Eidahlil

@skygunner58203 I think there was some discussion of parasite craft in the previous BDA thread, but I couldn't find it all quick-like. You can also try following this one: 7.2. may have been fixed in the meantime. But it might not be.

Sorry, genuinely missed your question. Currently bigger projectiles are not supported by BDA. Bullet hit raycast is done from transform center to transform center between physics ticks, laser is a simple raycast. You may be able to get a somewhat similar effect with proximity detonation of explosive rounds (I think oMillenium is one example). There is a chance proximity detonation may be broken, though.

Guns work just fine in space. They don't really do orbital mechanics, but the math is close enough. Mouse aim, however, is a different matter. It is not impossible, but it is reasonably tricky, and it is not implemented. Fixed aim is also not impossible via lead indicators, which are less tricky, but also not implemented. Visual guard mode works just fine and radar slaving should work mostly fine too. A simple demonstration using completely stock Abrams cannons at 6km in LKO. Technically this is the dev version, but there haven't been any relevant changes since last release.

Probably. If we have it in our github issues, we're less likely to forget, though. Sounds like you don't have module manager or physics range extender (or have them horribly outdated). Do you have any big red text when opening the bda toolbar? No, you shouldn't need a radar for loitering. Did you turn the flight computer on? Do you have a weapon manager on the aircraft? Is the default alt set to the altitude you want it to loiter at? Is the default speed set high enough for it to stay airborne?

Countermeasure routines (the code which actually fires the countermeasures) is in weapon manager, region countermeasures. https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/BDArmory/blob/master/BDArmory/Modules/MissileFire.cs#L1749 The decision to fire countermeasures is actually in various places, but most of it is in guard mode updates and RWR pings. https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/BDArmory/blob/master/BDArmory/Modules/MissileFire.cs#L3917 https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/BDArmory/blob/master/BDArmory/Modules/RadarWarningReceiver.cs#L231

No. I really want to say "not yet". I've been wanting this myself for a while, but it is quite a complicated change to do in maintainable way, so we'll just have to see if it happens. :)

It does affect guns. The AI checks if it should start firing guns every firing interval seconds. If it does, it will keep firing them for burst interval seconds, or half the firing interval if the burst interval is zero (<0.5 actually). Yeah, sorry about that. Not sure which wiki you're referring to (there's the ingame one, and the one floating on the internet), but, I guess, they are all outdated. For surface AI, you can right click the part in the VAB, and find a list of what each setting does in the part documentation. For pilot AI... I'll see if I can add that. Regarding tutorials, my favourite place is to check the BDA dogfighting competitions in the challenges subforum, but YMMV. Also, I think most of the settings will be pretty clear from description, except maybe the Factor, Damping and Ki, for which you can google about PID controllers (Factor is the Proportional part, Ki is the Integral part and Damping is the Damping part). It sounds like your control is underdamped, try increasing steer damping. Right click a weapon in VAB/SPH, Show Weapon Group UI, set both weapons to the exact same weapon group (type in the same name) - they will fire together.

BDA 1.3.1 is out - just a couple of bugfixes: FIXES All parts have bulkheadProfiles - should stop bulkhead filter NREs. Rocket pods no longer fire StackOverflows.

@FleshJeb you are technically correct, which, I guess, is the best kind of correct. The function produces only one side of a gaussian distribution (or the absolute value of it), which is misleading given it's name. However, in the `GaussianDirectionDeviation` above it, we're picking a random direction (-180 to 180 degrees), which you can think of as picking a direction from 0 to 180 and then multiplying by -1 50% of the time, and the -1 gives us a nice gaussian distribution again. I'll get it fixed anyway (unless you want to do a pull request yourself?) That said, this produces the wrong bullet distribution anyway. In reality the deviation is normal in any direction orthogonal to the firing line, however that make the distance from center not normal, but normal squared (aka chi-square with 2 degrees of freedom aka rayleigh). It's getting fixed in the next version.

Add blank decouplers with modular missile guidance. Make sure your firing interval is not too low. The AI will start dropping drones as soon as the drone bay _starts_ opening. So you want it to fire the blank ones first. Play around with the order they are placed in. It's a wonky solution, but the only one I found. If you check the princess it has two blank ones at the back of the bay. Doesn't always work right, but sometimes it does.

