TheHengeProphet

@ThreeGreenFields Oblique wing designs have that problem, to my knowledge. Not really sure how to solve it either. @SpaceplaneAddict That's impressive. Does mechjeb take thrust limiters into account when measuring T:W?

The rapid "kick" I experience is a hard yaw to the left or right when pitching hard under almost any circumstance. Not sure if I should bug ferram4 about it or just wait for the next release, which has a wing overhaul and see if it still happens... @Doke For most of the planes, you'll probably need B9 Pwings and Adjustable Landing Gear on top of BDA. For my Spite and Spectre, you will also need QuizTech Aerospace. I'll work on uploading versions of my planes designed to ignore Dynamic Deflection until I can either tune them to work better with it or just stop caring. But that'll likely happen tomorrow.

@FourGreenFields 6.2t is pretty light, but that's only 3t lighter than the Spite, for a lot less body... I'm curious, though: if you split the rear control surfaces into ailerons and elevators, of approximately equal size, when you pitch, do you get very strange behaviour, like kicking to one side when in hard pitch? It's a problem I've been having and I'm wondering if it's capable of replication... @CrisK I tested out your latest iteration (Mk3) and found it quite easy to fly, like all of the other versions, and yet I was unable to get it to pull a consistent 6g at altitude at half thrust. It would peak there beyond that, but wouldn't pull it consistently. It does handle decently well at all altitudes, though, which is useful. That's a decent payload you have on there, and I'm sure it could hold more and still work fine.

Pretty sure "slanting" the wing in any direction is going to affect your drag.

Unfortunately, I have found no explanation as to what each setting does, so... here is what I assume they do. Default Alt.: When not engaging or engaged with a target, the AI will patrol at this altitude. Min Altitude: When the craft is below this altitude, it will endeavor to get above it. If you force your plane into a fast dive past the minimum altitude and it cannot reliably pull itself out before hitting ground, raise this value. Steer Factor: I really don't know what this does... I know it turns harder with higher values, but seeing as there is no explanation, I really don't know what the numbers here indicate. Steer Limiter: This value limits the AI's ability to utilize control of the plane. Steer Damping: In theory, this should hinder the speed at which the AI can actuate the control surfaces, thus reducing jerkiness in flight. The maximum value here is 8, however, which I find completely insufficient and always max out. Max Speed: The AI will generally attempt to maintain this speed, but will often go below it in dogfights. It may go above this speed in a dive, if the plane is incapable of slowing itself down; however, it will endeavor to not maintain a speed higher than this value. TakeOff Speed: The speed at which the AI will attempt to lift off from the ground. For planes using FAR, or planes with long tails, I suggest not having a TO speed below 120 m/s. If your plane has weak engines, I suggest a higher TO speed to allow the plane to get some momentum before attempting a climb. If the AI happens to leave the ground before this happens, however, it will determine it is flying and will try to reach minimum altitude. I hope this helps. I myself would like a more specific explanation as to what exactly these values do (more specifically the steer factor and steer damping).

@FourGreenFields 50°+ critical AoA? That's crazy good. I'd be really interested in seeing this thing in more detail. What's it weigh even? 5t? @CrisK Looking good! I'll have to set some more time aside to try it out. Yeah, batteries behave oddly, but I'm hoping that'll get fixed in the next version.

I would like to see a higher steer-damping option available. The AI pilot jerks the control too hard inducing stall, and overall reducing the maximum capabilities of a given craft. But all in due time, I guess.

Are their guns aligned true forward for the craft? The AI doesn't seem to account for off-axis guns, but when I have them aligned properly, they seem to lead just fine, mostly.

Yeah, I got that. I've been messing around with it and finding it remarkably frustrating. This is largely due to it preventing further adjustment to the control value of a surface in flight outside of its own contextual windows, meaning I cannot further increase control values for tuning. This means the only reasonable way to adjust values is to set the control surfaces to the maximum and deny control from there, which is terribly frustrating.

@HQtopgun1 Are you toggling the weapon on in the weapons manager? Once you do that it should bring up a kind of boresight. So, I have a suggestion, and this stems from trying to tune AI midflight: Have an AI tab on the UI to be accessed from the corner of the screen. It could be an extra tab in the BD weapons manager window, or another one entirely on its own, like how FAR has multiple windows. It would also make trying to turn on AI when on the runway easier, by not forcing the player to hunt down the AI module.

