[1.2.x] Aviator Arsenal - World War 2 aircraft weaponry (v1.3)

[tetryds]

22 minutes ago, BahamutoD said:

tetryds, if you can think up a "competition mode" for AI where they fly off to certain positions before beginning the fight, i'll see if I can get it into BDA as a settings menu option

Well, that is an awesome idea.
Right now everything is set up for takeoff to battle, but such mode would allow battles to happen virtually anywhere on the planet where an airplane manages to take off.
How long would you take to implement such feature, and how would I set the positions they would fly to before the battle begins?
This idea is awesome, and it plays a huge hole on how the battles would be set up.
Along with it, I notice that the AI tends to go head to head very often, and hardly ever bail when they come too close, leading situations where one rams the other, or they crash frontally.
Would it be possible to detect if your airplane is approaching the other one too fast and too close so that it bails? For example do a simple math to realize if collision will happen within X seconds and bail if that is true.
Then put that as a tweakable setting maybe.

Anyway, just brainstorming a way to prevent crashes.

[BahamutoD]

I was thinking of having all of one team fly one direction for a certain distance, and the other team go the other direction, then once everyone reaches the set distance, they turn around and fight.  It wouldn't take long since the code is set up for AI to be able to override behavior by receiving commands (like the wing commander).

As for collisions - there's already collision avoidance, but it works by firing a spherecast(basically a 30m wide raycast) on its velocity vector for something like 4 seconds worth of flight distance, and if it detects something it breaks away.  It works sometimes, but since it doesn't predict where other vessels will be in the future, crashes obviously still happen.  Not sure what to do about that.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Speaking of proximity detection, would it be possibly to extend that collision detection spherecast to include a bubble around the craft itself? - I've lost track of the number of times I've had a pair of aircraft on the same team that decide to sideswipe into each other; maintaining a minimum set distance from flanking craft may also reduce head on collisions; aircraft spread out would present less of a target for an oncoming aircraft to hit than if when they're grouped tightly together.

Edited February 17, 2016 by SuicidalInsanity

[MedicRules41]

This is seriously one of the highest-quality mods I've seen in what feels like years...

Absolutely stellar work. This looks to be the quintessential WWII weapon pack. And I love it to bits.

[Aerolfos]

17 hours ago, tetryds said:

Aviator Arsenal will not be available on CKAN, mainly because it has dependencies on BDArmory.
About BAD-T, don't worry the next tournament will start soon(tm), there is a lot of balancing left to do and I think I managed to come up with a fair points system for the weapons.

Well CKAN has a setup for that, and in fact I've used it myself for my mod. Works quite nicely. However, tha lack of Kerbalstuff could complicate matters...

[DrDimic]

I apologize if this was said earlier, bombs can't  be attached to bomb mounts. Is there any quick way to fix it?

To be more precise, nodes not working.

Edited February 17, 2016 by DrDimic

[tetryds]

@DrDimic somehow you are right, tomorrow I will update the pack fixing this and a few other minor things.
Until then, you can rotate the bomb so that it points down, place it on the node and rotate it back with the gizmos.

[winged]

On 14.02.2016 at 4:38 PM, alp3r said:

My Ho 229 has been waiting for this..

 

 

@alp3r sorry for offtop, but this is really nice Ho 229. May I ask where did you find the cockpit?

Edited February 18, 2016 by winged

[Gnoyze]

After several hours of trying to make fighter planes with FAR installed, I found that I'm terrible at it XD (Can't figure out what the lines even mean) Also, have you decided on the plane types for the next tourney?

[xiones11]

Why does the mg151 do less damage than a shvak and hispano? The german 20mm cannons had the minengesholb shell which had the largest HE filler out of any 20mm shell of the war. They were the most damaging shells! Russians used garbage fragmentation shells that didn't even come CLOSE to those things! WTH is this? Are all the german guns just garbage in terms of damage? How does that make sense?

[tetryds]

@xiones11 Because on this mod all 20mm cannons have armor piercing ammo.
That is for a good reason, it would be simply impossible to balance the same class of weapons having two different types of ammunition.
And please do not claim that they are "garbage in terms of damage", those charts were made in a way to provide information about how their stats compare to each other, they are not absolute.
The damage difference between the weapons may not be as big as expected from simply looking at the comparisons, they are references, the only way you can figure this out how much that matters is by testing.
But I don't expect everybody to test every single weapon before choosing which one to use, hence why that chart exists.
So, yes, the MG151 has lower AP damage than the other 20mm cannons, does that make it a weak weapon? Hell no.
But that does not mean I am going to simply spoil everything about the weapons here

By the way, "damage" is a very subjective term, a lot of games have a hard time trying to quantize it.

[Aerolfos]

7 hours ago, tetryds said:

@xiones11

By the way, "damage" is a very subjective term, a lot of games have a hard time trying to quantize it.

