So, after logging a few hundred hours flying aircraft and driving vehicles with Flan's mod, and after a year or so of building roads and airports and whatnot to support those things, and after having made a content pack of my own with over 100 vehicles and planes (to be released as soon as we're done bug-testing it, of course), I figured I would put together my ultimate "wish list" of features I would love to see added someday. Things I believe would make Flan's better all-around. To see this stuff get added into Flan's, Flan's Plus, and/ or Flan's Minus would be amazing, and I think/ hope others would dig these ideas as well. I know my friends on my server would love the heck out of them!

I'm going to collapse each idea into a spoiler to conserve space. We all know how I can get a little long-winded lol. The headline bit will tell you what you really need to know. The stuff in the spoilers is just me detailing that idea further or explaining how it might/ could work. Anyhoo, the ideas!

Idea #1 - PROPER airplane taxi controls/ pushback

Warning: Spoiler! [ Click to expand ] [ Click to hide ]

On our server, we've built some pretty big airports. Runways are 15 blocks/ meters wide and 300 blocks/ meters long, with taxiways and terminals and hangars... and none of it works, because planes in Flan's mod don't actually taxi properly.

If an airplane's throttle is between 0.1 and 0.19 (1% and 19%, the pre-roll range), the airplane's TurnLeftSpeed and TurnRightSpeed would automatically equal 20, overriding the plane's config, and the plane would automatically turn at that rate in-place, allowing a plane to navigate sharp corners and maneuver along taxiways. Throttling between 0.2 and 0.29 (20% and 29%), the plane would keep those turn rates, but would move forward at the taxi speed that already exists in Flan's mod.

Pushpack would be pretty simple: by pressing and holding the PAUSE/ BREAK key, the plane would slowly roll backwards in a straight line for as long as you hold it. This will allow planes to pull away from terminals and back out of hangars.

If you've ever built a scaled-to-aircraft hangar or terminal, I'm sure you could appreciate the necessity of these features

Warning: Spoiler! [ Click to expand ] [ Click to hide ]

In the real world, airplanes are sort of like infants in that they require constant care and attention. This idea would add a bit of that care into Flan's Mod, tossing in a dash of realism and making people care about their aircraft a bit more than they might do otherwise. And on a server like mine, where a single airplane could pretty easily see 100+ hours of flight in a month, this would add a bit of "end game" challenge, lol.

Engines would now have durability and wear down over long periods of time. This wear would be random, using coolant and oil as modifiers; the lower those get, the quicker the plane's engines lose durability. On a multi-engine aircraft, it would be entirely possible for some engines to burn out, but not others. How cool would that be!

Oil and coolant gauges would be added in alongside the fuel gauge. Coolant would deplete at 1/4th the speed of fuel, while oil would deplete at 1/10th the rate of fuel. Planes used extensively would need to have these things checked. Oil and coolant could be added into parts packs, allowing us to use mod items (Buildcraft oil or Pneumaticcraft lubricant) in place of whatever wacky vanilla recipes were used to simulate them.

When an engine burns out, one or more random components of its crafting recipe will be needed in order to fix the engine, which could be added in using the R-key UI on a new "maintenance" tab.

In planes/ vehicles with a single engine, the engine dying would take us into Idea #4 down below. In a plane with multiple engines, the throttle would be reduced by a factor equal to the number of engines. So if your plane has two engines, you'd be capped at 50% throttle. If you have four engines, you'd be capped at 75% throttle. The other engines would then be stressed and lose durability faster by that same factor, since they're doing more work than they usually would.

One more idea here? An aesthetic rendition of plane failure. The engine could have fire and smoke emanating from the propeller point, signaling that the engine has catastrophically failed. I don't know how difficult that would be to add, but I know it would be cool as hell to see

Warning: Spoiler! [ Click to expand ] [ Click to hide ]

Okay, this one is a little far-fetched. I realize that (A) I might be the only person with mega-farms that would need this, ( it's probably wicked complicated, and (C) nobody else might find this to be cool. But this idea would add functional crop dusters, fuel trucks, fire trucks, and aerial firefighting planes/ "water bombers" to the game, so I kinda have to at least mention it, don't I?

