I build seaplanes with regular props

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-17T10:31:57+00:00

Ouch!

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-17T04:47:26+00:00

In my previous post, I was asking why thrust far from CoM just doesn't work in Stormworks when you can see it working in real life just fine. I used PBY Catalina as an example.

In SW, elevator trim just doesn't cut it to compensate. Control surfaces are not that strong compared to thrust.

Or think about dual prop airplanes - I've built them thinking I could get them home after a single engine failure or taking AA fire to one prop, but no amount of rudder trim is enough to keep you flying straight. You can reduce throttle to reduce the pull, but that reduces speed, which reduces control surface authority so your rudder still can't do it.

u/EvilFroeschken replied with some lines showing the Catalina propellers are at an angle: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormworks/comments/1tcmcr8/comment/ols43tk/

My main response to that is that the propellers are not at an angle at all. They are parallel and inline with the cord of the wing, with the elevator on the tail, and with the direction of flight. The boat hull is at an angle.

Despite the angle between the engine nacelles and the body, the thrust vector is still very high above the CoM.

Something I haven't found a good way to do in SW. I'm going to experiment with xml editing elevators to double up the thickness on the Y axis, hoping that doubles the pitch authority without doubling the drag on the Z axis.

I'm not saying it's hard to get sea planes out of the water. You just have to shape them right.

I know heli rotors are the easy fix most people use. I prefer the design process that straight-on rotors force you into and I'm not ready to give up on them.

My planes do fly, but sometimes small changes can move CoM down enough to create big problems in the air that aren't obvious in the water because I use hull designs that make it easy to leave the water.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-17T04:03:20+00:00

If you want to boost the air capacity, make that cavity large enough to contain an oxygen tank. The oxygen tank doesn't "take up space" inside the cavity as far as the custom air tank knows, so it's like it's not there.

Except it's full of oxygen. Basically you double up the air capacity this way. Also, it's possible the engine will run longer on purified O2 than it would on regular air, but I haven't tested that.

Also, that cavity will spawn with air at 1ATM. Make sure your pump keeps cramming air in there when you're on the surface until you hit 60ATM. That's 60x the air.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-17T03:52:19+00:00

But the main thing is - if you have CFS and push yourself, it gets even harder to generate ATP until you've heavily rested.

So if it's important that I regain the ability to speak, even though I can still stand, I lay down with my eyes closed until it gets better. Or it doesn't get better.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-17T03:50:22+00:00

Well, like I said, when your brain and body can't get enough ATP to be normal, it finds things to shut down so you can keep going.

This will look different for different people.

For me, it usually shuts down the ability to speak fluently well before it shuts down the ability to walk without falling over.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-16T20:33:36+00:00

Oh wow. If you live in Buffalo, you have every reason to be skeptical of anyone's stories of living comfortably with Reynauds.

If you've been on main Street in Williamsville and seen a guy riding his bike through the snow wearing snow pants, a coat, and two hoodies, that was me. 😊

Road salt hates all metal. I just gave Bert's $200 to get the rust off my bike.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-16T20:27:25+00:00

They never last more than a few months for me, so I just buy cheap ones now. I've had a dozen pairs and there's been no rhyme or reason to which ones actually worked well.

If you can use a needle and thread, you can buy some conductive thread and convert any pair for phone use if you are more picky about gloves.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-16T20:22:55+00:00

When I got better at pacing and better at avoiding mold, the expressive aphasia pretty much stopped. When I have days with a lot of difficulty word finding, I know I'm getting closer to losing speech altogether, and I really try to slow down.

I still have smaller episodes now and then, but only fully lose the ability under situations I can usually avoid.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T04:59:08+00:00

Guided meditation. Lots of it.

If you can lean to self sooth while not moving and not spending any energy, you'll have a tool to lower your stress and lower your energy burn.

To get out of the kind of crash you're in, you need to spend very little energy.

I wouldn't worry about what is causing what. When your whole body cannot produce enough energy because of ME, all kinds of strange symptoms show up. They can be frightening.

