Eidahlil

Just take off with it, and try to pitch up. It should respond like a jet fighter and not like a 737. Trouble is the Iris' real center of lift is so far behind it's center of mass. You've fooled yourself into thinking it is not by tilting the forward wing a touch, but that only fixed it for one specific AoA. And it will be very problematic to fix without spoiling the form factor AND keeping radar cross-section below 5. But if you can do that, we'll make a fighter plane out of it. You've got the rest of fundamentals alright - looks nice, TWR is good, wing loading is reasonable, armament could always use more guns and ammo, but you're just fine where you are with it. There is some other stuff, like you have a service bay, but for some reason the AI and the weapon manager are not in it, you'll need an ECM and batteries to fit in the current meta, your AI pilot is overdamped, but those are easy to fix.

I may have modified the Pike file. The initial version of the Berzerker 2.0 may have the AI values exactly the same as the Pike. So that one's probably on me. The wing clipping however, I took no part in. Though in all honesty that's more because I hate fiddling with the sliders. In most cases there isn't any real advantage going outside the ranges for "typical" dogfighters. The Monstron, on the other hand, couldn't be what it is without text editing.

I'd like a clarification of this rule. Competition mode makes a list of aircraft on clicking the button. Any aircraft launched after that are ignored. So if you launch drones after takeoff, they will: just fly in circles around the spot where they were launched instead of following the launching craft competition mode will ignore them, and start the competition anyway after the launching craft get far enough competition mode will not turn on the drones' guard mode on either So, questions: Assuming a craft did launch drones on takeoff, would they be left alone to do the thing listed above, or would competition mode be started again to include them? Assuming a craft launched something with guard mode already on, would the craft be disqualified, or would the behaviour be fixed manually (e.g. by restarting competition mode)?

I'd gladly, but they don't fit that way. And the long cargo bay weighs 6t. Most of the problems occur when the cargo bay is open partially though, and I think I mostly fixed it in the update a few minutes ago. The main problem now is that it seems if you kill the princess, the autopilot on all the drones turns off. Which is thematically appropriate, but not exactly optimal. I'll see if I can make it a bit more resistant to AMRAAMS as a workaround.

Something like that: It messes up launches from the cargo bay all the time though. I don't remember when was the last time all 4 came out alright. I'll see if I can fix it a bit and upload an updated version.

Yes, the modular missiles will fire action groups 1 through <stages number>, the first one after drop time, the next ones when it detects it has no more running engines. They are technically just very smart cruise missiles, so the AI properly launches them only when in combat. I get a weird feeling of deja vu looking at that picture. I honestly had not heard of that.

Well, then it would be a lot more obvious what it does from the picture. Turns out "control from here" can now be added to action groups. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there a few versions ago, but it solves that problem. I thought about more maneuverable or missile-armed drones, and, ultimately, ran into space, weight and part count constraints. I'd have to reduce the number probably. And that just wouldn't do thematically. I mean, I hope this doesn't become an accepted tactic in this challenge. And if it does, we can always improve and resubmit.

Well, then consider it submitted, but it, uh, employs some unorthodox tactics. My guess is it'll either fail spectacularly or warrant the banhammer. 1v1 it mostly works. 3v3... it works sometimes. Other times the AI glitches out and all the craft start spinning. I guess I'm doing stuff which was never meant to be done.

Update your BDA to 1.0.0 and it'll appear.

Sharpen yer pitchforks and banhammers, because I have just researched a new technology. http://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Hive-Princess.craft I don't think this should be an entry, but it is still rather nifty, no?

It's definitely Vessel Mover. When craft are spawned from the runway, the AI pilot will drop the trolley when it's quite a bit in the air, when it's spawned with Vessel Mover, the AI will drop the trolley when it's the tiniest bit (like 2mm) in the air. Test with both to make sure it can lift off. This came up with my Pike. My money is on the Blastoise leaving the turrets on default engagement options, which are, unsurprisingly, fire at ground targets only.

Press V on the keyboard to fix. Also, thinking about it, I'd like to retract my Warhog for now. I'll see if I can rebuild it with less clipping. Craft like that are just not good sportsmanship. Thank you!

While investigating if craft without missiles are feasible, this flying brick came to be: http://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Warhog-No-T.craft It's heavy, box-shaped, and uses guns for men, not those wimpy Vulcans. I'm sort of convinced that leaving missiles out is, indeed, feasible, though not necessarily optimal.

