Box of Stardust

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of S I D E W I N D E R S P A M. After Action Report: So yeah, the Maneuverability stat has been changed to Flight Dynamics, which encompasses maneuverability and stability and control surface setup. It's the physical aspect to how the plane flies as a whole. It's influenced by Flight Control, but still its own distinct category as it does still cover its own specific attributes.

Styling and/or armoring.

I figured it out as soon as I inspected the craft. It was interesting, I guess. That's more like what I expected from you.

There isn't a way to make the AI use the Radar Data Receiver by itself in combat, is there? Since the Data Link has to be activated manually on the radar screen.

Also can we sacrifice the 2 AIM-120s for 2 more AIM-9s?

Here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tu02TiunJwzDZNOjF4IziN7iW1vrrO43

Hey Hojoz, I think you'll need to set up some sort of box subassembly or something in the SPH as a measuring tool, because some parts seem to have weird hitboxes that cause the entire craft to have a height measurement larger than in actually has. Also I assume there's no Hellfire limit?

If you thought I part clipped a lot...

You're encountering problems I already faced when tuning the PEGASys-D, since you're basically tuning the same thing. Of course, I had my own solution to the problem, which is currently on the D7. I tried something different on the D8, with mixed results. The D10 may or may not be done differently, depending on how that tuning process goes.

And that's why I gave it the Flight Control rating it has. Plane is over-tuned. At the same time, the overtuning does make it nasty in close quarters, since the AI is always willing to use the Du-15's maximum roll rate, which has the effect of both possibly throwing off chasing attackers, and also making it difficult to throw off when it's the one chasing; it usually has to make the mistake to get thrown off.

Is there a reason the Steer Damping setting increments by 0.5 instead of, say 0.1?

Well my logic goes like this: Steer Ki (seems to) really only affect the fine adjustment of where the plane is pointed once it's there; the hard part about AI tuning is getting the plane pointed in a specific direction in the first place. Really, you expect the AI to work as it should once you got the hard part out of the way; program the plane to steer well, and you expect that guns will work once it's properly pointed in the right direction. In previous cases, the D7 would already be pointed at the target, indeed, in a perfect tail chase, but it would always bizarrely shoot above the target. That's not expected AI behavior, since it's clearly already pointed in the right direction and can chase a target accurately. This minor edit was a change for 'functioning as expected', not really 'perform better'. It in no way changes the tactics of the aircraft or the maneuverability or stability.

Battle: After Action Report: So, with that battle done, how about a bonus battle? Analysis:

It happens occasionally; sometimes videos don't process right away, then things get messed up when you try to upload more things, which ends up taking the link of a previous video, but the title of a new one.

... huh. Well, I guess I gotta go back and check what went wrong where now. Yeah, Youtube just goofed up the uploads for some strange reason. Guess I gotta reupload some now. Or at least find out which ones have wrong titles, because all of the videos are fine.

Battle: After Action Report:

Battle: After Action Report:

Battle: After Action Report:

Battle: After Action Report: Bonus battles; what happens if KSP+BDA has been running too long without a restart:

A quick PSA to everyone testing crafts: If you want to know the proper results between two aircraft that battle, restart the game before running it. BDA gets weird the longer the game has been running; missiles, especially, stop working properly, and many missiles will detonate at the target but do no damage. I was just testing a craft I cobbled together in about an hour, and it seemed like it was immune to missiles. I thought maybe it was related to its size and speed, so then I decided to put it up against the K2, since I know that thing would reliably eliminate everything it comes up against, or at the very least, put up a tough fight that leaves its enemies damaged. And when it was all done, no aircraft had received any damage at all. It was too bizarre. Upon restarting the game and running the battle again, missiles began working properly again (and guns too, it seemed like) and the seemingly invincible aircraft was getting blown apart as expected when missiles detonated near it. So yeah. Restart the game if you want proper results. BDA's performance degrades the longer the game runs, so don't run KSP for more than an hour without restarting it.

Battle: After Action Report:

Battle: After Action Report:

Battle: After Action Report:

Well, if you do decide to, you'd be coming back at the best time possible; right after you left, BDA 1.2 was... pretty cool (the AI saw significant improvements, mainly), but honestly rough, and pretty messy in spots. Part hitpoints were all over the place, damage was finnicky, and Sidewinders would often detonate right after launching. I actually just came back a month ago after finding out that they've hammered out a lot of the major bugs that caused me to stop half a year ago. And if you decide to download the ASC essentials, that's only like, 3 mods (BDA, AP+, Tweakscale). Most submissions have been keeping it light on the mods. We got a Discord server now too, if you want to join. Server link on previous page or so.

heh Nothing different, still a bunch of hyper-drones. But BDA is smarter and cooler now, so there's that, I guess. Also I built a new brick, this time spamming missiles.