Aeronautics

A flying base is a target. A flying base with guns is a fleet. Create Big Cannons puts real artillery on the deck, from a cast-iron field gun to a built-up steel monster, and Shield Generators puts something between you and the reply. Both run on the same Create rotation and redstone the rest of the ship already uses. Warning: Guns kick. A cannon firing off one side of a light airship moves the airship. Mount them near the centre of mass, fire in pairs, or enjoy the spin.

Cannons are cast, not crafted. The Basin Foundry Lid goes on a heated Basin and melts metal into molten Cast Iron, Bronze, Steel or Nethersteel. A Cannon Cast built up from Casting Sand and a cannon mould is the shape you pour it into. Fill the cast, wait for it to set, and break it open. A comparator on the cast reads 0 to 14 while it fills and 15 when it's done. What comes out is an unbored block, so the Cannon Drill comes next. It needs rotation, water, and a lathe turning the cannon at the same speed as the drill, and it eats more water the faster it runs. Cast Iron is the starter metal. Steel and Nethersteel cannons are built up in layers with the Cannon Builder and finished under a blasting fan, and they take far more powder before they burst.

Asks for: Basin Foundry Lid, Casting Sand

Before the artillery, there's the vegetable. The Mounted Potato Cannon is the handheld one bolted to the deck. It takes the same ammo, loads from hoppers and belts, and charges on rotation. Once charged, redstone fires it, and a held signal keeps firing. It kicks. A light ship with a cannon on one side will notice.

Asks for: Mounted Potato Cannon

The Shield Generator wraps a ship in a shell that stops anything moving faster than 0.35 blocks a tick. Shells, arrows and shot bounce off, and anything fast that's leaving gets reflected too. People walking through it are fine, and so is your own slow cargo. It burns Amethyst Shards, or takes FE instead at up to 2,000 FE a push, 20 FE per shard-tick. A redstone signal sets the shield heat from 0 to 100, and hotter is stronger. Big hits in one spot open a local breach for a moment, so a shield is a buffer, not a wall. Three shapes. A Convex Hull hugs the ship, a Metaball rounds it off, and a Ground Dome sits on the ground around a base at up to 50 blocks radius. The shell can stand up to 5 blocks off the hull. Bigger shields burn shards faster.

Asks for: Shield Generator

Everything in this chapter is about one thing. Building a ship that actually flies, and not falling out of it. A Simulated Contraption is a pile of blocks that has been handed over to the physics engine. It has mass, measured in kpg, and it obeys three forces. Weight pulls it down, Lift holds it up, Thrust shoves it around. Get lift and weight to agree and the ship hovers. Add thrust and it goes somewhere. You've already met the Physics Assembler and the Hot Air Burner on your starter ship. The quest paths below cover the hull, the lift, the engines, keeping it level, steering it, getting it somewhere useful, and arming it. Note: Nearly every block here has a Ponder. Hold W over the item in JEI or your inventory. They're short and they'll save you a crash or two.

Thrust is the push. Propellers make it from rotation, thrusters make it from fuel, and both of them push on the ship at the block where they sit. Where the push sits matters as much as how hard it pushes. Thrust below the centre of mass pitches the nose up, thrust on one side turns you, and thrust that isn't pointed straight through the centre of mass turns into a slow spin. The Contraption Diagram shows you exactly where every one of them is pushing.

A ship needs rotation on board, and a waterwheel doesn't travel well. The Portable Engine burns fuel and spins a shaft, in either direction, and it'll take fuel from hoppers and belts so you don't have to hand-feed it in flight. Drop a Blaze Cake in and it runs superheated for more power. The Stirling Engine from Create Propulsion is the other onboard option, and any Create Propulsion burner can heat it.

Asks for: Red Portable Engine

Lift is anything that pushes up. There are three ways to get it. Trap hot gas in a balloon, bolt on Levitite, use propellers to propel higher, or go fast enough that sails and wings start carrying you. A ship settles at the height where lift and weight are equal. Air gets thinner as you climb, so the same balloon lifts less up high, and that's what stops a balloon rising forever. Add lift to climb, cut it to sink.

