FAR Fighter Challenge BD Armoury AI: 2!!

[Hodo]

The problem with high-speed BVR fights is that they make for exceptionally dull video, both to watch and to record. The fights are either finished with the first missile or go on forever, and 90% of the recording ends up being the planes circling each other at long distance. Turning is slow at high mach, even at 15g.

You know what would be fun, AI ground attack mission.

I wonder how the AI does vs ground targets. I may have to test.

[Van Disaster]

Can't imagine it does that well using FLIR, but maybe dumb weapons or JDAM. I have some bombtruck versions of the craft from this out of curiosity, will have to give it a go too.

Edit: I take that back, the IR pod works ok, got a Maverick strike ( unguided by that point! ) after I put the min alt down a bit, it doesn't want to do a thing with unguided weapons

Edited October 7, 2015 by Van Disaster

[TrainEngie]

all u guys are dual engines

Not true. The current winner, the D-9, is single-engined. There are more single-engines than you think.

See you in the air, sir!

[Magnavox]

I'd be interested to try something along the line of a contest of ground attack planes vs a ground defence. One competitor builds a defence around KSC or or the island base or one of the other airfields on Kerban. The other competitors have to fly planes to attack the target.

Not sure how'd you balance the competition though.

[gridghost]

I've been messing around with an agile, one engine, craft since the SHINGO, so i give you GG HRF-1 to play around with. I tested it against the D-9 with some success but it's still a WIP.

[Hodo]

BROUGHT OVER FROM OLD FORUM.

OK so i showed u guys the J45-M1 it's done but its a single engine all u guys are dual engines so unless we have a single engine match diff from a dual engine she stay in the hanger for a while, Now i'm working an the J45-M2. Yup Dual Engines YEY!!..

http://i.imgur.com/oUtjsYS.png

Now the orange color is not because i was flying at sunset, if because i was flying at mach 4.4 (1400m/s) maxed at 1421 then the antenna over heated lol.

http://i.imgur.com/M1g8X1m.png

after i work on getting some good g-turns it lets see if i can take on the champ.

Hell my entry had one engine, and was champ for a while. And is STILL quite capable of giving several of the aircraft a run for their money.

[Van Disaster]

I've been messing around with variations of this for some time, has probably unsolvable stability issues though:

Nothing substandard about single engine designs except when an engine gets shot off.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Oh. My. Goodness. I'm SO sorry i was so inactive in this thread. I'll make it up though, starting to set up the first fight.

- - - Updated - - -

Simply put, the D-9 has lost the first round. Not enough fuel.

A slight change to how roundss will work from now:

If a competitor runs out of fuel during a fight, it will count as a loss.

- - - Updated - - -

Video comin soon

[Magnavox]

The first ship to crash should be the loser. Unless both ships collide, which in my experience happens a small but non-zero amount of the time.

This does raise the occasional question of what happens if a ship runs out of fuel. and while gliding, his opponent overflies him and he get a killing snap shot.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

The first ship to crash should be the loser. Unless both ships collide, which in my experience happens a small but non-zero amount of the time.

This does raise the occasional question of what happens if a ship runs out of fuel. and while gliding, his opponent overflies him and he get a killing snap shot.

While a gliding kill is possible, I'm just going to rule it out for simplicity. So as my advice to this new rule: 400 LF for one engine, 900 LF for two engine. This was, you'll have lots of airtime, making it harder for fights to automatically be ended cause someone didn't have the fuel.

[Van Disaster]

The first ship to crash should be the loser. Unless both ships collide, which in my experience happens a small but non-zero amount of the time.

This does raise the occasional question of what happens if a ship runs out of fuel. and while gliding, his opponent overflies him and he get a killing snap shot.

I would go with "first to crash" too tbh - that is as simple as it gets. If they collide - and they do fairly frequently in test flights - rerun the round. My craft don't tend to glide that well so I'd probably lose gliding fights, but hey, no arguments.

Going on the first-out-of-fuel rule I could just stuff a bunch of Mk3 parts together & fly giant circles.

[Magnavox]

I don't think putting fuel requirements on the planes is a good idea. If a competitor wants to short his fuel supply for weight or balance reasons. So be it. Your plane better be able to kill it's opponents fast or it's going to loose. It's a self correcting problem and therefore shouldn't require a ruling.

