Box of Stardust

There is not. However, there is a settings config file in the BDA directory that allows you to adjust a damage multiplier, which may achieve what you want. That said, most of us have been using hitpoint BDA for a very long time now, and we think part durability is in somewhere of a manageable state (though Vulcans may be pitifully weak). Be happy this isn't the BDA 1.1 days in KSP 1.3 when the hitpoint system first rolled out. That was bad.

Arc, this is the BDA thread lol. But now that you're here, maybe you'd want to look around and get yourself up to date.

Problem solved. I have a model with multiple separate meshes, and it turns out each mesh needs its own unique emissive animation assigned to it, and a separate AnimateThrottle module in the config for each animation as well. However, they can all be on the same animation layer in the config file. geez, I gave up on this for 10 months.

I've seen high-power fighter jets with unreasonable amounts of thrust and power evade missiles just by being way too fast in a (generally) straight line. for a missile to keep up a turn to intercept them. After all, evasion of a missile without countermeasures just requires the right set of circumstances; doesn't even require fancy maneuvering. Enough lateral movement relative to the missile could cause the missile to hit its maneuvering G-limit, of course. As for Kerbal G-limits, my experience with those has purely been from SuicidalInsanity's BAD-T, and uh, I guess I can say said experience has been rather unpleasant.

Interesting drone. In my personal weapons + weapons systems testing, I've found it's possible to evade an AMRAAM without chaff just with a single Saturn and letting it go pretty fast. Same with Sidewinders. I've no idea as to how it would perform with G-limits on, but I've never seen the G-force measurement of KER peak beyond 30-35 within general flight parameters.

I'll take the unique part configs too lol.

can I get a craft file of said target drones, I'm curious about them

Just stepping back in to reiterate that IR missiles or flares are currently broken in KSP 1.9 BDA. In fact, new tests seem to suggest something in the IR system is broken even in KSP 1.8 BDA. Flares do not seem to have a disruption effect on locked on IR missiles, that's so far what our observations are. What the cause is, unknown.

Update: So, it turns out the emissive gradient is working, since when I hover to place the part, the animation plays through the gradient before stopping on the end gradient. So clearly the animation part has been properly baked into the model, but it's not implemented properly somewhere.

Are the input keys based on engine power/throttle level then? I'd guess so, but just want to be sure. They only go from 0.0 to 1.0, so I'm not sure what else the input value could be.

AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_jet_deep volume = 0.0 0.0 volume = 0.05 0.6 volume = 1.0 1.3 pitch = 0.0 0.3 pitch = 1.0 0.6 loop = true } Can someone explain exactly what the values are here and how they correspond to how the audio plays in-game? Primarily regarding volume and pitch. Also the difference between spoolEffect and powerEffect.

So I may be incorrect here in how it's supposed to work, but I can preview the animation in Unity, so I'm not really sure what's happening. I have a gradient emissive set up in Unity as per the stickied thread in this forum, and I want it to work as the engine is throttled (engine color changes through the throttle range and all that). However, in-game it doesn't seem to do anything at all, and the texture is stuck showing the emissive texture itself. Like I said though, the animation can be viewed in Unity and the colors change through the gradient range. Is this a config issue of how I'm setting up the animation? Or is it an export/model setup issue?

Can anyone else verify that flares do not seem to be registered by IR missiles/Sidewinders at times? I and some others have been getting absurd 100% hit rates from previously improbable missile shots and while the AI is evading and launching flares as normal.

