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WWII BAD-T V: The AI Strikes Back - BD AI Dogfight Tournament


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11 hours ago, Alioth81 said:

I found some interesting huge jumps in HP based on the wing strength set in FAR. This is especially apparent with procedural wings but also affects the stock wings. Basically the HP stays constant but under a certain wing strength HP drops dramatically and stays there.

 

3 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Yeah it's actually kinda annoying. Like, 0.70 and you have 200 HP styrofoam and 0.75 and you have 2400 HP steel. I mean, I like being able to tune HP but I wish it varied more smoothly.

I noticed other HP weirdness in lots of other parts, so a while back I forked the BDA repo to see if I could make sense of the HP calculator. It's a mess. Essentially there are some rather poor assumptions and questionable math, and then a series of weird hacks to try to account for certain mods having initial HP values way outside of range. The end result is something that guarantees results within an upper and lower limit, but with very little consistency between parts that are mostly similar.

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^ Would be a nicer opponent to my poor kerbals than throwing them against my old IA-23 Caelus II.

9 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Yeah it's actually kinda annoying. Like, 0.70 and you have 200 HP styrofoam and 0.75 and you have 2400 HP steel. I mean, I like being able to tune HP but I wish it varied more smoothly. Especially because you usually don't strictly need high wing masses for aero-structural purposes. So I often wish I could set a wing ro like 0.45 and still keep, say, 900 HP. But no. It has 100-200.

HP calcs are weird. To elaborate on sturmhauke's comment, the BDA HP calcs assumes a part is a cube, then pretends it's a sphere to get surface area, then combines that with part mass for density, then multiplies that by the HPMult setting to arrive at the value seen in the PAW. And then you have the mutability of proc parts... at least stock parts are a static size and mass.
I can poke at the code some to see if I can get something more sane and granular, but no promises. (Of course, then comes the question, should I implement changes, if successful? It would result in fairer HP values, but people who set the wing mass higher to reach the next HP step - the 2400 HP steel over the 200 HP styrofoam - would be penalized for excess mass {though a more granular HP calc would still give them the benifit of that mass with more health than the current increments}, but those who are struggling with trying to make a plane out of the densest balsa wood ever would be given a boon. At least HP values are a runtime calc, so all craft on my end would be affected equally.)
Edit - Poked the code, initial results look promising:
iscl1V1.png
Numbers might need a little more massaging, but at least proc parts aren't getting the raw deal they had before.

Edited by SuicidalInsanity
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For those wanting nice destruction effects I added this small patch for destruction effects:

https://github.com/Alioth81/DestructionEffects/releases/tag/1.10.1

I am a first time github user so no clue if I published it in the right way. If not let me know and I remove it.

 

This should fix the all burning auto-struts problems that existed before.

In addition it adds some more parts to the burning list (also includes case insensitivity which it did not have before)

It also adds flames to breakaway parts which is especial spectacular if you destroy the root node :cool:

I do not intend to continue to fix other stuff or guarantee it works for you.

It does work for me on 1.7.3. with typical mods required for BAD-T

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On 10/10/2019 at 4:15 PM, Alioth81 said:

Here is my advanced target dummy if the original one isn't a challenge anymore.

AL-24 Advanced Combat Trainer

2x 13mm & 1x 30mm with the best engine. 

4pZCaZM.jpg

That thing is tough to kill. It's very good at a Boom-and-Zoom sort of fighting. Although it's definitely never gonna out-turn anything with good leading-edge flaps in a low speed turnfight. Out of curiosity, why are the trailing edge flaps set to pitch input? This would seem to me like it would cause problems compared to AOA%?

It's also very tankie. Taking off the rudder took a surprisingly large number of 20mm ShVAK hits and even then, I'm not sure it actually needs a rudder. Although it does need fuel and ammo.

Z8CC8KN.png

Edited by Pds314
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I found a way to avoid ALG stutter using ingame mechanics. It relies on the altitude-dependency of the stutter (which incidentally is the same altitude for Kraken drives to enter fast mode, who even knows why). You just need to keep a craft (with an ALG on it I think) on the ground where it will continuously prevent the ALG stutter.

Here's a video of a round I just ran demonstrating the advanced dummy's inability to escape a maneuverable enemy sitting on its tail. I don't want to give the impression that it's a bad fighter. It beat all of the planes I put it against at least once. Just that it has some easily-exploited vulnerabilities. I was having a lot of lag so the video is 4x speed to make it roughly as if there were no lag.
 

 

Edited by Pds314
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14 hours ago, Pds314 said:

That thing is tough to kill. It's very good at a Boom-and-Zoom sort of fighting. Although it's definitely never gonna out-turn anything with good leading-edge flaps in a low speed turnfight. Out of curiosity, why are the trailing edge flaps set to pitch input? This would seem to me like it would cause problems compared to AOA%

Normally I would probably have set those to do nothing or as spoilers (only decorative as the AI does not use them). However because its good acceleration and the GLOC I had to create something that slows the craft down while turning hard to bleed all the speed.

I was actually surprised how well it works but it has drawbacks like tendency to stall at high AoA.

I am sure the plane can be optimized in many ways but instead of optimizing the design I just used the "flaps" as brakes as it was intended only as a bit more challenging test opponent for future designs.

General question to all what is your strategy to deal with GLOC? Lower top speed? Less agility at high speed?

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53 minutes ago, Alioth81 said:

Normally I would probably have set those to do nothing or as spoilers (only decorative as the AI does not use them). However because its good acceleration and the GLOC I had to create something that slows the craft down while turning hard to bleed all the speed.

I was actually surprised how well it works but it has drawbacks like tendency to stall at high AoA.

