colmo

This ruleset is looking solid now - I'm happy enough with the draw conditions as written. When you say 'destroyed' in the air, what's the threshold? Some planes can be pretty beaten up and still limp along. Engines getting shot off is a common occurrence, and they can glide a long time? One other thing, teams may wish to use radar receivers to link the radomes of the two planes. There's no way to do this ahead of launch. Do you make the link if asked to do so?

Infinite Dice's Boat Parts kinda works if you install Better Buoyancy too. You'll need to pump fuel around to balance it though. Alternatively, don't install the plugins included in the pack, otherwise it'll sink to the bottom without Better Buoyancy.

Quite. The weapon values being used were established for turrets fixed forward. For free rotation, they're completely wrong.

There's good cashbacks on Lenovo Thinkservers (TS140) in the UK - Xeon 1226 v3 equipped and all, so good KSP grunt. They come in around £250 delivered after cashback, and while I could slot my GTX 660 in it, the large card may mean unplugging the front USB ports from the motherboard, a right pain. How good is KSP on the onboard P4600 graphics? If it's good enough, I may forego the big card altogether as I barely use it otherwise.

I recommend changing the conditions for draws. Who crashes first is stupid and arbitrary. I originally counted a plane dead for these purposes (though it can still shoot!) if it was no longer under powered, controlled flight. Thus, a mid air collision of the last two planes is rightly a draw, not a result because the wreckage of one plane hit the VAB earlier than the other which hit the ground. Top Gun AI was not originally a 1v1 format, it was 2v2. Allowing dissimilar planes is a nice extension of that, though the requirement of a radome misses the opportunity of a slow, radome equipped spotter scout and a radomeless lead strike plane. Now radomes have had their mass reduced, it likely doesn't matter, always worth having. I'm presuming the start positions of 100m apart means back to back launches? This is preferable to parallel launches, which make for farcical mismatches.

I recall Infinite Dice's advice for his carrier for the same reason: "strut everything". I suggested that some parts use auto-strutting to beef up rigidity - such a thing has been used before, such as in Procedural Fairings mod, and a pontoon mod from way back. The simplest part I can think of would be a central beam with auto strut points at increments along its length. Anything belonging to the same craft parallel to those points would get strutted automatically, even if connected to another part. There's also chat on the KAS thread about welding ports, a kind of one-use docking port to increase physical connections in complex structures.

Another BD Armory update!

Here's a challenge - see if you can kick the whole thing off with a single key press or click. I think it can be done.

Roverdude is the guy to ask, I haven't a clue how it works. Here's a repost from the Boat Parts thread I made that might fire a few more lightbulbs - it might be partly doable with current Maritime parts:

Re: Rivers - they could become navigable with plenty of set coordinates along their path, or if you could approximate them using a curve. Terrain detail variation is likely to cause problems though, as you probably already suspect. I think the ISRU code has a mechanism to change resources on a craft without being focused on it. Navigation plugin fuel use could do the same in reverse?

The Oceania pack has water launch sites, but wasn't up to date for a recent KS release, so wasn't included. If a boat uses fuel, some sort of means of depleting it would stop oceanic travel on zero fuel. Are craft oriented in the direction they are navigating to? We don't want them heading off on the wrong direction the moment they are switched back to.

I've added FAR Fighter Challenge to the OP list of tournaments.

Splendid, another AI dogfighter variant. I'm not au fait with FAR so the tips (inc. about Dynamic Deflection) are useful. I'll add this to the list of AI tourney threads on my discussion thread (see my sig).

Instead of showing a preset slideshow, I'd really like the TV and/or computer to access my Screenshots directory.

This will be even more fun when Infinite Dice refreshes his Boat Parts pack. I recommend adding KerbinSide bases to the preset coordinates. About the plugin - if two points on the ocean are not navigable in a straight line, does it plot a path to avoid intervening landmasses? What happens if there is no solution to this problem (i.e. the craft is in a landlocked water body)? Can it be used to navigate the rivers?

Loving Baha's sneak peeks on what's coming. The previewed wingman functionality looks promising for the thread's original 2v2 combat format. What happens when the lead craft is taken out? I'm guessing the wingman stops following and becomes independent (no sense plunging to the ground on the coat tails of a crashing plane)? I'm wondering what happens if the wingman is vastly inferior to the lead plane and can't keep up? Is there a point where it gives up trying to follow? I'm thinking of a reconnaissance, radome-encrusted plane which tags along after fighters, lighting up targets for them while lagging behind the action for their own benefit. I'm also thinking about my interceptor challenge - what would make life interesting is if the antagonist bomber(s) has fighters guarding it - the behaviour for those would ideally be wingman-type following until engaged by enemy, at which point they break formation and engage the enemy, only returning to formation once no threat is detected anymore. I suppose that leads on to a patrol mode - the ability to circle or stay close to a craft or fixed point, at low, efficient thrust, until an enemy engages them, and return to that behaviour once safe. This would be nice for their default circling behaviour - turbofans really chug through the fuel at max thrust!

What's the performance penalty for making buildings hollow? The reason I ask is the Kerbal Furniture mod, for times we feel like turning KSP into the Sims... Kottabos reviewed it here: https://youtu.be/9JkfFLJcBA4

Finally! With so much development on planes, I've been missing my carrier to put the on.

There are some already - various marinas and jetties.

Do they have radomes? If not, they're relying on visible range and viewing arc. Place two radar dishes (large one doesn't aid tracking or lock on, medium does) on the ground, one on each team, and link them to their respective planes using a radio receiver.

I didn't switch to Linux just for KSP, it's been my primary desktop for most of the last 7 years. I have no idea how to use Windows (8+) anymore. Don't need it, don't want it, don't think it's worth the price. I'll be sticking with Linux, thanks.

Bahamuto has updated BDA - guns should be viable again. There's some AI changes but I'm going AFK until Monday or so. I wouldn't mind some test video of the new behaviour to watch in the meantime!

Just build your own with the KK editor. I plan to for AI dogfighting.

Hi Scott, The WW2 guys are already well on the way for guns-only combat. Since BDA v0.9.x, radar opens up a whole new field of possibility, as it did in real military aviation. It brings in all sorts of factors, like visible range and viewing arc, wingmen with radomes broadcasting to receivers on lead aircraft, etc. My OP has a few ideas. As far as going for it, I made a conscious decision to throw my ideas out there and see what came of them. You running a YouTube series based on them is about as much as I could hope for. I'd love to take part!

By pointing in direction rather than velocity vector, this should also reduce mid-air collisions, which was how the majority of AI dogfights ultimately ended once missiles were expended.