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TheHengeProphet

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    The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

    in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    [quote name='Robet.G']The rules reads like this to me:
    "must look exactly like an F-16 or it doesn't count"[/QUOTE]

    To be fair, we can't even build what is technically a Gen 5 fighter, seeing as we have no way of determining stealth capability. More-over, most Gen 5 fighters can't compete with proper Gen 4 or 4.5 aerobatic/dogfighting capabilities, to my knowledge. The fighters really don't have to look like an F-16, but it is a good standard for capabilities.

    So far, my best fighter's basic design is based on an aerodynamics experiment to test a prior glitch in FAR, which was roughly based on the F-16. However, it only really looks like one in passing and is much more like an F-20, I guess. That makes it a poor example, really; however, my old MRF-4 is still capable of achieving the applicable goals for qualification and looks nothing like an F-16.

    I'm happy to say that the Devil Ray is still viable with the engine swap, albeit slightly less aerodynamic with a wave drag area of about .4 now. It appears to have slightly better control capabilities, which is to be expected (still not the best dogfighter), but it is able to supercruise at roughly mach 2.01 when full. I've been letting the plane fly on its own for the past half hour while I do other things, and it's range seems quite impressive. It seems to cap at about mach 2.88 with afterburners at high altitude, but have not tested its low altitude max speed. End of test result: Maximum ferry range is approximately 2000km.

    The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

    in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    I have been having trouble replicating it myself. Thanks for trying! This is clearly an odd glitch, so I'll have to figure out exact repro steps.

    Also, the latest FAR ("Helmholtz") seems to have resolved the CoL marker issue. I'm back to developing the Spite and its unnamed sister plane into worthy death machines. The thrust vectoring really adds a whole element I never really considered in the original design, so the previously "unstallable" planes will now do so... It's not hard to adjust their AoA values higher, but then they don't change vector as well.

    The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

    in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    I'm going to take rule 9 very literally:

    • The aircraft must not weigh less than 10 tons at takeoff with a full combat load.

    So long as you load it up with enough munitions to weigh 10t and still be able to take off and fight with it, it should be fine. I still don't exactly approve of the rule, hence why I built the spite in the first place.

    [edit] I may well be running into glitches as far as the afterburner goes, but it's practically impossible to tell considering air is no longer a visible resource... Starting at low altitude and staying at low altitude, the afterburner works fine, but if I go to high altitude where the engine starts to lose power from lack of air, if I switch to afterburner I actually lose thrust, and this loss of thrust seems permanent, considering I dropped back down to near sea level and was not able to return proper functionality to the engine. Anybody else able to replicate this? I want to make sure this is actually not just happening to me before I try to report it.

    The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

    in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

    Posted

    What usually happens is the AI pulls the thing into a stall, and then doesn't unstall; the opponent flies rings around it and eventually makes use of the fact that it's near stationary & guns it to pieces. If you adjust the gimbal range until it works then it's not supermanoeverable anymore, and you can do just as well with a lighter engine & good aerodynamics. Also the vectoring is either all or nothing, there's no adjustment tools like a control surface ( exposing gimballing as control surfaces would be a pretty nice mod, tbh ).

    The last couple of craft I did for the other challenge could pull 38deg AoA constant & 42ish transient without stalling, with standard engines. That was pushing it somewhat because that sort of AoA saps energy like crazy.

    Waiting on a few more mod updates & then I'll attempt something for this challenge ( although without AJE, I guess ). I still go fly my 0.90 Retrofuture creations a fair bit, I miss the stuff from that install that's never been updated.

    This is precisely why I asked BahamutoD for a minimum speed setting.

    It would be wonderful if there was something which allowed specific control settings for gimbal, because I very much need to disable yaw in order to make the Spite even usable with gimbal enabled.

    On the bright side, the spite is much lighter now due to the lighter engine, weighing in at 8.6t! Its sister plane now weighs as much as the old Spite at 9.2t and can sustain much higher G loads. Still needing to determine which is actually better, because I'm not sure the AI even really understands at this point.

    The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

    in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    @CrisK That's awesome! I thought about making a plane which largely uses the thrust vectoring for yaw stability, but looks like I was beaten to it!

    True that the CoL indicator is broken, but I've just been having a lot of problems where now my planes are no longer stable, so I'm going to wait a bit for any patchwork to happen.

    I know ferram4 does not like the CoL indicator, but trying to recalculate the stability derivatives after every minor adjustment is a nightmare. The indicator used to be great for getting a ballpark estimate allowing for further adjustment from there.

    There are more issues I have with 1.0.5, as well. The panther, for example, is a nightmare on single-engine designs, seeing as it forces full yaw on attempted roll maneuvers if the engine is even remotely out of line with the center of mass. Yes, I can disable gimbal, but that kind of defeats the point of the engine.

    Loading on smaller resolution wipes config file entirely. (Turns out it was the controller)

    in KSP1 Technical Support (PC, unmodded installs)

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    So, preface for this discovery:

    My computer is a laptop with a native resolution of 1440x900, but I typically play on an external monitor which has a native resolution of 1600x900.

    When I play away from home, the game determines the settings.cfg must be invalid and resets to default, which is incredibly frustrating. This only occurs when moving from a larger resolution to a smaller resolution, and it happens consistently if I forget to move the resolution down ahead of time.

    Turns out it was the controller, thanks to sal_vager for pointing that out!

    [1.1] BDArmory v0.11.0.1 (+compatibility, fixes) - Apr 23

    in KSP1 Mod Development

    Posted

    Actually, on the note of things that are getting craft shot down, is it possible to get a minimum speed field? Yeah yeah, making requests, but sometimes planes will drop below critical speed in an effort to get behind and/or face an opponent causing it to fall into an unrecoverable state where it either cannot recover from the stall or will continue turning in such a manner as to prevent acceleration.

    [1.1] BDArmory v0.11.0.1 (+compatibility, fixes) - Apr 23

    in KSP1 Mod Development

    Posted · Edited by TheHengeProphet

    Hey Baha, is it possible to get a proper rundown on what each of the AI control factors actually do? I've been having trouble getting it to fly planes in FAR due to its surface actuation being so binary that it will flip planes into extreme AoA and stall them out, where it really just needs to actuate the surfaces a little more slowly, but still do so fully.

    Not sure if that made proper sense.

    [edit]

    Okay, so, the two I'm wondering about specifically are Steer Factor and Steer Damping. Best I can tell, after RECENT experiments, is that steer damping works against steering in an effort to keep the plane going straight, which effectively reduces wobble; while Steer Factor is speed of control surface actuation???

    This actually goes against what I described them as in a previous post in this thread, so I feel bad about that.

    [1.1] BDArmory v0.11.0.1 (+compatibility, fixes) - Apr 23

    in KSP1 Mod Development

    Posted

    Hey if I asked y'all to help me run some test would y'all?

    I got two fighters I really like. I want to keep both but I do want to know which one is better.

    If I give y'all the downloads would y'all test them out for me?

    Which fighters? I'd like to mess around with them, sure. Did you design them in FAR? I downloaded your F-16 at some point, and it flies fairly well in FAR. I suggest checking out the 5th Gen Fighter Challenge.

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