Pylon weights and drag

[Stickler]

The "Empty" loadout in the mission editor has a "Weapons" weight of 223 kg/492 lbs.

When manually removing all pylons, "Weapons" weight is not zero, but -288 kg/-635 lbs.

From this I deduce that some pylons, but not all of them in the same way, are considered as part of aircraft weight.

I would appreciate a clarification regarding how pylon weights and drag are being considered in the mission editor and the flight model.

[Volator]

I've been wondering about this for a long time too, and I'm wondering whether this is a bug or intended. If the latter, why? Can't HB access/change the empty weight? If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to just add the pylons weight to the weapons weight?

Can you fill us in on the intricacies of the module, @Zabuzard?

[Zabuzard]

The default model without any "weapons" loaded has pylons and hence the aircraft weight is configured for that specifically.

A "removed pylon" is considered a weapon by DCS. Hence you can pick it from the loadout options, like a bomb or pod. Since it is a weapon, it has weight, including negative weight in this case.

If you would configure the aircraft by default for "no pylons", users would need to "equip" pylons manually in the loadout editor each time and we would also need to tie the pylon visually to all selectable weapons. It is much easier and more reasonable to instead have the pylons there by default and make the "no pylon" an equippable option. That decision then leads to the weight setup.