BlueCanary

Thanks, I'll try this out, although I'm not sure how it'll work seeing as my plane's wings are pretty much just one piece. How does it affect stability/maneuverability?

Wait, I'm not sure what you mean. Have you got a screenshot of the angled wings?

The main advantage of an extra vulcan would be putting twice as much lead in the air in the same amount of time, doubling the chances at least one round hits. Of course, it also adds a bit of a weight penalty. I flew some simulations against my latest El Quicko variant (2 vulcans, no missiles), I found that the general course of events was that my fighter got to altitude a little before yours, allowing it to turn in and fire a (generally ineffective) vulcan burst, before the Naga began firing AIM-120's. So far it looks like the El Quicko can usually dodge the missiles (most often 6 of them) for long enough that the Naga gets too close and switches to guns, at which point the advantage seems to be solidly with the more maneuverable El Quicko, which was able to stay on the Naga's tail and eventually shoot it down. The Naga did display some impressive damage resistance though, often still fighting despite missing an engine and half a wing. So if the initial missile attack failed, which, if the El Quicko was in the air first, it often did, as soon as the planes got too close for missiles, the result almost always went to the El Quicko, as it's superior maneuverability and acceleration meant it could prevent the Naga from escaping. That is, if the initial missile attack failed. If it didn't, and the fight remained beyond about a kilometre, the Naga got the win very quickly. I'm going to try giving the El Quicko some missiles of it's own and see if that changes anything. EDIT: I gave the El Quicko 2 AIM-120s and 4 Sidewinders, which actually made it's performance worse as while it tried to find a Sidewinder lock it was less able to evade missiles. I reduced it to just the 2 AIM-120s, which turned out to be very useful. If it gets to altitude to first - which it does most of the time, especially if it is the one activated first - and is able to turn onto the Naga and fire them off before the Naga can return fire, and the Naga is generally unable to avoid the missiles. I strongly suggest you work on it's missile avoidance ability, as in an AIM-120 fight, unless it fires the first shot, it seems to have no chance of successfully evading. If the Naga got to shoot first, the El Quicko was forced to evade, preventing it from returning fire whilst the Naga shot off all of it's AIM-120s. About half of the time the El Quicko was able to avoid every single missile, leaving the Naga with just it's gun while the El Quicko retained both it's missiles. When the AIM-120s did hit, it was usually with the last pair, when the El Quicko had already expended most of it's energy avoiding previous shots, suggesting that if the Naga was fighting a fighter with better missile avoidance ability it would have little chance of achieving a hit.

Ahhh, the El Quicko in it's natural habitat: getting completely shredded by AIM-120s. That's a very nice fighter you have there, looks pretty agile. What's it like in a gunfight? EDIT: Also, if you're looking to shave off any weight, you could save a good half tonne by using the small landing gear, which might give you a nice acceleration and maneuverability boost.

Maybe try swapping out the prop for duel Junos in pods on the sides? You'd probably still have to make some pretty extensive cost cutting decisions though.

Somebody had to do it. It's actually a surprisingly competent dogfighter, very hard to hit thanks to being so compact and is able to hit back extremely hard with 4 M230s. Decently maneuverable and with a reasonable amount of thrust, it's by no means the most agile fighter ever, but isn't a total brick either. The IVA view is awesome too. Here's a (WIP) craft file if anyone wants it, at the moment the cannon are set to have a couple of degrees gimbal, I know that's banned for tournaments, but I wanted to see how it affects the fight. It turns out it makes things explode. A lot.

Also, what does the "Hammers - 20 points" on the OP refer to?

Maybe Han meant that they would fly too near a star and be forced into sublight speeds in a position where they would have been fried by heat and radiation, without any way to escape back to hyperspace in time?

That's wierd, I was sure I picked the right one. It should be fixed now. https://www.dropbox.com/s/70gbrt062c2agjv/El%20Quicko%20%28-X%20Variant%29.craft?dl=0

@Triop Inspired by the Kritter, I replaced the El Quicko's M230 with dual Vulcans. Best. Decision. Ever. It's like watching a Star Wars dogfight. Fighters flicking around each other impossibly fast, cannon fire zipping past, then suddenly one of them suddenly stops mid-flight and explodes just like when Luke shoots down the TIE fighter. It's so incredibly fast KSP guns battles can be. If anyone wants it here's the craft file for the en-vulcaned version (for best results reduce fuel to around 20-40% before flight). At the risk of sounding really cocky and looking like a complete idiot when somebody's plane completely blows it out of the water, I think it might be the best non-wingstack gunfighter currently on offer, with extreme maneuverability, good acceleration, and now formiddable firepower. (It may or may not have a giant decoy/missile thing mounted on top, if it does just decouple it, it's useless.) Of course it still can't dodge missiles at all, but still...

