Dear Stormworkers,
Many of you have been asking for better rotor mechanics with rotor drag, more compact rotor assemblies, variable blade length, and torque pass-through to be able to build coaxial rotors. Many of you have even been creating incredible coaxial helicopters despite needing awkward pipes feeding the upper rotors.
We are currently working on all of these new features, and are sharing early versions of the new advanced rotors on experimental branch.
Existing helicopters and the existing rotors will continue to work in the same way as before.
The new, advanced rotors create rotary drag, causing a yaw force. The rotors spinning drag on the air as they rotate. This drag depends on the size of the rotor, and the angle at which it is slicing through the air. Without a tail or other force to counteract this drag, the helicopter would go into a spin. Tail rotors will now be mechanically essential to conventional helicopter designs to balance this force, and damaging a tail rotor will cause the helicopter to enter a spin in a similar way to a real helicopter.
The new rotors remove the blocks at their base, instead connecting the rotor axis directly to a torque pipe. This gives more power and flexibility to vehicle designers, reclaiming vital blocks at a critical area of the helicopter. This will make it easier to fit in other components and produce more compact helicopter designs.
Tweaking the size of your rotors is frequently requested, and an important feature for getting the right scale and feel for your rotors. Blades will be able to tweak their scale in a similar way to changing the size of wheels, where you can adjust the size, perhaps +/- 20% per rotor type.
Coaxial rotors will now be possible by simply stacking rotors on top of each other. Power can be passed through lower rotors to the upper ones, and the lack of block base and new meshes make these new rotors a lot more in-fitting and visually appropriate. Coaxial rotors can spin in opposite directions, creating drag that counteracts each other. They can be yawed by increasing the collective on one rotor set while decreasing on the other to imbalance the drag.
We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on the new advanced rotors! We will continue to test this new feature, as well as others on experimental and look forward to bringing it to the main branch of the game soon.
In case you missed it, a few weeks ago we announced that we are working with Microprose on the sequel to Carrier Command. If you are interested in game design and development, we have a series of posts discussing calling in fire support, the helm, remote vehicle control, inventory, manufacturing, logisitics, and more.
Meanwhile, we continue to work on modular engines, modular weapons, as well as a broad range of fixes and other improvements to the game.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers