Phearlock

Recently installed RSS, having the silly derwent V bug where reducing the single engine throttle past 50% or adding 2 derwent V's to my craft freezes all inputs entirely (bug where the cockpit part insists it doesn't have enough electric charge). Did anyone know where the fix for this is? I tried searching the forums a bit but couldn't find anything conclusive, nor in the common issues FAQ. (Same issue mr Manley had in his RSS vids).

Do we have to test individually if our old planes still fly the same in the new FAR version and apply changes individually, or are all battles still going to be on version 15.1 we submitted them for? Edit: I'm not making any bets until I've seen all the combatants =)

Very few fighter jets actually land around 200 knots, they can in an emergency that would dictate higher than usual landing speeds. But usually it's in the 130-170 KIAS region for your typical F-16, F-15, Su-27 etc landing speed (depends a little on aircraft and weight on landing)

Yeah I do think the Spike has a bit too much roll authority for the AI to handle normally, but it's stable enough that it doesn't matter too much. And handily, it maintains control authority all the way down to about 60m/s, which is about when the aerosports have enough thrust to give the aircraft a TWR > 1. So it's very hard for the AI to depart the aircraft despite it being inclined to pull quite a bit of AoA from the big stabilators on the tail.

How exactly are the fights set up? I'd like to know how you go about it, as I'd like to make something with a decent top speed, but I want to know how long it'll be up at altitude so it doesn't accelerate to insane speeds before it has to start turning.

It does take a while to set up fights, yeah. And to think that you originally wanted to do three different brackets! Still lots of craft I haven't seen fly yet, pretty excited! And I haven't seen any designs that try to capitalize on the AI's flight style in the same way I tried to do with the KF-Spike 5, so I'm excited to see if any of the competition went for a similar approach.

Did some experimentation with jets today. Got some acceptable prototypes up, but it's hard going optimizing their performance for the AI (It's not a question of if, it's a question of WHEN the AI is going to bleed away all its speed, and I need the thing to still be able to turn). Might actually forgo swept wings entirely for the next couple of prototypes, question is whether the slats should go too. On one hand, they do help a bunch when the jet is slow, but they also make it go slow faster. Prototypes 1 & 2, will probably scrap both and use them for target practice as none of them have the performance I need, despite both being 15G and mach .8-9 capable (AI never gets it up to those speeds anyway).

I've wanted to, but haven't gotten around to installing AJE so I can have a go.

Yeah you need a human pilot to hit anything with the new guns, better to stick with the old system for the AI battles until they get better at aiming.

Do leading edge control surfaces angled downward really hinder aerodynamic performance in FAR though? I mean, movable slats sure as hell work in FAR (and you forgot them on your 109! Those are like... the entire reason the 109 was capable of turning well at low speed. I know they don't work in stock, but you should put them in for the looks). I'd imagine with a fixed leading edge angled downward it'd work the same way, except more drag as they'd never retract.

How thin were WWI biplane wings anyway? Most pictures I've seen have them as basically a few centimeters. The few prototypes I have are 0.04 as well. But I also have some fixed (no movement at all) control surfaces on the front of the wing that are angled downward, creating a nice realistic cambered WWI biplane wing. 0.08 would just make it look like something from WWII. It sucks that they don't have collision though. As restricting that would only make the designs less realistic in terms of aerodynamics. =/

Tell me about it, bunch of hours in Falcon BMS and DCS modules, I know enough ACM to know that the AI certainly doesn't know anything. It's hard to make an idiot proof aircraft. My best advice is: Don't try to force the AI to fly intelligently, design an aircraft that the AI can fly in a dumb fashion. If I were making an aircraft for myself to dogfight in, I wouldn't end up with the Spike 5, however, the AI seems to like it.

I don't think we'd need 3 types so close together in weight. A single version at 5kg should be plenty good. Even if you then require biplanes to run 6 of them, it's only 30kg. @Qromodynmc, funnily enough, fuel is one of the lightest resources around for this category. Though it's a bit worse for D-25 engine planes as a single radial has about 9 times the fuel consumption as twin sport engine setups. Fueling my 4kg aircraft up to max (90 units, usual combat load of 20-30) would barely add any weight. The gun ammo is much heavier.

