Phearlock

The aircraft by itself isn't yawing much at all if left to its own devices, it's just the BDarmory AI that keeps doing it. But I'll try tweak the settings a bit more, probably won't tweak the aerodnyamics much at this point as I'm quite happy with the handling of the aircraft right now. Thanks for the suggestions guys =) Random webms: Rudder AoA% 20 AoA roll I swear I have aerodynamic failures on their default setting...

Actually the AoA% is applied relative to the control surface, not the vehicle. The way it's set up will actually make the rudder try compensate for yaw regardless if the FAR Yaw assist is enabled or not. It doesn't have a large effect while in level flight or low sideslip angles, but it actually is required for the craft to not depart during violent maneuvering. I might see if there's a way to split the tail up into segments where the controls are a bit more isolated. At the moment both Yaw, Off-angle Yaw (AoA%) and Roll all apply inputs to the single rudder, considering this amount of inputs, I should be thankful it's as stable as it is. So far pretty happy with it though, the available instantaneous turn rate without thrust vectoring is excellent, and it recovers from awkward flight angles quite well. Maximum pitch input will make it stop nicely at around 25 AoA, and it will have a hard time going to into stall regions unless the thrust vectoring is enabled. I'm mostly interested in tuning for the bdarmory pilot AI, as I'm not sure what the best settings are for this sort of craft.

I mean the main reason for the wobbly yaw while rolling is pretty obvious. It's cause I tied the rudder into roll inputs in order to let the AI use it for rolling (if purely human controlled, I'd just use the rudder pedals to apply yaw for my high alpha rolls), trying to figure out a way to make the AI use the rudder for rolls while not making it have so much an effect during sustained rolls or when doing minor corrections. As I mostly want it to operate in the mach 0.4-1.4 region and potentially jump between transonic and mach 1.2 a lot, having good area ruling is useful (it's around 0.5 at the moment).

Been a long time since I played much KSP. But slapped together a fighter-y craft I'm pretty happy with a few days ago, but there are some quirks I wouldn't mind some tips for. Firstly, I wanted it to be good at rolling at high angles of attack, managed that, but the yaw input required makes it a bit wobbly and can't really aileron roll without SAS (the wings always load up and cause it to barrel roll instead). Also picks up a bit too much pitch instability at mach 1.8. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this without sacrificing performance? It could also probably be area ruled a lot better... And it's pretty ugly =D Finally, what are some good settings for the BDarmory AI for a craft like this these days? SAS doesn't seem to play well with the artificial yaw stability (% AoA on the rudder) Version 1.1+, FAR version 0.15.6.5. Part mods: BDarmory+stock (FAR Yaw & Pitch assist suggested, SAS suggested disabled, thrust vectoring on action group 3, engine mode toggle on 2) https://www.dropbox.com/s/x5wbsox0udnocck/KF-7 Swellow.craft?dl=0

Looking at this... OP, are you sure you want to do a challenge video with 6 planes? It really doesn't look like your computer can handle 6 planes, much less record it. Edit: Also, craft file for the berkut would be nice, for testing purposes.

All moving surfaces usually start showing clear advantages over elevators around the transsonic region and beyond. At these speeds, you can get the same performance out of simply sticking an oversized elevator on the back (pretty easy with procedural wings). Though the all-moving stabilator was much easier to use. I believe they're set to a maximum deflection of about 13 degrees, as the plane is unstable enough that it doesn't really need as much control input for pitch as you'd expect. And I did ask if the two all-moving surfaces were ok before submitting the craft. It's turning capability is mostly inspired by the 109, with the slats giving it a very tight initial turn at the cost of a lot of drag. Though unlike the 109 it has enough TWR and lift that the low speed sustained rate is actually very good, hence it doesn't suffer as much from shedding all its airspeed as a lot of other designs would.

I'm 95% certain the VZ-38 will take the losers bracket pretty easily, it's a really good plane and I'm sad it got knocked down in the first round. And whoo, finals, I hope my little plane will manage. Will the focus on low speed rate, high TWR and high drag during turns pay off as well as I hoped when I made it?

