Van Disaster

We didn't have fancy stuff like that back then! ( also the takeoff was part of the fight for us - and notice I was the final title holder with a craft with the old Wheesley, which wasn't much more powerful than the current Jumo ). BTW, *does* Dyamic Deflection still work? that was one of the most useful mods for tuning that particular version of BDA. Didn't download but make sure you pay attention to the 399m/s top speed, Mukita12

OK, some admin notes: * The post you quoted was from the original thread which was locked - the OP of the continuation thread also didn't keep it up to date, so Gridghost & I managed the contest from posts 2 & 3 - Here's the final leaderboard although technically we never actually stopped, BDA and the game just kept changing on us. * There are useful checklists for this contest for both entrants and fight managers in my post ( the one I just linked above ), if you didn't change the rules they're still valid. * Try and quote the post from thread 2 a bit better. * Most of all, the post you quoted has extremely out of date mod links - I'm not sure Dynamic Deflection even works anymore. Challenges are started by the opening poster showing they can complete ( or compete in ) their own challenge - you should post a demo fight video like Wanderfound did. Here's the complete playlist from the previous contest. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMOfiFa_ZSfdns5-FZ8_3vqoeeat0JH8B

Hmm - I too have had bad experiences with IR & anything related to landing gear... will give it a little thought. Modern aircraft parts seem to finally be light enough that you can use a sensible wing area & still get some decent performance. Hurray! That thing even has a Vr of about 90kts at sea level still

It's more a reference to a gravestone that was horribly long ago though.

I don't think I've ever deleted a save, does it delete the entire directory tree or just the .sfs files? if it's just the latter then anything saved in SPH/VAB is still in it's directory.

Hm, last time I did this it was "as fast as possible" - something like an hour and 50m of near crashing iirc will investigate more, 0.23 was a long time ago. Edit: 1h40m - Most definitely not fuel cell powered though! be interesting what you can do with current stuff. Off to make a new install...

So, ah, this is a very British piece of engineering: landing speed of 73kts ( runs out of control authority just before it stalls ), stops in not much more than it's own length, can put it down about anywhere & takeoff run is pretty damn short too, but: Anyone know of either any kneeling landing gear, or ramp extensions? I know you could use adjustable gear & change the strut extension, but that is pretty clonky & potentially quite destructive. Using extra gear & retracting the mains also works, but it's a really inelegant solution.

Kinda looks the part, ( if you're building a SPAD ) - performance curve is kinda wierd though, gets up to 125mph fast and then just stops. Good find though, will go looking around for more. The 1.25m rotary is kinda funny - that'd have the plane on it's back on the ground, I reckon I've been looking around for something like a Bristol Mercury/Jupiter, or original P&W Wasp - the classic 20s-30s install had the distinctive annular cowl. Ed: I like this one, very inter-war.

As a general note, if you're spinning out you probably just don't have enough vertical fin - it's the part that stops a craft yawing. The craft in the OP definitely doesn't have enough vertical fin. On top of that, the actual force is area of fin * distance from CoM * airspeed, so the nearer it is to CoM the bigger it has to be. There's a bunch of other things involving wing shape I'm not sure matter to stock, generally deltas are quite stable though.

And there is the difference between someone who legitimately would want to use a mod if the logistics didn't mean it was an issue ( which is why I don't use part mods in another building game - KSP has so many mods that make my experience better I'm not bothered ), and someone who thinks not using mods somehow makes them better than other people. Just ignore the latter.

Try the actual official IRC channels ( well, don't go into kspmodders ) - usually full of long-term users & friendly. I only use discord channels for one game, and that will probably be the only one ( not least because the discord plugin for my IM client is not great! ). The IRC channel mods are good people. As for active anti-modding ( which shows up everywhere, not just KSP ), it's just some elitist ego-strokers, play as you enjoy. So much hypocracy involved it's not worth the effort to argue about or even bother thinking about. A mod becomes part of the stock game and it's suddenly legitimate, really

The simplest thing is probably just to fly by temperature, another thing a gentle re-entry will let you do. If the temperature is static but below maximum you can descend a bit faster, if it's going up too fast just pitch up & level off a bit ( that requires a bit of pre-emption ). If you keep a note of the average descent rate you can plot a better trajectory for the next one until you can pick the right re-entry burn location & time, and the re-entry pitch, and basically just leave the craft alone until it's time to start flying & not just falling. You don't actually want to maximise L/D - you're trying to slow down!

