Hovercraft and You

Extensive guide on creating stable hovercraft in a multitude of ways for a plethora of uses. For beginners to advanced players. Learn how to make better airships, helicopters, spacecraft, and more!
IMPORTANT! This guide is unfinished, and published only as a piece of From the Depths history. To replace the content of this guide, I had created the video "Hovercraft and You" on YouTube.com.

Introduction to Hovering

The Term "Hovercraft"

The term "hovercraft" encompasses a small family of craft - anything that maintains altitude primarily with vertical thrusters, rather than lateral thrusters(planes and thrustercraft).
-Helicopters
-Multicopters
-Some Spacecraft
-Hoverships
-Hovertanks
-Basically anything that can maintain an altitude without velocity

In This Guide

In this guide we will be going over how to create stable hovercraft with multiple methods and levels of complexity. Here, you can familiarize yourself with several ways of expanding your From The Depths repertoire.

Do Balloons Count? - A small discussion on craft utilizing Balloon Deployers.

Your First Hovercraft - Covers the most simple hovercraft you can make using Jet Stabilizers, ACBs, and Helicopter Rotors. For FTD beginners.

Basic AI Hovercraft - Introduces AI into the equation, allowing more options. For intermediate players.

Getting to Know PIDs - How to grant your craft the most stable possible hover/flight using PIDs(General Purpose and AI). For those wanting a little more.

Variable Altitude and Auto-stabilize - Adding the bility to manually and automatically change PID settings. Useful for PvP-craft.

Examples

Flying Hippo. Uses Heliblades, ACBs, and AI.

Ryu. Uses PIDs and AI.

Quelaa. Uses PIDs and AI.

Bioshock Airship and Troop Transport. Uses Variable Altitude PIDs.

Moss Pi. Uses Variable Altitude PIDs with automatic correction.

Dendrobat. Uses Variable Pitch and Roll PIDs and auto-stabilization ACBs.

Do Balloons Count?

Do they? I'll touch on this briefly. Ballooncraft aren't true hovercraft, but function essentially in the same way, though with much more fragility. A major benefit to ballooncraft is that it is easy to set up manually, with ACBs(Automated Control Blocks), or with Water Start AI Card. A ballooncraft can literally be as easy as pushing a button. In this guide, we are focusing our attention to thruster-controlled hovercraft. As such, ballooncraft aren't going to be covered.


That's about all the screenspace here I'll allocate to balloons. Now, let's get to hovering!

Your First Hovercraft

For the folks just starting to play From The Depths, this section is for you. For everyone else, feel free to skip ahead to the next section.

For the sake of example and for the rest of this guide, we will be using a simple 7x7 platform made of wood blocks to create our hovercraft. To ensure our center of mass stays low, we'll put a lead block on the bottom of our platform. Remember to press CAPSLOCK to freeze your vehicle while in Build Mode.

Keep in mind the arrow on the cursor block shows you where the front of the vehicle points.

Making Your First Hovercraft

Now we add the Jet Stabilizers. Jet Stabilizers automatically adjust to changes in your vehicle's pitch, roll, and yaw. Keep in mind that for Jet Stabilizers to work, they require engine power.

To make our craft achieve an altitude, we are going to place a Dedicated Heliblade Spinner. The orientation of the blades don't matter, so don't be afraid to use Mirror Mode. Although Heliblades may use engine power(Motor Drive) to boost the amount of lift they produce, they do not require any engine power to produce a small amount of lift.


Now that we have our control components, we need to make them work. First, let's use an ACB(Automated Control Block) to tell the Heliblades to maintain a target altitude. Let's try 50m. Place an ACB, then press Q to modify its settings. It should look something like this:

Inputs	Affected	Affect
...altitude less than 50	Spin Blocks	Insta-spin

To get our Jet Stabilizers working properly, we need to add engine power. We don't need very much engine power though. Start by placing a Fuel Engine Generator and attaching a Cylinder to the front of it. Check if the Engine output(front of block) is properly connected to the Cylinder input(bottom of block).
You should now have 10 total power. Add a Fuel Tank anywhere on your craft. You should now have working Jet Stabilizers and a Heliblade. Your craft should look like this:
For most stable flight, make sure your center of gravity is in the center of your craft. if you cannot see it, press P in build mode. You can adjust where it is by moving Lead or Metal blocks around.

Weaponizing Your First Hovercraft

What good is having a vehicle in FTD if you don't add a bit of dakka? Well let's keep it to basics and just put a Simple Weapon, some more control, and of course a Chair.

We can start by putting control thrusters on our new vehicle. You will need some for Yaw and Throttle, since we want to be able to turn and move forward. We don't want too much throttle, since we have such a small craft, so I used Ion Thrusters. On the bottom of your craft, place 2 on either side, then 1 on the back. They should all be facing away from the craft.
Important note: all Yaw and Pitch thrusters in the back of a vehicle must be set to Thruster Reverse. To do this, select the side thrusters in the back and press Q on them; this should bring up the Block Settings Menu. At the top left you should be able to select "Thurster Reverse". Do that for both rear Yaw thrusters and we should be all good!
"But Papa Spud! How are we going to use our thrusters?" Well, let's make a controller! I decided to go low and build downwards. From the bottom of your craft, place 4 blocks vertically in a line, then 2 blocks outwards from the bottom block. This should form and "L" shape. On the hook of the "L", you can add a chair and a vehicle controller so that we can control our craft.

All you need to control your vehicle now is just a Vehicle Controller and a Chair to sit on.

Basic AI Hovercraft

For any AI-controlled hovercraft of any type, DO NOT USE THE AERIAL AI CARD. The Aerial AI Card will use pitch to achieve an altitude, causing your craft to misbehave. Instead, I recommend using the Naval AI Card, which should be fine for most uses.

Vertical-Propeller Craft

Thruster-Only Craft

Getting to Know PIDs

Variable Altitude and Auto-stabilizing

[m-a-t-s]

omg thank you so much i CANT do hovercraft and this helped thanks man

[Iron Trident]

Seems to have gained popularity though.

[spudcubs]

Lol no this was an unfinished tutorial I ended up making into a video

[Iron Trident]

Hey its you. The youtuber man. And this tutorial will help those with limited hovercraft knowledge.