Van Disaster
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Posts posted by Van Disaster
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OK, some admin notes:
* The post you quoted was from the original thread which was locked - the OP of the continuation thread also didn't keep it up to date, so Gridghost & I managed the contest from posts 2 & 3 - Here's the final leaderboard although technically we never actually stopped, BDA and the game just kept changing on us.
* There are useful checklists for this contest for both entrants and fight managers in my post ( the one I just linked above ), if you didn't change the rules they're still valid.
* Try and quote the post from thread 2 a bit better.
* Most of all, the post you quoted has extremely out of date mod links - I'm not sure Dynamic Deflection even works anymore. Challenges are started by the opening poster showing they can complete ( or compete in ) their own challenge - you should post a demo fight video like Wanderfound did.Here's the complete playlist from the previous contest.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMOfiFa_ZSfdns5-FZ8_3vqoeeat0JH8B
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Hmm - I too have had bad experiences with IR & anything related to landing gear... will give it a little thought.
Modern aircraft parts seem to finally be light enough that you can use a sensible wing area & still get some decent performance. Hurray!
That thing even has a Vr of about 90kts at sea level still
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6 minutes ago, GDJ said:
I think that classifies as a Necro Post. Over 4 years ago.
It's more a reference to a gravestone
that was horribly long ago though.
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I don't think I've ever deleted a save, does it delete the entire directory tree or just the .sfs files? if it's just the latter then anything saved in SPH/VAB is still in it's directory.
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Hm, last time I did this it was "as fast as possible" - something like an hour and 50m of near crashing iirc
will investigate more, 0.23 was a long time ago.
Edit: 1h40m -
Most definitely not fuel cell powered though! be interesting what you can do with current stuff. Off to make a new install...
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So, ah, this is a very British piece of engineering: landing speed of 73kts ( runs out of control authority just before it stalls ), stops in not much more than it's own length, can put it down about anywhere & takeoff run is pretty damn short too, but:
Anyone know of either any kneeling landing gear, or ramp extensions?
I know you could use adjustable gear & change the strut extension, but that is pretty clonky & potentially quite destructive. Using extra gear & retracting the mains also works, but it's a really inelegant solution.
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3 hours ago, OmegaForce said:
Engines could come from the early set in the Airplane Plus mod. They might need some tweaking but visually they fit the era. The mod as well has a bi plane style fixed landing gear we could put to use.
Kinda looks the part, ( if you're building a SPAD ) - performance curve is kinda wierd though, gets up to 125mph fast and then just stops. Good find though, will go looking around for more.
The 1.25m rotary is kinda funny - that'd have the plane on it's back on the ground, I reckon
I've been looking around for something like a Bristol Mercury/Jupiter, or original P&W Wasp - the classic 20s-30s install had the distinctive annular cowl.
Ed: I like this one, very inter-war.
Spoiler
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As a general note, if you're spinning out you probably just don't have enough vertical fin - it's the part that stops a craft yawing. The craft in the OP definitely doesn't have enough vertical fin. On top of that, the actual force is area of fin * distance from CoM * airspeed, so the nearer it is to CoM the bigger it has to be.
There's a bunch of other things involving wing shape I'm not sure matter to stock, generally deltas are quite stable though.
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13 minutes ago, Frank_G said:
I play with stock parts, but use Kerbal Engineer Redux and Editor Extensions, because it offers me more freedom in my creations. I like to compare my creations with others though, so i have to stay with the stock part catalogue.
I really wish for a stock controllable rotational electric motor though, for creating ramps, rotors, deployment mechanisms, robotic arms and such things, without having to refer to mods.
And there is the difference between someone who legitimately would want to use a mod if the logistics didn't mean it was an issue ( which is why I don't use part mods in another building game - KSP has so many mods that make my experience better I'm not bothered ), and someone who thinks not using mods somehow makes them better than other people. Just ignore the latter.
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Try the actual official IRC channels ( well, don't go into kspmodders ) - usually full of long-term users & friendly. I only use discord channels for one game, and that will probably be the only one ( not least because the discord plugin for my IM client is not great! ). The IRC channel mods are good people.
As for active anti-modding ( which shows up everywhere, not just KSP ), it's just some elitist ego-strokers, play as you enjoy. So much hypocracy involved it's not worth the effort to argue about or even bother thinking about. A mod becomes part of the stock game and it's suddenly legitimate, really
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7 hours ago, Gordon Fecyk said:
Today I succeeded in gliding Matt Lowne's Blunderbird 6 across half of Kerbin's circumference after botching my re-entry, and landed on the runway. Thanks to Gav's advice.
