Galane

What if they're docked after launch?

If I fly with unbreakable joints and no crash damage and infinite fuel, does that make the planes invulnerable? That'd be easier than making a practice ammo mod for BDA. Why? For an easier job of AI and control tuning. The task would go faster if a plane with poor settings isn't getting shot down repeatedly. Adjust until it's flying acceptably and getting more hits on the opposition than its getting on you.

I'd want the FMR setup to be fully AI controllable, treated pre-launch as a single missile. The mothership AI launches an FMR as one missile, then the FMR AI launches both of its missiles at the same target, having inherited targeting from its mothership. Could have different FMRs for different missile types. One for heat seeking, one for RADAR homing. Could build them from Oscar-B's drained of oxidizer, a small circular intake, a Juno and a few bits of wing. Having a dedicated FMR core piece with built in wings, liquid fuel tank and Tiny size mounts front and rear would be good. Add the intake and jet, or an Oscar-B with just oxidizer, a small rocket engine and a nose cone. Many possibilities.

The FMR would need BDA AI and weapon manager modules of its own. Until the FMR is launched its AI would need to be dormant. Any way to launch it and activate its AI, with the drone inheriting the mothership's team association?

Flying Missile Rail. Can this be done? It's a drone with one or two missile rails, fitted with AMRAAMs. http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a28100/darpa-factory-in-a-can-drones/

Flares and chaff plus ECM pod. Part of it is due to my planes literally flipping out when the fight starts. Instead of executing a smooth turn towards the enemy they try to pitch over 180 degrees. Then they either flap around for a bit (and usually get blown up) or they regain control and dive. Then they get their act together and fly properly - if they haven't been blown to tiny bits. More fiddling with AI and control authority settings... I can get less craziness and more shooting sooner at the start, at the expense of reducing maneuverability later. Win/Loss ratio is getting better. ADF-01 Falken Crewed, what is your secret? (Other than weighing about a ton less?)

I want to make versions of some parts minus the oxidizer tank, minus both oxidizer and fuel tanks, and minus oxidizer with fuel volume expanded to take up the oxidizer space. Easy to do, just add a folder under GameData and put renamed copies of the edited cfg files in it, and the part names in the cfg files also have to be changed. The tricky bits are the numerical values to change. For example the MK2 Bi-Coupler and MK2 to 1.25M adapters. Without the tanks, but with fuel crossfeed left in, the part should weigh quite a bit less as a structural only component than just emptying the tanks in SPH. There's a lot of parts in KSP that could be much more useful (mostly due to weighing less) if they were available in such variations. With expanded fuel tankage I'd expect the dry weight to be the same or perhaps slightly less due to not needing bulkheads for two tanks. Wet weight would be the same since fuel and oxidizer are the same per unit. Should be able to cut the weight of my plane to under 10 tons by taking a cutting torch to those MK2 parts. It only need the liquid fuel in two MK2 to 1.25M adapters.

Making structural only (with fuel crossfeed) versions of all the jet fuel airplane fuselage and adapter parts, and jet fuel only and structural only versions of the various spaceplane fuselage and adapter parts would by itself be a huge help in building lighter vehicles. Without the tanks, the structural only parts should be considerably lighter. Remove the oxidizer tanks from the rocket parts to make them lighter, or keep the dry mass the same but increase the liquid fuel capacity by as much volume as the oxidizer used. I have a plane with a fuselage made from two MK2 bi-couplers and two standard length MK2 to 1.25M adapters. It's seriously overweight, even with all the tanks dry except for the fuel in the two adapters. The Structural Fuselage only comes in 1.25M Small size. It should at least be available in Tiny, Large and Extra Large diameters. ThunderMax and ThunderMaximus, yeah, why not?

https://kerbal.curseforge.com/projects/aviator-arsenal

Some praise for a very tough to beat fighter jet, the ADF-01 Falken Crewed https://kerbalx.com/goduranus/ADF-01-Falken-Crewed I've been attempting to build fighters that can consistently blow them out of Kerbin's sky. I'm getting there but it's been a long road, paved with the shattered remains of many planes and the splattered corpses of many Kerbals. In a 2v2 AI fight, the Falkens shot down both of my planes. So I switched one Falken to Team A. It immediately went full throttle and took off straight up, despite having missiles left. The other Falken gave chase, with only its Vulcans available. After blasting the other Falken, it continued going straight up to where its engines ran out of air. Its peak altitude was over 23KM. After falling back to air dense enough to restart its engines, it flew back down to the set idle altitude. That was a crazy yet amazing glitch in the BDArmory Continued AI. The max altitude was set to 3000 meters.

