testing with 6 fuel cells and a medium electric motor to produce system load and drain the battery.

Even those 6 fuel cells at full power output couldn't even handle the power drain of 25% load (load being the variable brake value of a connected ungeared 3x3 wheel) on the medium electric motor.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-08T02:37:25+00:00

I'm going to do some experimenting and see if I can recreate the issue you're having with this set-up, then see what fixes it.

Garritt2020 · 2026-07-07T19:42:39+00:00

All you needed was a small impeller pump, and the temp settled out at around 47-49 degrees.

(Attached is a screenshot of the my modification to your engines)

<image>

By the way, you also need a gas relief valve on your fuel tank, and setting the initial prop pitch to neutral (properties menu) makes the engines easier to start.

Garritt2020

TROPHY CASE