Drag glitch
The "Drag glitch" is a long-standing issue in Stormworks' vehicle simulation. It prevents drag, buoyancy, and custom tanks from being calculated on some parts of a vehicle.
Symptoms
The drag glitch will only ever apply to part of a vehicle. This is to say, there will always be at least some part of a vehicle unaffected by the glitch, even if that part is a singular block. The glitch also does not affect subgrids other than the one causing the glitch.
There are three properties of a vehilcle affected:
- Vehicle fails to float. The vehicle does not float, despite it having enough sealed volume to support itself. Even a completely unsealed vehicle normally has some small amount of buoyancy due to many components being slightly buoyant.
- Vehicle has little to no drag. The vehicle receives neither aerodynamic drag nor hydrodynamic drag. Because this makes vehicles go faster, it is often used intentionally on some planes.
- Custom tanks fail to seal. Custom tanks are unable to form, and will not hold any fluid. Any fluid meter will read a negative value (the default for unsealed spaces).
Cause
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The drag glitch is caused by groups of blocks being physically separated, yet merged into one subgrid.
During vehicle spawning, Stormworks will compute buoyancy surfaces. These are invisible shapes that are used to calculate buoyancy, as well as drag, sealed volumes, and tanks. This computation always starts at the oldest block placed and will spread to all adjacent surfaces. The oldest block, as well as all blocks directly connected to it, will not be affected by the glitch. All other blocks will be drag glitched.
Solutions
The simplest solution to solving the glitch is to reconnect the glitched components to the rest of the subgrid. This can be done using regular blocks, wedges, or even pipes.
Because the drag glitch does not traverse between subgrids, the separated part of the grid could also be split into its own subgrid using the selection grid tool.