Top Gun AI - The Official Tournament Thread

[MostExcellent]

Looks like I'm gonna be able to do a second tourney with all these new planes!

Better get out a new fighter.

 

[Triop]

Lol, I have 3 planes in that tournament, all out of date versions by now.

My best 2 have to fight against "X wings", and the SuperFly II is from the cold war era .

I will looooose this horroribellelly

O well, I guess there will be a next time...

[drtricky]

3 hours ago, Triop said:

Lol, I have 3 planes in that tournament, all out of date versions by now.

My best 2 have to fight against "X wings", and the SuperFly II is from the cold war era .

I will looooose this horroribellelly

O well, I guess there will be a next time...

Hey man, 1950's MIG-17's were scaring the USAF during the vietnam war with their more modern F-4 Phantoms and F-105 Thunderchiefs. 

[drtricky]

With a second torney possible, I'd like to introduce my second monstrosity plane, coming soon to the meat section of a super market near you

Meet the F/A/B-41 Taurus

 

Features:

Beefy wings with enough missile space to screw anything it locks on to (Creator's note: only has 7 missiles because I've been paid to keep it fair)

Beefy body with enough mass to shrug off the recoil of 3 GAU-8's (Creator's note: does not have 3 GAU-8's because I've been paid to keep it fair)

Minimal wing stacking and clipping

11 engines

Noise levels that causes hearing loss to any kerbal pilot after 5 minutes of exposure

Internal bomb bay with a capacity of 30+ mk 82 bombs (Currently has nothing inside it)

 

Point count (pictures above outdated):

1 Hidden vulcan = 7

1 ammo box = 4

7 AIM-120's = 28

4 Chaff CM = 8

4 Flare CM = 12

For a total of 59 points

Edited December 31, 2015 by drtricky
Uploaded improved version of plane

[MostExcellent]

Round of 8 over and uploaded to youtube.

Playlist with all tournament videos

Results:

Match A:

Canard C 3-0 SuperFly II

Video

Match B:

Top Kek 3-0 El Quicko

Video

Match C:

FF-102 3-0 Ariel 3

Video

Match D:

Asp Mk4 3-2 Flutter

Video

IMHO the Flutter is by a wide margin the best non-wingstack design presented so far in the tournament. Major props to @Triop

Edited December 30, 2015 by MostExcellent

[drtricky]

1 hour ago, MostExcellent said:

*snip*

Wing stacking, man

Good thing I was using your aircraft (top kek) to determine the standards I would face

Edited December 30, 2015 by drtricky

[RocketTurtle]

Guys,

 

I'm going to assume you've made quite a few changes to the tournament since I've been here. I've been caught up in school and stuff so I apologize for not being able to keep the OP up to date.

 

If someone could PM me a list of changes I need to make to the OP, or simply something I can copy and paste into it, that would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks

[BlueCanary]

5 hours ago, MostExcellent said:

Match B:

Top Kek 3-0 El Quicko

Video

List of people who urgently need a new design:

    - Me

 

I think a lot of my problems are coming from too much low speed maneuverability: the AI makes it turn as hard as it can all the time and end up with next to no energy for missile avoidance. The Top Kek pulled less Gs, kept twice the energy, avoided my missile shots, shot some more, won.

Edited December 30, 2015 by BlueCanary

[BlueCanary]

Well, here's a quick attempt to make a less-useless design:

Stacked engines English Electric Lightning style, improved TWR over my previous design, reduced maneuverability to maintain more speed. Unfortunately I can't figure out a way to put landing gear on it. Are tailsitters allowed?

EDIT: Here's a craft file, if anyone would like to test it against one of their designs that would be so helpful, my PC is throwing a tantrum so I can rarely even launch one craft before KSP crashes so there's no way I can test it in combat myself.

Edited December 30, 2015 by BlueCanary

[Alphasus]

3 hours ago, BlueCanary said:

Well, here's a quick attempt to make a less-useless design:

Stacked engines English Electric Lightning style, improved TWR over my previous design, reduced maneuverability to maintain more speed. Unfortunately I can't figure out a way to put landing gear on it. Are tailsitters allowed?

EDIT: Here's a craft file, if anyone would like to test it against one of their designs that would be so helpful, my PC is throwing a tantrum so I can rarely even launch one craft before KSP crashes so there's no way I can test it in combat myself.

No engine stacking allowed, its considered clipping of engines.

[BlueCanary]

2 minutes ago, Alphasus said:

No engine stacking allowed, its considered clipping of engines.

By stacked I mean they are vertically arranged, not that they are clipped into each other. It's just like side by side engines, just rotated 90 degrees.

Like this:

[Triop]

@ BlueCanary, smart, it's like the "Gladius 1-A". Good fighter, don't remember who made it...

I like your design, at least it looks like a plane, maybe later will see if I can "Flutter" it.

If these "X-wings" like ASP keep entering tournaments I will be forced to do the same, but I would not like that...

@ MostExcellent  "IMHO the Flutter is by a wide margin the best non-wingstack design presented so far in the tournament."

You have no idea how many hours where put in to achieving that....

[Triop]

13 hours ago, drtricky said:

Hey man, 1950's MIG-17's were scaring the USAF during the vietnam war with their more modern F-4 Phantoms and F-105 Thunderchiefs. 

Hey man, those were flown by Russian "Aces", not stupid AI

 

[drtricky]

Those non-stacked wing designs would all be viable, if the AI wasn't so dumb at flying thm

[BlueCanary]

13 minutes ago, drtricky said:

Those non-stacked wing designs would all be viable, if the AI wasn't so dumb at flying thm

There should be some kind of CornerSpeed variable or something to recommend a speed the AI will try to remain at or above unless there's an emergency, so that it won't bleed off all it's speed straight away. That way you could set it high for a fast but not very maneuverable fighter to fly fast hit and run attacks or set it low so a maneuverable dogfighter will turn quick to get behind it's target, but still high enough that it holds at least enough energy to dodge missiles.

[Triop]

20 minutes ago, drtricky said:

Those non-stacked wing designs would all be viable, if the AI wasn't so dumb at flying thm

I found out that setting up your AI computer can help, most people copy the settings from planes that are good I think, but every design needs a different setup.

Also, I found out that fighting different crafts, my plane needs a different setup per craft.

@ blueCanary I lolled so hard about the name you gave your plane

Edited December 30, 2015 by Triop

[drtricky]

46 minutes ago, Triop said:

I found out that setting up your AI computer can help, most people copy the settings from planes that are good I think, but every design needs a different setup.

Also, I found out that fighting different crafts, my plane needs a different setup per craft.

First off, can you explain what each steering setting does?

Second, the AI is just dumb in general. An example is when my F/A/B-41 Taurus gets tailed by mostexcellent's top kek in a gun fight (for testing purposes), the first thing my Taurus does is slow down and set the throttles to half or idle. The AI on my plane is too damn dumb for some reason to apply full throttle and escape using the thrust provided by eleven frickin engines.

It is also common for my plane to make no attempt to maneuver away from missiles, despite having enough speed, countermeasures and space to do so, or be dumb when making maneuvers to dodge missiles.

Edited December 30, 2015 by drtricky

[Redshift OTF]

12 hours ago, MostExcellent said:

Round of 8 over and uploaded to youtube.

Playlist with all tournament videos

Results:

Match A:

Canard C 3-0 SuperFly II

Video

Match B:

Top Kek 3-0 El Quicko

Video

Match C:

FF-102 3-0 Ariel 3

Video

Match D:

Asp Mk4 3-2 Flutter

Video

IMHO the Flutter is by a wide margin the best non-wingstack design presented so far in the tournament. Major props to @Triop

Cool! Nice round there. The Flutter put up a heck of a fight. It is surprising the difference in the styles of planes and how effective they are. Can't wait for the next round although I think my FF-102 is in for a battle.

[Triop]

11 minutes ago, drtricky said:

First off, can you explain what each steering setting does?

Second, the AI is just dumb in general. An example is when my F/A/B-41 Taurus gets tailed by mostexcellent's top kek in a gun fight (for testing purposes), the first thing my Taurus does is slow down and set the throttles to half or idle. The AI on my plane is too damn dumb for some reason to apply full throttle and escape using the thrust provided by eleven frickin engines.