https://kerbalx.com/Galane/O-Twisted-IL-BDA O-Twisted-IL (InLine cockpit). Shedding a lot of weight from the seriously pudgy O-Twisted-FTP, it has made great gains in survivability. Still needs more twiddling with the AI and control authority to tame its desire to flip a 180 degree pitch when starting battle - without making it fly like a brick the rest of the time. If it survives the first missile volley, watch your back, top, bottom... The aft fuel tank has been emptied. Engine gimbaling is restricted to yaw because it needs no help with pitch or roll. Two ammo boxes and the top Vulcan deleted. The biggest visual change is the inline cockpit and nose intake. The intakes were removed from the rear with two relocated to the forward sides. The intake on the bottom is to cure lower engine flameout issues during hard pitch up. That dramatically improved its survival rate. The forward intakes may not be needed, haven't tested without them since adding the bottom one. The airbrakes are gone, they didn't seem to be doing much for yaw control and added weight. For manual flying, don't try to flip it like a Babylon 5 Starfury, keep your speed up and you'll do well. screenshot8 by g_alan_e, on Flickr

I've mounted a 105mm howitzer on a fighter jet, but that's just silly. Is there an addon that has sizes of cannons which were actually flown on planes during WW2 and early jets? A 20mm and a 75mm would do for a start. The later F-86 Sabre had four 20mm cannons. The P-61 and the later F-4U Corsair were also equipped with four 20mm.

What does the Pitch Ki adjustment do? It's skipped over on the Wiki and in-game manual. Will fiddling with it make planes stop trying to change direction by pitching up 180 degrees? Fighters need *smooth* turns to keep their speed up as high as possible. Speed = survival.

I'm attempting to build a fighter jet to be superior to another person's very good jet. What I have looks to be at least its equal in maneuverability. Both have the centers of lift and mass spheres intersecting, with the lift center just behind the mass center. The problem is with how the two planes begin their attacks. Both AIs are set with a 500 minimum altitude. The enemy plane is set to 3000 max altitude, mine to 3025 because the slider won't stop at 3000. (I assume the craft file was directly edited.) Starting competition at the default 8000 distance, my planes always immediately dive to get down to around 600 before they even think about firing missiles. The enemy planes will fire right away at around 2600 altitude. Thus at that starting distance they almost always lose in a 2v2 fight because they're immediately on defense. Once in a while it'll go to one plane left, mine or the enemy. Both planes are using the same radome, same engines, one ECM pod. Mine has six AMRAAMs, two sidewinders, three Vulcans. Enemy has four AMRAAMs, two sidewinders, two Vulcans. Both set to use up to three missiles per target. If I shorten the start distance to 5000, my planes still dive but are forced to respond sooner and shoot back, instead of turning tail and blowing chaff to try and survive. IF they manage to survive the first volley they may get off their own missile volley, if the enemy hasn't closed to Vulcan range. I want my guys to Han Solo it. "Han Shot. Greedo died without pulling his trigger. There was no 'shot first'." Be like the Kzinti in war, Scream and leap! Then worry about strategy, if the targets aren't dead.

How do I stop the AI from always diving down to below 1,000 meters before it starts to attack? The jet I built mine to destroy has the same minimum 500 meter altitude and it has a 3000 max altitude. I can't get the max slider to go to 3000 so I set it to 3025. At the default settings with 8000 distance, my planes always cede first shot to the enemy while they're wasting time heading for the deck. The enemy planes immediately launch their AMRAAMs from around 2600 meter altitude. Both are set to 3 missiles per target, mine has 6 AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders. My plane has three Vulcans VS two. The enemy has four AMRAAMs and two sidewinders. I want to make my plane stay high and shoot early too! If I shorten the distance to 5000, my planes win about 50% of the engagements because they haven't lost so much of the high ground before they pull their thumbs out and decide to fire missiles. At times they have managed to get first kill right off - then lose spectacularly to the single remaining enemy. There is much happiness when mine gets two kills without receiving a scratch. My plane https://kerbalx.com/Galane/O-Twisted-FTP-BDA Its nemesis! https://kerbalx.com/goduranus/ADF-01-Falken-Crewed It took some work meeting the Falken in maneuverability. But I can't figure out its tricks for why it attacks the way it does.

And here it is, ready to do battle. My performance benchmark was ADF-01 Falken Crewed. I kept working on the plane until it could not only get first kill in a 2v2 fight but also win fights with no losses. Its first victory was quite nice to see. Two ADF-01's down to one O-Twisted flying, with one wingtip shot off. Had to keep adjusting... Much of the R&D went towards pushing the COL forward and the CG backwards - without altering the original fuselage, engines, main gear and wings. Alan Aerospace Recycling and Packaging put too many minutes worth of work into that arrangement to justify altering them. (Production tooling costs big money.) Everything else that bolted on was fair game for being changed and moved. Why it now sports those four intakes out on the wings is because at high AOA the top engine would flame out. There's no where to put inline intakes and the other radial mount is too huge. All stock plus the base BDArmory mod. Six AMRAAM, two Sidewinders, three Vulcans fed by four ammo boxes. AI is set to fire up to 3 missiles per target. Once I figured out that being set to 1 was a huge part of it always losing fights, the R&D was able to move from weaponry to balance and aerodynamics. https://kerbalx.com/Galane/O-Twisted-FTP-BDA screenshot2 by g_alan_e, on Flickr

Since people have made various addons for BDA, why not enhancements for the autopilot? Shutting off the AI's on the survivors one at a time then manually landing each can be a bit of a chore. Clicking a button to invoke a script to land them one at a time would be quite nice, especially if it could prioritize based on fuel remaining. Lowest fuel gets to land first.

Two things BDA could use. 1. A way to turn off the AI pilot from the GUI instead of having to right click directly on the module. Some plane builders choose to bury it inside the plane so it can't be easily accessed. 2. An AI landing mode for planes. MechJeb's SpacePlane Guidance hasn't been updated in forever and unless the plane is a very long way away from KSC it'll come in at any angle, put gear down then fly across the runway and try to circle back around. Its maneuvering is very herky-jerky, like it's hitting the controls full on and full off. It doesn't control the throttle or brakes either, all it does is (poorly) circle around to try aiming at the runway, put it onto a glideslope and leave it to you to attempt to get it set down without crashing. With the way BDA can smoothly fly planes to their limits, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for it to line up with the runway from any distance-altitude then bring the plane in to a smooth touchdown and stop. The cherry on top would be to have it carefully taxi off the runway to make way for more planes to land.

After watching O-Twisted get its afterburner handed to it a few times by better armed jets, I reconfigured its armament and defenses. Gone are the twin .50-cal that never got used. It now sports three 20mm Vulcans (two on the radome and one center dorsal) and six boxes of 20mm ammo. The six sidewinders are replaced by six AMRAAMs and two sidewinders. There's an ECM pod starboard (the RTG was moved inward on the wing to adjust CG) and more flares and chaff. I also put a couple of airbrakes on top of the wing and ticked the authority up a bit on the elevons on the back of the wings. It's now O-Twisted FTP (Frak This Poo!) https://pastebin.com/dDJBrC9a

A classic SciFi time travel story from 1976 by Dean McLaughlin. A pilot and his futuristic VTOL jet are sent back to WW1 while observing a nuclear bomb test. You can read most of the story on Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=GzqWCrBO7XEC&pg=PA21&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false The jet in the story has only nuclear warhead missiles for armament, and its targeting systems can't lock onto the mostly wood and cloth aircraft of the 'teens, though I bet actual missile heat sensors could lock and track internal combustion engine exhaust heat. Their warheads proximity detonators don't trigger. The pilot then resorts to literally blowing them out of the sky with supersonic shockwaves, but the jet finally gets taken down by sucking in pieces of a biplane. Using BDArmory and Airplanes Plus, Firespitter, or some other mod with propeller parts, dogfight a team of propeller fighters (up to the maximum BDA supports on one team VS 1) VS one jet fighter. For the prop fighters, go realistic/replica from WW1 through WW2 era or get creative like the advanced plane prototypes and limited production ones that didn't see action in WW2, or planes like in "The Sky Crawlers" anime movie or the "Crimson Skies" video game. Not a challenge, just something to try for fun.

