CrisK

I'm really glad that you had fun playing around with the USAF variant! I spent more time on that one as compared to the flanker. You're right that cranking up the wing strength dramatically improves the durability, but I'm not sure if that's considered cheating for this challenge. Even setting it to 1.25 is a huge improvement. The AI rips the plane apart on my install too. I actually re-built the body of the flanker this evening to lower the part count, clean up the lines, fix the z-fighting, and make it more durable. I sort of rushed the original body of the flanker - I built it on a whim after playing around with Halsfury's flanker. I'll update my older post and add the flanker craft file to this post. Edit: Here's a zip file with the craft. In terms of FAR giving you drastically different numbers - that has happened to me too. I think that it's a bug. I save scum to get around that. Vis-à-vis the lift bug: what FAR is doing is actually shifting the lift to the root of the plane. It's a weird bug and the only fix that I've found is to reload from an older save. It completely screws up the craft file. PS: The flanker version is stable at 80% AOA and can turn on a dime.

I'll check when I get a free moment to play KSP again! To be honest, the high performance was half voodoo/luck and half science. Every time I made a change to the plane I checked FAR's analysis window to see if the AOA increased or decreased. If the performance went down, I loaded an older save. By doing that I found 3 different wing configurations that performed well enough. If I increased the wing's length, the AOA stability/performance decreased but lift increased. There's a healthy balance between lift and AOA performance. You can make the plane stable at an AOA of 90+ on the analysis graph, but it won't have enough lift at higher altitudes so the entire plane will stall. Tweaking the control surfaces is also very important. For example, on the flanker variant you can increase the deflection of all of the control surfaces to 35 or so, and add forward-facing control surfaces that are set to affect pitch. That will allow you to turn 90% pretty much instantly. The downside of this is that you lose a huge percentage of your speed. The plane will also snap in two at low altitudes (below 5000) if you do this. The real Russian planes do this, but it leaves them sitting ducks for a bit while they pick up speed. Imagine a plane going from Mach 0.9 to Mach 0.5 in the span of a few seconds. It looks cool, but what practical purpose does it serve? I've also played around with BahamutoD's thrust vectoring engine. It makes just about any plane supermaneuverable, but every turn bleeds speed.

BahamutoD, the AA missiles seem to be seriously under-performing. I sent up an unarmed drone on team B with AI piloting, then followed it and launched 6 AMRAAMs and 4 sidewinders at a distance of 1km. The AI was able to dodge all 10 missiles. It was easier to gun the plane down than it was to hit it with the missiles. I was locked on with a Radome and the AI plane was directly in front of me, level with me, flying in the same direction.

I use IR to build missile rails. Have you ever experienced BDArmory's missiles colliding with your plane and blowing it up? Well, when they're attached to IR parts that doesn't happen. It's also great for building internal missile racks that extend out of the plane with an action group, fire, then draw back into the plane. This process takes about 2 seconds. Yeah but PEW is not compatible or I might have downloaded it wrong. do you just drop PEW into the GameData? cause I dropped the parts into the BD armoury file. EDIT: I tried PEW again but it's behaving badly still. I'll have to keep trying to get KSP's parts to turn into a successful A to A missile. I've found that missile making is just about as hard as making the plane. I've been firing them at a subsonic flying wing fighter I made a while back (the Bhlom und Voss P209) Which is successfully evading my very large missile every time. The missile AI is quite stupid about identifying lead and trying to intercept the target (which is surprising considering BD armoury can calculate lead for other projectiles just fine). I've identified that to solve the problem I need to make the missile more maneuverable, but so doing has lead to a lot of flying backwards. In an even more annoying twist it seems totally impossible to use the missile manager in conjunction with a player controlled aircraft, this will usually result in the missile AI taking over the plane's control. Hmm. P.E.W. works fine for me. Did you download the updated version from @LORDPrometheus's Dropbox account? I'm fairly certain that the modular missiles are meant to be long-range cruise missiles. They're not really designed for AA. Here are craft files. 1. USAF variant armed with IR. 2. USAF variant unarmed with minimal mods. 3. Flanker variant with all mods including IR. 4. Flanker variant unarmed with minimal mods. These planes are somewhat challenging to fly. I recommend using a soft touch when flying them at low altitudes (under 5k). Pilot assistant's throttle control is very helpful. I put fuel in both the tank and the wings. Empty the forward tank if you want to be more acrobatic at the cost of losing half your flying time. I limited the thrust to 70, but it should fly nicely at anywhere above 45. 70 seems to be a sweet spot. For the USAF variant: keep the AOA below 60. It's stable up to around 70, and it won't stall until you pass around 75. It's the more stable design, so it can't pull stunts as easily unless the forward tank is emptied. For the flanker variant: Keep the AOA below 70. This variant is more acrobatic and can/will stall if you go above an AOA of 75. It's capable of really weird and fun stunts, at the expense of burning speed. The cockpit is angled downwards, so there's more drag and the navball is a bit off. This gives a great IVA view though, and it's really cool for dogfighting in the IVA view. It's also amazing for IVA landings because you can see below you as you land. Neither need airbrakes to land. Hold the S key when you touch down and the rear fins will slow you down. It's easy to land on a very short strip (including Eskandare's aircraft carrier) with these planes, even with IVA. The USAF is especially forgiving with landings.

I agree with you that the missiles are heavily under-performing right now. I launched 6 AMRAAMs and 4 sidewinders at a target directly in front of me less than 1km away and they all missed. I was locked on! @LORDPrometheus created some nice long range air to air missiles in his P.E.W. add-on. There's the AIM-54 and the R-37, plus others that I don't really know anything about.