@Triop I've done some more flights against the Kritter, and it looks like the El Quicko has a pretty comprehensive advantage over it. Although the firepower of the Kritter makes it far more effective than any other fighter I've seen in long range gun runs, once the fight becomes a turning battle (which it almost certainly will, considering the Kritter only carries 2 missiles) the more maneuverable fighter was able to literally run circles around it, getting on it's tail very quickly and denying it the opportunity to use those four vulcans. The low rate of fire of my fighters M230 cannon meant that the Kritter was often able to evade, but it simply lacked the maneuverability to be able to get back on the offensive. However, when it did get a chance to use those cannon, the effect was devastating for everything in their path. If you can get anything near that level of firepower in the fighter you're working on now, it sounds like it'll be very hard to beat.

@Triop I'm trying the Kritter+ against the El Quicko, so far things look to be leaning towards my fighter. I was reusing the El Quicko as set up for previous tests, so it had no missiles equipped, but the Kritter kept it's AIM-120s. The El Quicko, with a slightly better TWR, was able to get in the air quite a bit faster, and was able to dodge both AIM-120s quite easily (it can dodge the first shots well, it's just that it loses the energy it needs to deal with follow up shots, which the Kritter can't deliver), quickly making it an all guns battle. The first fight ended with a mid-air collision resulting in the total destruction of both aircraft, but in the second the more maneuverable El Quicko was able to quickly get on the Kritter's tail and take out it's wings with 30mm cannon fire. It's worth noting, however, that had the Kritter had a couple more missiles it wouls have won the fight within the first 15 seconds. Also, the impressive volume of fire it's 4 cannons put in the air completely outgunned my fighters single M230. If it had managed to score a hit on it's first past while my fighter dodged the AIM-120s, it would again have been able to end the fight very quickly. More testing coming soon.

Wait, did you mean to tag Redshift OTF? The Anduril is not my design, although I have flown designs against it.

That's the thing that confuses me, it has huge wing area compared to it's mass. That was one of the main design considerations. It's also 6 tonnes lighter than the Anduril, but has a lower TWR as it has half the engine - although the climb to altitude times seem quite similar. It's incredibly responsive in turns, although the control surface area is so large that it can get twitchy under SAS at high speeds, although the autopilot doesn't appear to have this problem so much. I think the issue is that it is so responsive in turns that when the autopilot breaks as hard as it can to avoid missiles, a lot of energy is lost, simply because it's pulling Gs way off the navball G meter's scale for extended periods of time, allowing it to avoid the first missile with ease but leaving it without the energy to get away from the second. This could be avoided by reducing the pitch authority or moving the CoM further forward to reduce maneuverability, but the problem is that this would ruin the extreme ability to make high G turns at all speeds that makes it so good in a gunfight. What I don't understand is why the Anduril does not have this problem - it seems to have very similar all-speed maneuverability, but without losing the ability to dodge missiles. Craft file for the El Quicko is here, if you want to try it. If you do I recommend you try it at least once in an all-guns fight, as it allows you to get a much better sense of it's capabilities than in a missile fight, where it turns into a useless pile of space-grade poop. I also recommend you reduce the fuel load to ~40%, as that seems to be just enough to give it the edge against the Anduril in a gun battle.

It definitely seemed to be shooting at me from very far off, although it didn't score any hits from that far so I'm not sure how much of an advantage that is. The El Quicko is hopeless at avoiding missiles* (although it carries 7 of them and is comparable in maneuverability to the Anduril so it shouldn't be too bad at firing them) so you'll probably find that outside of a gunfight there's nothing you need to change to fight against it better, although without missiles it seems to be about equal to the Anduril, maybe even with a slight advantage if you reduce the fuel load to ~40%. *The autopilot flies it so it kills all it's speed turning as hard as it can to avoid the first one and then doesn't have the energy to avoid the second, I can't see any reason why the airframe should be so unable to dodge missiles as it is plenty maneuverable and has a reasonable countermeasure load, I think it's just the way the autopilot flies it.