It is also common for my plane to make no attempt to maneuver away from missiles, despite having enough speed, countermeasures and space to do so, and continue shooting missiles at the enemy when there are missiles flying at it.

"First off, can you explain what each steering setting does?"

I can not explain it but e.g. If you see in a fight that your plane keeps rolling trying to get a missile lock, lowering some values helps making it more sturdy to get the lock sooner, however, this can lower your chances to avoid missiles.

CoM and CoL changes can also help, it's just a lot of configuration and time...

I needed to do A LOT of fighting sims against different craft to get the settings for the Flutter...

"Second, the AI is just dumb in general"

Maybe, but all fighters have the same dumb AI pilot, so I see not much of a problem here.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Triop

[drtricky]

23 minutes ago, Triop said:

Maybe, but all fighters have the same dumb AI pilot, so I see not much of a problem here.

9 out of 10 times in a gun fight, I see that my plane could get behind the enemy's, heh for example, when my plane is headed towards another plane heading towards it. But for some reason, it good to honest lets the enemy get behind it heheh. by turning into the opposite direction, something I've never observed the enemy doing.

I think my AI has some kind of prison r*pe kink 

Edited December 30, 2015 by drtricky

[Triop]

So, lets do a quick mini-tournament

BlueCanary- "Hopefully not crap"

v.s.

drtricky- "FAB-41 Taurus"

Wanna see how it went ?

Spoiler

HNC hits Taurus first with Aim-9 Sidewinder.

Taurus survives !

Second Aim 9 from HNC

Full hit !

Taurus keeps flying !

Save the Kerbals ! ! !

O dear. . .

This fight was just for fun, and fun it was

 

[BlueCanary]

38 minutes ago, Triop said:

So, lets do a quick mini-tournament

BlueCanary- "Hopefully not crap"

v.s.

drtricky- "FAB-41 Taurus"

Wanna see how it went ?

  Hide contents

HNC hits Taurus first with Aim-9 Sidewinder.

Taurus survives !

Second Aim 9 from HNC

Full hit !

Taurus keeps flying !

Save the Kerbals ! ! !

O dear. . .

This fight was just for fun, and fun it was

 

Wait, did I forget to set afterburners on by default?

Still, nice to see something I made not blow up.

[Triop]

26 minutes ago, BlueCanary said:

Wait, did I forget to set afterburners on by default?

Still, nice to see something I made not blow up.

I have no idea, I kept of the settings accept for height: low 600m high 1500m.

your craft is avoiding missiles amazing, I saw you did some stuff with the settings that improved a lot.

 

Come to think of it, your take off setup didn't match the speed, took of slow..I need to check...

Yep, your engines are dry..have to do more sims

So much to do, so little time..KSP I hate you .

[Triop]

Ok I see there is a dedicated little group here, do you like a "small" challenge ?

-  juno engines only, 4 max (for the Xwing builders here)

- only guns

- No mods, only BDarmor

-Settings for battle Altitude: The deck = 150m low, 500m top. EDIT : 150m is to low for Juno,The deck = 600m low 1500 top !

 

The rest is up to you, love to see you stacking wings on that, rebel scum

 

Now don't go uploading craft files yet, first let me know if you are interested.

One volunteer will do, more are welcome.

Edit: Put a Kerbal in it !

Find some inspiration here:

There is even a TIE FIGHTER

Edited December 30, 2015 by Triop

[BlueCanary]

3 minutes ago, Triop said:

Ok I see there is a dedicated little group here, do you like a "small" challenge ?

-  juno engines only, 4 max (for the Xwing builders here)

- only guns

- No mods, only BDarmor

-Settings for battle Altitude: The deck = 150m low, 500m top.

 

The rest is up to you, love to see you stacking wings on that, rebel scum

 

Now don't go uploading craft files yet, first let me know if you are interested.

One volunteer will do, more are welcome.

Ooh I'd love a guns only battle, it would make things very interesting. 

Also thanks for running the simulations with my plane, I'm having some really annoying stability issues (can't even load a single craft half the time) at the moment so it's really helpful.