Box of Stardust

Decided to finally re-fly a project I did a lot of work on back in 1.0.5. I present a unique entry: the AS-3A Skystreak. This SSTO can be built with only a Tier 2 R&D facility, and it also doesn't require the High Altitude Flight node (but may fly more optimally with parts from it). It has an incredibly tight error margin on the ascent profile, and it doesn't get to orbit with that much dV, but it gets up there. With a good ascent, it has enough dV to do part retrieval missions in an unconventional manner, and was the primary objective behind designing this SSTO- do part retrieval missions cheaply, instead of sending a rocket with stages that have to be expended or recovered, which cuts into the profit margin.

He's the one that said he'll keep doing it, so a bit of mixed messaging here.

Err... not sure. We're kinda waiting on exbyde. Or April 6 or BDA 1.1 for KSP 1.4.1. If exbyde doesn't come back by then, I suppose some of us will take over. As well, I'll be posting up my Light Drones competition on the release of BDA 1.1 for 1.4.1. You can throw some (well, one, at this point I think) planes at this guy if you haven't already.

Finally, after a few years, we finally got this great feature of being able to move a window! lol

Maybe just waiting for a move to 1.4.1? For here, at least, exbyde kept saying he'll 'resume on Monday'... for like, a month. So... maybe today? (Probably not, I feel...) In any case, it's barely been a week, and there was a note that we might take a break until mods update accordingly to 1.4.1, so I wouldn't worry too much at this point, at least for ASCc. Also, when mods are updated for 1.4.1, I'll be posting up a light drone offshoot since building small seems to be a trend.

Which one? For VM or should I just put it on the BDA one?

Speaking of Vessel Mover, I have a minor request for it: can you guys make it so we can actually drag the VM window around?

This was my original method.

It does. Also, is there some sort of construction factor that affects how 'missile happy' a plane is? I feel like some of my planes (when flown by AI) launch missiles more quickly the moment they get onto target than others. The set weapon ranges are identical between the two aircraft. Does it have anything to do with stability of flight, i.e., aircraft can point themselves in the right direction more precisely without extra correction? Or amount of engines/heat sources on the launching aircraft (maybe?)?

Okay, I rebuilt the missile directly onto the plane, and it still explodes upon spawn by Vessel Mover.

I'm trying to use a multi-stage modular missile made out of procedural missile parts, but mounting it on an aircraft causes weird physics things that makes the plane implode when spawned with Vessel Mover. Any ideas why?

Finally got around to testing it. The percentage method works! ... once. Afterwards, it always takes the percentage entered relative to the current hitpoint pool. Not sure if intended. It would be nice if there was a 'reset to defaults' feature, or just fix the previous issue.

It comes with BDAc.

It would. Currently, in the Weapons Manager, there's the Wing Commander, which has some basic settings for formation flight. It would be more ideal for people to arrange their formations tuned for their aircraft. This would all be best discussed in the BDAc mod thread.

I start the competitions with the current cross-water spawn points with a separation distance set to 8km; basically, I don't touch the setting at all. Competition begins right as they all get off of the ground. Maybe you had peace mode turned on? Reverting to a quicksave while aircraft are in flight in competition mode will also require restarting the competition.

Starting competition turns on guard mode, and they will approach each other regardless of the distance in the settings. Aircraft will only go into formation if the start distance is farther than the current separation. You could probably interrupt the approach by turning on Peace Mode or something, but aircraft will then begin patrolling and circling their current position while they get in formation.

That was how the original ASC was done way back when. I'm not entirely sure why exbyde changed the format. Maybe because KSC buildings pose some sort of terrain problem? idk. Interestingly, this method is either more fair or less fair depending how you view it. Aircraft are in formation up to the starting points, but performing the 180 turn can leave a lot of variation in aircraft formation. Some planes seem to turn well in formation, others don't. It's a lot more random, I think. I don't think you'll be more consistently fair than the current method. I think the most fair you could get is to download Kerbal Konstucts, pick some place out somewhere as the arena, and place runways facing directly to each other and launch teams from there. Link works, will check out plane. I can tell you this much though: bog standard manned fighters are usually outpaced by the current hyper-drones.