[Van Disaster]

I don't think putting fuel requirements on the planes is a good idea. If a competitor wants to short his fuel supply for weight or balance reasons. So be it. Your plane better be able to kill it's opponents fast or it's going to loose. It's a self correcting problem and therefore shouldn't require a ruling.

Or it's just more economical a craft. But yes it's self-correcting in a way; and even gliding further when you're bingo can be part of the contest.

Did anyone get anywhere on solving control bounce? I have a little guy who seems to be able to outturn anything, but pitch bounce is so atrocious it can't actually shoot what it's chasing... the only thing I can think of is to make something so huge it's inertia makes it take longer to change attitude than the controls take to move, but I'm not sure we have parts for that

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Ok, we'll go with the crashing rule and not fuel requirements. For the record though, those numbers weren't requirements. They were recommendations. Anyway, I'll probably count that as a null round.

[Doke]

Did anyone get anywhere on solving control bounce?

One of the AI steering controls (steer factor?) makes imputs relative to the angle of the desired turn when its on a low setting, and uses max deflection on max setting. Supposedly.

[Van Disaster]

One of the AI steering controls (steer factor?) makes imputs relative to the angle of the desired turn when its on a low setting, and uses max deflection on max setting. Supposedly.

I read up on steer factor, it's meant to be a weighting between two setpoints, which I took as something along the lines of pulling for lead pursuit or lag pursuit - although if you turn it right down the craft never turns at all, so I'm not sure about that. Doesn't seem to affect actual controls though :S I think the main problem is it uses stock SAS - is there a mod that will tune SAS on a per-craft basis when there's two or more craft in vicinity ( and save settings in the craft file )? if there is maybe we could have a poll about using it.

[Magnavox]

I was under the impression that the problem with stock SAS is that it's hard coded into the game. That will change with 1.1 I think I heard. But until then there isn't really a solution to the control oscillation.

Of course my research on this is minimal. If anyone knows something I don't, please tell us.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

I'll let you guys decide who would've won.

[Dwerto]

I think maybe you should turn off external view camera shake to make it easier to watch.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

I think maybe you should turn off external view camera shake to make it easier to watch.

But, I don't know how to.

[Van Disaster]

Heh, I forgot how incapable that old model was - current one runs rings around it & all I did was reprogram the control surfaces. And nobody crashed, so no winner.

What's odd is I'm running my own fights now & my plane is performing way worse than it did before I entered, very strange - if it was this bad when I uploaded it I'd not have bothered entering.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Van Disaster

[Wanderfound]

I read up on steer factor, it's meant to be a weighting between two setpoints, which I took as something along the lines of pulling for lead pursuit or lag pursuit - although if you turn it right down the craft never turns at all, so I'm not sure about that. Doesn't seem to affect actual controls though :S I think the main problem is it uses stock SAS - is there a mod that will tune SAS on a per-craft basis when there's two or more craft in vicinity ( and save settings in the craft file )? if there is maybe we could have a poll about using it.

Kerbal Pilot Assistant: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100073-1-0-x-Pilot-Assistant-Atmospheric-piloting-aids-1-11-10-(Sep-25)

I use it for stock SAS PID tuning in my career game; cutting kp and scalar to 1/3 default removes most of the problems with stock SAS wobble.

I'm not sure how it'd cope with multiple craft with different settings, but it's worth a try.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Wanderfound

[Van Disaster]

I use pilot assistant all the time - pretty sure it has no idea of how to handle multiple craft, sadly. On the other hand if it applies the same settings to all craft we could agree on some new global SAS settings. Having to activate it every fight is a pain though.

Hmm, maybe it does handle multiple craft... however I also think BDA is sticking it's own SAS settings in somewhere, as soon as I activate an AI pilot it goes back to bounce. Popped a request in for a PID in the DD output which would solve all issues.

More strangeness though: having restarted the game the F2b model of my Moth is running rings around the D-9 again, seems completely different to half an hour ago.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Van Disaster

[Dwerto]

To turn off the camera shake I think you just press escape during a flight and click settings.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Anybody have thoughts one who would've won the first round?