I've actually looked at the code considering maybe I should just fix some of that myself, and turns out it really would be an impressively large amount of work. Also, to be fair, the Pike does use and abuse some of these quirks. It is very much a meta build. I can do a "quick" postmortem if anyone's interested, though my "quick" tends to get rather wordy anyway. Extending, aka flying in a straight line doing nothing: The intention here is to build some distance so you can get a clearer shot. It seems there are people (who build hyper-maneuverable fighters), who wish this behaviour just went away (me included), and there are people (who build high speed interceptors), who think the AI does not do enough of that. What can you do about it? Well, the most common scenario is when the AI decides it wants to use a missile, but is too close for a clear launch. To counter this, you can make it think it's going too slow to pull the maneuver off by raising the idleSpeed. Or just go the way of the Pike, and don't bring missiles. The other scenario is when the AI decides that it is already turning in circles for 15 seconds and cannot achieve a kill. Well, kill faster. There's also a more obscure scenario involving a target under you and below your default altitude. So, generally, don't set the default altitude too high. Weapon selection, aka not shooting when you have a clear shot: The AI will have one, and only one type of weapon selected. The selection is primarily done based on what's in range and the "situation" of the target, "airborne" in our case. In theory, the AI will pick its best missile when above "gun range" set in weapon manager, and best gun when below. It doesn't actually always obey the gun range, I'm not sure why. The AI thinks the AIM-120 is better than the AIM-9, because of reasons. So while you have AIM-120, it mostly won't use Sidewinders. What can you do about it, especially against stealthy fighters? You could increase the minRange of AIM-120 to about 5km, which seems to be the effective range of Sidewinders. Or just accept that this is the era of stealth fighters, and relegate the AIM-120 to history. Which brings us to: Stealth, aka being unlockable by radar: The basic Radar Cross Section (RCS) is rather uncomplicated, you can see the number in SPH, radars have a detection curve, the larger you are, the further away they will lock on you. ECM are rather more complicated. They both increase your signature, and give you a multiplier for your signature for lock-on purposes. Chaff also give you a similar (just very temporary) multiplier. We can get rid of a lot of that complexity by focusing on the lock-on multiplier. I know the minmaxers among you are already thinking "can we make it go to zero?". Turns out, we can do better. We can make it go negative. You can check out the specifics on git, but this is engineering, not science, so, of course, we can have a nice table instead of complicated formulas: Number of ECM How much RCS can they hide completely 1 5 m2 2 8.25 m2 3 10.36 m2 4 11.73 m2 5 12.62 m2 Infinite 14.28 m2 As you can see, you will still want a rather small RCS, but the choice can be more informed about that design decision. This is not an absolute truth, you might still get locked-on at extreme (~10km) range for larger RCS, because ECM jamming has a limited range. I also saw a few times when AIM-120 were fired in the videos above after achieving a lock for reasons unknown, but they lose interest immediately. NB: The AI will only turn on ECM when AMRAAMs are fired at it, you have to turn them on via action groups for this to work. And make sure you have enough electricity to run them all. And no, you do not need chaff if you do this. Heat, aka now that we're immune to AMRAAMs, what can we do about Sidewinders: Turns out, not too much. The signature is measured in Kelvin (if I understand correctly), which currently means the difference in lock-on range between a room temperature glass of water and a red-hot engine is 4 km vs 5.5 km. EDIT: Actually a room temperature glass of water is locked at 1km, so the method below is more effective than I expected when writing this. So, what can we do? Well, the AI of the other side will start dodging as soon as you fire that Sidewinder, so those 4 km vs 5.5 km can still be rather critical in making sure you fire first. The engines are by far the biggest source of heat, so cutting throttle before entering Sidewinder range will give you that edge. You might notice the Pike does exactly that - sort of "gliding in for the kill". To make the AI do that simply limit its maxSpeed (and make sure it can reach that speed on limited throttle). This also has the benefit of reducing Sidewinder friendly fire, by the way. And now that we've solved these problems, we're left with the good old-fashioned gunfighting problem, where more dakka, higher TWR and lower wing-loading carry the day. EDIT: Guess I might as well post it, since I went through the pages looking through the current queue: Looks like next up is @Mukita12's https://kerbalx.com/Mukita12/FL-2-Triango-Combat @53miner53's https://kerbalx.com/53miner53/Fighter-3-Mk3 @Abraxis's https://kerbalx.com/Abraxis/DN-65C @dundun92's https://kerbalx.com/dundun92/IV-1 with its 118 parts And, maybe possibly lastly, my https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Tank

I don't think it's an accuracy issue, it is actually a lot more accurate than a vulcan (0.2 deviation vs 0.6), the main problem is the low fire rate, of which the vulcan has plenty. So I took two turrets. Now, this is not my official entry, so, @exbyde, run it only if you feel like it'd be a fun thing to do, but this lil' guy has been exceeding my expectation all evening, so I just have to give him a chance. http://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Tank.craft

Well, making a forward-mounted design is like shooting yourself in a leg. Anytime the target passes your horizontal plane, the turret will yaw all the way around to shoot at it, as it cannot just pitch over. That will result in long delays in firing anytime that happens, and when aiming, that will happen a lot. It would make more sense to just restrict the yaw angle on a top or bottom mount. Might just try to restrict the yaw on the current test plane and see how it goes, but with only 2k range it is a lot harder to justify the weight. Obviously, the advantage would be less, and the plane would need to be better designed to make use of that advantage. And then we'd just restrict the lasers even more. So the rule would become "you can use turrets, but only on bad planes". I'm trying to come up with a good reason for that, and I'm failing. If it's for novelty's sake only, perhaps allowing aviator arsenal weapons (except the turret) would be a better idea. Well, I'm pretty sure I could get it under 20t. 15t might be tricky with all the dead weight - a cockpit of 1t, a laser of 1t and fuel cells at least 1.5t but probably 2t. The additional restrictions might be effective, but I honestly don't see what we achieve by that. And I think I could definitely make a lighter plane with similar behaviour to spam missiles. But missile spam is dead. The new low radar cross section entries do very well against AMRAAM spam, and Sidewinders really like to lock on the previously fired missile anyway. So these planes cannot really work without turrets. I have tried. Many times.