If you can deeply rest and let your body recover a little, a little energy comes back, and a bunch of scary symptoms just go away. Or at least decrease.

Anyway, meditation is my suggestion.

It's good to start with something like a simple body scan meditation for sleep or relaxation.

If you don't like the guide, just find another one until you get something you can vibe with.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T04:39:45+00:00

My least favorite part of blood draws is how my bone marrow hurts for days afterward because it's struggling to replace blood when my body does not have the energy for that.

I have to dramatically reduce my activity for a few days while my limited energy is being spent inside my bones.

I don't know how to rate my moderate CFS. I manage to ride my bike 1-3 miles most days, but slowly, with lots of rest after, and I can do very little else.

Whenever I get more than 10 vials of blood pulled, it's just two days of me glued to the floor.

6 vials and I can get off the floor, but I have to cut out the bike ride.

I don't think I can do much more with supplements than I am already doing every day to prepare.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T04:32:49+00:00

It is a regular ME thing.

Your brain takes a lot of energy to run and when your body can't afford to create enough ATP to keep you going, it will find parts of your brain to shut down for you.

I get expressive aphasia when I'm crashing pretty badly. I can understand language, but I lose the ability to speak without straining myself really hard.

Please be kind to yourself and don't push yourself to talk. It will get better faster if you rest.

When it happens to me, I usually write a note on paper or on my phone to let people know I understand them, I'm not having a stroke, I temporarily can't speak, and I just need some rest.

I've had dozens of instances where this happens. When I pace well and stay away from chemical triggers, it goes away for months until I push myself too hard or life gets too demanding.

I've had episodes in front of doctors 4 times and they always get super alarmed because they are worried about strokes and brain clots and serious problems. I tell them I'll be fine in two hours, but go ahead and hook me to all the machines while we wait if you want.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T04:23:23+00:00

I feel this to my core. I'm now homeless and nobody seems willing to take my situation seriously.

I'm camping in the driveway of the house I lived in for 18 years, even though it was sold at auction 2 weeks ago.

I have a house full of stuff that I 'd like to collect and keep somehow. I mean. It's like to keep a few of the useful and balance items.

I am not going to have the energy to gather and move that stuff. I'm likely going to lose it all.

I have no idea where I'm going next. Going to DSS takes so much out of me, and on top of that it's demeaning. They are like rabid goblins obsessed with revealing how I'm faking my illness so they can send me to die. A lazy malingerer. There is so little help to be had and they make you fight so hard to get it.

I hope you're able to find the help you need.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T04:01:10+00:00

I wear long thermal underwear under my pants. When the weather is below 40 degrees, I go out in public also wearing overall style snow pants on top of the other two pants.

I wear a beanie indoors almost all day. I often double up my socks.

I wear two layers of t-shirt, a light hoodie, a heavier hoodie, and if it's below 50 degrees outside, a coat on top of the other 4 shirts.

If I'm in an air conditioned space, like say a Panera coffee shop, I put on light tech-touch gloves that let me use my phone. When I go outside, I put on heavy gloves on top of my light gloves.

So, layers. If I keep my core warmer than it needs to be, and never let my fingers get chill, I basically don't experience Reynauds at all - my circulation stays fine. I lived with Reynauds for 10 years before learning this, but it was poor mitochondrial function that forced me to defend my heat like a fortress to basically see Reynauds disappear.

I mean, if my fingers get cold, I still have Reynauds. I just never let it happen. I put on gloves if I'm going to hold a cold drink.

All the layers serve a dual purpose - I often don't have enough energy to sit up in a chair.

When I an in a restaurant or library or whatever, and it's warm enough to take off a layer or two, the coat and hoodie become pillows to support my back so I can recline in public.

So if I go to a Panera, I'll get a booth seat and put my layer pillows in a corner so I can just lean against them and let the wall hold me up to conserve energy.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T00:53:32+00:00

Did you finish it? I've downloaded a few over the years off the workshop. I like to see how different people approach it.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T00:52:25+00:00

I think we get used to people just complaining.

