Electric Fighter Program: World War E

[Pds314]

Mission

Realizing that the next great conflict shall be settled by aerial gun chariots animated via the electrical airscrew, we have commissioned you to build such a contraption or a team of such contraptions in order to secure victory in battle against other such craft.

 

Required Mods

Reasonably Modern version of KSP with Breaking Ground DLC.

Ferram Aerospace Research Continued, 16.0.1 or latest, and dependencies.

BD Armory Continued for Runway Project, 1.4.4.3 or latest, and dependencies.

Aviator Arsenal 1.5 or latest.

 

Optional mods

B9 Procedural Wings (current version) and dependencies.

Procedural Parts (current version) and dependences.

Making History DLC

 

Craft Requirements

1. Submit a team of aircraft consisting of no more than 200 parts and 200 points between them. Specify how many of each aircraft is on the team if you submit multiple.

2. Submissions can either be in the thread or via PM and can be edited or modified. The most recent submission on the submission deadline will be accepted.

3. No default BDA weapons may be used. Stick to Aviator Arsenal weapons.

4. Drone cores, turrets, BDA armor panels, active reaction wheels, RCS thrusters, and jet/rocket engines are prohibited.

5. No abusive clipping. The one time you are allowed to clip motors is to create coaxials. Don't clip resources together unrealistically.

6. No floating parts. Every part must be visually connected to its parent part.

7. No inadequate landing gear. I'm not gonna make you use a landing gear design that the AI will tolerate but if it can't, you definitely need to be able to take off yourself.

8. Anything goes cockpit-wise. So long as you make sure reaction wheels are off and you have an AI and WM somewhere. Strapping a 5 kg combat seat to the side of the fuselage is a legitimate strategy. Watch out for pilot snipes though.

9. Weapons cost their caliber in millimeters, rounded down. So for example a browning costs 12 points while a Hispano costs 20. R4M rocket racks cost 4 even though they do more damage than cannons because they have extremely limited ammo, so you really need to aim them. Bombs are free but also pretty useless in air to air combat.

10. The following electric motors are available for use:

Spoiler

 

EM-16S

motor size/torque: 1%

RPM limit: 460

cost: 6 points

 

EM-16S++

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 460

cost: 14 points

 

EM-16

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 400

cost: 10 points

 

EM-16++

motor size/torque: 3%

RPM limit: 460

cost: 20 points

 

EM-32S

motor size/torque: 1%

RPM limit: 400

cost: 15 points

 

EM-32S++

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 460

cost: 40 points

 

EM-32

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 350

cost: 25 points

 

EM-32++

motor size/torque: 3%

RPM limit: 400

cost: 50 points

 

EM-64S

motor size/torque: 1%

RPM limit: 350

cost: 35 points

 

EM-64S++

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 400

cost: 80 points

 

EM-64

motor size/torque: 2%

RPM limit: 300

cost: 55 points

 

EM-64++

motor size/torque: 3%

RPM limit: 350

cost: 110 points

 

 

Combat settings:

Spoiler

 

Teams will consist of upto 200 points and 200 parts of aircraft from either side. The actual composition and number will be up to the creator of each team.

All aircraft will get one shot at a normal takeoff. If any of them fail to take off, the match will be restarted and all aircraft will be given a 1500 meter airspawn facing directly downward in quick succession.

Competition distance will be set to 5000 meters. In the event that this distance is reached, but the competition does not start because aircraft are not in formation, competition will be started manually.

Damage multiplier is 300%.

All types of battle damage are enabled. This means Kerbals can die inside functioning cockpits, wings and control surfaces (and prop blades!) can become less effective and less controllable, things can catch fire or leak, ammo bins can detonate catastrophically when destroyed, etc. Proc frequency will be 50%.

Ramming will be allowed.

If either side has no operable aircraft, that side will be declared the loser. If the aircraft permanently disengage from meaningful combat and both sides have at least 20 minutes of electricity/fuel, the round is declared a draw.

The tournament structure will involve each team having two rank points at the start. After a battle, the winning team gains half the losing team's points, rounded up. Teams with zero points are eliminated. In the event of a draw, half of each side's points are pooled together and then divided evenly, rounding in favor of the team that's currently ahead. Teams which have played the least rounds are prioritized for the next round of combat.

 

 

Tips

Spoiler

 

Change the AI settings. Seriously. The default settings are extremely unoptimal for the current meta and guaranteed to result in a plane that can't fight. Runway Project BDA AI has little issue with a 25m altitude floor. Setting that to 500 will result in getting shot to bits from below. Dynamic damping is also very useful.

Don't use only deploy to set your props. If they get shot too much, they will lose their deployment. Instead, rotate the props by however much you would deploy them by.

Keep in mind most dogfights do not occur at maximum speed. Tune your prop to have good performance across a variety of speeds so you can get up to speed quickly and regenerate lost energy from maneuvers and climbing rather than going as fast as possible in a straight line.

Terrain avoidance is good. Paranoid terrain avoidance is less so. If your plane is many hundreds of meters up and avoiding terrain unnecessarily, this likely isn't helping it win the fight. Set it to what's needed to avoid a crash.

Set some negative AOA% control on forward-facing surfaces to delay stall onset and positive AOA% on rear-facing ones to increase lift.

Test against the dummy triplane (to be linked here later today). It's fragile, slow, overweight for what it is, undergunned, overprovisioned, not particularly efficient at flying, barely tuned at all, and has just 26 points of hardware. You should ideally be able to quickly and reliably dispatch it with no losses.

 

Dates

May 19th, craft submission deadline.

May 22nd, tournament begins. How long it takes will depend on the number of submissions and how evenly matched they are.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Pds314