Spin a Propeller and it pushes. Spin it the other way and it pulls. A wrench flips the direction without touching the gearing. The Wooden and Andesite versions are fixed, and the Smart Propeller pitches itself along one axis to try and face upward, which makes it the easy pick for a helicopter rotor. Each one costs 4 SU on the network. A propeller that's already moving through the air can't push as hard, so thrust falls off as you pick up speed, and it falls off again as the air thins with altitude. Goggles show the Thrust and Airflow of any propeller you look at.

Asks for: Andesite Propeller

Levitite is a crystal that refuses to fall. Enough of it on a ship and the ship floats with no balloon, no burner and no fuel. It can't climb on its own, and at low speed it drags hard against any movement, though the drag fades once you get going. If you've got Just Dire Things going, a Tier 2 Goo block turns lava into blend in two minutes flat. Pour the blend where you want the crystal and touch it with fire, a torch, a campfire, magma or a lit blaze burner. The reaction spreads through the whole pool and sets. Once placed its lift will be applied. This block can be picked up so move it as needed.

Asks for: Levitite Blend Bucket

The Propeller Bearing turns a structure into a propeller. It grabs the block in front of it, and anything with at least two sail-like blocks in it counts. More sails, more thrust for the same rotation, and a big four-blade windmill out of Sails will out-push a mini propeller several times over. It draws 2 SU. Reverse the input rotation or wrench it to reverse the thrust, and expect the same fall-off with airspeed and altitude as the small propellers.

Asks for: Propeller Bearing

A normal Propeller Bearing on top of a ship makes a helicopter that tips over. The Gyroscopic Propeller Bearing keeps its rotor pointing up no matter what the hull is doing underneath, which is the difference between a helicopter and a very expensive fan. Mount one upside down under a top-heavy build and it stabilizes the whole thing instead. A redstone signal resets the tilt to zero if the auto-levelling is fighting you. It needs a Gyroscopic Mechanism, which is covered in the Stability quest path.

Asks for: Gyroscopic Propeller Bearing

Envelope blocks are the skin of a balloon. Build an airtight shell out of them, point a burner into it, and every cubic metre of Hot Air inside lifts 1.5 kpg. The shell has to be sealed. Hot air fills it from the top down and leaks out of any gap, and any block sitting inside the shell steals volume. Shafts that need to pass through the wall get encased in envelope blocks to stay airtight. Right-click with dye to paint them. A good balloon is a big, empty, closed box with as few blocks inside as you can manage.

Asks for: White Envelope

Everything on a ship listens to redstone. Burners take an analog signal for how hot, thrusters take one for how hard, servos take one for how far. Controls are just ways to turn a hand on a wheel or a key on the keyboard into those signals. Start with a lever and a wheel. Graduate to a desk full of modules when the ship has more than three things to adjust.

A Mechanical Servo turns a redstone signal into an angle. Right-click to set its range, and a full signal rotates it to the end of that range, a weaker signal to somewhere in between. It finishes the move it's on before it starts the next one. The Stepper Servo steps instead. Set the angle per step, and each signal strength turns it that many steps. Signal on one side goes one way, the other side goes the other way, and both sides powered means hold still. Either one costs 4 SU per RPM while the input shaft turns. Rudders, elevators, aiming a propeller, opening a hangar door. Anything that needs to be at an angle rather than spinning.

Asks for: Mechanical Servo

Aeroworks gives you a proper cockpit with the Control Desk. It's a block of sockets, and every Control Module you mount in one becomes a real control with its own keybinds and redstone link frequencies. Right-click with an empty hand to sit at it, use keyboard and mouse to move the controls, and press Esc to let go. Each control transmits how far it's moved on one frequency, and the opposite direction on a second frequency. Desks that touch join into one deck that a single player runs together. Sneak and right-click a mounted control to configure it, and wrench it off when you change your mind. It keeps its settings. The standalone Joystick block is the same idea in a single block, with four axes and a spare button. Each Module can be installed separately and come with their own buttons as well. You can place multiple Desks side by side to extend the amount of controls you can assign to a single Desk. Clicking anywhere on the Desk allows you to interact with all controls via keybinds.