So, a proof of concept. These are the third and fourth tests, with no tweaks between them. The first two were 1v1 too. I understand that is a lot more than most entries get, but still. I would tweak it more if it were an entry, like it probably has too many missiles which it barely uses, no flares, the engines probably don't need to gimbal for roll, a fuel cell or two could be replaced by an extra battery, etc. As for proof of concept, it's good enough. It also breaks the new 20t mass limit, but not by much. Also, I would argue against the mass limit as unnecessary, but turrets seemed more important. I don't think mass affects lag, that's what the part limit is for, and I don't think it solves any other problems. And it does restrict some design choices. Distract the public with hot-button topics so you can pass the relevant ones without argument, eh? Good luck on your career in politics. The problem with turrets is that it drops the requirement for the aircraft to turn to face the target. You can just amble about and hope it turns out alright. While fixed lasers might still have a few problems, like perfect accuracy and no possibility of dodging, the weight of the laser and the fuel cells might mostly offset that. Turrets relax just too many design problems (turning radius, aim stability). I mean, I'll be honest, if you allowed Abrams cannon turrets I'd probably take it, and laser turrets I'll take any day of the week. http://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Minilaser.craft Sorry for no sound in the first one.

Don't forget that thread restricted all weapons to be static, meaning the laser had to have its rotation set to zero (like it is on the Solarius). Do we have a similar restriction here? Imho, we should, (because turrets,) but if we don't I am going to go and build a turreted craft right now.

A wild cheese appears! https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Pike.craft I think I've worked around all the serious bugs encountered with this one so far. I'm going to quote the doctor at you :

I think there haven't been any major changes (mandatory "but I am not a dev"), and the suicidal insanity is due to a bug in guard mode "firingAtMe" detection. Previously the planes would get out of the way early because they would be dodging each other's gunfire, now planes mostly don't dodge gunfire. The detection angles are too small because of a forgotten square root. Pretty sure it was already in the 1.0 release. The collision detection, with a detection radius of 30m and a prediction interval of 0.5s firing for planes heading at each other at 100m/s each will mostly miss (70%), but it has been this way for a long while. It's fired every 20 updates, so it has multiple chances of detecting the other one, but in a protracted fight it's very likely to fail at some point.

That does not mean it no longer works, I use it without any problems. You'll just have to spend a minute longer to google up a live download. You'll want to search for "Windows Live Essentials 2012"; I think the cnet download should be fine, but you can drop it into virustotal after downloading just to be sure. Alternatively, youtube has a few tools integrated (click "edit video" under the video after uploading it and then "enhancements"), such as trimming out parts of the video, and speeding it all up, though I find the movie maker a better experience.

That was exactly my reaction too! I don't have a strategic bomber either, but I'm a more of a ballistic delivery kind of guy anyway. Though a bomber might be more precise with my shoddy piloting. I may have overdone the last attempt to the extent that my KSP crashed, but at least I got to scream "NO KILL LIKE OVERKILL!!!". Warning, the video ends abruptly. Because, as mentioned, KSP crashed.

Well, I managed a stalemate with both sides out of ammo. 192 parts on the attacking side. Shooting starts at about 2:15.

I'm in! I've been running the dev version for a while, and it really makes a lot of difference. I can also probably run a battle or two in the dev version (too lazy to revert to an older one), but it's mostly similar to the beta. I think my laptop can handle about 400 parts per side before it becoming too slow. Sometime before I've run 500+, but it was way too slow for me to try again. Just tell me what to run against what (and if you want AI on the ships). The only sad part is that I haven't found a way to nicely beat @Earthlinger's challenge in dev: The turrets shoot down bombs super efficiently. And if I drop more bombs, then one exploding (shot down) blows up all the others. Maybe if I dropped them from many small planes though... Goalkeepers at 3km barely do any damage to the flak cannons, unlike before. Any closer, and my craft get shot up. The things are way too small to really hit using artillery at long range. My (AI) aircraft haven't really utilized AGM missiles properly to date, but so far that's the most promising strategy. I'm also thinking of making a landing craft and doing a land-based assault from a less defended coast, but they are harder to design than I wished. I don't want to resort to using a million cruise missiles, because that feels cheap.

The persistent.sfs is sufficient. Or you can do alt+F5, name it something like "fortified v1", and then share the fortified v1.sfs. Then we can load it using alt+F9. The frigates are also somewhat hidden inside the island for me. Could be that I loaded a science save in a sandbox game, not sure.