Top Gun AI - The Official Tournament Thread

[colmo]

My personal rules on wing spam and clipping are:

- no sandwiching of wings

- elevons can only be attached to a fixed wing's edges, either leading, trailing or tip.

- control surfaces should not be significantly clipping though other parts in their normal range of movement.

- fixed wings should not clip inside fuselage more than necessary for seamless fit and finish - over 50% of surface area concealed is a definite no-no. A specific exception is engine nacelles built into the wings.

My initial draft.

[Alphasus]

Only broke one rule that if fixed, hampers the plane.

[Slam_Jones]

-snip-

Also, an f15 has landed with one wing, and all it has is body lift to help it....http://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wing/

Interesting (and very impressive). But there certainly is a difference between making an emergency landing without a wing, and continuing (and eventually winning) a dogfight without a wing.

[Alphasus]

Interesting. But there certainly is a difference between making an emergency landing without a wing, and continuing (and eventually winning) a dogfight without a wing.

The plane was a factor there. A CK-232 can't turn particularly well. That damage sustained against the f-9, fa-27,little buster,gladius, heatwave, stormwind, spatha, ck141,typhoeus, and a few others would have gotten me killed.

[Evstaman]

The gladius was made by a veteran of this tournament, and he clearly used wing clipping as an advantage to his plane. His plane was beat by the ck-260, one of your planes, which didn't use wing clipping.

[Alphasus]

The Little Buster also used very little wing clipping, and thus it defeated the f-9, which used clipping, and the Gladius, which used minor wing clipping.

[Evstaman]

Wing clipping is therefore absolutely not overpowered, but i admit it can be a significant equalizer to show the skill of the builder in a tournament like this one.

[Slam_Jones]

True, my designs do make use of some clipping for aesthetic reasons, but I always try to make sure at least 50% is shootable (meaning you can see it, and if fired upon, it will take damage, rather than the damage going to whatever part may be covering it). If it appears I have more of it hidden than that, then by all means, call me out on it, and I'll check and modify it to make sure it's all legit. I think below that (50% threshold) is starting to reach the "abuse" region. Then again, more rules means less options, means less unique craft.

We could certainly try to get some rules hammered out for the next tourny, if the community agrees on them. I think 50% is a fair point to start at. Should it be required to have more exposed? Allow less to be exposed? Or just not worry about it?

Edited August 20, 2015 by Slam_Jones

[Alphasus]

In this tournament, it will be a don't worry about it. I rather like limiting restrictions. This could be a tournament where unrestricted planes go.

[colmo]

The Gladius doesn't look so bad. Wing strakes are pretty much designed to clip a bit into awkward curving fuselage and add minimal lift to the equation.

An eyeballed 50% is what I suggested, we don't want to get bogged down in scrutineering.

I appreciate that making wings look nice in stock can be tricky. When you've got clipped wing parts which are clearly not for looks but redundancy and drastically shifting and increasing lift, that's just exploitation of the aero model.

We don't want to go to FAR because that's a new thing to learn and an extra burden on the recording rig, FPS does suffer according to Scott Manley.

I gave this idea for free use so I'm mindful I'm not sole proprietor. You kids will have to thrash it out for yourselves.

Edited August 20, 2015 by colmo

[dangerouspeople1]

I want to ask, will FAR correctly calculate clipped wings( like only calculate the part exposed)?

[Hobbes Novakoff]

I want to ask, will FAR correctly calculate clipped wings( like only calculate the part exposed)?

Yep, it's all voxelized-individual parts don't matter, just the overall shape. Even if it would make planes a lot harder, I almost want FAR to be made stock because of how awesome that would be.

[GDJ]

Okay, so can we all agree to this?:

-Wing clipping into the body no greater than 15% of the wings surface area.

-Wing blending into another wing is permitted as long as the blended area is no greater than 20% of the wings surface area AND it must be visible from the outside. If the wing blending is greater than this it may be permitted as long as it was necessary to the proper flight of the aircraft (i.e. structural necessity).

[Alphasus]

Hmm, I like my tournaments to be free form. But, everyone has their own rules, so they can use their own.

Those rules do make sense, however.

[dangerouspeople1]

If that's the case, I will just use FAR. It can discourage wing clipping and makes the dog fight more realistic.

[RocketTurtle]

Guys, school has recently started for me so I can't keep up with this thread. If there are any changes I need to make to the op please PM me.

[TokiTech]

Okay, so can we all agree to this?:

-Wing clipping into the body no greater than 15% of the wings surface area.

-Wing blending into another wing is permitted as long as the blended area is no greater than 20% of the wings surface area AND it must be visible from the outside. If the wing blending is greater than this it may be permitted as long as it was necessary to the proper flight of the aircraft (i.e. structural necessity).

Guideline is within my perspective, i can do if you are the tourney host.

[Zixor]

I say any future competitions should just use FAR instead of instituting arbitrary rules about wing clipping. It would avoid nitpicking over what precise amount of wing area can overlap. FAR would also give more depth to the design process in my opinion. The only downside is that FAR is more taxing on the CPU, but I think a decent computer should be able to handle 1v1 matches with no issue.

[GDJ]

So hey what little decal can I stick beside my BDArmory sig? One of them has to be the "cheap-@$$" one.

[Alphasus]

So hey what little decal can I stick beside my BDArmory sig? One of them has to be the "cheap-@$$" one.

You get tightwad and sergeant.

[GDJ]

"Sergeant Tightwad".

Kinda rolls off the tongue, eh?

[ihtoit]

I'm gonna have a go at this - if I can build a fully stocked replica F14 Tomcat.

Failing that, I have an F16 already, all it's missing is missile hardpoints. Is there a maximum number of missiles I can mount? I have enough wing to mount 24 rails I reckon.

[Zixor]

Ihtiot, page 27 of this thread has a post by Alphasus with info on the latest tournament hosted by him. That tournament is nearly over now, but there may be a new tournament hosted after this one is wraped up.

[Guest]

I was going to see about hosting a tournament, but I want to build my own ruleset based on observations in the thread, and the game behavior.

I'll need to do more testing before I'm ready to go.

[GDJ]

I'm gonna have a go at this - if I can build a fully stocked replica F14 Tomcat.

Failing that, I have an F16 already, all it's missing is missile hardpoints. Is there a maximum number of missiles I can mount? I have enough wing to mount 24 rails I reckon.

OOH! I have my CF-86 and a Firespitter F-86H that would love to meet them!