Wanderfound

MiK vs LAF with speeds matched and LAF steer factor at default:

Mk3 needs more cockpits, more tail sections, more modular wing pieces, more nosecones. But for now, a Mk3-Mk2 adaptor plus a bicoupler or Mk1 adaptor/nosecone works fairly well.

Just ran a quick test flight of MiK vs LAF-1A. * The LAF is nimble enough that it's very hard for the MiK to get clear once the LAF is on its tail. However: * The LAF autopilot turning settings have been wound up substantially from default, to the point where the LAF continuously overcorrects. It flies successfully, but is apparently in the hands of an extremely drunk pilot. * The LAF intakes are set up so that one engine cuts out at around 10,000m. Replacing the intakes and engines in order (or using Intake Build Aid) would fix this. In the test flight, the LAF managed to dodge the MiK's opening AMRAAM salvo. It then made it in behind the MiK, but the two planes engaged in an S-pattern turning duel that limited shooting opportunities. The LAF got one Sidewinder off at reasonably close range, but it was decoyed by the MiK's flares. Another long-range Sidewinder shot was simply outrun. Eventually the MiK pulled into a spiralling climb. The LAF originally shadowed the MiK at low altitude, but then began to climb as well. As it passed 10,000m, one engine cut out, throwing its already wild piloting over the edge from manageable to unmanageable. It dropped into a subsonic stall and fell in a flat spin, blowing up in mid-air when it hit the lower atmosphere. Did you want to tweak the handling before I run the full combat? Just pulling the autopilot turn settings back closer to default or reducing the control authority should do the trick (pulling the steer factor back to the default 14 stops the over-pitching issues, although it's still a bit roll-happy). The lower top speed relative to the MiK also makes it hard for the LAF to get within gun range (although I'd be happy to pull the MiK's top speed down to match the LAF; slower fights are tighter and better to watch on video). If you want to see it in action, the video of a short bit of the test flight is at https://www.dropbox.com/s/nkb2tzzur3mj3ue/Wobbles.avi?dl=0

Working fine for me; see vid. Do you have Dynamic Deflection installed? The MiK is designed for it; it'd over-control itself into aero failures at speed without it.

An entry for the gunfighter (i.e. no missiles allowed) division: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oh0waffikniqqil/Kerbofighter%20MiK-3%20GF%20C1.craft?dl=0

Same as always, it's the #1 essential mod. More detail in FAR than ever, and stock aero is meh.

Zoomy: Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/wctnndvdul4tire/Kerbofighter%20MiK-5%20c2.craft?dl=0 Requires BD Armory.

With sufficient creativity, you could do a torque driven paddlewheel. A bunch of large SAS units to make the paddlewheel, wing sections for the paddles, an appropriately placed probe core to direct the torque and hold down the Q etc key to go.

Looking forwards to it; it'll give me a chance to roll out the MiK-5. Scott Manley's been talking about starting up his own one. No idea what mods he'll use, though. If you toss in a Wheesley-based or no-missile fighter, I'd be happy to run those in separate categories. And I'm thinking of increasing the altitude a bit to reduce the frequency of autopilot dive-into-the-ground kills. I'll still keep it down in thick air, though; maybe just add 500m or so.

It'd vary ship to ship; you'd need to try it and see. Cones do have better heat tolerance, but they're also unfortunately just a little bit less than you need for one engine at altitude. One ramscoop per engine is fine; shock cones may need to be supplemented with a few structural intakes or similar.

And a demo vid (short, the loser made a mess of the first pass):

New challenge aimed at FAR fighter engineers: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132274-FAR-Fighter-Challenge-BD-Armory-AI No piloting required; just slap some guns and/or missiles on your favourite fighter and throw it into the ring.

New challenge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132274-FAR-Fighter-Challenge-BD-Armory-AI