I am sure the plane can be optimized in many ways but instead of optimizing the design I just used the "flaps" as brakes as it was intended only as a bit more challenging test opponent for future designs.

General question to all what is your strategy to deal with GLOC? Lower top speed? Less agility at high speed?

So far I've found that really aggressive, high AOA turns bleed energy fast enough to stop GLOC almost all of the time. My current fighters can all do nice sharp >40 degrees AOA turns. So ironically "pull 25 Gees but not sustained" seems to stop GLOC better than "be gentle." Basically because induced drag is roughly proportional to the square of the lift.

 

It's also usually better to GLOC in a super violent turn that will throw away all your energy than to get stuck in an 8 G loop or something.

Edited by Pds314
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I might be out. For some reason BDA is creating cockpits that have the BDA flight AI/Weapons manager in the cockpits, and not when I place the proper parts on the plane.

When I launch, game crashes, output log calls it a stack overflow in the worker thread (!?!?). KSP log shows a lot of fatal errors.

IF I get it fixed, I'll be in and let everybody know. Until then......sorry.

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12 minutes ago, GDJ said:

I might be out. For some reason BDA is creating cockpits that have the BDA flight AI/Weapons manager in the cockpits, and not when I place the proper parts on the plane.

When I launch, game crashes, output log calls it a stack overflow in the worker thread (!?!?). KSP log shows a lot of fatal errors.

IF I get it fixed, I'll be in and let everybody know. Until then......sorry.

Have you tried reinstalling KSP?

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Tried that and just adding mods that pertain to the contest itself.

Here's the KSP. Log and a screenshot of a Mk1 cockpit and nothing else.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/227iv55g1g2is6p/KSP.log?dl=0


I5rvD4S.png

For some reason BDA is adding all the functions of the AI antenna into EVERY cockpit (exceptions to the Firespitter cockpits) without adding the antenna.
Part of me likes this, but it makes any of my craft that exhibit this behaviour unshareable.

Edited by GDJ
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44 minutes ago, GDJ said:

For some reason BDA is creating cockpits that have the BDA flight AI/Weapons manager in the cockpits, and not when I place the proper parts on the plane.

That's supposed to happen. The BADTV_Tweaks MM patch adds the weapon manager/AI to the Mk1 cockpit and Mk1 inline cockpit, and the command seat, both to cut down on part count, but mainly to stop the AI modules from being sniped, something that was a common occurrence in the DJA Tourney. Removing the MM patch will revert the cockpits to normal masses and options. Vessels should still be sharable, those with BDA will see the cockpit AI, those without, the AI Module won't load in and will not be present.

44 minutes ago, GDJ said:

When I launch, game crashes, output log calls it a stack overflow in the worker thread

That's not supposed to happen. The log you posted is from the session you took the screenshot, and doesn't show any errors. Can you post a log from a session that crashes?

Edited by SuicidalInsanity
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15 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

That's supposed to happen. The BADTV_Tweaks MM patch adds the weapon manager/AI to the Mk1 cockpit and Mk1 inline cockpit, and the command seat, both to cut down on part count, but mainly to stop the AI modules from being sniped, something that was a common occurrence in the DJA Tourney.

Okay, just found that out the hard way. Just the MK1 cockpits and the seat. None of the Mk2 and MK3 are affected, so that's normal (honest I didn't know about the added feature. Sorry about that)

 

15 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

That's not. The log you posted is from the session you took the screenshot, and doesn't show any errors. Can you post a log from a session that crashes?

I can, but it might be a non-issue at the moment. I was adding the AA antenna or the BDA flight AI to my models and that's when it crashed (specifically when I attempt to launch the aircraft). If I leave those modules out, it doesn't crash and saves normally.

I will let you know.

@SuicidalInsanity

Here is the last crash console log.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtvcdgvwxptiy3b/KSP_2019-10-13-183903_Geoffery-Dean-Jacksons-iMac-2.crash?dl=0

Edited by GDJ
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So far so good. Took the MM patch out and everything work just like the old days. Now I know that I can put it back in and have the special features. :) 

So @SuicidalInsanity since I managed to get myself unforked here do you prefer planes with the AA antenna or without?

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Question: how exactly will the level 5 pilots be selected/created? Depending on Courage and BadS-ness, the G tolerance can be anywhere from 6.5 to 8.0 and the G endurance can be anywhere from 2.0-4.5. You could argue that this also reflects reality, with even experienced pilots having drastically different ability to handle G loading, but it would be ashame if someone designed their plane based on very capable pilots but got very unlucky ones and got continuously GLOCd. Or designed their plane on bad pilots and ended up with one that's very conservative.

 

My recommendation would be to have every pilot standardized so there are no unexpected BadS pilots and they all have the same Courage.

Edited by Pds314
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Ok. I think my issue regarding lag in my videos was just a case of too high settings graphics-wise. I managed to get pretty close to real time video with the default windows recording software by just nuking all the graphics settings besides groundscatter and terrain detail (nuking terrain detail messes with my quicksaves).

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@GDJ I can port the AI settings over and remove the antenna if you include one, but I'd prefer a design without one. Also, keep in mind the MM patch reduces mk1 cockpit masses to something more reasonable for the purposes of the tournament, which may result in a craft up to 700 kg underweight if the patch is removed.

@Pds314 - Pilots were going to be standardized by modifying the persistence file to have identical stats, for the reasons you pointed out.

Edited by SuicidalInsanity
sentence structure, how does it work?
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I tried to get a KSP install going with the modlist, but it crashed on me. I've been having computer problems lately. If you need an entry to round out the lists, you can use my plane from BAD-T IV and maybe add some ballast to make weight. Otherwise I probably won't be able to enter.

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