"Realistic" would be 100-300m and to be fair I think most of the kills in the tournament ( definitely not all mind ) are probably below 400m. The closer craft get to each other the more slight errors in heading vs target start causing bigger control movements & the craft can diverge from head-on, that needs some testing - it'll quite happily go head-on through a bullet hail for hundreds of metres anyway, so there's no difference whether it's firing or not. Ideally the AP would recognise head-on behaviour & break off, but that's another matter ( far too many collisions still anyway ).

People satisfied with what they have is anathema to capitalism DLC for KSP1 are going to be bought to reward Squad for supporting the game for so long, that's as far as any extra money for it is going to go with the community as it is, there's no avenue to do anything else. You'd be surprised about how many people buy DLC for long-running titles just to try and keep development ticking over ( I've got every official Assetto Corsa car just for that, I'll probably never drive some of them ). KSP2 might be on an entirely different game engine, and who knows what style of game it will really be? no point spending the energy on either feeling assured or paranoid at this point. It might not even ever arrive.

The important parts are just fancy labels for the gains on a PID controller: Steer Factor is the proportional gain, Steer Damping is the differential gain, and Pitch Ki is the gain for an integral controller ( I haven't checked if it really only just works in pitch ). I set steer factor to 5.5, damping to 1.5 & pitch Ki to 2.5, but those wouldn't be final numbers by any means - it just means it maneuvers a bit more smoothly - which isn't always a good thing because it's like having slow reactions, but it does mean less energy burned off usually. I think the Rolf-75 suffered a little from over-enthusiastic control movement. Most of the difference in the Kestrel performance is simply because it shed a tonne & a half or so. Quite impressed that it took three Mk108 rounds without losing anything important! I'll see if I can resurrect any of my civvie planes from 1.1 contests, I like those too. And as promised here's the Deimos from this contest: https://kerbalx.com/VanDisaster/DAC-Deimos-Mk-X Tetrydis, most of my frustration with building for this is just the same as other contests, the AI limitations.

I'm aware of most of the reasons ( I'm not you, so obviously I don't know all your thought process ) - I brought it up because I don't think it makes enough difference that there's any point choosing to take less ammo and I wondered if you'd run numbers on different masses. TBH without gross changes in mass - and changes in other areas of balance like wings - I don't think ammo box counts will ever be more than fine tuning unless guns had to have their ammo in close proximity, and as the game doesn't enforce that that's a non-starter anyway - but maybe your data says otherwise. I don't want to force people to take more ammo; the thought I had was to give people the option to take less ammo and gain a noticeable performance advantage that they could exploit to get closer where they've set their guns up so as to not waste ammo spraying it around at 2km. Right now if I pull half the ammo out of my entry it doesn't make a measurable difference to anything ( perhaps a fractional increase in climb rate ). Right now we're all ( from the videos, literally all ) showering anything that moves at almost as far as the guns can shoot because you don't gain anything by not doing that. But, as I said, on reflection I don't think fiddling with ammo box mass is really going to do that without changes elsewhere too.

If you can persuade them to stay attached to the craft and then not pull whatever they're attached to off as well, rear-mounted stalled control surfaces are going to haul your speed down in a bit more of a hurry than mine did. There was one version of FAR which involved making a descent by going twice around the planet in the atmosphere thanks to there being so little drag... @plausseFor Laythe the easy answer is to land on the poles - other than that you can land in the sea, or it is actually doable to land on open ground but really not easy.

I was asking if you'd considered increasing the mass of a round of ammo ( or the physica box itself ) such that carrying more has a noticeable effect and there was a choice to be made between being able to spray shells around from long ranges, or conserving ammo until you have a more guaranteed hit by reducing the distance guns fire at. I was asking that because you're the one who's run numbers on that sort of thing. I could have put a single ammo box on my craft & been fine, I doubt it'd have even used that, but adding another made absolutely no difference to it's performance. @SuicidalInsanityI think you've run a fine event! Oh, and this one is for @MightyDarkStar - I was testing a new recording environment & thought I might as well post it, it involves a lightweight Kestrel. There's a 1440p option if anyone can use it.