In very simple terms - KSP has a system to move the world around the vessel instead of moving the vessel in the world. Not all things in BDA take this into account. This system is disabled when the focused vessel is close to the ground. So if the selected vessel is on the ground, the world will stop moving, and everything will work like you would expect. In less simple terms - detecting collisions at high speed is tricky. Also, floating point number precision is directly related to their magnitude. So KSP has systems to try to circumvent these problems - velocity offloading (called Krakensbane) and floating origin (called FloatingOrigin ). The first one works by calculating the speed of everything relative to the active vessel instead of the body you're orbiting. So then when you're heading for Duna at 3km/s, and jettison a booster, Unity has to calculate if it slips between the two fins for a booster moving at 1.2 m/s for a stationary spaceship rather than if a booster moving at 3000.1 m/s slips between the fins of a spaceship moving at 3000 m/s. Turns out, the former is easier. The second one works by keeping the vessel at (0, 0, 0) in the internal coordinate system, and everything close by is also relatively close to 0 (things far away are unloaded anyway). You can probably google up a better explanation of the problem than I can manage without taking up three paragraphs but you start to lose small movements when you're far away from zero. In BDA, some things, like bullets, do not take these things into account (likely the bullets were implemented before KSP had these things). So, when the systems kick in, the bullets start inheriting the acceleration and movement of the focused vessel. Also, when the focused vessel changes, the bullets like to teleport together with the vessel change. Now, when you're close to the ground, collisions with terrain come up. And, applying the same argument, there is a lot more terrain than there is ship, and calculating collisions is easier when the terrain is stationary. So Krakensbane turns off. And since you're stationary, Floating Origin has no reason to kick in either (and it is less aggressive for vessels close to the ground too). So, a landed observer stops the main causes of the observer effects, while a flying observer does not (it might still alleviate Floating Origin issues if it stays in relatively the same place).

Yeah, there are quite a few observer effects, such as bullets moving together with the selected vessel (hard to spot), bullets teleporting "randomly" occasionally and pilots extending forever. An observer aircraft doesn't really stop them from happening, if you want a truly unbiased testing, you'll have to use a landed/splashed observer craft. Note this is because of KSP reasons, not because of BDA reasons, but a workaround should still happen someday. Hopefully with next BDA release, as a probable fix is already in the dev builds.

I've had pretty good results launching drones via the modular missile guidance. Even autopilot AI / guard mode can sort of figure it out. They activate rather reliably, though in this specific implementation the AI does not wait for the cargo bay to fully open, resulting in some of them hitting the door on their way out. Somewhat useful instructions here:

Sure, the Rafale looks quite good, but you can probably make it pretty good: Needs proper ECM tech - add some batteries, I'd recommend at least 2K of electric charge. And add "activate ECM" to the gear action group for all the ECM. Also maybe add another ECM for a total of 3. A bit sluggish on pitch - the center of lift should move forward a bit. A bit overenthusiastic on roll. Maybe disable roll on the middle elevons and tail, and set all the elevons back to 100 authority limit (not the canards though)? And while you're at it, increase steer damping to 6? It only has 2.2 engines - 200 fuel should be plenty and save a ton of mass. What's up with the 5 second drop time on the Sidewinder? It's supposed to be a missile, not a bomb. AI tweaks - reducing max speed to ~290 would make it a lot more resistant to the initial sidewinder volley. If 2. and 3. get fixed, the minimum altitude can decrease to 300-400. And I have no idea why it has any amount of Pitch KI. FYI I did not test the head in detail. So something like this: https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Dassault-Rafale-C-CE-Shark-III-Type-E.craft Speaking of which, @exbyde, I think the Pachycephalosaurus deserves a honorable mention. "Hydra" maybe? Or "Nietzsche poster plane" ("that which does not kill me, makes me stronger")? The Mini Shark is already pretty good. It can probably benefit from pretty much all of the comments for Rafale, but they are a lot more optional here. An ECM will increase mass by 10%, which is not insignificant, though I've found that it is very vulnerable to AMRAAMs (which lock at 3km out).

They don't seem to overheat too badly when on guard mode. I suspect this is due to having many guns, and having useRippleFire on. Since the rules don't allow me to text edit that to false, and I could not find another way to turn it off for GAU-8, it sort of became a non-issue. By the way, @exbyde, do I have to specify which category the entry is for? If yes, then it's unlimited. I added the cockpit solely for looks, there's a proper drone core behind it.

Well, the main reason I didn't use them is because they provide pretty much no info in the part details in the SPH. That, and the really large radar cross section. But now that you mentioned it, I went through the part.cfg files, and noticed that the Maverick engine is quite reasonable both in terms of RCS and performance. So there might an actual helicopter in the works, depending on whether I can figure out how to make it maneuverable enough.