Asks for: Control Desk, Joystick

A Joystick gives two tilt axes. A Throttle Quadrant gives four levers side by side. Then there's the Yoke, the Wheel, the Pedal, the Lever, a single Button, a 2x2 Button Panel and a 3x3 Keypad. Smaller modules fit in larger sockets, and a few of the big ones carry a small socket of their own. Right-click that with a small module to stack a head on top, and it rides along with the control underneath while working like any other input.

Asks for: Joystick Module, Throttle Quadrant

On a Simulated Contraption, a Sail is a wing. Move it through the air and it makes lift at right angles to its surface, and the faster you go the more it makes. Enough sail and enough speed and a ship with no balloon at all leaves the ground. The Symmetric Sail is the other half. It makes no lift, only drag, and only when it's angled away from the direction of travel. That's a rudder, a tail fin or a stabilizer, depending on where you bolt it.

Asks for: Windmill Sail

The Hot Air Burner tops out at 500 hot air. The Steam Vent puts out up to 5,000 steam, which lifts exactly the same 1.5 kpg per cubic metre, so a vented balloon carries ten times the ship. The catch is the piping. A vent wants the same things a Steam Engine wants, heat under a boiler, water in it, and enough boiler space. Power it with redstone and it fills the balloon above it. The signal strength scales the output, and the panel on the vent sets the ceiling. Both burners and vents will hunt up to 80 blocks for a balloon to fill, and several can share one balloon. Click a vent with an Iron Sheet to change its metal.

Asks for: Steam Vent

Same blend, different flame. Put a Soul Campfire or Soul Torch next to the Levitite Blend instead of regular fire, or pour it over soul sand or soul soil that's burning, and it crystallizes pink instead of blue. It floats exactly the same. This one is purely for the ship that has everything.

A big cannon is a line of bored cannon blocks, a chamber at the back, a barrel in front, and a breech to load through. Blocks placed by hand don't join on their own. Weld them with the Cannon Welder, or better, build the gun once and move it whole with a contraption. The Cannon Mount holds the assembled gun and pitches it with rotation. The Yaw Controller under the mount turns it. Load a Powder Charge and a projectile through the breech, by hand with a Ram Head on a stick, or with the Cannon Loader, then give the mount a redstone pulse. Guns can be up to 64 blocks long. More powder, more range, until the barrel gives out. A cast iron gun with too many charges has a coin-flip chance of bursting, so learn its limit on the ground before you learn it at altitude.

Asks for: Cannon Mount, Yaw Controller

Solid Shot punches. AP Shot punches deeper. HE Shells blow up, Shrapnel sprays, Smoke Shells hide you, Fluid Shells dump whatever you filled them with, and a Bag of Grapeshot turns the gun into a very large shotgun. Shells need a fuze to go off. An Impact Fuze detonates on a hit about two times in three, an Inertia Fuze nine times in ten, and the delayed versions of each wait until the shell is inside something first. A Big Cartridge rolls powder and shell into one item for the Quick-Firing Breech, which is how a Mechanical Arm reloads a gun by itself. Keep a Gas Mask aboard if you're the one firing smoke.

Asks for: High Explosive (HE) Shell, Powder Charge

Before anything flies it has to hold together, and it has to be light enough to be worth lifting. Every block on a ship has a mass. Stone and metal are heavy, wood and wool are light, and a hull built out of the wrong stuff will need three times the lift. Press F3+H and the mass shows up in item tooltips, courtesy of Sable Mass View. This quest path is about glue, goggles, hull blocks and knowing what your ship weighs.