I've messed with BD Armory and the configs.. the "Damage" value seems quite arbitrary indeed. Higher, more damage, as expected, but beyond that...

And charts are indeed more for picking a high rate of fire weapon, but still balancing it somehwat against damage. Or feeling that you need to fire long bursts and focus on finding a gun that suits that.

[alp3r]

15 hours ago, winged said:

@alp3r sorry for offtop, but this is really nice Ho 229. May I ask where did you find the cockpit?

It's the Stryker Aerospace, I think. The cockpits are really nice, I wish he made more WW2 aircraft cockpits though.

[tetryds]

@Aerolfos it breaks my heart to see you saying thay the value is arbitrary.

DMG_MULTIPLIER = 100 took me nearly a day of testing to define.

When BDArmory updated everything was overpowered and I tested the guns and gave values for baha to work with, also the DMG_MULTIPLIER value itself.

ROF, Power, reliability, two more and you name all of the stats of the mgs and cannons. Since cooldown and accuracy are doubtlesly important I can assume that the charts are 100% effective.

And at this point you probably figured out there is no "overall best" for any type of weapon

[SuicidalInsanity]

Don't worry about the damage value by itself; every weapon is more than capable of shredding enemy aircraft, and every weapon has its use, otherwise why would anyone use the 7.62mm machineguns instead of going for 20mm cannons? The trick is identifying what weapon has the proper mix of qualities that will work best for the airframe they're being mounted on. Also, keep in mind bigger guns mean heavier ammo, and less of it, which is another factor to be aware of when arming a plane.

[tetryds]

Also remember that recently BDArmory added the ability for the AI to switch weapons when it overheats.
And yes, there are many factors to take into account when arming your airplanes, the new points system is going to make it even more interesting.

[alp3r]

@tetryds Are you planning to make 7.7 Browning guns? It is the only weapon for me that makes this pack incomplete.

[tetryds]

@alp3r So, for us the pack is very close to being completed, with the Jericho Trumpet and all (IF YOU DIDNT CHECK IT GO DO IT NOW), so the next updates will be much smaller, probably few very important weapons.
Because of that we are not going to explicitly mention if we are developing anything, but we do plan on releasing a few more weapons on the future, especially weapons that fill a role (2000lbs anyone?).
Until then, I believe that the Breda-SAFAT will do the job for you.

[alp3r]

4 minutes ago, tetryds said:

@alp3r So, for us the pack is very close to being completed, with the Jericho Trumpet and all (IF YOU DIDNT CHECK IT GO DO IT NOW), so the next updates will be much smaller, probably few very important weapons.
Because of that we are not going to explicitly mention if we are developing anything, but we do plan on releasing a few more weapons on the future, especially weapons that fill a role (2000lbs anyone?).
Until then, I believe that the Breda-SAFAT will do the job for you.

Mhmm, really saddened to hear that. Guess I'll have to look forward to TUKE's weapon pack.

[xiones11]

Sorry if i came off as offensive. It just liquides me off when I see stuff that makes all german weapons seem like crap. This is an awesome mod and you did an amazing job!

[tetryds]

@xiones11 that is fine, don't worry.

But have you tried the MK108? That thing is a beast.

[BahamutoD]

@tetryds about the bombs- The attach nodes don't line up because the model is rotated 90 degrees.  This is apparent also because the center of drag isn't oriented properly as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFpKD843k4

 

edit- Bombs and missiles should all point in the forward Z direction

Edited February 19, 2016 by BahamutoD

[tetryds]

Oh yes, this was fixed yesterday night, I was about to upload a fix but power went down here for some hours...
Doing that right now, thanks for the reminder.

[tetryds]

So, Aviator Arsenal just updated!
Minor update to fix a few issues

Changelog:
-Fixed bomb node orientations.
-Fixed Jericho Trumpet naming.

Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yhfy6siftqzytqn/AviatorArsenal-1.1.1.zip?dl=0

Edit: the center of drag was adjusted in the past, it doesn't seem to have any effect right now, I will see what I can do about it.
And the behavior on the video is relaly weird, it was not like that on my side 

[BahamutoD]

34 minutes ago, tetryds said:

Edit: the center of drag was adjusted in the past, it doesn't seem to have any effect right now, I will see what I can do about it.
And the behavior on the video is relaly weird, it was not like that on my side 

The wobbling is because FAR doesn't have fake angular drag, so I'll be fixing that, but the incorrect orientation is the simpleCoD issue.  You should be able to just change it to 0,-3,0 instead of 0,0,-3 and it will be fine.

edit: ^ False.  I have a thing that helps bombs stabilize and point forward, and it relies on the model being pointed forward in the Z axis.  You need to do this in Unity:

(Notice how they're oriented)

Edited February 19, 2016 by BahamutoD