We have done a lot of testing, and a few of us have competed in different competitions with different formats, and we've come to the conclusion that there is a point at which this becomes a noticeable factor, but that point (for most builders) is... a fair bit far off. There are a slew of things you can influence to put fights into a craft's favor, part of which is knowing how the AI and how BDA itself works (which here at ASC we've pretty much sorted most of it out) and applying it to craft design and setup. Said things to influence can also be format-dependent (for example, BAD-T, SuicidalInsanity's WWII-prop-fighting tournament here... really brings out the stupidity of the AI due to the factors in speed of aircraft and behavior with guns). I've written a BDA combat manual (see flair) and it has generally held true for at least the past year of my BDA dogfighting "career". The point where AI influence comes in has really only been encountered in the higher tiers of BDA combat... which, coincidentally, ASC:UL is one of the very few. So in some ways, you're right, and that's why this particular thread has stagnated; we, the thread regulars, have run out of room to innovate and it comes down to really minor things like AI and weird craft quirks. However, I'd still argue for most other players, there's plenty of room to learn in all aspects of BDA craft design and setup if "performance" is the goal. The built-in AI routines only become the limiting factor once the limits of craft design and weapon setup (both competition/environment-specific) have been reached and the AI settings (which can be craft-specific) are set properly. The AI settings are especially important because if the settings are set right, the AI will be able to execute its intended maneuver and therefore reduce the frequency of "AI stupidity" moments. Air Superiority Competition: Unlimited has basically been all about, well, having an incredibly loose rule set that allows builders to just submit whatever craft possible. For the upper level of ASC:UL, it's been compact high performance drones, which now at this point have gotten almost pretty same-y. We've extracted near-maximum performance possible out of the combinations of craft and AI we could figure out, and in the process, experimentally learning exactly how the BD AI works. In a weird way, ASC:UL has become a "solved problem"; you follow a formula and will meet a certain performance metric. Now, I know for anyone passing by and just casually entering, that isn't exactly the case, but the main showcases in this thread have primarily been these "hyper-drones", which the competition has kind of taken as its theme and ran with it. The leaderboard document is set up in a way to be divided up so that casual entrants are still welcome, but... it creates a bit of a mess when the challenge's theme if you actually read through the thread are these "hyper-drones". So, basically, from this point, I'd figure that ASC:UL is probably at a wall, at least for the regulars here. It may still continue (we've got someone else that might help record matches) just for the fun factor if that remains an interest, but for me personally, I'm slightly more interested in moving to a different format that is also perhaps "more open" in a weird way, such that the aircraft in focus aren't the deadliest dogfighting drones to ever be created in BDA, but instead, more "normal" planes that are in some ways more accessible. That said, a lot of the design and craft setup nuance I referred to still and always will apply to BDA combat, so make of that what you will in terms of creating a competition.

Alright, just as a BDA mechanics review, radar signature of a craft is baked in as-is when the craft is spawned in, right? So any huge bits attached to the craft will affect the RCS, even if immediately detached?

Are there any specific patch notes for KSP 1.9 BDA, or was it just a recompile?

@Pds314 uh, you got a craft file or some pictures on how you accomplished that reverse polarity goofiness? Because that whole ordeal seems rather fun to experience.

I've tried the mountain range closest to the KSC before; I think that one was pretty much impossible on batteries alone. At the very least, the rover I tried it with couldn't make the trip up; the grades were too steep; I had to use jet engines just to get to where I was able to. (This was in an older version of KSP, to be clear, and almost 2 years ago.) Maybe I should try with newer parts.

Um, doesn't the whole intake air "fuel" count as infinite fuel anyways? This all rather seems more like it'll end up being a thermodynamics management challenge than a speed challenge, also. As we've had many experiences in "high speed challenges" before, it ends up being how to keep your craft intact more than how much faster can you go.

The specific Unlimited challenge, probably not (as we seem to have exhausted all possibilities to boost performance), but there's a possibility of a new ASC in a few months, depending on how things are going on our end internally. For most people that might be interested, however, the changes in competition rules might be negligible, since the proposed idea so far is moving away from hyper drones and back to normal fighters, which is a rather more accessible environment (though perhaps in some ways less intensive for learning design skills).

You know, I was just thinking earlier today that since this challenge came up in my notifications and I already had a partial solution worked out from the top-down, I might give it a go. But it seems you're in the same seat I was in with JunoSlab for its challenge; already on the road to final optimization. I was also thinking perhaps a ~25t craft going at a decent speed would have enough lift to get up and still enough TWR to accelerate decently enough to get to the highest point on the curve for a mass-velocity balance, but it seems you're well on the way to that already. ... Still might give it a go anyways. I like building "theory craft".

Well this was a bit of a surprise notification. The JunoSlab lives! Fun to see someone creatively repurpose it.