Honey Glue is Super Glue for ships. Click two corners and it glues the box between them. Ctrl+Scroll grows or shrinks the box, and holding Alt lets you drop a corner in mid-air. The difference from Super Glue is what it sticks to. Honey Glue only ever attaches to Simulated Contraptions, so a bearing or piston contraption passing by won't drag half your deck away. It will grab any Super Glue it overlaps, but Super Glue won't grab it back. Create Propulsion adds an Auto Glue item that draws one honey box over a whole connected structure in a single click. Handy on a big hull.

Asks for: Honey Glue

A Nameplate names the ship. Right-click to edit, dye to recolour, and wax it with honeycomb to lock the name. Every nameplate on the same contraption shares one name, and the Airship Station later in this chapter picks ships by that name, so name it early. A Handle is something to hold on to. Hold right-click to grab it and pull yourself along, hold it while sneaking to pull the ship instead, and scroll to change your distance. Grabbing one mid-fall also ends the fall without ending you.

Asks for: Iron Handle, White Nameplate

Copycats+ blocks take on the texture of whatever block you click them with, so a hull can look like oak, deepslate or brass while weighing almost nothing. Aero Copycats is the glue between the two mods. It hands every copycat shape a proper physics mass, and a Copycat Board comes in at 0.125 kpg. That's the trick to a big ship. Build the shape out of boards, beams, panels and slices, skin them with the heavy-looking block, and let the balloon carry a fraction of the weight.

Asks for: Copycat Board

The Tilt Adapter from Create Propulsion tilts rotational output by an analog signal, up to 90 degrees each way in this pack. The Advanced Tilt Adapter lets you set a different limit for each side, and holding Ctrl while setting one toggles shared limits. Where a servo holds an angle, the adapter keeps the shaft spinning through the tilt, so it's the one for a propeller you want to aim while it runs.

Asks for: Tilt Adapter

The Steering Wheel is precise rotation by hand. Hold right-click to grab it and move the mouse to turn, sneak while turning to snap to 45 degree steps, and set the maximum angle on its value panel. A comparator on it reads the angle, and a comparator on the back reads whether someone's holding it. The Throttle Lever is the same idea for redstone. Drag it to set an analog signal, wrench it to invert. One for the burner, one for the engines, and you have a cockpit. Note: A bearing on the far end of a wheel will happily disassemble whatever it's turning. Tell it not to.

Asks for: Steering Wheel, Throttle Lever

Keys become redstone with the Linked Typewriter. It binds keyboard keys to Redstone Link frequencies. Sneak and right-click to open the setup, put a link's items on a key, and from then on pressing the key transmits on that frequency. Right-click it with a Linked Controller to copy that controller's bindings across in one go. Right-click to take control and the typewriter steals your movement keys and every bound key until you let go. Thirteen thrusters, six servos and a burner, all from one seat. Aeronautics Curios Compat gives it a slot of its own. Keep a typewriter in the curio slot and the Use Remote Typewriter key drives the ship from anywhere aboard.

Asks for: Linked Typewriter

The Contraption Controller is a flight computer with 13 channels. Bind keys to pitch, roll, yaw, throttle and whatever else, pick an input mode per channel for how the signal ramps, and it puts out clean analog redstone for each one. The Analogue Joystick is its physical cousin. Tilt it and each side sends its own signal scaled to how far you pushed. Good for the pilot who wants to feel the ship rather than type at it.

Asks for: Contraption Controller, Analogue Joystick

A Wing is a purpose-made lifting surface, the Tempered Wing is the sturdier version, and the Copycat Wings come in 8 and 12 metre spans that take the texture of any block you click them with. Pair wings with thrusters and you've got a plane rather than a blimp. Planes are faster, planes are lighter, and planes fall out of the sky the moment the engine stops. Choose accordingly.

Asks for: Wing

Create Propulsion has its own family of engines. The Solid Fuel Thruster is the cheap one. It burns items from the slot on its back, redstone is on or off with no in-between, and it pushes about a quarter as hard as its liquid cousins. Wrench it to open the hatch and it'll pull fuel from a container behind it. The Thruster runs on Turpentine and holds a 1,000 mB tank that lasts 1,000 ticks at full throttle. The Ion Thruster skips fuel and drinks 40 FE per tick instead, and it's the strongest of the three. Build any of them as a 2x2x2 or 3x3x3 block and they merge. The big versions push 25% and 50% harder and burn 40% and 60% less fuel.

Asks for: Solid Fuel Thruster, Thruster

A fixed engine pushes one way. To steer with thrust you need the engine to swivel. The Vector Thruster swivels by itself. Redstone on its faces yaws and pitches the nozzle, and the Liquid Vector Thruster does the same on Turpentine. The Servo Bearing is the other route. Mount any thruster on it and a redstone difference across the bearing pivots the whole assembly up to 90 degrees. Put a Smart Gearbox in servo mode behind a Servo Bearing and it aims the engine from orientation data automatically, which is how a ship holds a heading on its own.

Asks for: Vector Thruster, Servo Bearing

The Thruster from Create Thrusters burns fuel and shoves the ship away from its nozzle. Coal, blaze rods, lava and a long list of fluids all count as fuel. A redstone signal from 1 to 15 is the throttle, and full throttle gives about 2.94 kpN. Throttle is not linear. A neutral fuel burns 5.6 mB per tick flat out, and backing off to half throttle cuts the burn a lot more than it cuts the thrust. Cruise low, sprint rarely. The Small Thruster is the same engine in a shorter body. Stay out of the exhaust, it hurts. These Thrusters do a lot more than just move your contraptions thanks to their upgrades, which can allow Thrusters to smelt, cook, and haunt items just like Encased Fans. They consume liquid fuel by default, but can be made to consume power (FE) instead using the Thruster Lens

Asks for: Processing Upgrade: Haunting Tier 1, Processing Upgrade: Haunting Tier 2, Processing Upgrade: Haunting Tier 3, Processing Upgrade: Haunting Tier 4, Processing Upgrade: Smelting Tier 1, Processing Upgrade: Smelting Tier 2

The Autocannon is the small fast one. A breech, a recoil spring and a few barrel blocks, cast the same way as the big gun except the moulds shed their sand on their own. It sits on a Cannon Mount like the big gun and aims the same way. It feeds from an Autocannon Ammo Container that holds 64 rounds, or 128 Machine Gun Rounds. Flak rounds burst in the air for anything with wings, AP rounds go through armour. The recoil is half of a big cannon's, which on a small ship still counts.

Asks for: Autocannon Ammo Container, Cast Iron Autocannon Breech

A ship that flies is easy. A ship that flies level is the hard part. Anything with the lift and the weight in different places wants to tip, and once it's tipping the lift points sideways and it tips faster. Balance the hull first, then add something that actively fights the tilt. Follow this quest path to learn the ways to balance.

The Gyroscopic Mechanism is the part that everything in this quest path is built around. You'll want them for the Gyroscopic Propeller Bearing as well.

Asks for: Gyroscopic Mechanism

Down is the one direction a ship keeps losing track of, and the Gimbal Sensor is how it finds it again. It puts out a redstone signal on the low side, each axis on its own, and the angle for full signal is set in the value boxes. Invert it if you'd rather the signal came out uphill. On its own it's a tilt alarm. Fed into a Servo or a thruster throttle it's the start of an autopilot. Fed into the blocks below it becomes the ship's sense of balance.

Asks for: Gimbal Sensor

The Advanced Data Link carries orientation. Point it at a Gimbal Sensor or another orientation source, up to 128 blocks away, and any block next to the link that can use that data gets it. It's the same idea as a Display Link, but instead of text it moves pitch, roll and heading to the blocks that need them.

Asks for: Advanced Data Link

The Gyroscope actively holds the ship level along whatever axis you place it on. Spin it up and it fights pitch and roll, and it bleeds off a spin so the ship stops turning when you stop turning it. It wants rotation, and a lot of it. Full control arrives at 256 RPM and the draw is 16 SU per RPM, so a gyroscope at full speed costs 4,096 SU. One gyro fully steadies about 5,000 units of ship inertia. A bigger hull needs more of them, and a ship with too few isn't unstable, just slower to right itself.