Folks, take his advice!
The aero data display in FAR helped a lot. I used that to maximize my lift-to-drag ratio on re-entry, and even with that pointy Mk1 cockpit managed to glide safely home.
The simplest thing is probably just to fly by temperature, another thing a gentle re-entry will let you do. If the temperature is static but below maximum you can descend a bit faster, if it's going up too fast just pitch up & level off a bit ( that requires a bit of pre-emption ). If you keep a note of the average descent rate you can plot a better trajectory for the next one until you can pick the right re-entry burn location & time, and the re-entry pitch, and basically just leave the craft alone until it's time to start flying & not just falling.
You don't actually want to maximise L/D - you're trying to slow down!
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4 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:
On the other hand, setting engagement ranges to something more realistic like ~800-1200m with the current AI will only result in guaranteed kills during the first pass, as both craft have time to line up shots and begin firing from a range that's too close to dodge the incoming fire.
"Realistic" would be 100-300m and to be fair I think most of the kills in the tournament ( definitely not all mind ) are probably below 400m. The closer craft get to each other the more slight errors in heading vs target start causing bigger control movements & the craft can diverge from head-on, that needs some testing - it'll quite happily go head-on through a bullet hail for hundreds of metres anyway, so there's no difference whether it's firing or not. Ideally the AP would recognise head-on behaviour & break off, but that's another matter ( far too many collisions still anyway ).
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21 hours ago, KSK said:
Plus - there's always another ladder. Maybe if I bought a bigger ladder, I could get even more fruit. But that way surely lies madness.
People satisfied with what they have is anathema to capitalism
DLC for KSP1 are going to be bought to reward Squad for supporting the game for so long, that's as far as any extra money for it is going to go with the community as it is, there's no avenue to do anything else. You'd be surprised about how many people buy DLC for long-running titles just to try and keep development ticking over ( I've got every official Assetto Corsa car just for that, I'll probably never drive some of them ).
KSP2 might be on an entirely different game engine, and who knows what style of game it will really be? no point spending the energy on either feeling assured or paranoid at this point. It might not even ever arrive.
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2 hours ago, MightyDarkStar said:
Oh, now this was cool. You've completely transformed the Kestrel, not to mention how good a fight that was. The Huginn is quite a pretty thing, I adore your building style.
Did you tweak any of the Ai settings on the Kestrel M? I don't know what half the stuff means lmfao.
The important parts are just fancy labels for the gains on a PID controller: Steer Factor is the proportional gain, Steer Damping is the differential gain, and Pitch Ki is the gain for an integral controller ( I haven't checked if it really only just works in pitch ). I set steer factor to 5.5, damping to 1.5 & pitch Ki to 2.5, but those wouldn't be final numbers by any means - it just means it maneuvers a bit more smoothly - which isn't always a good thing because it's like having slow reactions, but it does mean less energy burned off usually. I think the Rolf-75 suffered a little from over-enthusiastic control movement. Most of the difference in the Kestrel performance is simply because it shed a tonne & a half or so.
Quite impressed that it took three Mk108 rounds without losing anything important!
I'll see if I can resurrect any of my civvie planes from 1.1 contests, I like those too.
And as promised here's the Deimos from this contest: https://kerbalx.com/VanDisaster/DAC-Deimos-Mk-X
Tetrydis, most of my frustration with building for this is just the same as other contests, the AI limitations.
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I'm aware of most of the reasons ( I'm not you, so obviously I don't know all your thought process ) - I brought it up because I don't think it makes enough difference that there's any point choosing to take less ammo and I wondered if you'd run numbers on different masses. TBH without gross changes in mass - and changes in other areas of balance like wings - I don't think ammo box counts will ever be more than fine tuning unless guns had to have their ammo in close proximity, and as the game doesn't enforce that that's a non-starter anyway - but maybe your data says otherwise.
I don't want to force people to take more ammo; the thought I had was to give people the option to take less ammo and gain a noticeable performance advantage that they could exploit to get closer where they've set their guns up so as to not waste ammo spraying it around at 2km. Right now if I pull half the ammo out of my entry it doesn't make a measurable difference to anything ( perhaps a fractional increase in climb rate ). Right now we're all ( from the videos, literally all ) showering anything that moves at almost as far as the guns can shoot because you don't gain anything by not doing that. But, as I said, on reflection I don't think fiddling with ammo box mass is really going to do that without changes elsewhere too.
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19 hours ago, AeroGav said:
I try to argue for a non-stalled re-entry angle but tend to get buried by the avalanche of "pitch 90 degrees" advice.
