It seems like I have a visit from a player who is interested in reaching the sky. Maybe you are a huge aviation fan who wants to try something new building jet in survival mode, maybe you are the one who isn't that expirienced in building aircrafts but wants to build one as a sign of survival progress domination. Even if you are that kind of guy who knows almost everything about the game and checks community guides' quality, I have some pretty neat stuff to show you. But at first I want to explain my intentions with this particular guide.


In this guide I am going to teach you how to build and contain a JET in SURVIVAL MODE. The whole thing will be built using mid-school math and physics' knowledge and theoretical data on hand-made graphs and tables. Also, aircraft is going to be optimised for a better resource consumption. And yes, we will build it using SUSPENSION GLITCH and I hope you understand why because this is the unique way of imitating aerodynamics physics. In this guide I will include a really decent way to produce gas to power your vehicle which, I bet, you haven't seen before.


Here is a little preview of my jets. Check to understand if it's really the thing you are looking for.










Some of my tricks can also be used in other aircrafts.

For now, let's just think about the functionality you want to see in your jet. It's really important to include enough things on your board. I just want to say that making a jet with one seat without chests and other things might be a mistake. I hope you know that you can't enter warehouse from above using an aircraft... You wasn't trying to build a jet for it, was you??? Anyway, I really recommend you to get at least one chest on board if you want to use it with comfort. When you will understand all your expectations we can start building our aircraft's "shell" starting from the cockpit not forgetting about proportions and the fact that it is necessary to include gas container for every thruster. You can use a reference just to follow it's proportions

So, I am going to build a jet from cardboard (of course) with a large chest as the most effective configuration.



Before you start it is really important to decide with seat you are going to use: 3x5 or 4x6. It matters when you start to build the nose of the plane. For me it's easier to build a nose if my jet's width is odd but for it can be different. Also don't forget that seat 4x6 (driver seat) weight is 60% higher than 3x5 seat.




As a reference I am going to use this jet from google images. I'm not coppying it entirely as you will see later. I recommend you to do the same thing for a special sharm - just copy proportions but experiment with the whole form and look of it.




While constructing your cockpit make sure that the windshiled is covering you character entirely. In this case your jet's high must be something around 7 blocks at least. One block of glass is equal to 3 blocks of cardboard but don't worry it! You will be happy about using it instead of other clear light blocks when you will try to fly it from first person ^.^




Try to leave you vehicle as many free space as you can. Try to expand your space especially under the wings. But be really careful - you don't want any colision to happen between moving parts.





Hold yourself a bit during decorating part. All this tiles are pretty heavy for a jet to handle.

I guess your aircraft should look like this if we talk about sizes. We are playing as dwarfs,so, I guess, it's size is pretty reasonable.

This article is pretty useful in many scrap mechanic situations and so in our too. Just take a look at it before filling your jet insides. All the information was found by me, so correct me in the comment section you see a mistake.

Thruster engine in Scrap Mechanic is that one stupid thing for 50 component kits which moves your build when powered. I really recommend you to use the last lvl of your thruster and not only because of it power increase but also because of the weight decrease.



On this table you can see all thruster variations' characteristics. With each lvl of thrust, thrust power increases by 1.5 times starting from the second power level which is 1N (Newton? Why not? I hope he won't be mad at me) It's better to use 5th thruster variation on it's maximum power option in any case and use only it not even decreasing power for a steady fuel consumption. "U" means Unit, 1 Unit = 1 cardboard block. "Profit" is a number of units thruster can lift including itself and a gas container, (which we need anyway) aslo, if profit is negative this means that thruster can't even lift itself.

What the frick? We are building a jet! Why the hell do we need vertical thrust? Let's just say thanks to Scrap Mechanic for not adding aerodynamics. You will have to use some thrusters to imitate air lifting force.



Using this graph you can see every thruster level's load capacity including it's own and gas container weights. Even if you can see there all power levels included I still recommend you to use the last one. So, apparently, weight of your jet has to be the same as your vertical thrusters load capacity or less (which is going to cause your jet not to float but fly up a bit.) Getting the perfect relation between weight and thruster load capacity might be a tricky thing considering the fact that you can only use the unique thruster configuration but you can always add something on board like a chest for example if it flies up too much. Also there is a special solution I'll explain later which I call diagonal thrust if accuracy really matters for you.

P.s red lines represent thrusters lvl 5 on their limits

P.s2 There will be a table with weight data for diffrent tiles in the next article.


Nothing interesting to say. I think you need 5N of thrust for every 600U of weight but you can get even faster.




This is a really cool and fancy solution to get your bird to fly. So, I guess you are allready understand what to expect. Thruster at an angle which moves our aircraft in both directions at the same time. I also prefer to keep a horizontal thruster (at least one) just for the esthetics with diagonal ones because they don't really make your jet look like a jet.



If you want to use diagonal thrust in you jet you have to understand what it is going to cause.



1 - You won't be able to chose a specific direction to fly. Horizontal and Vertical thrust only will be working at the same time. While doing tricks such as death loop your vertical thrust is not going to help your jet to float anymore but will help gravity to crush you.



2 - it's pretty hard to set one and calculate it's position



3 - This type of the system is the most efficient out of all others. You will be able to calculate angle of thrusters getting perfect lift force for your aircraft






First of all look at this graph of load capacity (another one, not the same) this time the graph doesn't include thruster and gas container weight (you need to imagine how many thrusters you will need and calculate the whole weight) When you'll get the weight of your jet you can use this equation in order to calculate how many Newtons you do need to get the whole thing to float - 5.0625/1300=x/your weight (x= 5.0625xyour weight/1300)


And then, using this equation which is basically all about sum of force vectors we get the angle we need to set. Finding calculator which can do trigonometry might be tricky but not that hard.






I am going to show you an example of setting a diagonal thruster in my jet. The weight will be 1200U, 2 diagonal thruster, 1 horizontal



1 I am finding thrust force which my jet needs to have in order to float using my first equation. X= 4,67 N


2 I am getting the angle for my thrusters using the second equation not forgetting that I have 2 diagonal thrusters, so 2x5.0625=10.125 N. a=62º



3 And then, using this equation I get thrust power for horizontal movement. This jet is going to be really fast - 14N of horizontal thrust against 1200 U of weight. I will leave a link for you test this jet out in the end of the guide.

This article is about setting everything needed inside of your jet and calculating it's mass. In this table you can see some useful things with data about their weight. Count your decoration tiles as 4U each and include 5 controllers on the board


U - Unit, Cardboard block



After calculating your total weigt use one of graphs depending on which thrust system you have choosen for further calculations.



When you will finally understand your jet's characteristics you can start to fill it up with chests, controller, gas containers and other stuff. It will be really helpful to download this mod for this

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1400025377
This mod adds to the game some very cool calculators such as "Creation Center Of Mass Finder". I recommend you to get your center of mass point inside of blocks' grid just make it easier to understand what are you working with.



Also, a special addition just for you. As far as you may know there isn't a small chest tile in creative mode. So, I suggest you to use this vanilla building which has exactly the same weight and volume of a small chest.






So, here is the hardest part. What do we need to get a stable jet? Get our center of mass to the same point as our center of thrust. There is a thing such as the law of leverage to help us.



thanks to Archimedes, my good friend, for the work done there



If you don't know a thing about this law here is a quick example: 2 thrusters 5 m far away from our center of mass from one side and 1 thruster 10 m far away from other side cause the object to float really stable without falling on any side.



This will help us to move the center of mass how we want and set our thrusters where we want. A quick tip: the further away from the center of mass you place a heavy tile the more it moves CoM (center of mass) position in that direction. That means that placing heavy block on your jet's nose might be a good idea to move CoM closer to the seat.



Also, by using this law you can place you thruster in whichever position as far as you do calculations, not placing any additional unneccesary weight.




On this sheme you can see 4 possible ways to place 3 thrusters reaching balance. CoM is located at the point where colour changes. You can use this sheme in many cases not only in the current one.



Your vertical thrust will be considered a stable one only when your jet will stop falling on any of it's parts and will be totally balanced.



However, balancing horizontal thrust is a diffrent thing. You won't be really able to do any calculations because the area is going to be too small. You can reach balance just by doing some experiments. If your jet goes up when you try to fly forward that means that CoT (center of thrust) is lower than CoM, if jet goes down - CoT is higher than CoM. Moving CoM is much harder than CoT sooo...



1 If number of your horizontal thrusters is even just use bearings to move thrusters up and down holding SHIFT in controller menu for a better accuracy. Of course you will have to mirror every thruster angle



2 If number of your horizontal thrusters is odd (I mean if all the thrusters are lockated in the center only) you can try moving them with pistons. Here are some examples of this method.



P.s Be careful while testing horizontal thrusters balance. For some reason your jet will go up and down anyway if it won't be parallel to the ground. So if it will be inclined even a bit for an accident it will go even further at that point. Make sure that your jet hasn't toched the ground while starting.






Balancing this thing might be a bit harder.



First of all you need to understand that thrust force from your thruster goes exactly from it's top from a centre. This point has to be considered as a Horizontal CoT and Vertical CoT at the same time. When you place your diagonal engines it is really important to imagine how CoM is going to move after placing them and how accurately CoM and CoT of vertical engines are going enter each other in horizontal perspective at least. After reaching a decent accuracy you won't be even able to check it by running because of Horizontal thrusters not being balanced yet, so you will have to balance them in one go. For this an additional horizontal thruster may help you - just move it until CoT of horizontal engines and CoM enter each other from vertical perspective.



Go check my third jet in the end of the guide if you want to see diagonal engines in action

Finally the final part of building an aircraft. This article is much easier than other ones. You can finally relax



Suspension glitch is the best solution to make steering system. I think that the hardest thing to overcome here is your psychology. Many of players try to avoid using glitches for their advantage because they think this is not fair. I also one of them but I think using this glitch in this particular case is resonable enough. There isn't a thing such as aerodynamics in this game so air flow force can only be imitated by something. And let's be fair here, using thrusters for this is overkill. Just imagine that suspension glitch is aileron. You will be right.



So, here is how it looks like. Suspension on a bearing push static part of the jet making it to move in that direction. You will need 5 of these.



