Desperate for any and all stabilization help

[Com_turtle]

I've lost count of the number of tutorials I have watched and followed 1 to 1 now. Probably everything from two or more years ago, up to as new as a week ago, from steam forums to youtube and beyond. Everything I make from ships to airships to helicopters and satellites will all violently or constantly shake and rock around on pitch, roll, or both at the same time. I had tried everything including ripping out and trying to use the AI from campaign blueprints, to having no AI at all.

I've only successfully stabilized one airship I made and I have no idea how that happened, as even copying its AI and PID's does not replicate the results, but even then the airship will nosedive for no apparent reason when in combat sometimes.

Seriously what the hell am I doing wrong here? I'm at a loss.

[budisourdog]

Consider basic physics of your vehicle. Go wide and long, not tall. Keep center of mass down, planes need lift to roughly equal that center of mass. Consider having more propulsion, side, and vertical thrusters or air propellers and spreading them out along the length of the vehicle instead of clusters.
I don't use and have never touched PIDs, they really aren't necessary and altering the ways in which the AI controls your vehicle that then results in bad controls is a circular problem. Default hover AI is very stable and adaptable with minimal tweaking of allowed altitudes for airplanes, airships, boats and submarines.

[Xeno42]

make sure to use the PID settings. for most ships i usually set the derivative to at least 5 on the pitch roll and yaw

[The man, the myth, the leg]

there are multiple ways you can fix vehciles being to sensitive and fishtailing
you yould add more weight, especially as far to the edges as possible. airsships especially need some mass to not just fishtail
you could also just reduce the power output/response on your control surfaces/thrusters

[Com_turtle]

So after some time and testing, I can get ships stable consistently, I have one stable jet based airship but it likes to fly in circles perpetually, hydrofoils always nosedive into the water immediately, and planes and helis I cannot get stable for the life of me, they always flail around or fly at a 45 degree angle. PIDs seem critical in order for the AI to be able to actually move (the ai by itself only seems to capsize ships when trying to turn, and crash everything else), but also changing those PID settings in any way makes them not work at all.

tried lowering center of mass, but even going as far as having massive lead weights extending like a pillar out the bottom of the ship that are also heavy enough to sink it like a rock, does not seem to improve stability at all. anything lighter then also also does not seem to have any effect

[benjaminasandwich2]

Make sure your craft has enough hydrofoils set only to always provide lift, a major problem is when your controls decide to not work because the craft is too high up/ not at the right attitude and so your controls lock up.