Hey, I'm not saying other people shouldn't use it. It's a decent tool. I just don't like it. @Doke already been messing around with it, and even tried replacing the landing gear with adjustable ones. Best I can tell, it's involved with gear orientation, though stock landing gear is a bit stiff, and the front gear being so tall was not helping. No matter what I do, though, the plane seems to veer to the right on the runway, so that's interesting. Those fins you've porcupined your plane with are actually doing a world of good and haven't managed to do better than what you've got, but replacing the landing gear did actually improve your aerodynamics, though judging from the construction of your plane, I wouldn't expect you to use part mods, haha. This thing really is kind of a marvel to me, nice job. Trying to improve things is a hobby of mine, so I never really consider it a waste of time. I'm just hoping my constant quest for perfection doesn't offend anybody, heh. Ergh, going to continue trying DD, because I guess it DOES have control variability per plane, but the default is not 0 adjustment... That's a massive faux pas, to me, though.

@CrisK That sounds like fun. Let me know where you're streaming! I'll see if I can't look into Doke's landing gear issue when I get a chance. Edit: Tested out Dynamic Deflection, and under consideration have determined I will not use it. This is due to it being a broad sweep across all planes, disallowing for a per-plane profile setup.

Are you sure FAR doesn't support washout? Sure, if you have a singular wing section, it probably won't work, but using multiple sections, it seems to work alright. It really is just a matter of wing orientation in relation to the velocity vector. On another note, I don't know if the voxelization issue in relation to FAR has been addressed here. A thick wing appears to lack the appropriate voxels on the ends, which can prove problematic.

WHAT? mindblown How did I not know about this? As for those fins, hmm... You're using them to avoid stall, but all they're really doing is acting as stabilizers, considering I don't think FAR actually models flow that way (yet?). I think more control and stability can be attained via ventral fins, however, considering you're losing lateral stability during pitch stall, which is probably caused by occlusion of your vertical stabilizer/rudder. I'll have to mess with it later and see if I can net some benefit.

I did a few test flights of your plane, and I must say I'm impressed. It's remarkably light, and incredibly maneuverable, though it is quite easy to stall out parts despite its remarkable 30° stall angle. I did notice that it tends to kick hard to one side if a stall is induced, but it's not hard to regain control. It is certainly capable of achieving all the requirements here, except that I proved completely unable to land it. Pretty sure that thing would light up like a christmas tree on a radar pass, but really that's rather moot here, haha. I'll try letting it dogfight some, when I'm less tired. I anticipate I'll need to install Dynamic Deflection to get it to dogfight at its proper potential...

Wait, if negative sweep is properly accounted for, perhaps washout is as well. I might actually be able to make some of my planes even more crazy, and maybe get the Mamba to stop having its bizarre tip stall. I would like to see Tweakscale and Procedural Parts available. Particularly as it could likely reduce part counts drastically in planes which use them. Edit- @Doke, sorry I missed your post earlier. That's an interesting looking plane. How to post an album from imgur: {Imgur}albumcodehere{/Imgur}, replacing {} with [].

CoM alteration from the engines is not the only thing to consider, and I feel that's an easy one to deal with. The change in model, however, is likely to absolutely ruin my aerodynamic profile on the rear of all of my planes (maybe not the Spite). Currently, we have no bearings on how the current engines have changed, nor on the capabilities of the Panther. I really want to know what the Panther's power profile is, as well as its gimbal range. If it has a high enough gimbal range, I might even go so far as trying a thrust-stabilized aircraft like the X-44 Manta concept. I thought about making a negative-sweep plane, but I'm quite sure FAR doesn't model aerodynamic forces realistically enough for it to be useful, or even break even. Indeed! In truth, the only reason I moved on from the Adder design is that Tweakscale was disallowed. That plane still performs with scary capability... I might pull it back out and see if I can analyze why it's so darn good (not S-USAF good, though...).

Getting the thrust limiter to 50 is so remarkably annoying. I manually set mine to 50 by going into the craft file, then save the engine itself as a subassembly, that way I can tack it on to any plane I wish to have 50% thrust. And yeah, somewhere earlier in the thread, it was said that 50.5 is acceptable. I guess it makes sense that you have your deflection increase as you get faster, but that is actually the exact opposite of what I tend to want on some planes, heh. Looking forward to seeing what you have! Still not sure if this challenge is still living, but I love what goes on here...

I disagree wholeheartedly. While all of my and CrisK's planes presented -for example- all are capable of everything in the rules (minus the spite being underweight), they are quite different. Each has their own handling characteristics, are capable of performing various roles with varying degrees of capability, and even look different. Granted, once you start getting to higher and higher levels of performance, things will start to become more similar, as they're nearing in on what is a "perfect form", that is until someone throws something in that changes the meta paradigm. It is, however, on its own, a challenge in itself to make a plane capable of qualifying. Edit: Here are the adjustments. CrisK S-USAF Hvar: tuned control surface actuation, disabled torque. CrisK Trainer Hvar: Modified strake profile, tuned control surface actuation, modified mass/strength values, disabled torque. CrisK Trainer Hvar Combat: as previous, but with a gun, AI controller, and weapon manager.