I feel that luck should begin during the merge, not before it. Those Squirrels were in a fairly loose formation, which indicates a 'false start' sort of takeoff. A 'correct' takeoff for 3 planes puts them within 300m of each other after takeoff, which is easy to achieve from KSC due to how spawns work, but not from Island. Considering how little we have control over with the BD AI, I don't think significantly differing formations are fair. Now if we could put our aircraft in a specific formation and spacing (like, say, if we were able to program Wing Commander and have that apply to in-combat) different formations would be fine, but we can't. That's just my perspective on 'fairness' for the competition, at least. Tuning the AI pilot is, for some, a major part of this competition. Most current aircraft here are all built with an extreme degree of maneuverability, so it comes down to tuning the AI pilot to fly at the limit, but also fly stable. Some competitors here sort of get away with just setting steering and damping to max though. You're free to privately test your plane against the leaderboard and the queue if you'd like, or at least download them for some pointers. Also, your link doesn't work.

It's because when the craft file is created, the file is also named that, and Windows file system doesn't allow symbols, so it can break things.

So I think all of that was unnecessary, since I ended up remembering messing with Module Manager to try and fix some categories, and I never deleted it after I finished with it. It was that stupid minor MM screw up that was preventing parts from loading. You have a new problem though, and it's: if your aircraft is spawned in from the SPH/Runway, and not by Vessel Mover, the first plane does weird things and refuses to turn towards the enemy team like normal. The 'computer spawn' always does slightly weird things, notably retract gear later and linger in the takeoff stage a little longer (I think), but since your aircraft is really light and not exactly rock-steady stable, it kind of wallows around the air a bit before turning. Actually, in general, your aircraft are annoying to deal with in the takeoff stage. This is alleviated by, well, just respawning it in with Vessle Mover instead of launching it from the SPH/Runway, but it's just a note. FUTURE NOTE THOUGH ( @dundun92 you too): Stop naming aircraft with quotation marks. That's what's screwing up my downloads, and files don't like them in general, so it gets a bit weird.

Can you try updating the KerbalX page again? If you're getting the error that the page stops on the upload, upload it as a new craft, and if it's named the same, it'll open up a dialog to update existing.

Vessel Mover actually has a 'hyper' mode that goes really fast, can travel halfway around the world in a few seconds. It's just that switching to a vessel on location is instantaneous, instead of 'a few seconds'. Hyperedit is more orbital stuff, not surface stuff.

Actually, at least on my end, the 'false start' Island Airfield takeoff only happens on the first launch, like something needs to be cleared away in the BD AI. After reverting to quicksave from that, the BD AI will take off perfectly every time (provided starting positions were correct). However, I also have an 'airfield beacon' on top of the tower (to switch to when I need to spawn aircraft there after setting up KSC), which might have some minor 'corraling' effect that helps guide the planes to the correct direction on every launch after the first one? Not sure about this one. We could do alternating spawns, but I think we'll have to go to a best of 5 if we do that, since the way we record, we also switch spectated teams between each round. The other way is to just not switch spectated teams, but I don't think that's necessarily fair either. Minor note, the way I've recorded is that the 'attacking' team spawns from Island, while the 'defending' team is at KSC.

I mean, it's more of a collaborative leaderboard by this point, but there was the disclaimer all the way on the first temporary take over post that if you had any problem with any battles done and their results, final say was yours since there hasn't been any talk of changing who may be the de facto competition runner. As previously stated, the tightness of formation differed significantly, which I believe isn't in the spirit of a 'fair' fight, given the limited factors we have control with BD AI and Competition Mode. The formation issue happens because launching from the Island Airfield is a finnicky thing, and aircraft won't always turn in towards the other team properly like they do from a KSC launch.

I don't feel that Gunbrick fairly gets past the Vampire Squirrel, and my testing corroborates that. It should sit at #3. If other people want to test that too (maybe @exbyde and @goduranus), that would be good.