Kerbals on an external seat have their stock drag calculations applied

[ezsnackeur]

As per title, i dont know if this is the correct repo to report this but idk where else it should be reported.
All the kerbals sitting on a external seat have their stock drag applied making it impossible to build an efficient or fast plane with a custom/open cockpit.
even if the seat is shielded from the airflow or clipped into something else the drag is always present.
To make sure this was the case i used the Engines GUI app, when thurst/drag ratio there is stated as >1 the craft should obviously keep accelerating if vertical speed is 0. but thats not the case when you have an external seat, the drag produced from it is not included in those calculations.
If the same plane is flown with the seat being empty then it behaves as expected with no additional drag. The cause for the drag is the kerbal itself

[siimav]

Is there even any difference for kerbal terminal velocity for stock vs FAR?

[ezsnackeur]

Yes, massive, but also the drag is higher at any speed with stock drag

[ezsnackeur]

Correction i had misread what you said there, FAR doesnt affect kerbals at all, nor does it affect their personal chute, they all rely on stock aero calculations. So no there's no difference between FAR and no FAR for the terminal velocity of a Kerbal

[siimav]

Not sure there's anything to do here until FAR adds support for kerbals. I guess one could try to fudge the kerbal drag cubes or aerodynamic constants until they resemble something more sane. Unlikely to help with command seats though if some part should partially occlude them.

[ezsnackeur]

the ideal solution would be a workaround that only affects or disables the kerbal's aero behavior while they are sit in the Command seat. That way it wouldnt affect the normal gameplay loop

[siimav]

Then the next day I will start seeing kerbals attached to the front of the plane nosecone. No thanks!

[ezsnackeur]

Not really? Far and stock aeros dont interact so it wouldnt affect the rest of the plane

[siimav]

Indeed it wouldn't. But you're suggesting we go from too draggy kerbals to zero drag kerbals. I'm confident you cavemen will come up with stupid ways to minimize the drag from the rest of the plane by placing those 0 drag kerbals into places that make no sense.

[ezsnackeur]

The external command seat is unlocked with interplanetary heatshields IIRC, its completely irrelevant to any speedrun, especially for planes applications, the reason it would be nice to have it fixed is to make recreations that make sense of open cockpit airplanes, in particular i found out the bug while recreating the Supermarine SB6b

Most normal people never use the command seat ever in the whole run, and those that do use it for rovers on the moon, so no atmosphere there :v

[siimav]

Stumbled on this by accident: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealismOverhaul/blob/master/Source/ModuleEVADrag.cs
I wonder if this is what makes kerbals 🐉gy on their lawn chairs.