1 connected to the seat. Maximum speed, minimum angle





2 connected to 2 controllers connected to 2 buttons





2 connected to 2 controllers connected to 2 buttons



Don't worry about their weight. Not a big deal, really.



Instead of block on the edge of suspension put L-like pipe in order to get rid of unexpectable moves while flying.



In your controllers' menu set the speed to the maximum and the angle to 10°



Can I use any other controller instead of lvl 5? This really affects comfort when you fly. Maximum speed means that you won't face any delay while pushing buttons. I don't recommend you to do that.



Oh yes! Finally! Stabilizer 2000. This little buddy will make flying as smoth as possible. I think, you can place more for better stability. I prefer placing 1 every 1300U. To make it get any controller you want, get 4 bearings on it, connect each of them using L pipe and set angle to "when powered input" to +180° for the first bearing in pair and -180° for the second bearing in pair mirroring it in the end.




4 buttons for roll control and 1 switch for our stabilizer (don't forget to turn it off if you don't fly to get rid of lags. I prefer to connect them like so- 1, 2 tilt up, down; 3, 4 barrel left right; 5, 6 engines and stabilizer starters.

I think you already understand how many fuel a jet can consume. This amount of oil is scary for real - 1 unique thruster consume 1 unit of fuel every 5 seconds when active. Good thing that we have gas container for every thruster. So, apparently, we have 100 fuel units per engine which is 500 seconds of fly. This means that 5 engines consume 1 fuel per second. How are we going to handle it?










Of course for this thing we will need to find an oil pool in the desert biome which looks like this.



Then, we need to understand how long we are ready to wait until getting the full amount of fuel. I think itthat's something around 2 minutes, so 0.83 fuel per second or more for each gas container on your jet.



My idea is to connect a large amount of first lvl craft bots instead of a few last-lvl-ones. Connect all of them to the last chest where we will get crazy amount of fuel per second.




The smallest unit of this factory is pump connected to chest splitting resources into 2 craftbots connected with a chest in the end. This thing produces 1 fuel per second. Just connect more of these and fuel won't be a problem anymore



Blue chest splits all produced oil, the red one gets all produced fuel in it. If red chest is not the last output fill it up with anything except oil and fuel in order to use it as a filter. I prefer cardboard. You don't need to fill every slot totally - just put 1 item in every slot.



Pump gets one oil unit per second. 2 craftbots produce 10 fuel per 10 seconds (2x5 per 10). This way pump works at it's maximum efficiency.



_________________________

So, the number of these units is up to you but if you want to fill your jet's gas containers in 2 minutes just multiply number of thrusters by 0,83, round the number up and you will get the number of fuel producing units you'll need.



After connecting everything up to the unique chest you are ready to go. Just turn on your pumps and choose fuel to be crafted in THE LOOP MODE.






This is an example of my fuel producing factory which produces 5 fuel per second. I decided to get everything under the ground.








After connecting everything up it will be really hard for Scrap Mechanic to calculate physics behind your build. This won't really cause your game to lag unless you add something to it. That means that you won't be able to build anything on top of it, so avoid connections between your base and fuel factory - fuel factory has to be separted with everything else.



ATTENTION! Wrong explotation conditions of this factory may cause your world to die, read carefuly. There is a chance that your factory will overflow. When your final output chest will be filled entirely fuel will go inside blue chests of factory's main units. Afterwards you will have exactly 600 seconds until the start of apocalypse. Scrap mechanic will start to delete fuel by itself when the FINAL overflow will be reached which will cause game to lag as hell. It will be pretty hard to stop it with 1 fps or something.



How to avoid that scenario?



1 Turn of your factory before your chest is filled up. Unfortunantly, you will have to turn on crafting again everytime you'll visit it.



2 Check the number of fuel inside your blue chest using any bot bomb crafting recipe. If you will see "*" instead of any number standing for fuel, then, it will mean that you have to clear your chests immidiately. And destroy your fuel by throwing it in the void.



3 Have as many empry chests as possible in order to change them before flying away from your gas station.



4 You can try to burn all your fuel by engines. You just have to get 5 fuel per second consumption rates. I don't know if it's even possible ;-; But theoretically - yes. To burn 5 fuel per second with thrusters you will need 25 of them...



5 Tell me if you have any better idea

The main objective of this guide is not to build the best aircraft in the game. Author just really like jets and so decided to create this guide in order to teach you something new. I really hope that this guide will inspire you for something and you will spend in this game a little bit more time.



Feel free to contact me in case of errores found or if you have any questions. I translated this guide by myself, so tell me if something isn't right.



Web resources used:

MP3 - GIF conventer https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif

Tables Generator https://www.tablesgenerator.com/html_tables#

Graphs Creator https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/

Scrap Mechanic Wikipedia https://scrapmechanic.fandom.com/wiki/Scrap_Mechanic_Wiki


Aircrafts designed by following this guide's steps

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2753845846

- That one from the beginning


https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2753846458

- Minimal Setup

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2753846709

- Example of Diagonal Thrust using previous model

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2753846949

- Maximal Setup



This guide was brough to you by PomidoroV corporation