How about this? It's the first time I've built a plane in KSP for serious use rather than trying something crazy, like an SRB glider. The ammo boxes are sunk into the center tanks so may be tricky to change for altering armament. Update: A much improved version on KerbalX. https://kerbalx.com/Galane/O-Twisted-FTP-BDA

Lots of beautiful planes in this thread. What the NASA lifting body program contributed to the Space Shuttle was proving that a fast and steep 'glide' path could be ended with a landing instead of a crash*. Their aerodynamics had little if any influence on the final design for the Shuttle. The Shuttle design ended up being a brick set atop a delta wing with forward strakes. It's what they had to do to accommodate the Air Force's demands for a huge cargo bay to launch big spy satellites and whatever secret stuff we still don't know about from flights of Atlantis. *Except for the one where Bruce Peterson crashed the M2-F2. He lost vision in his right eye due to a staph infection contracted while in hospital. The aerodynamic deficiencies of the design contributed to his survival. The center of mass was so far behind the center of lift, the only way to 'fix' it was to add a huge amount of weight to the front. They seriously considered 'borrowing' a lot of gold from Fort Knox, then returning it after the flights were done. Someone involved with the program had the connections to do that. (Dunno why they didn't think of tungsten, it's >thisclose< to gold in density.) But they decided it would be more practical to reinforce the frame structure around the pilot, a lot, with enough steel to get the center of mass forward. After the crash, it was calculated the frame could withstand a 300G impact. That's why it was able to be rebuilt as the M2-F3 instead of having to be scrapped.

Now it has chaff and flares. Missile rails straightened and extended a bit too. I pitted two of them VS a pair of Ravenspear MK1's I fitted out with the same armament (but no radome). My planes did fire missiles but still wouldn't use the .50's They took down the Ravenspears pretty easily. then I pitted them against one another. Bill took out Valentina in about 60 seconds. I need a different fighter that's good to pit O-Twisted against. https://pastebin.com/40HUtutW Armed Ravenspear MK1 https://pastebin.com/QVzbP5rG

I tried to make a dual rotor jet thrust autogyro, using a couple of the free spinning docking washers from Infernal robotics. It could fly, slowly, but the rotors would only turn slowly. screenshot23 by g_alan_e, on Flickr SSTO rocket. After finally obtaining a successful launch and orbit I made a version with asparagus staging. I need to put some nosecones on and see if it will still work in 1.3 Then there's my mission to send two Kerbals on a round trip to Eve, making extensive use of ReStock 90 (especially the ThunderMaximus tanks I added to the pack), KSPX, and some Hooligan Labs airbags. I need to duplicate that with 1.3 but with the new aero and without Kethane it'll be a lot harder. Might be able to use similar design concepts but I'll probably have to do a lot more ship assembly in Kerbin orbit. http://imgur.com/a/2C8Iw Peruse my Flickr KSP screenshot collection for more. Jeb's Nightmare is an early one. I just kept adding different stuff. It has nose cones because I thought they did something back then. I should try it in 1.3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/27748767@N08/albums/72157635319720861/page1

After watching a lot of BDArmory vids showing various types of aircraft dogfighting, I decided to give it a try. But I didn't want to make something too ordinary. So I threw this together with superposed engines and the cockpit offset to port, then used forward swept wings just for the heck of it. Getting the CG centered left-right was a bit of an issue. I resorted to putting a couple of RTGs on the starboard wing for the all stock version. The BDArmory version only needed one RTG due to the radome being a bit heavier. Flight characteristics. Don't over-rotate taking off or you'll remove the lower engine. Put on SAS and throttle up. Hands off and let it get wheels up on its own. At takeoff with full tanks the CG is a bit far forward but SAS or BDA AI has no problems. I set the forward tank to drain first so the CG will shift back then stay put to increase stability. Feel free to use afterburners early. So far its battle action has been one BDArmory AI dogfight VS itself. It won. With the default AI settings it was doing some pretty good yank and bank. However it only engaged with the Vulcan, never touched the twin .50's or the six AIM-9's. I'm probably missing something on the craft... just remembered I haven't installed chaff or flares. Oops. Feel free to modify weapons type, quantity, functionality. BDA version https://pastebin.com/X0m7V7ax Stock version https://pastebin.com/iTHuNi1w screenshot0 by g_alan_e, on Flickr screenshot1 by g_alan_e, on Flickr