Asks for: Gyroscope

Two separate rotation lanes run through the Smart Gearbox at different speeds, which is useful on its own when a hull is short on space. The trick is Servo Mode. Feed it orientation from an Advanced Data Link and it aims any Servo Bearing attached to it so the mounted thruster or propeller always points the way you want it to. Power the gearbox with redstone and the aim inverts. Between this, a Gimbal Sensor and a couple of thrusters, a ship can hold itself level with no player at the controls.

Asks for: Smart Gearbox

A ship that flies and steers still needs somewhere to go and a way to stop when it gets there. This quest path is docking, ropes, navigation, automated routes, claiming your ship so it keeps ticking while you're away, and taking it into other dimensions.

Docking Connectors come in pairs. Extend both, bring them close, and they pull themselves into line and lock. The connection is rigid but the two sides stay separate ships, and once locked, items and fluids pass straight through in either direction, as long as something is inserting on one side and pulling on the other. Retract either end to undock. A comparator reads how far along the docking is, which is the signal an automated dock waits for. Redstone Magnets help line a big ship up. Opposite poles attract and try to align with each other, so a magnet on the hull and one on the pier drags the connectors into range.

Asks for: Docking Connector

Place a Contraption Claim Block on a ship and the ship becomes FTB Chunks territory. Only your team can break it or open it, allies can be added from the block, and it shows up on the map with its altitude and speed. The block also lets you force-load the ship. Keep Anchor Loaded keeps the chunks under it awake so it keeps existing while you're gone, and Keep Physics Active keeps it simulating too, so a flying farm keeps farming. Both count against your team's force-load limits. Warning: A ship that never stops simulating is a ship that never stops costing the server. Force-load the base, not the fleet.

Asks for: Contraption Claim Block

Not everything has to fly. Offroad puts a Tire on a Wheel Mount and a Simulated Contraption becomes a truck. Rotation drives the wheel, redstone from the top brakes it, redstone from the side steers it toward the signal. Tires come in Small, standard, Large and Monstrous, and the mount's suspension strength is set on its scroll panel. The Borehead Bearing is the same mod's drill. Attach Rock Cutting Wheels and a storage block to it and it chews through terrain in a radius, at a quarter of the input speed, dropping everything into the storage until the storage is full.

Asks for: Tire, Wheel Mount

For when the ship is parked and the island is over there. Hold the Hang Glider and jump off something tall and you glide instead of drop. The Reinforced Hang Glider lasts longer between repairs. No lift, no engine, no landing gear. Aim for the water.

Asks for: Hang Glider

Two Rope Connectors and a Rope Coupling ties two contraptions together, or a contraption to the ground. Right-click one end then the other. Shears cut it, and right-clicking with a wrench slides you down it. A Rope Winch in place of one connector reels the rope in and out with rotation, which is a mooring line, a crane or an elevator depending on what's on the end. Two winches won't connect to each other. The Powered Zipline from Create Thrusters rides along a rope under its own power, and the Claw hangs from one and grabs connectors on a redstone pulse.

Asks for: Rope Connector, Rope Coupling

Climbing down to tie up a ship gets old. A Throwable Rope Connector is a connector you throw, and it anchors wherever it lands, up to 10 blocks away. Keep one in your off hand and the Rope Connector Launcher fires it 20 blocks instead. The Mounted Rope Launcher is the ship-side version with a 40 block reach. Right-click to mount it, left-click to fire, right-click to release the anchor, and a redstone pulse fires it along its last aim so the docking sequence can throw its own lines. Ammo is only used up when a throw actually sticks.

Asks for: Throwable Rope Connector

A Cover is a facade that wraps around pipes, cables and other awkward blocks so the hull reads as one surface. The Directional Cover does the same with a block that has a front. Regular cable facades fall off the moment a ship assembles. These survive Create contraptions and physics assembly both, so a covered engine room stays covered when it takes off.