I wouldn't mind wing thickness limits being a thing for monoplanes, and maaaybe jets. WWI Biplanes did have terrifyingly thin wings though, requiring wings to be reinforced via struts or similar in a logical manner would possibly look much more Biplane-y. Though stock struts are a tiny bit on the heavy side, maybe only require 2 of them? Hard to say.

Yes, no tweakscale. Though since procedural parts & wings are allowed, you shouldn't need them too much.

Pity about the Sanka's AI settings. In the few tests I ran against the Delilah it usually did very poorly in head-on engagements. But was quite nasty if it managed to survive the initial merge and managed to get behind you.

I don't think so VentZer0, as far as I understood it you don't get eliminated by only losing 1 match. Also, here's a screenshot of version 5.2 (version currently in the competition is 5.1) Excellent low speed turn rate combined with a bunch of TWR for climbing. Top speed is around 180 m/s in level flight. Ignore Kerbal engineer max g of like 44, that's a bug. The KF-Spike 5 will fall apart at about 17G's, thankfully it "should" never end up doing that.

I'm fine with either option. Shortening them if they go super-long is probably good (or speed it up during those parts maybe?) As long as you have the full footage available in case anyone wants to contest the result, I don't see an issue.

Well, sounds like the upgrades between version 2 and 5 paid off. But yeah gosh I don't know if you intended it or not, but setting the tail of the VZ-38 to wing strength 1 really made it impossible to easily destroy it. Unlike my aircraft which will fall apart after one or two good hits on the back portion.

@VentZer0, latest version of the KF-Spike (5.1) is still being tested, and isn't available just yet. Will post a proper craft file when the deadline for editing it is up xD It's basically the screenshot I posted before but capable of a bit more AoA and reconfigured for twin pusher engines. Along with some other tiny adjustments.

Regarding the D-25: With how much the AI was bleeding energy inefficiently all the time, I either had to lower maximum deflection (force it to turn worse), or come up with a design that will quickly gain and expend energy. Once it was down to those two options, I didn't feel like the choice was very difficult. Empirical tests also so far have my twin sport designs outperforming my D-25's. I'm not going to say the D-25 doesn't have it's place, but the aircraft I came up with seemed better suited to being powered by the twin sports in the end. Also, with my current home-brew testing. The aircraft I'm most worried about is the VZ-38, it flies very well, and the reinforced tail section is very resilient.

I'm afraid version 5 has been swapped over to the twin sport setup to better take advantage of the low speed handling those wings were giving me. But I agree, it looked much better with the radial engine =)

Monoplanes were interesting, went through a lot more revisions than my biplane before I was happy with it. Version 2 is available for public download. http://kerbalx.com/Phearlock/KF-Spike-2 Version 5 (current) was submitted via PM. Pictured below is Version 2.

I'm not too concerned about winning so much as having a bunch of fun planes to mess with. I'll post up the current (not final) version of my Biplane if people want to analyze it a bit for help with their own designs. I'd especially suggest looking at the main wings, as that's what I put the most work into. Also, feel free to set the trust limiter to 100% and make it fight prop monoplanes. =P https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m9yes143gny19j/Kokker%20F2.craft?dl=0 Requires the WII weapons pack/BDarmory linked here as well as B9 Procedural wings. Also @Tuke, grab this and pick it apart, it's slow, but it flies nicely. See if you can take some inspiration for your own biplane =)

Did some inital work on a Biplane entry today. Pretty happy with it so far. Planned combat weight will probably be around 1.8t to 1.9t giving it a nice TWR of .6 in most cases. It's still a draggy piece of poop so it can't effectively accelerate past 90 m/s under its own power. Still, decent handling in the 50-90 m/s range, (max recorded G's in a dive was about 8.5). Doesn't have enough elevator authority to easily stall its main wing (I'd like to give it more, but need to make it AI proof). On the runway http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/447332276392131476/6210C1225EE681AEC389A07A4412215E75700DC1/ Climbing pretty well for a 50% sport engine http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/447332276392131976/A6DBF3ABA3DF5AA4594E67B499348D6DEEC00B0E/ I hope it'll turn well enough to compete with other designs, it's pretty fragile, so if it can't out-turn something it's kinda dead. http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/447332276392132107/121D6C29785F29E8410AAAE63EFA064995BDC49D/ landing is hilariously easy in that you just fly across the ground at 35 m/s and cut power while pulling up, it'll safely drift onto the ground.