If you can persuade them to stay attached to the craft and then not pull whatever they're attached to off as well, rear-mounted stalled control surfaces are going to haul your speed down in a bit more of a hurry than mine did.
There was one version of FAR which involved making a descent by going twice around the planet in the atmosphere thanks to there being so little drag...
@plausseFor Laythe the easy answer is to land on the poles - other than that you can land in the sea, or it is actually doable to land on open ground but really not easy.
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20 hours ago, tetryds said:
The crate mass is always the same, calculated for a perfect box of steel at the aproximate ingame size, then adjusted, it weights about 8kg.
Did you mean increasing the box weight/making it smaller so that you use less?
Their size was adjusted so that a box contains around 350 rounds of 20mm bullets, about what a real mid/late ww2 fighter would have. Then the ammo count for the other bullets was calculated as described on the previous post.
You can change the amount of ammo the box contains on the editor after placing it. I fail to visualize the effect you described coming from adjusting the boxes sizes.
As a rule of thumb I would suggest one box for manual piloting and two for AI, regardless of the weapond type you use given the other BAD-T constraints. That way you will never run out of ammo.
I was asking if you'd considered increasing the mass of a round of ammo ( or the physica box itself ) such that carrying more has a noticeable effect and there was a choice to be made between being able to spray shells around from long ranges, or conserving ammo until you have a more guaranteed hit by reducing the distance guns fire at. I was asking that because you're the one who's run numbers on that sort of thing. I could have put a single ammo box on my craft & been fine, I doubt it'd have even used that, but adding another made absolutely no difference to it's performance.
@SuicidalInsanityI think you've run a fine event!
Oh, and this one is for @MightyDarkStar - I was testing a new recording environment & thought I might as well post it, it involves a lightweight Kestrel. There's a 1440p option if anyone can use it.
Spoiler -
4 hours ago, HebaruSan said:
I think that's true of rhoticity, in which it became common for Brits to imitate the most posh-sounding accents.
Not so aborted, depending on which century you mean by "last"; many US conventions go back to Noah Webster:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Compendious_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language
(I don't think I've ever seen "errour" in print.)
I'm a little dubious of that source of "pollution" ( but then it's Webster ) - anyone who's studied Chaucer will know Middle English, while just about readable by anyone who knows modern English, is *much* further adrift than just some random extra u's scattered about. It was my recollection that the "pollution" came from around when England took in a load of refugee aristocrats from the French revolution - by that time the American colony was well under way & speaking what was by then an older dialect.
"errour" would be very odd - in French it's erreur.
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On 06/11/2017 at 1:31 PM, Geschosskopf said:
#2: Uncrewed Launches: The main reason for parking a geostationary relay directly above KSC is to ensure you always (within the lifespan of orbits) have a link to ships that won't circularize until about 120^ around Kerbin from KSC. If you do this, then you've got launches covered with just 1 relay and can delay putting up the others until you have the need and/or money to do so. Because you've got 1 at geostationary orbit already, the others need to be there as well, to give the proper spacing and to remain in formation.
Well, no, they don't. Ignoring that you can put three relays up in one launch for not really all that much extra fuel ( resonant orbits are fun ), if you stick one geo relay above KSC you've effectively got a giant antenna to retransmit to lower-orbit relay networks ( like, say, ones in polar orbits ) which can relay on further. No need for more geo sats. Last RT run I put a gigantic - big enough to blanket the entire system - relay in Kerbin polar orbit at a distance somewhere between Mun & Minmus & just relied on low-orbit relays to get the signal to it.
For humans, knowing where a commsat is & knowing it's going to stay there makes actually using it considerably easier.
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1 hour ago, Oiff said:
I don’t think the text boxes would be big enough for Welsh
If it can handle German, I'm sure it'll manage
A Welsh voicepack would be kinda fun.
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I still wonder why it's not en_EN ( or just plain EN ). It's not like English is the language of England or anything
gd_AL & gd_CY ( gaelic Alba/Cymru ) would be the sensible codes for Scotland/Wales national languages - Scottish appears to be gd_GB - I'm very sure the other celtic areas of GB don't speak Scottish Gaelic - and Welsh just CY though if someone wants to get started on those. While you're at it, add Cornish & Bretannic too.
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11 minutes ago, tetryds said:
You can carry as much ammo as you wish, if you bring in more than needed you pay with the extra weight. And besides, the AI is not ready to deal with ammo management.
The ammo box capacity is basically a relationship between the mass and how many bullets such crate would be able to physically carry, with adjustments, especially for very large calibers.
I guess the fact that BAD-T is not meant to be realistic was lost again somewhere along the thread.
Yes, that's why I asked if you'd considered changing the mass or the capacity with the same mass, did I say anything about restricting the number of ammo boxes?. The effect would either be less pray & spray as you reduce firing distances, or you can just load up on ammo & pay the mass cost if you want to shoot at 2km ( currently the mass cost is not enough to make a noticeable difference, so it's not actually a choice at all ).
If I was talking realism I'd be looking for ways to make the pilot less accurate, don't remember mentioning that in that post.
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2 hours ago, Surefoot said:
The problem with canards and forward swept wings, is the bad re-entry heat/mechanical resistance. Canards will take a lot of heat being out of the shock cone, and fw swept wings will take a huge load out of the slightest AoA bump. I'd rather stick to standard tailless delta, even though these tend to have lawn dart behaviour...
We don't care about divergent issues - wings don't twist. I believe the shock cone at Mach 5 is 11 degrees, so those canards would be inside anyway ( since when did that matter for heating? ) - but that also doesn't matter if you don't aim at the planet like a lawn dart. In fact here's part 2 of the video covering re-entry - it being a new plane of course I messed up the descent & overshot the runway by several hundred km, but that was just a matter of sorting the timing out.
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1 hour ago, Alioth81 said:
Yes i will try to do that - I have to get to know the forum a bit better.
That was a complaint about the forum, not you - I tried to edit my previous post to quote yours, and couldn't find a way. Edit: well I certainly found a way to break quoting, at least.
First-pass kills are something I'm very unhappy about ( despite being to my benefit in that last battle ) - head-on jousting was something that happened in WW1, but for anything past 1917 it's just ridiculous. Unfortunately if the AI's target is in a line with it's velocity vector it doesn't know it needs to increase angular deflection... this is something that can be fixed.
1 hour ago, Alioth81 said:I am sure that is true it was more a subjective feeling that explosive ammo does not always "work" whereas the AP ammo types seem a bit more reliable (this could be realistic).
For sure I put 30mm on my plane to have a good chance to destroy whatever is hit :-)
What would you think about some restriction about how many large caliber cannons you can mount/clip into the engine (which was for sure a real restriction)? A limit of 30 mm per engine in total would be a limitation for cannons but you still can mount 2x 12mm or 4x7mm? At first I had my 30mm shooting through the propeller but it just did not feel right.
This way if you want multiple large guns you would be limited to wing positions outside the propeller diameter where they are a bit less effective. (or have an inverted propeller design where you need an appropriate nose cone.You'd only ever have one gun in the engine IRL and I'm not sure you could do it in a radial at all - for a watercooled V engine you can stick it in the vee, the propellor is geared so the crankshaft is below the gun. For a radial you'd have to have it firing down the middle of the crankshaft, and I don't think hollow cranks are a good idea for 2400hp aero engines... well I guess you could have it firing through a pair of cyls in a single row engine, but no *sizeable* radial has a single row. In-game it doesn't really matter if they're in the engine or on it, so not a problem as far as I'm concerned, benefit of the mass offset would be tiny.
However *above* the engine, or in the wing roots is just fine - you'd have to have synchronisation gear, but that was solved in WW1 and for slow firing cannon it's not a real impediment. You get problems with blinding the pilot with muzzle flash/filling the cockpit/engine air intakes with smoke/cartridge cases going everywhere they're not meant to/hot engine causing gun jams/other issues.
Ammo's effectiveness on hit depends on the temperature tolerance of the part it hits, amongst other things. My craft has survived a couple of 30mm hits, but I'd not rely on that. A burst of 20mm will kill anything, armoured or not, just like it ought to ( unless it's a Sturmovik, and good luck dogfighting in that ). The BDA issue is it's far too easy to hit anything - but if you make it harder to hit you'll have fights ending with no ammo, or lasting an hour. Well there is also that we carry a lot more ammo than real planes ( @tetryds, did you ever consider either increasing ammo mass directly or decreasing the rounds in a case? I agree the points system does work really well though ).
FAR Fighter Challenge: BD Armory AI: Recontinued (version 1.3.1)
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas
Posted · Edited by Van Disaster
We didn't have fancy stuff like that back then! ( also the takeoff was part of the fight for us - and notice I was the final title holder with a craft with the old Wheesley, which wasn't much more powerful than the current Jumo ).
BTW, *does* Dyamic Deflection still work? that was one of the most useful mods for tuning that particular version of BDA.
Didn't download but make sure you pay attention to the 399m/s top speed, Mukita12