Seems way too high, making this vehicle a much worse option compared to the other aircraft mods. I was using nuclear fuel, and couldn't even maintain liftoff speed while turning. Should probably decrease the requirement?

there's a setting for it :)
i know it's very high, but at the same time there's a lot of stuff that it can scale from which results in being able to lift off after like 5 meters in desert in late game if it was lower :D
i see that i forgot to add screenshots of the settings, gonna change that :)

Even if there's a setting for it, shouldn't the default setting reflect the intended functionality? Unless it is intentional for it to be arbitrarily difficult to maintain liftoff speed. Because as I said, not only am I unable to get it off the ground without equipment or nuclear fuel (both of which are mid to late game), but unless you concrete the world, it also touches down constantly whenever you try turning, even with equipment and nuclear fuel, since the mere act of turning drops the speed below the threshold.

There's just something about the acceleration, like on flat unpaved ground, with just nuclear fuel, it takes at least 10 seconds to even BEGIN taking off, and you can't turn for a few seconds even after that, because you'll lose speed and touch the ground again. Then with speed equipment, at the default grid size of 6x6, I was able to get +100% speed movement bonus, on top of the +250% acceleration from the nuclear fuel, and it STILL takes a good 5-6 seconds to even BEGIN taking off, and then a bit afterwards to start turning without touching down again. It doesn't feel good to drive.

EDIT: My specific test: length 100 tiles of Refined Concrete (+150% walking speed bonus), speed equipment (+100% movement speed bonus total), AND nuclear fuel (+250% acceleration), and it was just about able to lift off before reaching the end of this 100 tile "runway". And of course, still had the sheer drops in altitude while turning.

I don't see what other "stuff" you can stack on top of this to make it liftoff any earlier, unless there's some kind of technology or something else that I'm missing?

Side note, the recipe is also missing locale data; it shows up as "recipe-name.raven2" in both the crafting menu and Factoripedia. Also, the entity data for the raven's shadow should probably not appear in the Factoripedia? I believe there should be a "hidden_in_factoriopedia" attribute you can add to remove the shadow from the Factoripedia.

If it touches down while turning and holding the acceleration key, that's a bug, but I'll reconsider the liftoff setting
The other stuff I was referring to was increasing the quality of the plane, fuel and equipment

Ahh, I was testing with mostly vanilla, so Quality mod wouldn't come into play.

The issue with turning is that vehicle speed drops while turning, and if the speed drops low enough to fall below the liftoff threshold, then the vehicle lands on the ground, and won't take off again until you stop turning. This happened because it was so difficult to achieve liftoff speed in the first place, and I was only barely above the threshold while flying in a straight line. Maybe I was doing something wrong, I dunno.

if space age is disabled, the equipment grid is bigger and the base power is higher (by the default settings that get applied when you first launch the mod)...... but maybe not high enough

I think from my testing, the liftoff requirement was somewhere above 150km/h? At default settings, no space age or quality, using solid fuel and no equipment, basic terrain (no concrete) it was basically impossible to achieve even half that speed (after about 10 seconds of holding forwards, I got to around 78km/h, rising at 0.1km/h per second or less)

oh yeah solid fuel and no equipment is not supposed to get you off the ground imo

Same conditions, this time using rocket fuel, after 15 seconds of holding forwards, capped at about 110km/h, still not achieving liftoff speed. If rocket fuel can get a rocket into space, I can't see how it fails to get Raven off the ground

EDIT: It's fine if this mod is trying to go hard-mode, realistic physics or whatever, but if it requires so much effort just to get this aircraft off the ground, then is it even worth using? Also requiring the use of exoskeleton LEGS to get an AIRcraft to fly... how realistic lol

by my testing, rocket fuel and 3 exoskeletons (and having charged batteries!) gets you off the ground within 4 seconds

using the default settings of without space age (500 base power, 6x6 equipment grid)

with nuclear fuel and the same conditions, you can even lift off on dirt or within 3 seconds on refined concrete

if you can reproduce these results (just so that we're on the same page), just suggest what default settings you find fair and i'll update it

I feel like you shouldn't rely on equipment to make the vehicle usable, or to enable what I would assume to be its primary feature, flight (especially when the equipment in question is multiple pairs of legs... being used to make a plane fly ).

Flying should just be something it can do naturally, and any bonuses from equipment should just make it faster. It also means that the equipment grid can't be used for anything but legs (without changing the defaults), so why even have a grid at that point?

You need legs in the grid to make it fly, yet you can't use any other equipments if you do that. No shields, no lasers, nothing. At that point, you could just not have a grid, and lower the threshold so it flies with rocket fuel normally, and achieve the same result.

But maybe that's just me. Also sorry if my critiques came off as harsh, or offensive, since I realize they might sound that way.

well the equipment is used to craft the vehicle, so it's not unreasonable to assume you have enough of these.
the exoskeletons give you another resource to micromanage (electricity) and having to consider survivability of the squishy airplanes using shields vs speed and liftoff speed
i also find it weird that factorio ended up with exoskeletons boosting vehicles without any modding api feature allowing a way to finetune this, i ended up thinking of exoskeletons like more of a generic motor device or tuning kit that can be applied to any kind of engine.
i know the requirements are pretty hardcore, my mods are usually balanced on the more difficult side so using mods won't feel like cheating.
maybe the way i reduced friction on higher speeds also adds a difficulty multiplier on the liftoff requirements

i also find it weird that factorio ended up with exoskeletons boosting vehicles without any modding api feature allowing a way to finetune this

It's funny that you mention this, because that was one of the few things I wanted to fix from the other vehicle grid mods (back in 1.0/1.1), and the only reason I made my own vehicle equipment mod.

well the equipment is used to craft the vehicle, so it's not unreasonable to assume you have enough of these

Funnily enough, I was actually planning on replacing that requirement with my mod, since I have my own version of the exoskeleton legs, unique to vehicles (and prevents legs from being used in vehicles).

the exoskeletons give you another resource to micromanage (electricity) and having to consider survivability...

This part feels like one of those classical fake choices.. like you could do this suboptimal thing if you really wanted, or you could just do what is clearly intended, and get a much better result. In practice, you probably wouldn't want to put shields or lasers on an aircraft that seems to be meant more for exploration, but it still just feels really weird that it's an absolute requirement that the vehicle will not fly without equipment.

(also figured something out about the turning thing; you technically don't land while turning, but your speed drops to exactly the liftoff threshold while turning, which drops your altitude to just above the ground)

the reason it has an equipment grid is to preempt equipment grid adding mods from making the airplane overpowered. (and i kinda like having equipment grids on my vehicles)

to be clear, i'm not trying to convince you. i'm just explaining all the reasons i had for balancing it the way it is.
i think i'll reduce the liftoff requirement to 140 or halve the scripted vehicle friction

seems like there is no scripted ground vehicle friction... maybe i removed that at some point (probably for the same reasons i just wanted to nerf it.. because it makes weak airplanes even harder to get off the ground)

-> This part feels like one of those classical fake choices..
it's more of a decision of it charging faster vs survivability and i think after you've used the raven for a while you'll appreciate the shield

it's not much but i reduced the ground friction by 20% in the latest version

the reason it has an equipment grid is to preempt equipment grid adding mods from making the airplane overpowered

This feels rather targeted, considering (*checks notes*) mine are basically the only mods that add grids to modded vehicles lol.

Tbh, the balancing doesn't seem to be specifically "difficult", it just seems to be "you do it this way, or you don't do it at all", especially considering the payoff (when you can actually get it off the ground) seems to be quite massive. To me, it just feel counter-intuitive that it has to be done this way.

If it were possible, I would find a way to remove solid fuel from being used in the vehicle at all (I feel like it should be possible, though maybe it might break more things for other mods) since you can't fly with it, then lower the liftoff requirement to maybe 90-100km/h (so rocket fuel can be used to make it fly without the need for equipment) and simultaneously lower the speed boost you get from being in the air to counter-balance how easy it is to achieve flight.

THEN players can add equipment to make it go faster or whatever. That would probably be the ideal balance.

Alternatively, create your own fuel that works specifically with Raven (with two tiers if you want to mimic rocket/nuclear fuel), with similar changes as previously mentioned, to eliminate the need for legs in the equipment grid to achieve liftoff.

I don't envision either scenario happening though, since you seem to be quite ingrained with the current level of balance, and it would probably require a lot of testing and fine-tuning to change that. I'll check out how the latest version feels

and reduced the default liftoff speed to 140 in the new newest version... but that will only apply to new installs and people who reset their settings (after they load their savegame!)

banning solid fuel from this would be a highly invasive change that would touch any entity that uses a burner ... or it will be like a black hole for solid fuel, or it'd be immediately putting the solid fuel back into your pockets

banning solid fuel from this would be a highly invasive change that would touch any entity that uses a burner ...

I had a feeling it might be like that, with all entities are coded to use "fuel" in some generic way, and no way to only prevent it from certain entities. But that's why I proposed the alternative, though as mentioned, that one would likely involve more work.

rocket fuel isn't exactly an end game item, i think it only requires 200 blue science fairly early. i feel like it's a pretty low quality item that's barely above coal
is it better now? note that the new default liftoff speed setting won't apply to save games that had the mod before and needs to be reset for every savegame

I mean, you say that rocket fuel is a "low quality item", but it's literally the same type of fuel that gets rockets into space. If it can get an entire space platform into orbit, then why should it not be able to get the raven off the ground?

If you want to look at it from a more game-ified perspective, then the Raven itself should be considered a "low quality item", because it only requires blue science (in vanilla). That line between game balance and realism is a shaky one. (EDIT: Rocket fuel tech requires 300 blue science at 45s per cycle; Raven tech requires 100 blue science at 30s per cycle; in terms of raw science, rocket fuel requires more. Raven is just higher up in the blue science tier, but it's still the same level as rocket fuel.)

If the Raven is supposed to be some super-futuristic vehicle that can't use rocket fuel to fly, then it really should have some kind of vehicle-specific fuel to reflect this, or should be locked to a higher level of science, to show that it isn't a machine from the oil-refining era.

As for how it feels in the new update... well, I guess it's an improvement, but it hardly feels noticeable to me. I think the required changes to make it feel good and balanced (to me) would probably be too large and sweeping for you to ever consider making them. As it is, I probably won't ever be including this mod in my usual modlist... there's just better feeling alternatives.

why don't you consider changing the settings though? every aspect of the power of the airplane can be customized: vehicle grid, engine power and liftoff speed
sorry if i disappointing you.... i just find airplanes incredibly strong in this game, especially since you can fly up to 500 km/h and drop atomic bombs on biter nests without them being able to touch you

i changed the default liftoff speed to be 100

especially since you can fly up to 500 km/h

This is part of the issue though... to me, it just feels weird that a plane can't fly without putting legs in it first, and then once you do, it zooms off at the speed of light. The requirement for flight should be low, and the boost gained from achieving flight shouldn't be as high.

You don't have to change the mod to cater to me; even if I paid to support you, I don't actually expect anything in return. It was just a friendly tip. If you think the balance is fine where it is, then that's fine; it's ultimately up to you, it's your decision.

People have suggested plenty of changes to me for my mods, and while I mostly try to change things to make them work better for others, sometimes it's just not possible to please everyone.

sorry if i disappointing you....

Please don't feel too bad about this. Honestly, I'm sure most of this isn't even your fault, since a lot of this would come from the original mod author.

For me, at the default base power of 500, and the new default liftoff speed of 100, it felt a lot better.

why don't you consider changing the settings

The default settings are how most people are going to be experience your mod for the first time, and if it leaves a bad first impression... well, it would be more like my reaction. It's easier to just use a different mod, than to try and tweak settings for something that didn't feel good to use in the first place.

-> Please don't feel too bad about this. Honestly, I'm sure most of this isn't even your fault, since a lot of this would come from the original mod author.
i spent a lot of time tuning especially these aspects

maybe like this?
note that default liftoff speed has been increased to 115 now, so gotta reset the setting on each savegame

Ooh, yeah, that is feeling really good now!

imo it became too easy to lift off on dirt, i increased the ground friction multiplier and reduced the liftoff speed to 105 in return
the difference of dirt vs concrete is still a bit small for my taste though

The airplane now has the same power in flying mode as on the ground (used to be 1.764x)
When approaching liftoff speed, reduces ground friction exponentially (starts to really take effect at 70-80% liftoff speed)

I think these two changes alone made the biggest impact for me; anything from 100 to 130 liftoff speed should probably still feel pretty good, and as long as the actual flying speed doesn't get too out of control, it should still be pretty balanced, I think?

alright i'm glad we settled on something :)

i think i might rework the whole acceleration curve and make it fully scripted though. it's weird that the plane accelerates like a drag car from a still stand. (0-40 in the blink of an eye)
the acceleration should be very even due to it accelerating with the turbines.
but not today, it's getting very late

okay, NOW it's perfect
the only thing that's missing now is simulating how the turbines spin up.. but that would be ridiculous..., right? (maybe tomorrow xD)

added that too :)