Asks for: Cover

The Navigation Table points at things. Give it a navigation item, a Filled Map or a Compass, and it puts out a redstone signal toward the destination, strongest when the ship faces it dead on and weaker as you drift off. Feed that into a servo and the ship finds its own way. The Navigator's Table from Aeronaut's Compass is how you make the destination. Put a compass on it, type coordinates and a name, and the compass points there. Craft it alone to reset it. The Advanced Navigation Table holds several maps at once and exposes the slots to automation, so a route can swap targets as it goes.

Asks for: Navigator's Table, Navigation Table

Automated Logistics teaches a ship a route by watching you fly it. Put a Vehicle Transponder on the ship and an Airship Station at each end of the trip. Open the transponder, switch to Recording Mode, add a route from this station to that one, fly it, and save the segment when you land. Routes are saved per direction, so fly the return leg too. Press play from any station on the route and the ship flies it by itself, stop after stop, and it keeps flying while the chunks between are unloaded. The stops screen sets wait conditions and docking waits, and during a dock both the station and the transponder put out redstone so your connectors know when to extend. The Logistics Terminal is the top-down map of every station, route and ship in the network. The Advanced Transponder adds four redstone output ports for dock and drive intent.

Asks for: Airship Station, Vehicle Transponder

This pack's shortcut is the Skybound Anchor. Place it on a ship and it counters pitch and roll with no rotation, no stress and no fuel. It doesn't touch yaw, so the ship still turns freely, and it doesn't fix a hull that's badly out of balance, it just stops the wobble. For a starter ship or a flying base that mostly parks, this is all the stabilization you need. Save the Gyroscope for something that has to fly straight at speed.

Asks for: Skybound Anchor

The Altitude Sensor turns height into a redstone signal. By default the signal grows as you climb, the range is set in its interface, and it can be flipped to shrink instead. Feed that signal into the burner or vent and the ship holds a height by itself. Climb, the signal rises, the redstone into the burner drops, the balloon cools, the ship sinks back. Wearing goggles or holding a wrench shows the exact altitude and air pressure.

Asks for: Altitude Sensor

Wear these and the ship stops being a mystery. Every force acting on a Simulated Contraption gets drawn as an arrow, propellers and thrusters print their output, and assemblies show their details. The Aviator's Goggles from Aeronautics do the same job as Engineer's Goggles for stress and RPM. Pick whichever pair suits the outfit.

Asks for: Physics Goggles

Right-click a ship with the Contraption Diagram and it opens a page of the things you actually need to know. Total mass, the centre of mass, and every force arrow, merged or separate. The centre of mass is the number that decides whether your ship flies level or nose-first. Balloons and propellers push on the ship where they sit, so lift far from the centre of mass turns into a tilt, and a tilt turns into a spin. Check the diagram before the maiden voyage, then move the heavy bits until the arrows line up.

Asks for: Contraption Diagram

AeroPortals lets a ship fly through a portal. Not you, the ship. Sail the hull into a Nether Portal and the entire contraption arrives on the other side, crew, cargo, balloon and all, still moving at the speed it went in. It works on far more than the Nether. The End, Ars Nouveau portals, Draconic, the Ender Gateway, TelePastries, even the Pina Colada. Build the portal big enough for the ship to pass through it. Warning: The destination has to have room. A ship that would arrive inside solid rock has its jump cancelled rather than the rock removed, so scout the far side first. A portal of matching size gets built for you if none is waiting, and a ship can't jump again for ten seconds after arriving. Keep the hull under 200,000 blocks of bounding box or the portal won't notice it at all.

A Propulsion Upgrade multiplies thrust. Tier 1 doubles it, and each tier doubles again up to sixteen times at Tier 4, with the fuel bill climbing to match. Processing Upgrades turn the exhaust into an Encased Fan. Items on Depots in the stream get smoked, smelted or haunted, faster and over a wider area at higher tiers. The Thruster Lens swaps fuel for FE entirely, 90 FE per tick at full throttle, and focuses the plume into a beam that pushes harder than the open flame. The Fuel Oxidizer boosts supported fuels by half again.

Asks for: Propulsion Upgrade Tier 1