I tried flying my El Quicko against this, since it seems to have a similar design philosophy (big maneuverable fighter with low wing loading). Your plane completely hammered mine in a missile fight - I'm still not really sure why mine is so awful at dodging missiles - but in an all guns dogfight things were much more evenly matched. So far: Two clear victories each. Two three mid-air collisions - two incredibly maneuverable planes spinning around each other metres apart at 30-270m/s is pretty dangerous, it turns out. One fight where both planes ended up missing a wing. The rate of fire of that GAU-8 seems to be helping the Anduril a lot, whilst my M230 armed fighter needs to be pretty much on the targets six to get a hit. I might swap it out for a Vulcan to see if that changes things. KSP seems to be only saving screenshots about half the time, so I have no record of this really incredible fight where after a lengthy dogfight the El Quicko got behind the Anduril and shot off part of it's wing. The Anduril kept fighting, but soon got another lump of wing shot to pieces. And it kept flying and fighting, getting hit three more times, until eventually it just disintegrated. It's damage resistance is incredible.

@Triop Yet more fights against your MiG: This was with the nearest thing I had to the MiG, an ultra-low part Hawker Hunter type-thing powered by a non-vectoring Panther. It has 4 sidewinders but they almost never even got close to the MiG. Most of the fight was fought with the twin M230s. Download The first fight was so evenly matched that the MiG ran out of fuel and landed before either plane could damage the other. The next few fights seemed to show the hunter having a slight advantage, although I'm not sure why since it has a lower TWR and comparable wing loading to the MiG, and lacks thrust vectoring. The most common result was that it managed to shoot the MiG's engine, forcing it to land.

I tried the HNC (with added Vulcan cannon) against your MiG-15, once again the MiG completely avoided every single missile with ease. Eventually the HNC got on the MiG's tail while climbing vertically and shot off one of the wings. The El Quicko actually did better in the guns battle than the HNC despite being so much worse at missile fights, it's lower wing loading and better pitch authority than the HNC got it in firing position much quicker. The next few rounds were pretty much the same, with the HNC firing off a few Sidewinders, the MiG evading with ease, and a gun battle where the HNC ends up winning. One time the HNC actually bumped into the remains of the MiG. One time a lucky Aim-9 got through, but that was the only missile hit I've ever got on the MiG. I think if it got some missiles of it's own and maybe some more wing area to help boost maneuverability it'd be a very hard fighter to beat, the TWR and ability to evade missiles are incredible. I tried deactivating the HNC's Vulcan to see if it could get a missile kill on the MiG, but the MiG ran out of fuel before the HNC even got the chance to fire all it's Sidewinders.

What about a guns only contest at some point since it's very exciting to watch and it removes the element of luck that's there with missile kills, as to get a guns kill you pretty much have to have managed to get solidly on the six of your enemy, whilst a missile can be fired in the first two seconds of the contest and end it straight away?

Physical impossible AFAIK, the jets stop giving thrust long before that, and at any altitude where jets work 6000m/s will kill you anyway. Maybe if you could somehow get into space just using just jet parts, and somehow carefully plan gravity assists so you end up slinging into Kerbin at over 6000m/s?

Watching these fights from IVA is so much fun!

I finally managed to shoot something down with the El Quicko! It turns out in a guns only battle, where it doesn't need energy to avoid missiles, it's actually pretty formiddable. After missing with all seven missiles - that MiG is really incredible at avoiding them, none even got close - it was able to get on the MiG-15's tail easily with it's very good slow speed maneuverability, and eventually managed to shoot it's wings off with a lucky long-ish ranged deflection shot. If there was a guns only tournament I think there's a good chance it would do quite well.

Let's see how your mig does against my mig (very quickly thrown together MiG-21, not the most maneuverable or fastest plane but it does have missiles): 2 AIM-120, 2 Sidewinder, M230, Chaff, Flares. Download This is my first attempt to set up a fight, so I know it's going to go bad. Time to try the MiG-15 against some of my more maneuverable designs.

Thanks for the advice, the lack of afterburners probably explains the low climb rate, and that fuel will probably get used up much faster with them on. I will try and add a gun somewhere, I wonder what is the general opinion, M230 or Vulcan?

Ooh I'd love a guns only battle, it would make things very interesting. Also thanks for running the simulations with my plane, I'm having some really annoying stability issues (can't even load a single craft half the time) at the moment so it's really helpful.