I thought your plane was really cool Azimech, but yeah it didn't seem like it was designed to force the AI to fight the way you wanted with it. If I were making an aircraft for a human I'd probably not end up designing the KF-Spike 5 the way I did. Tetryds managed to set his aircraft up for B&Z'ing tactics which was cool. I decided to exploit the v8 BDAI's tendency to be terrible at going defensive by simply giving the Spike a bunch of instantaneous rate. With a dash of >1TWR when slow and decent low speed maneuverability to make up for the fact that I basically intend for the AI to bleed all its energy on purpose to get good rate and small radius. I'm still speculating on what sort of design will do best with the new AI. I won't have to design a craft designed to survive head-on passes as much at least, so that's nice. IL-2 was fun, though never played it too much. 500+ hours in both BMS and DCS though.

Finally a reason to go tinker with the design a bit. Though will probably take me while to get around to it. Most likely I'd indeed simply move some fuel around, likely remove all the missiles as well, dead weight really. (If you want missiles to be a bit more relevant, maybe force both aircraft modules to enable their radars before taking off, instead of letting them do so themselves. That tends to make them at least fire radar missiles earlier).

It's nice to see the Spike going up against something that doesn't take a near infinite amount of hits to kill. I think the part clipping on the delilah really takes badly to being shot =(

The link to the last version of the F3C I made should still be on page 6 Halo_003. But I'll repost it if you're having trouble finding it https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb2f5mibw9e4411/F-3C%20Pidgey.craft?dl=0

This isn't a challenge where you have to finalize a design and stick with it until the challenge is "done" SpaceplaneAddict. Feel free to just post new iterations if you feel you need to improve your craft (which I assume you do, judging by your post).

Nice, I can see where you took the wing design from. I usually don't prefer the Mk2 fuselages for fighters as I find it a bit annoying to area rule. Though that isn't much of an issue for this challenge, seeing as we're not really going to be going very fast.

It's all part of the dynamic deflection mod coupled with editing the FAR control deflection settings. I posted a link to the F3C a bit further up. Grab it and take a look at it yourself. The customizations should all be visible when you mouseover a control surface and hit K assuming you have dynamic deflection installed. (also, just right clicking and showing the FAR control surface settings to see how pitch/roll it set up.)

If you want some tips on how to improve it. I'd suggest looking at the dynamic deflection settings of the F3C's pitch authority. Usually, the aircraft would have maximum maneuverability available at low speed, and then get steadily more stable up toward the mach .8 to 1.0 region as the control surfaces become less effective. Which means you usually can't turn as hard, this is further enforced by the dynamic deflection settings that drastically reduce control authority around that region due to dynamic pressure. That's part of the main reason most fights end up with just big turning radius at high speed. Now, notice how the F3C gets around this: it's actually only allowed 50ish% max deflection when at 0Q atmospheric pressure, which is takeoff and low speed. While once it enters a bit of atmospheric pressure, typical of low altitude flight at around .7-1.2 mach the dynamic deflection is set to provide 100% control authority to all the surfaces relating to pitch control. This compensates for the reduced control surface authority usually experienced at these speeds, and lets the aircraft pull close to it's maximum AoA around the transsonic region, which quickly converts a bunch of speed into drag and lift, letting it turn very well while also dropping airspeed to prevent overshooting (hence why setting 500 max speed for the F3C isn't as big a deal as with the MiKs, as the F3C will naturally bleed its excess speed once it starts turning, while an aircraft with standard dynamic deflection settings will be unable to pull enough AoA to start bleeding speed). Now of course, letting the AI pull upwards of 15-17G's maxiumum at low altitude does mean I had to ramp up the wing strength of the main wings all the way to 2.0 to prevent it from tearing the aircraft apart. I daresay the F3C could indeed pull harder the settings currently allow, however, the AI doesn't know when to stop pulling and let the speed build up again. So to minimize the risk of the aircraft being stuck at 150 m/s where it simply doesn't have enough rate to dogfight effectively, the maximum deflection is tuned down just a little bit (though this is still an issue at times, and can be exploited if you wanted to design something specifically to defeat the F3C). Of course, all this is moot if you don't have an aircraft that can pull 20-30 AoA comfortably without any risk of stalling out. I saw a lot of the MiK versions had issues with pulling beyond 15 AoA without starting to flop around pretty badly.