Yet another BDA dogfighting competition

[Eidahlil]

Since the other challenge has shaped up a bit, entries are now closed discouraged. No point cluttering the forums with multiple threads doing the same.

Short form rules - 3v3, best of 3, KotH. BDA+stock, no turrets, max 6 missiles, max 75 (experimentally raised to 80) parts, must be kerballed + Wheaton's law.

Long form rules:

Spoiler

1. Submission rules:
   1. Post a link to your craft in this thread. KerbalX preferred, but not required. Also, everyone loves a single picture.
   2. You may have only one entry in the fight queue.
   3. I will not modify your craft. That's what we have you for. Also it makes running fights quicker.
   4. You may submit as many entries as you like, but I reserve the right to refuse to re-run craft with only minor tweaks.
2. Plane construction rules:
   1. Planes shall be constructed with stock and BDA parts only.
   2. Planes shall be kerballed, pilots shall be in cockpits (no pilots in external seats, no drones). Primarily for balance reasons.
   3. Planes shall have no more than 75 80 parts.
   4. Planes shall have no turrets. No, not even with rotation turned off, I don't want to have to check.
   5. Planes shall have no more than 6 AAM seeker missiles. AAM missiles are the AIM-9 Sidewinder, the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the PAC-3 Intercept Missile. You can have any mix of those up to 6 total. Feel free to try the other missiles, but I don't think they are going to help much.
   6. Planes shall be visually contiguous. Translation: no floating disconnected parts.
   7. Planes shall restrict part clipping to a reasonable level. See part 4 for details, but you know what I mean.
   8. Planes shall exhibit sportsmanlike behaviour. So no adding "toggle team" to the brakes action group, no decoupling into three planes upon takeoff and no adding probe cores with weapon managers on your wingtips, among other things.
3. Fight setup:
   1. The competition will be king of the hill style, where each entry goes against the current king of the hill, taking his place upon victory.
   2. Fights shall be best of 3 rounds. If one side wins the first two, there will be no third round. What would it change?
   3. Each round shall have 3 combatants on each team.
   4. Fights shall occur over the KSC.
   5. Fights shall be setup using competition mode with a starting distance of 8 20 km.
   6. Planes shall be staged once before launch, then launched using competition mode. It should remain stationary when staged once. No, don't add standby mode, guard mode, or whatever you think is "convenient" to staging.
   7. I shall record and upload videos of all the fights. Bad camera angles and missing half of the action is to be expected.
   8. If a plane demonstrates crippling control issues during battle, one round shall be enough.
4. Clipping guidelines: Since someone is going to ask what is "reasonable".
   1. I will not check unless the performance of the planes is different from how it looks. I will probably also say "whatever" if someone starts complaining about something that wasn't obnoxious enough for me to notice, like wings are 25% clipped. Guidelines.
   2. Clip landing gear however you want.
   3. Service bays and fairings shall not contain more parts by volume than they have volume.
   4. Clip ammo boxes however you want, except in service bays and fairings.
   5. If you have a GAU-8 we want to see the barrel sticking out, but otherwise guns can be clipped rather liberally.
   6. Engine exhausts shall not be clipped.
   7. Wings shall be exposed to airflow. Wings shall not be clipped more than ~20% by total wings surface. Biplanes+ shall have a gap between wings at least equal in width to the thicker of the two wings.
   8. Parts shall not be clipped into other parts more than ~20% by part type, except for structural parts and empty fuel tanks.
5. Anticipated questions:
   1. Yes, you can use gyroscopes aka SAS. You can also use RCS, but the AI does not use it.
   2. Yes, you can use whatever AI settings you want. I won't even check.
   3. Yes, you may enter craft submitted to other challenges. Why would I care?
   4. Yes, you can have 74 guns on your plane. Might change if it gets abused too hard, but with missiles I don't think that's likely.
   5. Yes, you can also have 74 engines on your plane.
   6. Yes, lasers are turrets. Also lasers are overpowered against planes.
   7. Yes, I am on vacation and have the time to run some fights. Expect that to end someday, probably next week.
   8. Yes, technically rules require neither the AI pilot, nor a weapon manager, the rules are long enough already. But you will lose the fight, and adding them will be a "minor tweak", see 1.4.