I'm a little dubious of that source of "pollution" ( but then it's Webster ) - anyone who's studied Chaucer will know Middle English, while just about readable by anyone who knows modern English, is *much* further adrift than just some random extra u's scattered about. It was my recollection that the "pollution" came from around when England took in a load of refugee aristocrats from the French revolution - by that time the American colony was well under way & speaking what was by then an older dialect. "errour" would be very odd - in French it's erreur.

Well, no, they don't. Ignoring that you can put three relays up in one launch for not really all that much extra fuel ( resonant orbits are fun ), if you stick one geo relay above KSC you've effectively got a giant antenna to retransmit to lower-orbit relay networks ( like, say, ones in polar orbits ) which can relay on further. No need for more geo sats. Last RT run I put a gigantic - big enough to blanket the entire system - relay in Kerbin polar orbit at a distance somewhere between Mun & Minmus & just relied on low-orbit relays to get the signal to it. For humans, knowing where a commsat is & knowing it's going to stay there makes actually using it considerably easier.

If it can handle German, I'm sure it'll manage A Welsh voicepack would be kinda fun.

I still wonder why it's not en_EN ( or just plain EN ). It's not like English is the language of England or anything gd_AL & gd_CY ( gaelic Alba/Cymru ) would be the sensible codes for Scotland/Wales national languages - Scottish appears to be gd_GB - I'm very sure the other celtic areas of GB don't speak Scottish Gaelic - and Welsh just CY though if someone wants to get started on those. While you're at it, add Cornish & Bretannic too.

Yes, that's why I asked if you'd considered changing the mass or the capacity with the same mass, did I say anything about restricting the number of ammo boxes?. The effect would either be less pray & spray as you reduce firing distances, or you can just load up on ammo & pay the mass cost if you want to shoot at 2km ( currently the mass cost is not enough to make a noticeable difference, so it's not actually a choice at all ). If I was talking realism I'd be looking for ways to make the pilot less accurate, don't remember mentioning that in that post.

We don't care about divergent issues - wings don't twist. I believe the shock cone at Mach 5 is 11 degrees, so those canards would be inside anyway ( since when did that matter for heating? ) - but that also doesn't matter if you don't aim at the planet like a lawn dart. In fact here's part 2 of the video covering re-entry - it being a new plane of course I messed up the descent & overshot the runway by several hundred km, but that was just a matter of sorting the timing out.

That was a complaint about the forum, not you - I tried to edit my previous post to quote yours, and couldn't find a way. Edit: well I certainly found a way to break quoting, at least. First-pass kills are something I'm very unhappy about ( despite being to my benefit in that last battle ) - head-on jousting was something that happened in WW1, but for anything past 1917 it's just ridiculous. Unfortunately if the AI's target is in a line with it's velocity vector it doesn't know it needs to increase angular deflection... this is something that can be fixed. You'd only ever have one gun in the engine IRL and I'm not sure you could do it in a radial at all - for a watercooled V engine you can stick it in the vee, the propellor is geared so the crankshaft is below the gun. For a radial you'd have to have it firing down the middle of the crankshaft, and I don't think hollow cranks are a good idea for 2400hp aero engines... well I guess you could have it firing through a pair of cyls in a single row engine, but no *sizeable* radial has a single row. In-game it doesn't really matter if they're in the engine or on it, so not a problem as far as I'm concerned, benefit of the mass offset would be tiny. However *above* the engine, or in the wing roots is just fine - you'd have to have synchronisation gear, but that was solved in WW1 and for slow firing cannon it's not a real impediment. You get problems with blinding the pilot with muzzle flash/filling the cockpit/engine air intakes with smoke/cartridge cases going everywhere they're not meant to/hot engine causing gun jams/other issues. Ammo's effectiveness on hit depends on the temperature tolerance of the part it hits, amongst other things. My craft has survived a couple of 30mm hits, but I'd not rely on that. A burst of 20mm will kill anything, armoured or not, just like it ought to ( unless it's a Sturmovik, and good luck dogfighting in that ). The BDA issue is it's far too easy to hit anything - but if you make it harder to hit you'll have fights ending with no ammo, or lasting an hour. Well there is also that we carry a lot more ammo than real planes ( @tetryds, did you ever consider either increasing ammo mass directly or decreasing the rounds in a case? I agree the points system does work really well though ).