What do Air Intakes do?

[Breakleg Bonesnapper]

is it something related to the engines? Why would I want air intakes on my aeroplanes?

[Melfice]

Probably the jet engines.
But you can absolutely go crazy and make them rocket planes.
The Germans had some succes with that. Of course, they defined what succes meant, but... y'know.

[El Rushbo]

You could use the tiny jet engine like I have on the back of this plane.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=554222236
Or the big mothers like what are on this one.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=591965061
Or something in between, it's up to you.

[Zyme]

Depends what size of a plane. Whiplash is pretty decent. And you can use the big airline engine if you are building a giant plane.

[Frogurt]

I generally prefer to use multiple smaller engines than maybe a giant engine, but at the end of the day it's up to you.

[dIESEL]

you can use any jet engine, but don't foget about air intake

[Just Jim]

If it's just an explorer jet, and not an SSTO, I prefer one, or maybe two, whiplash engines. But it depends on what you're using the plane for. If it's a big mk3 cargo plane, obviously you'll need either bigger engines, or more, or both.

[[COxMA] Altripp]

Depends on basically 3 things: How big your plane is, how high you want to fly it and how fast you want it to go. I follow, basically, these guidelines:

Use the J-20 "Juno" Basic Jet Engine for small sized, slow and low altidude flight
Use the J-33 "Wheesley" Basic Jet Engine for small sized, medium speed and low altitude flight OR for medium sized, low speed and low altitude flight
Use the J-404 "Panther" Afterburning Turbofan for small or medium sized, high speed and low altitude flight. You can also use it for high altitude, but it's not the best engine for that.
Use the J-X4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine for small or medium sized, high speed and high altitude flight
Use the J-90 "Goliath" Turbofan Engine for big sized, low speed and low altitude flight
Use the CR-7 R.A.P.I.E.R. Engine for space planes.

If you want a big plane fliyng high or fast (or both), you are gonna have to spam lots of engines. I think the RAPIER works OK for these, but i don't like big planes for high altitude/speed flight, so i don't even use it that much for this purpose

Edit: If someone disagrees with my guidelines please let me know, i'm no master at plane building and always could use learning more about that

[AlexMBrennan]

For the record, it might help people reading these threads at a later time if you didn't completley change the original post and topic days later.

If you have two distinct questions, you can make two posts. You do not have to replace your first post.

What do Air Intakes do?
is it something related to the engines? Why would I want air intakes on my aeroplanes?

Try building a plane without air intakes and observe the result.

[[COxMA] Altripp]

You should just create a new thread, or post a comment asking other questions you have... completly changing your post confuses everyone reading who hasn't read the original post, and you are less likely to get help that way.

And answering your new question, jet engines requires atmospheric oxygen to work. They get that through the air intakes. They are required for jet engines to work.

[JBrown247]

intake air