Current King of the Hill: @NotAnAimbot's MBL F-25BN2 Fencer

Battle history:

@NotAnAimbot MDL F-25BK Fencer vs @Andetch's ADX G-Type Snubnose - 2 - 0

@NotAnAimbot MDL F-25BK Fencer vs @exbyde's Berkut-II - 2 - 0

@NotAnAimbot MDL F-25BK Fencer vs @drtricky's F-42 Invader - 0 - 2

@drtricky's F-42 Invader vs @dundun92's F-10 Striker - 2 - 0

@drtricky's F-42 Invader vs @dundun93's F-34 Bullet - 2 - 0

@drtricky's F-42 Invader vs @dundun92's F-1100 - 2 - 0

@drtricky's F-42 Invader vs @dundun93's F-60 Super Eagle - 1 - 0

@drtricky's F-42 Invader vs @NotAnAimbot's MBL F-25BN2 Fencer - 0 - 2

@NotAnAimbot's MBL F-25BN2 Fencer vs @Kukler's SU-39 Ripper-C - 2 - 0

 

Edited December 7, 2017 by Eidahlil

[HeroBrian_333]

@Eidahlil The shutdown of entries in my thread is so @exbyde and I can have times to do more battles. Also, please note that the shutdown is temporary, and should only last a few more days. In the meantime, feel free to do your own battles.

Edited December 4, 2017 by HeroBrian_333

[Andetch]

Right, well I have just got BD, based on an idea to enter @HeroBrian_333 's challenge. I am new to this thing, so I guess I will have an entry for this in an hour or so. Wanted to clarify - "Planes shall have no more than 6 AAM seeker missiles. Feel free to try the other missiles, but I don't think it's going to help much." 

AAM means? Is this basically you get a choice of six either sidewinder, amram or harm style? 

[Eidahlil]

13 minutes ago, Andetch said:

Right, well I have just got BD, based on an idea to enter @HeroBrian_333 's challenge. I am new to this thing, so I guess I will have an entry for this in an hour or so. Wanted to clarify - "Planes shall have no more than 6 AAM seeker missiles. Feel free to try the other missiles, but I don't think it's going to help much." 

AAM means? Is this basically you get a choice of six either sidewinder, amram or harm style?

AAM is probably Air to Air Missile. Could be Anti-Air Missile too. In the part details, it will say "Guidance mode: aam"

Currently in BDA this consists of the AIM-9 Sidewinder, the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the PAC-3 Intercept Missile.

So the total number of those missiles should be 6 or less, but you can have any mix of them.

The HARM missile is actually antiRad, which means it targets radar systems and is designed to target missile sites on the ground. I haven't been able to make it lock on another plane, and even if it would, I think it would not lead the target properly due to wrong guidance mode and miss. So they will mostly be just dead weight.

Btw, since I mentioned it, the PAC-3 requires a constant radar lock from the launching craft and is generally not well suited to planes. Probably stick to Sidewinders and AMRAAMS.

[Andetch]

Yeah, I usually put a HARM onto my fighters (only been making them a day) just so the can talk back to the SAM sites I like to deploy.... SAM sites at the end of the runway always make for an interesting takeoff..... Is fine if you can fly below radar for long enough! Time for fine tuning. Thanks!

 

[exbyde]

@Eidahlil the "closed" thread is on hiatus for submissions. Ill still be doing 1-2 fights a night until we catch up, and then submissions can resume. Two fights were done and posted yesterday after the announcement.

Edited December 4, 2017 by exbyde

[NotAnAimbot]

Gonna submit the F-25 again, since this thread's restrictions looks saner than the other one's.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fen1hff367oyd1b/MDL_F-25BK_Fencer.craft?dl=0

Is 79 parts fine?