I don't see any problem with someone using Dynamic Deflection, but don't expect anybody else to use it. I've thought about setting it up on mine, but have been lazy about figuring out configuring it. CrisK, I adjusted the everloving shizzle out of your control surface settings on the S-USAF, and drastically improved its handling. My friend informs me that I'm a bad person for making what was already amazing better. None of my planes can beat it one-on-one currently, but two spites can handle it (both survive about 50% of the time). I made some serious adjustments to your trainer, and it may now well be the most maneuverable plane of the lot; however, it is rather frail, and I can't seem to strengthen it enough to handle more than 12g. It is also severely lacking in power, weighing 14t with a single engine, so it often never gets above 150m/s during a dogfight, and is quite often sitting around 80-50m/s. Nothing wants to approach it, though, considering they can't get to a point where its nose is not facing them. I'll work on uploading the files when I get off work. You mentioned you have a version of Kerbpaint which works with 1.0.4?

Could you elaborate on what you mean here?

Probably best to keep the FAR flight data open in general, unless you are starved for screen real estate due to low resolution. Also, if your fairings are overheating before your B9Pwings, I don't know what's wrong, because they have a much higher temperature tolerance. Then again, I've never really used them, so what do I know? FourGreenFields has it pretty right as far as those lines go. I really don't know what the pressure coefficient is for, probably because I've been too lazy to look it up. Is there radar on there? That might serve better for a nosecone, but I really don't know exactly what you're going for in design here.

Except it's been happening with my Spite, primarily, which only uses stock wings, so... maybe I should strip it down again and send it to him, because some time mid-flight it started stalling the leading-edge wing parts, wherein I could not previously get it to stall at all. I'll have to strip it down and see if it continues to do it on a completely stock model. The asymmetric stalling happens glaringly obviously on my Black Mamba and Devil Ray planes, which heavily use B9 PWings, which explains a lot... Ugh. Oh, so... soon I'll upload my updated Rafale, of which the AI uses much better than previously (apparently). Also, when I've been having the planes dogfight, I've been using full thrust on the engines, because it get almost boring watching the low-power dogfights. Okay, turns out it was that the delta wings have their attachment point rather far back and were flexing due to aerodynamic stress, causing them to exceed stall angle, but in a strange and unpredictable manner. Struts fixed it. I was also able to get back the mass gained from the struts by lowering the mass on the trailing wing body, so the plane still weighs only 9.2t, and for now, I'm keeping it there out of spite of rule 9. Thanks for linking to Kerbpaint! Well, I can't get Kerbpaint to work with any reasonable functionality at all, so... oh well.

Tested out your latest iterations, and they are an absolute joy to fly! I don't know why, but the Flanker just... feels stumpy, but it's a lot of fun. I thought your landing gear arrangements felt a touch odd, though. Really wide, and low in the back, which I guess works alright. Of your planes, my favourites to fly are the Rafale and the trainer, both of which will do what you tell them to. I can see the trainer being an absolute terror in a dogfight. I noticed some built-in inefficiencies in the Rafale, so I'm giving it a major makeover. It's not really going to be a repro by the time I'm done with it. So far, I've widened the body to make full use of the air intakes and their ducting, as well as leveled the nacelles with the fuselage and wings, while also removing that oddly placed intake on the tailplane. This dropped the wave drag from 1.31 to 1.2. It still feels a little sluggish, but I think some area ruling might be able to help out here. Of curiosity, what did you use to colour your planes? Magically, aerodynamics are working like they used to again, even though... nothing should have changed significantly, so I'm totally baffled. All of the planes, yours and mine, seem to be flying as we designed them, ridiculous AoA values and all. Update: So, I pitted the Spite against the Rafale, guns only, and it won three fights undefeated... so I pitted it against 2 Rafales at the goading of my friend, and... it was surprisingly even. The Rafale duo won 3 of 5 fights, and lost 2. I'm going to have to pit the Spite against the Flanker next. Further update: The Flanker is scary maneuverable, but I couldn't exactly call it even, because the precoolers kept ripping themselves off due to aerodynamic stresses, for some reason. Might want to look into that. Further further update: The USAF fighter is amazing. It's ability to maneuver at just about any speed is ridiculous... It's been beating the Spite about 70% of the time in guns only duels. On another note, my aerodynamics started acting wonky again, which is weird, because it occurred within the same session of play, causing the Spite to start stalling at around 17°, rather than around 25°. I haven't figured out any methods of reproducing it, so I can't really even bring it to ferram4's attention and expect a result. Hmm... I thought random asymmetric stalls were fixed... I think I'm just going to hope for the wing overhaul coming soon.

What's going on here is that if you fly out of physics range, or fly over 750 m/s, the reference frame changes, and for some reason, the wing states don't survive the transition. Not really sure why they don't, but it's fairly annoying to deal with. You should be able to reproduce the bug without BDA, as I'm fairly certain that mod has nothing to do with the issue other than providing a reason for people to leave planes on the ground while they fly around.