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.

It's interesting, I certainly put top speed combined with high energy conservation near the bottom of my list of desirable combinations when designing an aircraft for this contest. Other people seem to quite like it though.

None of the tests I did ran long enough for the Pidgey to run out of fuel even if it was only fueled to 50%. If I run into fuel becoming an issue I'll bump the tanks up to 75% and maaaaybe 100%, but I don't see much reason to do so yet. Now that your version is corrected the Pidgey shoooould fly as it was designed to. Assuming your aerodynamics are correct the AI should pull to about 15(when fully loaded) to 35 (low fuel & no missiles) AoA normally in the Pidgey, with a tendency to stall it a tiny bit in the 240-180 m/s range when fuel levels have been expended slightly. (It's designed to be slightly more maneuverable once missiles and fuel has been expended to help it out in gunfights.) the inboard Elevon4 airbrake tends to break off from aero failure sometimes, it's not a required part so, that's fine. Assuming it's flying like that, feel free to set it up against whatever you're done tuning the MiK4 into. The stability curve should look a bit like this if your aerodynamics are correct: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/432698496208751765/38E77359324B958F056F20FD51D0351D8FF6EB44/ Buy yeah I made some tiny adjustments (just to the AI settings and dynamic deflection settings) https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb2f5mibw9e4411/F-3C%20Pidgey.craft?dl=0

Yup, though the Pidgey handles differently on my install compared to yours as well (everything pulls significantly more Alpha when turning in my install, both the pidgey and the Mik-4, hence the MiK-4 spinning out of control at low speed and the F3C handling differently). So I think there's something weird going on. I'll double check I have everything updated and then see how the AI flies both again, if it's still different, I can record a vid of how everything handles on my end. You can easily check if dynamic deflection was installed by simply seeing if the values have been changed (For example the pidgeys stabilators should go from 55% at 0 dynamic pressure to 100% at 40 then back to 50 at 160.)

Sort of, it exploded from part clipping while still on the runway 3 times in a row, and the FAR stability analysis had it as super stable (aka, probably wouldn't be able to turn very well). Along with none of the control surfaces having anything but the default values (so ailerons, rudders and stabilators were all set to both pitch/yaw and roll.)

Now I realize the 500 m/s thing, and I did configure the Pidgey to never get up to those speeds unless the opponent was extending hard (and once it's above 4000 meters even at 500 m/s it'll bleed speed pretty hard when it turns due to how I set up its control authority). The AI does seem smart enough to use speedbrakes to try avoid overshooting even though it doesn't have throttle control (hence the massive split brakes on the Pidgeys wings), if another aircraft has issues with maneuvering at those speeds due to failure to set good dynamic deflection settings or being too fragile, that's their problem. I do think enforcing a set max speed for all aircraft would work well though. For the reaction wheel thing: I realize you may not be that competitive, but that's a poor excuse when you host a challenge like this that encourages competition. You need to be consistent. If you do want to keep cockpit reaction wheels allowed: You need to say so, none of the other FAR challenges currently running (5th gen fighter design thread, WWII dogfighting AI thread) allow them, I assumed no reaction wheels meant none. If you do want to keep cockpit reaction wheels as something that is allowed, I will design an aircraft around that (likely a small 2seater) to take full advantage of it, and it will indeed influence the later stages of this challenge to be biased heavily toward small aircraft that get the most out of the cockpit torque. Personally, I think they should be disallowed entirely to help keep the viable designs more diverse. Edit: also wanderfound, the MiK-4 flies nothing like on the video you posted. Are you sure you have the same FAR version as I do? There was a pretty sizable update only about a week ago (v15.5 @ 25 august) that changed a bunch of lift and weight settings for wings, meaning a lot of craft required some minor/major re-tuning. I suspect you may have an older version as the MiK-4 seems to pull way too much AoA and spiral out of control really easily at low speed.

Are you adjusting the speeds up to fastest one, or down to the slowest one? Or are you meeting them in the middle (fastest goes down by as much as the slowest goes up). This is a huuuuge deal in terms of how to configure the AI. You need to add this to the OP ruleset in terms of you do fights. Or set a fixed max top speed that everyone should keep to. Second. You either need to revise the MiK 4 or revise your ruleset, as right now it says "no reaction wheels" however the Mik-4 Does not have the cockpit reaction wheel disabled, this is a significant control authority boost for small aircraft, please follow your own rules.

Um, @CommanderCoye, are you sure you submitted this in the right thread? This is for one of the FAR dogfight challenges, your craft looks very stock aero and doesn't have any of the FAR control surface configurations.

Here's an initial trial aircraft, I don't yet know quite what'll be optimal for this challenge, so I simply made an all-rounder. Decent low speed, subsonic and supersonic maneuverability, though I had to dump the roll rate to make it BDAI friendly. It's a bit of a large aircraft compared to what everyone else has posted so far, but most of it is structural fuselages and wings, so it should still retain acceptable acceleration, might revise it in the future to make it lighter. Made in FAR v 15.5 (Will fly bad in 15.1) Also Wanderfound, do you have a download for the MiK4 somewhere? Just so everyone has access to the aircraft that's classified as the current leader. Edit: I'll also suggest probably limiting defensive chaff/flares. As right now you can easily stick on 4 of each and since BDarmory AI missiles are both slow, crap at turning, have no range, and can't maintain a lock at all on anything that has some minor defensive things. https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb2f5mibw9e4411/F-3C%20Pidgey.craft?dl=0 Picture!

Hah, speaking of weapons, it was kinda funny, at first I was looking at the 3x Browing M2 setup for the Spike 5, but then I realized... I could actually fire for longer with the 2x 20mm cannons as the ammo weighed less relative to rate of fire. And don't even get me started on 7mm, I'd lose the >1 TWR if I had to put in enough ammo for those 4x 7mm guns to get the same combat endurance I'd get from the 20mm cannons...

I deleted and made sure to grab the newest AJE and solverengines versions but no luck, I'll give a clean install a try. Edit: Nope, still the same issue, can confirm I have the latest solverengines and AJE 2.4. Can you detail the bug and how it was fixed? Would help in troubleshooting what mod may be conflicting with it and making the fix not function.