We had/have certain "universal" attributes as part of the work-in-progress scoring sheet (e.g., noise/comfort, takeoff run, flight handling, safety, etc.). We had yet to truly define what constituted what score in each category. And we never really got to how all these values would come together in terms of a final score (if at all necessary). (When the discussion moves to defining specific scoring methods, we should talk about that; but as it is, we're still on setting up the whole thing.) Point is, the idea was that the judging process would have a fully value-based aspect that would help... "formalize" the challenge better for entrants and their results. Give people something tangible to work with and have a way to easily compare their planes to others. That said, I think some of the odd "sub-categories" (seaplane, hopper/regional) should be relegated to a "final judging verdict footnote" thing, separate from the value-based portion. Those attributes are just too odd and unrelated to have as part of a "final score" kind of thing. I think || Turboprop, Small / Medium, Large / Jumbo, Supersonic, Super Jumbo, Specialty Aircraft || is a pretty good, functional division of aircraft that covers all the bases within a proper wide-but-constrained scope for the challenge. ... I also think the Turboprop category could use a bit of a rework (or at least a re-title), since it was originally stated that it didn't necessarily need to be turboprop-powered, and the class was more about being a low-volume, shorter-range hauler. Maybe just a <=32 passenger deal to define it, which can also encompass the (proposed to be deleted) seaplane category (of which the attribute can just be tacked on post-judging if applicable), but at the same time open up the possibility for an implied business jet entry. Maybe just call it "Light Commercial Aircraft" instead of "Turboprop". We could add a note somewhere saying "[shorter range] is minimum for regional, [longer range] is minimum for standard" for the Small, Medium, and Large categories, therefore avoiding directly implementing subcategories, but also implying that there are variations of submission options. It could also serve as a "choose your own difficulty" sort of thing (though I personally didn't find most of the range requirements too hard to achieve, and in many cases, over-achieve). As for cargo aircraft, that could probably slot into the suggested "Specialty Aircraft" category (which also puts it all the way in Tier 3). It does bring an interesting question as to how to approach aircraft variants (which many entrants- many of us judges even- had). I suppose that is something that could be a score modifier, unless variants are just scored completely separately from each other (though that seems somewhat excessive). In terms of non-value judging, the approach used in KEA has been working though (all the text-based stuff doesn't really need reworking I think). And regarding supersonics, I sort of agree that there should be a passenger capacity minimum and maximum, but it was also really interesting to me the way some people managed to bend/combine categories (I reviewed the Jupiter, a supersonic jumbo, and it was actually quite good). Category combinations (it tended to be supersonic jumbo) tended to be less common, and we're already putting Supersonic and Jumbo all the way behind the wall of Tier 3. Maybe, again, these "Category Combinations" are cases that can be covered under the proposed "Specialty Aircraft" category, which is also all the way deep in Tier 3, which means judges shouldn't need to worry about reviewing too many of the odd ones, and the ones that do come around will at least bring something productive (or at least interesting) to the table. To have all these "lucrative" "kerbal-ish" designs deep in Tier 3 though... hm. Not sure if that affects the appeal of the challenge, but then again, I did say we need to structure the whole thing such that players approach KEA in a productive manner.

Well, let's look back at what the KEA challenge had as categories, because I think those need an update as well: Firstly, we could keep the odd KEA-specific cabin sizes. I'm not opposed to that, but it's just an additional odd detail for newcomers (albeit one that's not difficult to pick up just by reading the rules). And it increases "passenger numbers" up to something that sounds reasonable. But we're still kind of working with kerbal-scale here, so there's a compromise somewhere that has to be identified. Basically, what I'm saying is we should better-identify how many passengers and how much range equates to our classifications in kerbal-scale. For the jets, these are defined as "regional" jets, but I think the challenge grew past the whole "regional" moniker (and the fact that, with stock Kerbin, ranges are quite short), despite the small passenger sizes. So, at least label-wise, we can get rid of that. Probably a good baseline. The classifications kind of go by "passenger capacity x range", so that's something to keep in mind. So it does seem pretty reasonable to just divide up by one of those, then sub-categorize post-judging based on range (and speed) or capacity? Dividing up by passenger capacity makes controlling entries easier, I think, since it controls the size of the plane. Range is just an additional thing that gets tacked on. It also makes sense from an "in-universe" view; build smaller aircraft first. Dividing up range invites the possibility of some larger aircraft in lower categories, which we want to avoid. For my own revised category list, this is my suggestion: Tier 1 (Entry Tier): Tier 2: Tier 3 (Specialty): Ideas Not Currently Tiered So, that's firmly 8 categories; 2 in Entry Tier, 2 in Tier 2, and 4 in Specialty Tier. Beyond these categories, I guess judges could somehow nominate aircraft as "top in specific qualifications", such as "best long range medium airliner for overall value" or "cheapest small airliner for minimum requirements" or whatnot. I feel like dividing aircraft up into further sub-categories is something best done during/after the judging process. Rather than opening up so many subcategories for people, because I feel like that just invites an even larger backlog as people design for all specific categories or whatnot. At the very least, I feel like it'll perhaps invite people to aim for specific attributes within each category, rather than inviting entries for every available category if we divide up by too much. As well, dividing up by such specific attributes is something better suited to the "extended simulation" challenge with economics and such, something I think is a bit unnecessary here for categorical purposes.

The only issue with the Mk1 Cabin was really the fact that it translated to 8 passengers, which scaled horribly against the rest of the cabins. Limiting it to 4 should be good enough to balance it out, though I do feel we're missing a "cheaper" and "conventional" 8-passenger cabin.