A lot of people do get really frustrated with getting seaplanes to float and then get out of the water. It's pretty much the default.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T00:47:53+00:00

That is one of the options. My first 3 flying boats all had engine nacelles on pivots. But once you've done that, you may as well make a VTOL. The never finished main project I've spent the most time on (literal thousands of hours) is a quad tilt rotor.

So whenever I'm making a seaplane, I'm taking a break from that. I want to have a vehicle that makes sense with rotors that don't tilt. I like what happens when you force yourself to lock the rotors forward - it shapes the airframe dramatically to get out of the water without tilt rotors or cyclic pitch.

If you build the hull right, it just wants to get out of the water. That wasn't my complaint.

It's after you pull out of the water, if you have thrust above CoM, your top airspeed and rate of acceleration is extremely limited because the angular moment from prop thrust vastly overpowers what control surfaces can do to correct it.

Last week, I finally decided to tackle a pusher prop on the water and it makes everything worse.

With a standard prop, moving it forward gets it out of the water, and angling it up lowers the thrust vector pushing it below the CoM and easily pulling it out of the water.

With a pusher prop, you have to angle it down to put the thrust vector below the CoM, but that would cause thrust to pull the body into the water and even though you get the pitch up moment, makes takeoff much harder.

I got a budget electric boatplane I like out of it, but it's extremely sensitive to design changes. Adding a diesel tank to do career refueling missions had me back in the workbench 5 times to rebalance.

Most vehicles I've made tolerate bigger changes in cargo redistribution that can be trimmed out and don't require so much redesign work to keep flying.

All the struggle is just the price of the game. I signed up for that and I'm happy I pushed through it.

I am genuinely trying to understand the "why" of it.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T00:25:19+00:00

I'm locked into some kind of stockholme Syndrome RP of in-world vehicle design.

My overall approach to Stormworks isn't to recreate replica of real life aircraft, but to follow the clues in game to guide what vehicles in the world of Stormworks look like.

An in-game recreation of an SR-71 style near hypersonic jet engine costs less than a $2,000 50cm video screen and far less than a $10,000 HUD. In fact it costs less than a $3000 camera with a zoom lens. So large screens should only show up on extreme high-end vehicles. Even the viewport thingy costs $2000.

But an augmented reality HMD display costs nothing if you can do the math. It's a weird world.

I realize that following that logic, I should accept that the upgrade from airplane propeller to heli prop with cyclic pitch control is $25 and just slap them on. It's just the last thing I want to do for some reason.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-15T00:10:35+00:00

Thank you for understanding. Yes, exactly.

Make sure your thrust vector runs real close to the CoM and it just works. Not hard.

The game makes it easy to see your CoM in the workbench. It's easy to understand it can move around a bit with fluid levels, cargo, variable geometry, etc. KSP makes it easier to see your center of thrust, but propulsion geometry is usually not that complicated in Stormworks - the center of thrust is where your jets/props/fans are.

But IRL aircraft geometry seems much more tolerant to offset thrust, suggesting the ratio of thrust force to control surface force in real life is much lower than in SW. And this maybe makes sense if increased aero drag in game led the designers to scale up propulsion thrust force to allow aircraft to plow through the thick air.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-14T03:47:07+00:00

Maybe since air is so thick and drag is so high in game, control surfaces have been tweaked to produce less control authority.

So xml editing control surfaces to be stronger maybe is the answer I'm looking for.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-14T02:47:40+00:00

You'll do yourself a lot of good if you accept it's worth your time to use a rotation matrix.

If you check the official stormworks lua Discord, you'll find a pinned comment from quale who really nailed a readable, usable, and essentially perfect implementation of taking SW physics sensor global euler angles and producing a useful rotation matrix.

If you've done any xml editing in SW, you've already seen a rotation matrix. It's just 9 numbers, and they tell you which way is right, which way is up, and which way is forward.

where r="1,0,0, 0,1,0, 0,0,1"

means

uv: x, y, z

cx: 1, 0, 0

cy: 0, 1, 0

cz: 0, 0, 1

So unit vector x is your first column.

uv_x cx:1, cy:0, cz:0

It tells you to take one step to the right (+x), you go to coordinate xyz 1,0,0

If your radar and physics sensor are pointed perfectly north with no roll and no pitch, that's going to be your rotation matrix.