Mod note: Thread locked at OP's request. NOW MOVED TO A NEW THREAD: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/135934-FAR-Fighter-Challenge-BD-Armoury-AI-2%21%21 Okay: time to add to the collection of AI fighter challenges. This one is focused on small fighter planes built for FAR, armed with direct-fire guns and missiles, in best-of-three one-on-one dogfights. Entering is easy; just post a link to your .craft file, I'll run three dogfights with both planes under AI control (starting with both aircraft on the ground, one on the runway, one facing due west on the grass adjacent). Afterwards, I'll post the results as well as video highlights of the combat. The loser can choose to concede after one fight if the outcome is obvious. Whoever wins becomes the new defending champion, and holds the spot until defeated by a new challenger. Your ship will need an AI pilot module from BD Armory, as well as a weapons manager. Autopilot altitude settings will be left at default+500m (i.e. min altitude 1,410m, default altitude 2,000m) to keep the planes together and give enough room to fight. Other autopilot settings can be altered. Keep in mind that dogfighting is a turning game, and excess speed makes turning slower. Also remember that Mach 3 at low altitude is generally suicidal from a heating point of view. (edit to add: in order to keep the planes close together and to approximate the ability of a real pilot to increase their maximum speed as the circumstances dictate, fights will be run with maximum speeds matched as well as altitude. 399m/s will be the default maximum speed; this can be changed by mutual consent of the pilots if necessary) Parts are limited to stock plus those found in the BD Armory mod [1]. The important [2] mods installed on the host machine will be as follows: BD Armory (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85209-1-0-BDArmory-v0-8-3-(critical-fixes-improved-AI)-Dev-Thread-May-30) Dynamic Deflection (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/116888-1-0-The-Plugin-Workshop-Small-plugins-of-varied-function) FAR (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-1-0-4-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-15-4-1-Goldstein-7-29-15) If you don't have all three of these mods installed on your game while you're building and testing your fighter, it won't fly as you expect during the fight. Part clipping for aesthetic or aerodynamic purposes is fine; stacking three engines onto a single node is not. Engines are limited to turbojets/turboramjets; no reaction wheels or RCS (including Vernors) are allowed. Cockpit torque must be disabled. All aircraft must be Kerballed; no drones. Normal HOTOL jets, not floating AA gun platforms etc. Weapons are limited to a maximum of six missiles per aircraft and as many direct-fire guns as you like (turrets must be locked if used). Defensive "weapons" such as chaff are allowed, but only one each of chaff/flare dispensers. Make sure that you test-fly your aircraft with the BD Armory autopilot before submitting it to ensure that it actually flies. Rules are subject to modification in the interests of maximising fun if an un-fun dominating exploit shows up. Wheaton's law applies, but shouldn't be necessary. Leaderboards will be maintained in as many categories as seems appropriate. [1] If you really want to fly with non-stock parts, that's fine, but you'll need to run the combat on your own machine. I'm keeping the part packs down to the minimum in order to minimise load on my CPU while recording video. [2] There'll also be a few cosmetic things to improve the video (Kerbpaint etc) but those aren't necessary to build your ship. Current Champion: Dwerto, D-9. Defeated K-3B1 Arctic Skua. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/f4uw6d6tv7fb7zv/d-9.craft?dl=0 Previous Champion: Doke, K-3B1 Arctic Skua. Defeated TE-11FS Shingo, K-35. Craft file at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132274-FAR-Fighter-Challenge-BD-Armory-AI?p=2214583&viewfull=1#post2214583 Previous Champion: TrainEngie, TE-11FS Shingo. Defeated D-6, CrisK Mini Flanker V2. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xii68bw6svl5j5/TE-11FS%20Shingo-Struts.craft?dl=0 Previous Champion: Dwerto, D-6. Defeated F-119C/A, K-3, Nabf-3. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ojh75jh9m8vuz45/d-6.craft?dl=0 Previous Champion: Hodo, F-119C/A. Defeated MiK-6, ASK 1F-F. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/zrn8c74mwcdovwv/F-119CA.craft?dl=0 Previous Champion: Wanderfound, MiK-6. Defeated F-3C, F-152A, K-18, ASK 1F-F. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/5mxvjnihkmhgoxb/Kerbodyne%20MiK-6A.craft?dl=0 Previous Champion: Phearlock, F-3C Pidgey. Defeated MiK-3. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb2f5mibw9e4411/F-3C%20Pidgey.craft?dl=0

Kerbodyne Kubla. Crew transfer with style. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/mz54ng6jamgbwc9/Kerbodyne%20Kubla.craft?dl=0

Nice... Give it a run on the track? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123650-Kerbinside-Air-Race

New track!

It's a smidge cheaty, but a few Sepratrons or equivalent (Vernor ports, Twitch engines, etc) work well to break the surface tension and get you up to speed:

Sashan: see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92229-How-To-Get-Support-%28READ-FIRST%29 Strip the game back to the bare minimum amount of mods that will cause the bug, find a set of steps that will reliably cause the bug to occur, go through those steps, then exit the game and find the log files as described in the link above. Also report exactly what mods are involved and exactly what the bug reproduction steps were.

Most importantly: your lift thrust needs to be in line with CoM. Mods such as Kerbal Engineer or RCS Build Aid are very useful for getting this right; tweak the engine position until you've got the engine torque as low as possible. VTOLs were much simpler when you could stash a couple of basic jets in a cargo bay. Unfortunately, the nerfing of the basic jet means that you'll need turbos these days, which don't fit easily in a bay. But there are other mounting options...

Think about the physics involved; once your ascent speed starts to wind up, you're essentially flying a plane at a 90° AoA. Unless the craft is built to cope with that, regrettable things will happen. You can reduce the effect by minimising your wing surface (if it can VTOL you don't need much aero lift anyway) and keeping the lifting surfaces relatively balanced around CoM. VTOL piloting demo (one of my ships, but not my piloting): (note: this is from before they nerfed basic jets; you'd need a turbojet for the lifting engine these days)

Airbrakes and S-turns make it possible to ditch speed and altitude extremely rapidly, BTW. 1) KSC in sight, 27,000m altitude, speed Mach 4.5: 2) One minute later, subsonic in a vertical dive: 3) Touchdown, 75m/s, 3 minutes after the first pic: The airbrakes make it a lot easier, but they aren't necessary. So long as you build in a decent amount of g-tolerance and not too much wing loading, you can get similar levels of deceleration from S-turns. Just keep alternating 5-10g banking turns until you've got the speed down to where you need it. The real limit is heat; super-rapid descents without airbrakes have a tendency to melt your wings off, especially if they're still warm from the ascent.

For a somewhat improved version of a similar concept:

I wasn't intending it to be an exclusive list. But isn't that a Mainsail (or Skipper?) as the main engine? Both of those have gimbal. As you demonstrate, the "very small payload wings balanced by substantial tailfins" approach can work, especially if you're careful to keep close to prograde during the ascent. It does tend to be rather fiddly and restrict your payload size, though.

Option 1: lots of gimbal and a very vertical launch. Don't pitch over until you're in the upper atmosphere. Option 2: