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Flying Blocks are blocks that are used for aerial movement, and consist of propellers, wings and spoilers, hover pads and adjustment thrusters, and also boosters with related fuel tanks extensions.
Flying blocks are more sensitive to excess weight than wheel blocks and must require careful placement for maximum effectiveness.
Blocks subtypes[]
Propellers[]
Propellers are effectively 1-axis adjustment thrusters with a spool-up and wind-down periods. They also can act similarly to boosters and can be activated selectively with a special keystroke, although they can still be controlled with other keys if configured to do so.
Helicopter rotors from Hawkeye and Better Future as well as the Linear Motion Engines have adjustable thrust gauges, that allow for building of helicopters with passive lift. However, the constant lift introduces its own challenges with controls, and thus require designs forged around them.
While all propellers can be placed in reverse-thrust orientation and will perform adequately, most will be less effective.
None of the propellers have individual tilting (vectoring) or passive rotational power, thus making proper conventional 2-rotor helicopters impossible in the game. Multiple rotors behave like adjustment thrusters and turn/tilt the tech through their output adjustment (like copter drones).
Wings[]
Wings, aerofoils and rudders keep already moving vehicles in the air. All of them require tech to move at high speed to be effective.
Spoilers also belong in this category. They differ from regular wings in that they do not have flaps on them and will not respond to controls. They produce negative lift that prevents fast land vehicles from flipping over.
All blocks of this type are all mutually exchangeable, as their function will depend on the orientation (wings will act as as spoilers when upside down and vice versa).
Airbrakes[]
Airbrakes activate in the absence of aircraft movement input, reducing airspeed in its respective orientation depending on aircraft movement.
Hover pads[]
Hover pads are a type of passive thruster that excel in adding lift through brute power at the cost of limited hovering height. All hover pads have some degree of vectoring, although they generally slack at that and require additional adjustment thrusters. Better Future manufactures Hover Flippers, which are essentially hover pads with integrated adjustment thrusters.
Hover pads will push against terrain even when placed sideways and will not push anything else.
By default Hovers float at 50% of their power, which can be altered either actively through lift movement keys or passively through Hover Power Controller. Enabling vertical thrust gauge either through rotors or Linear Motion Engine provides an alternative quick method of adjusting passive hovering height relative to Power Controller's setting.
Hovers' performance is heavily depended on tech's weight and their balance. Heavy techs will not fly as fast or high without some assistance from other means of propulsion. Properly balanced tech will move equally fast in all directions. However, some passive tilt will increase the top cruising speed in a given direction at the cost of reverse movement (braking will remain effective), yet it also might make tech harder to control.
Hover Pads also open strategies for techs named "Hoverbugs". Such techs have removed hovering height of hover pads by putting wheels under them (such as inverted GSO Hub Wheels), essentially converting them into always-on thrusters and replacing Anti-Gravity Engines and rotor blades. However, such setups can be even more challenging to control without Gyros, Stabilising Computer, and proper weight and thrust balancing. Beyond that, they can handle similar either to regular hovercrafts (on lower side) or Anti-Gravity techs (on higher side).
Adjustment thrusters[]
Adjustment thrusters are specialized maneuvering blocks responding to regular input commands with their nozzles. They provide extra force and are best used to improve a tech's agility, especially when a tech would not be responsive without them, though this is mostly exclusive to hovercrafts and helicopters.
Boosters[]
Boosters provide additional extra velocity while consuming fuel from a tech's fuel tanks. They are independent from the main movement controls and only can be activated selectively with a special keystroke. This makes them extra-useful for Anti-Gravity techs by allowing for powerful main thrust that will not interfere with maneuvering.
All boosters are considered volatile blocks and will explode violently when destroyed.
Fuel Tanks[]
Fuel tanks are blocks that expand the tech's fuel capacity, which in turn serves useful in augmenting boosters and allows them to sustain usage over longer periods. All of a tech's mounted fuel tanks refill collectively, and their individual regeneration rates stack. Fuel regeneration will only proceed when the tech's tanks are not full.
Fuel tanks start out full, and are only emptied through boosting. All fuel tanks are mounted with visible yellow lights to indicate the amount of fuel they have, usually divided into three segments. All lights align with each other for every fuel tank on the same tech.
Fuel tanks are considered volatile blocks and will explode violently when destroyed regardless of how much fuel was inside them.
Anti-Gravity Engines[]
Anti-Gravity Engines reduce the effect of gravity on blocks within their AoE in exchange for a passive power drain. It makes dedicated Anti-Gravs extra-vulnerable if their main means of defense are shields and not passive armoring.
Anti-Gravity techs will have the most complex control scheme, utilizing both 3 axis of rotation and 3 axis of movement. They can be quite challenging to control and park due to increased rolling and tilting, and overall drifting in additional dimension, that neither Stabilising Computer nor Sky Anchor can handle. At the same time Active Gyros become less useful, since in Zero-G they start imparting tremors to the techs and/or disable axis of freedom. However, Passive All Axis Gyro become immensely helpful in stabilizing rotations.
Anti-Gravity Techs are especially demanding for mass and thrust balancing.
Notes[]
- AI-Controlled techs are unable to use boosters.
- The GeoCorp Eagle Heavy Booster is both considered a Fuel Tank and a Booster.
- Some blocks outside of this category synergize rather well with them:
- The GSO Fuel Gauge adds a fuel display to the HUD, allowing the user to monitor fuel levels even if all their tanks are concealed within the tech.
- Batteries are required to store electricity for powering AGEs.
- Gyroscopes can help to stabilize aerial techs.
- The Block Controller Switch can be used to deactivate power blocks in order to reduce their energy drain if they are not required, such as AGEs.
- The Hover Power Controller regulates default hovering height. This is most useful for hoverbugs, as it can be difficult trying to regulate lift otherwise.
- All Control Blocks have internal fuel tanks with baseline refill rates.
- The exception is the Reticule Research Cab, which was, at one point, bugged and has no data associated with it. If the tech does not have extra fuel tanks. it will be able to power boosters for extended periods. Adding the GSO Fuel Gauge will also cause it to display with all three bars filled.
Trivia[]
- Reticule Research does not manufacture flight blocks as of 1.4.7.
See also[]
- Fliers - quick guide on flying techs construction.
- Hovercraft
- Wheel Blocks - The other primary category of blocks supporting movement.