Thanks! Sure thing. I'll create copies without the internal infernal robotics parts tomorrow to reduce the mod count. Other than IR, they both use BDArmory, b9 wings, and adjustable landing gear. Thanks man! I like the idea that you proposed a while back of there being different categories of planes. Multirole, air superiority, bomber, close air support, electronic warfare, utility, etc. PS: BDArmory was just updated again with some goodies.

I was inspired by Halsfury' flanker, and I decided to create two variations of my "Silver". #1: USAF Lockheed style: #2: Flanker Sukhoi style: The USAF version is more compact, shorter, and more aerodynamically stable. I designed it with a focus on "stealth". The Flanker variant is less stable, a little bit longer, the body's wider, and the engines are spaced further apart. Both are capable of 17g turns, vertical climbs, supercruising, and supermaneuverability. SAS optional.

@TheHengeProphet I don't like reaction wheels because they can cause the plane to snap itself in half by performing maneuvers that are not physically possible. However, I tend to clip an MK2 drone core into my planes' bodies because the core includes a battery, and it can track targets. Tonight I tried to design the best small 5th gen fighter that I could, not based on any pre-existing designs. Here's what I came up with: I call it the C-R Silver. It's capable of sustained Mach 1.4 supercruise above 8k, vertical climbs, able to reach Mach 2 with ease. I used FAR's flight analysis tools to perfectly balance the wings so that it's capable of extremely tight turns, it has incredible AOA stability. That took a lot of fiddling. It's supermaneuverable. It's actually the most acrobatic fighter I've flown in KSP. I took a few screenshots of it performing cobras, loops, spins, etc. It has a large internal bay at the bottom with up to 6 large missiles, and two smaller ones on the side that can carry 2-4 smaller missiles (2 sidewinders, 4 hellfires, etc.) I think I'll hold off on designing any new planes for a while and enjoy flying everyone's creations. The F-16 is great in my eyes. The Su-27 flanker still needs some work, but it's my favorite flanker design, and I think it's the flanker to beat. Strictly in terms of how well it flies, I think that it's the best flanker on the forums. I want to play around with the Wheel Wobble if Henge posts the craft file. Hint hint.

Added the Lockheed F-117.

I plead the 5th. Yes. It flies like a brick.

In short, no. It's not capable of competing with any of the fighters. Hals mentioned adding new categories for reconnaissance planes, utility planes, etc.

Here's a little something that I built for the proposed stealth / reconnaissance category:

Heheh. This looks so goofy. I love it. Halsfury, I don't really like the limit on mods. It means that we can't use 3rd party cockpits, or variable wings using infernal robotics.

Hals, I think that you should end this challenge and start a new one. Maybe call it "The 5th Generation Fighter Challenge MKII". That's more fair than changing the rules this late in the day. PS: I posted the Rafale craft file with some slight tweaks, and called it the CrisK & Halsfury Rafale. It still flies well under the latest version of FAR and BD.

A version of the YF-23 using procedural parts:

I really like the shape of your planes. PS: The YF-23 using procedural parts: p Edit: Here's a modified version of the Rafale with Halsfury's wings. This one can pull 17g turns. I shifted the wings slightly, replaced the canards with control surfaces set to the same shape, removed the forward-facing flaps (they caused a lot of problems), and used an engine nacelle to provide the cockpit bubble.

Hmm. I'm thinking that there's something going on here. This reminds me of when FAR enabled its pilot assist for pitch, yaw, etc. when I was flying Hodo's plane. I'm using the latest release of FAR from Github.

Cool. It's more agile now, but it's also very fragile. I think that I can beef up the sturdiness while using your wing shape. The X-32 can pull 20g turns. The old Rafale design can pull 15g turns. This one splits apart after 8g...

It looks great! How does it perform at high speed maneuvers? I like the improved wing shape.

Cool. You're welcome to put the Halsfury branding on the Rafale once you've modified it.

Hals, I think that you're overthinking this. There's a limit to FAR's realism. I stumbled on a quirk that amuses me: if I rotate the body of the X-32 by 90% then it flies insanely well. It can perform the tightest loops, turns, etc. that I've ever seen on a plane using FAR. Of course, this makes it absolutely hideous (even more so than it was before)! Goofy designs like this fly amazingly well in FAR:

Well done, haha! Try setting the AI's steer limiter to 1, steer dampening to 3, and lower the max speed to Mach 1. It's strange that you find that the Rafale has a slow turning radius! It has a much faster turning radius than any of the fighters in this thread other than the X-32. This makes me wonder if the FAR settings that I applied to the control surfaces aren't saved in the craft file... Really, it turns so quickly (due to the canards) that it can snap itself in half at low altitudes. Vis-à-vis the thrust: set it to 50% if you're flying it manually! I tried setting it anywhere from 40% to 100% to try to create a good AI drone. Any higher than 60% and the AI loses control of the plane. PS: If you don't mind the increased part count, you can make really cool missile mounts by adding missile rails to the edges of those pylons.

I modified my ATF-14 using tricks that I learned from Hals and clown's designs.

What can I say? When you post cool designs it inspires me to improve own designs. The X-32 uses FAR, B9 Procedural Wings, Adjustable Landing Gear, BDArmory, MK2 Expansion, Infernal Robotics. The Rafale uses FAR, B9 Procedural Wings, Adjustable Landing Gear, BDArmory. I can remove the landing gear if you want to avoid installing another mod. Cool!

The Rafale has a new body.