Also, might I suggest setting start distance at 20 km @Eidahlil? This ensures that planes using the PAC or AIM 120 can use the missiles' range at their fullest, since their ranges have been fixed to respectively 30 and 15 km. Setting distance at 8 km turns into a competiton of which plane completes the initial turn quicker and fires off a missile.

Edited December 4, 2017 by NotAnAimbot

[Eidahlil]

10 minutes ago, NotAnAimbot said:

Gonna submit the F-25 again, since this thread's restrictions looks saner than the other one's.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fen1hff367oyd1b/MDL_F-25BK_Fencer.craft?dl=0

Is 79 parts fine?

I'll run yours, and see how my computer holds up while recording, and then maybe consider raising it to 80. Sounds reasonable? Part limit is 80 while you're in rotation anyway.

Also, there's a lot of doubled up wings in there. I can see that this is at least in part for aesthetic purposes, so I'll hold off my judgment on clipping until we've seen it in action. Consider yourself warned.

16 minutes ago, NotAnAimbot said:

Also, might I suggest setting start distance at 20 km @Eidahlil? This ensures that planes using the PAC or AIM 120 can use the missiles' range at their fullest, since their ranges have been fixed to respectively 30 and 15 km. Setting distance at 8 km turns into a competiton of which plane completes the initial turn quicker and fires off a missile.

I've actually considered setting it to 15 - 16, but ended up not doing it. I'm still open minded about it though. My reasoning is that:

1. Well designed fighters very rarely get killed by long range missile launches.
2. At extreme ranges, the missiles have very little energy left, and that probability decreases even more.
3. When a missile is launched at it, the AI starts spinning circles in its 'evasive routine'.

So if we start at long range, what we have is either:

1. Everyone launches missiles at everyone. Everyone spins circles. Everyone is out of missiles and the proceeds to enter into gun range. Then we have that classic initial joust of planes flying headlong into bullet fire which gets complained about every time there's a challenge.
2. Some of the planes don't get missiles launched at them, and proceed towards the enemy. The three planes split up, and what we have is a 3v1 match first, and 3v2 match later. A plane winning or losing then starts to depend on the rather fickle AI targeting.

I don't think either of those is a very good option. If we start at 8 km, those problems, while still present, are reduced significantly. In order to make a longer range work, we'd probably need to allow to carry more missiles, but then it would turn into a missile fest instead of a dogfight.

So, considering all that, I designed the rules with a plan for missiles to be used more to break up the initial joust rather than a killing tool. Also, yes, I want the competition to be about cool planes where what matters is power, maneuverability and quick reflexes rather than reducing your radar cross section so radar cannot get a lock on you at 13km (which is just an invitation for clipping).

That said, if in the first few matches we see that it is indeed super important to launch that initial missile first, I will definitely be revisiting this. Though I expect that to be more of an issue in 1v1 rather than 3v3.

[HeroBrian_333]

@Eidahlil please update your thread description to state that the pause in submissions is temporary.

[MiffedStarfish]

Great! It's brilliant to have an active dogfighter competition with strict rules regarding planes. And after saying that, I'm going to ask if the rules could be more lenient. It says "No command seats", however I have a plane which uses a fully enclosed service bay cockpit, so it is still realistic. It also has a probe core so it could be flown without a kerbal to stop vesselmover issues. Would I be allowed to enter that?

[Eidahlil]

8 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Great! It's brilliant to have an active dogfighter competition with strict rules regarding planes. And after saying that, I'm going to ask if the rules could be more lenient. It says "No command seats", however I have a plane which uses a fully enclosed service bay cockpit, so it is still realistic. It also has a probe core so it could be flown without a kerbal to stop vesselmover issues. Would I be allowed to enter that?

Well, there haven't been any fights yet, so let's not jump to conclusions.

If that's fine, I'd like to preserve the cockpit rule. For smaller planes, that 1t cockpit vs a 0.05t (empty) chair plus 0.2t service bay is a significant difference. If we let chairs with probe cores in, then everyone who wants to win will almost have to use it. And given that choice I'd rather stay with the cockpits. Is that reasonable?