This would basically allow for vehicles and planes to hold millibuckets (mB) of liquid, just like Buildcraft, Railcraft, or Immersive Engineering tanks. Fuel trucks and vehicles like that would suddenly be able to work properly, but more importantly, this idea could incorporate a "sprayer feature" in the config that would allow vehicles/ planes to "spray" those liquids via particle/ smoke effects.

Imagine a "Miracle Grow" solution made from bonemeal and water buckets. You fly your cropduster plane over a field of crops, press the bomb button, and automatically bonemeal all of the crops and grass in a 3x3 radius where the bomb would otherwise land. Or imagine flying a water bomber holding buckets of water, and dumping that down on a forest fire or lava pit. And for you murderous killer types, you could load up a plane with lava and cause lots of fires down below, destroying whole villages in ways napalm just don't cut it.

Firetrucks could have a "stream" instead of a "spray" that shoots water over distance. The higher your arc the stream, the further the stream goes, up to a cap of, say, 64 blocks away (that's a totally made-up number I pulled out of nowhere).

Streams and sprays would not cause water-buildup; this wouldn't be the same as using a bucket on a block. It would be a particle/ smoke effect with the same properties as that liquid. For instance, a water spray or stream would put out fires. A miracle grow spray would make plants/ trees/ grass grow faster. A lava spray/ stream would set things on fire. And vehicles could store liquid, interfacing with BC pipes and tanks and whatnot, which would allow moving those things around to be a whole lot easier. If you play with those mods, you already know that they can be a real pain sometimes.

Again, I know this is probably the least-realistic of everything on this list, but I had to suggest it. I think it could be a lot of fun someday!

Ok. Quick responses.

1. Yes, actually working on this already, seems to be mostly done.

2. No. Overcomplicates gameplay and will annoy more people than it satisfies. There's a proper flight sim mod out there for this (I forgot the name).

3. I could go for a % fuel guage on the in-flight GUI. Remind me to have a go. No clue what you want with cargo unfortunately.

4. Also working on this. Trying to improve the flight model, so gliding may or may not be made possible as a consequence.

5. Useful idea, but going to be a pain in the ass to implement. Don't count on seeing this in any reasonable timeframe.

6. Funnily enough you can do this by giving the vehicle a gun that doesn't fire any bullets, but does make a sound. Though a proper function for this may be handy.

7. I do want to do something about this one. The problem is how to do it without breaking existing content. But I'm sure there's a solution.

8. no

9. Music disks no. However I'd be keen on implementing something like those mods where you put a .mp3 link in a stereo block and it actually plays the song. Unfortunately I have no idea how you do this.

10. Fex already got this working on his 1.10+ build. I sort of have it working on mine. It'll happen eventually.

11. Sounds nifty but I doubt it's usefulness.

12. Might actually give this a go, currently re-writing the flight controller so there may be room for some form of autopilot function.

13. Would be neat, but little mechanical benefit. If I figure out a cheap way to do it then maybe, but I'm not going to prioritize this.

14. Wait we can't do this already?

15. Oh my sweet summer child.

On idea 13: I think this was a brief feature back in 1.6.4. Flan and I have talked about this before, you could tow planes around airbases and aircraft carriers. It would make things a lot easier organizing the planes when not in use.

Just quickly saying, Fex's version is 1.11.2

I LOVE that you're doing Taxiing! I've been wanting that for a long time, can't wait to see it implemented! Everything else on the list was wishful thinking so if it ever gets added that's great, but if it doesn't get added anytime soon I'd understand, totally.

As for cargo, I'm not even really sure how that should work TBH. The current system has us clicking to scroll by each tab, which isn't a big deal until you get into the big (75+ slot) cargo vehicles/ planes. At that point it feels like you're clicking for an eternity. A faster scroll, or maybe tabbed out cargo "pages" might be more efficient, but again, this only impacts the small number of us who use Flan's mod for shipping cargo around so it's not really a priority issue, more of an idea pretty much. The taxi/ pushback feature is the one I've wanted the most, so to know it's being worked on and almost done has me giddy

I love the idea of vehicles being able to play Music Discs, i like that a lot better than playing custom online mp3s. Its a lot more minecrafty.

Speaking of Music Discs, Flans Mod should support custom music discs. It has custom items, it has custom sounds - why not be able to make items that play custom sounds?
It'd be great. If this were implemented, there would be no need for the online streaming thing, as players could make custom Discs as part of their content pack.