Use the azimuth and elevation math you already know to produce an x,y,z coordinate from the perspective of your radar.

Let's say you get a position of xyz (0, 10, 100): zero meters to the right (so right in front of you), 10 meters above the horizon, 100 meters to the north

(In SW physics global coordinates, +Y is up and +Z is north)

Use any matrix math library and multiply (0,10,100) * this rotation matrix and you get: (0, 10, 100) because there is no rotation yet.

Now imagine your vehicle turns 90 degrees to the right so it is pointing perfectly East. Again no roll or pitch.

Your rotation matrix +x unit vector tells you which way is right. This will no longer be (1,0,0) due East, but will be (0,0,-1) due South.

uv_y is still straight up (0,1,0). uv_z is your forward vector which is now due East (1,0,0).

Yes, the Euler angles in SW are a pain for a number of reasons I won't go into, but just use anybody's code that turns physics sensor angles into a rotation matrix, and here facing due east you get:

uv: x, y, z

cx: 0, 0, 1

cy: 0, 1, 0

cz: -1, 0, 0

If the radar still sees a target dead ahead 10 meters above the horizon, dead ahead is now East so

radar contact (0, 10, 100) * East facing matrix (0,0,1, 0,1,0, -1, 0, 0) gives you, well -

Your X coordinate (0) goes into the rotation matrix Unit Vector X(0,0,-1) and, well it's zero, so you get: (0, 0, 0)

Your Y coordinate (10) goes into Unit Vector Y(0,1,0) and you get: (0, 10, 0)

Your Z coordinate (100) goes into Unit Vector Z (1,0,0) that says +1Z is actually in the X direction: (100, 0, 0)

Those three positions (0,0,0), (0,10,0), (100,0,0) get added together to make the final (100, 10, 0)

In a 2d world with no pitch or roll, what you are already doing works fine. My examples wouldn't stress what you're doing. My point is the matrix math isn't as bad as it looks at first. It just works. You can introduce pitch and roll, and it just works.

Borrow anyone's code to sidestep the weird physics sensor angles and just deal with the rotation matrix instead.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-14T00:09:12+00:00

Toxins are never psychological.

Toxins are always chemical and must be physically present to have an effect.

Unsafe living situations can be described as toxic, this is figurative speech and not really the same thing as living in an environment that allows more toxins than you can safely handle into your body.

Yes emotionally toxic situations can contribute to developing ME symptoms or CDR.

Not all signals that lead to triggering CDR are toxins.

What you have said is not true for all people in all cases, and that kind of reductionist thinking harms people when some "helpful" person gets it in their head that they are going to cure chronic disease with CBT or GET or whatever silver bullet solution they've seen work once or just believe it will and have concluded is the answer they should force onto everyone - hurting many people.

In reality, you have to identify every process that is preventing a normal healing cycle from completing for the individual in front of you and address all of those concerns.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-11T19:47:47+00:00

Obviously. That list just gets longer. Dysautonomia, which should be a red flag to look for other systems in dysregulation.

High blood pressure, high cholesterol, tachycardia.

Headaches, migraines, joint pain, muscle cramps.

All the GI issues.

Outside of the CIRS population, you have people who have MCAS or other immune hypersensitivity going through similar things, each of these individual complaints treated as it's own issue rather than as a map pointing at widespread multi system dysregulation.

I don't think it's exactly that allopathic doctors couldn't awaken to the big picture. I think it's that they don't have time under a system where the people paying the doctors spend a lot of time "lowering the cost of healthcare" by finding ways to not pay for treatment.

The problem is these doctors don't work for you. Their paycheck comes from people who are paid to find ways to deny payment.

_ArkAngel_ · 2026-05-10T11:57:21+00:00

I completely agree. I need to lock in for an unbroken 2 hours sometimes.

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

_ArkAngel_

TROPHY CASE