I shall update my reasoning in the rules.

[Andetch]

Andetch G Type Fighter

Just press R!

Try this one out for size! https://kerbalx.com/Andetch/ADX-G-Type-Snubnose-Fighter-Competition

[MiffedStarfish]

1 minute ago, Eidahlil said:

Well, there haven't been any fights yet, so let's not jump to conclusions.

If that's fine, I'd like to preserve the cockpit rule. For smaller planes, that 1t cockpit vs a 0.05t (empty) chair plus 0.2t service bay is a significant difference. If we let chairs with probe cores in, then everyone who wants to win will almost have to use it. And given that choice I'd rather stay with the cockpits. Is that reasonable?

I shall update my reasoning in the rules.

It's ok, I'll just replace it with a cockpit. Migth actually improve performance with the furhter forward mass.

[Eidahlil]

It seems you were right, @NotAnAimbot, starting at longer range the fights were more interesting. Let's switch to 20km starting distance.

So the first battle, @NotAnAimbot's Fencer vs @Andetch's Snubnose, is in:

For posterity, here are the fights starting at shorter range, but these are non-canon:

Spoiler

 

Suggestions for improvement in the videos are welcome.

Edited December 4, 2017 by Eidahlil

[exbyde]

Well, i suppose if this is staying around, perhaps i can throw my hat in the ring

https://kerbalx.com/ExByDe/Berkut-II

Edited December 4, 2017 by exbyde

[Andetch]

Meh, I got totally pwned.....  Did seem to me that I need to set the autopilot to pull up a little earlier, yes, I can usually pull out of it from 250m, auto pilot seems not to. Lesson learned.

[Andetch]

Also, anyone wanna confirm what the pitch KI lider does in autopilot? Not able to find an explanation online, it seems is out of date? Is this the pitch limiter control?

[MiffedStarfish]

Just now, Andetch said:

Also, anyone wanna confirm what the pitch KI lider does in autopilot? Not able to find an explanation online, it seems is out of date? Is this the pitch limiter control?

All the AI sliders are totally mystical to me. Basically, I pick Pitch Ki or Steer Factor and put one right up, and put steer dampner around the middle, try it out and make tweaks. Thats what I do for my planes.

[Andetch]

Yeah, I am still in trial an error working all this stuff out... These Snubnoses seemed good at avoiding missiles in my tests - but not IRL it seems.... Hahaha... Also, does anyone know if there is an auto-pilot module for land based vehicles available for BD ? Would be nice to hit some moving SAMS....

[exbyde]

7 minutes ago, Andetch said:

Also, anyone wanna confirm what the pitch KI lider does in autopilot? Not able to find an explanation online, it seems is out of date? Is this the pitch limiter control?

Look up PID loops. It basically describes how an aircraft responds to a change in input. If PIDs are wrong, your aircraft wobbles or doesn't respond enough.

[drtricky]

Not the best fighter, but here it is anyway.

https://kerbalx.com/drtricky/F-42-Invader

Spoiler

 

[Andetch]

Thanks, I will.... However in my testing the wobble seen in the videos was very intermittant... I had two flying with same settings, one wobbles one doesn't.... Interesting hmm?

[exbyde]

1 minute ago, Andetch said:

Thanks, I will.... However in my testing the wobble seen in the videos was very intermittant... I had two flying with same settings, one wobbles one doesn't.... Interesting hmm?

I think pilot choices make a difference somehow in BDA, but i'm not sure.

[Eidahlil]

@NotAnAimbot MDL F-25BK Fencer vs @exbyde's Berkut-II battle is in:

 

 

30 minutes ago, Andetch said:

Lesson learned.

You're always welcome to reenter.

[Eidahlil]

@NotAnAimbot MDL F-25BK Fencer vs @drtricky's F-42 Invader battle is in.

I think the part limit will go back to 75 as soon as something with that number of part becomes king of the hill, KSP performance is a bit too slow for my liking.