Not really a plane... While it technically has a bit of wing surface for structural reasons, at 16.6t, the 3 or so m2 hardly matter. It mainly uses props for lift. I suppose that makes it a stealth attack helicopter. At least if we ignore the parachute.

I'm OK with the Pike being replaced. While we're at it, let's jump on the airplane plus train, since everyone seems to think it's the bees knees: https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Cookie

Put a decoupler on the mothership. Put another decoupler on that decoupler. Put a modular missile guidance on the first decoupler. Put your parasite craft on the second decoupler. Don't forget to tell it it's a drone, because the mothership thinks it's a potato. Add to action group 1: AI pilot - activate Weapon manager - guard mode on engine - activate probe core/cockpit - control from here second decoupler - decouple. whatever else you want to do when launching the drone Congratulations, your missile guidance now thinks that it is a super awesome decoupler - powered cannon. Set your modular missile guidance settings to: GPS guidance mode so it doesn't try to get a heat lock increase the max range to whenever you want the drones to launch I recommend having at least half a second of drop time. Congratulations, your mothership now thinks the parasite craft is a very fancy cruise missile. Your mothership will now launch these drones as it would launch cruise missiles - any time it as much as glimpses an enemy. PROFIT!!!!!! Your drone will turn off its autopilot if the mothership is destroyed. No known workaround.

While we're at it, I've updated the sunfish, it should no longer get lost on the way. Hopefully. Also clamped all the values to those available in the editor. Well, at least those I've found... So feel free to still throw it out, but in case you want to keep going... https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Hedgedrone.craft (same link as before)

Alrighty, here's a version of the Pike in which I'm pretty sure I've set the values to what can be set in the SPH. In my tests it wins about 50:50 against the old Pike. https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Pike-Clamped I don't think there's a noticeable difference in performance, but I'm all for testing it out. [EDITED]There's a difference between cfg editing and save file editing, but turns out, it's less than I thought before writing this post. Pretty sure you can only edit the isPersistent=true fields in a save file. But it turns out there are plenty of important ones. You can increase the engine gimbal and thrust limiter over 100, which makes it crazy powerful and able to fire sideways. Why didn't I think to try that before. You can also increase the torque limiter on SAS. There are also shenanigans which can make parts have more resources than they should, which saves you the weight and drag of a tank (the resource still weighs normally). Incidentally, I learned that last part from a craft in this thread. I don't think it was foul play, just some mod doing it's thing without the builder realizing, so no names. Didn't use it here, because, imho, that would be cheating. I'll think about it for the super category though. You can already set the guns straight. Press F to toggle absolute rotation, turn on angle snap, and it will set itself straight. You can also offset parts wherever you want, just hold shift. As for the BDA settings, most of them don't make a difference as far as I've noticed (doesn't stop me from trying, but I can stop, if you'd like that). The scanInterval DOES make a difference however. A small one, but it's there. Then again, I'm pretty sure my craft ain't the only ones which have it modified, so I thought that was fine. Sorry. Just kill it. Kill it with fire. (And by that I mean remove it from the competition.) Also, I have no idea why it doesn't fly where it's supposed to. Maybe that's just because it's a sunfish. EDIT: So, after some tests, I'd actually probably be for banning craft file editing. Soooo much you can do there.

Well, since the lasers don't seem all that popular, I'd like to offer an alternative submission: https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Fort.craft Plenty of firepower, but also a large target. I hope it's fine I stored some ammo instead of diesel in those fuel tanks. Saves on part count. It's under 40 now. Let's pretend that's a mod?

Are lasers banned yet? I vote lasers are banned. I even have an argument for banning lasers: https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Heliotherapy-Reconditioner.craft In case lasers are not banned, consider this a SAM submission. EDIT: Well, lasers don't seem to be too popular around here, consider the submission retracted in favor of the one below.

Assuming the plane is not crazy, you are right. However, previous contestant history has shown us that this is not always a correct assumption. So i need 4 to kill the friendly in front of me, 4 to kill my target, 4 to kill the target of the friendly, and 4 to finish off the last hostile because my wingmate has no idea what it's doing. Also, I'm not firing them one at a time. Though, actually, it's more for the awesomeness factor than any practical considerations.

Junos are the new Panthers! Missile spam is dead! Long live missile spam! http://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Hedgedrone.craft Let's see if that works. It's the ECM. They cannot get a lock, so they do not fire, simple as that. The Sanngrior Mk 2 has no battery, so doesn't really use the ECM the same way as everyone else.