FAR Fighter Challenge BD Armoury AI: 2!!

[Van Disaster]

K-191's is EzBros, I'm sure he'll take the compliments though I just link the current champ in my sig for the ease of everyone else reading the thread. Yeah the AI does some really suicidal stuff; you need a combination of plane tuning & steer factor and a lot of practice runs to minimise that but I think our craft at this point are outstripping the AI's ability to cope. You'll notice that when it can't make it's mind up, flies straight and gets bounced by the opponent before it can decide what to do.

Stalling is generally not a good idea, you lose energy & most importantly control. I let the Hummingbird stall very rarely because when it does it won't matter ( usually at the top of a loop and it'll pull through anyway ), pretty much the same as the previous craft. The other one I've got on the go for later I can't get to pull high enough AoA to stall because it's turn rate is utterly mad already. Really though this is my... 10th I think airframe, which is counting everything that looks like a Swallow as one airframe even if they're fairly different - I can't think how many it'd be if everything was counted seperately. Got to be well over 100 versions. Just needs practice, experimentation, and using all the FAR tools.

Set up a bunch of savegames for a random selection of other people's craft - don't put them all in one save or you'll kill performance - like in the video I did about setting up fights. That'll save you tons of time testing. Might want to start somewhere in the list of champions from the previous thread & work up to the current ones.

[Hodo]

I used my last fighter in this challenge for a career mission to destroy a SAM site at the island runway, it was one of those expanded contract mods. It actually ran the mission perfectly, granted I flew it, but I had two CBU clusters, and 2 Mavericks with a laser pod and 2 AMRAAMs on the wings.

Not only did it destroy the target with the CBUs, and NOT take damage from incoming missile fire, but it did it with such ease that I would say it is one of my best multi role fighters. And may actually replace my aging F-119C/A.

[Van Disaster]

Heh yeah, I've tried turning some of my older ones into bombtrucks out of curiosity... problem is most of them are too small.

That one didn't do too badly though - but even that ran out of spaces to hang things from.

[Guest]

This one is hilarious xD

https://www./?pz27ewllt3p1zlj

Edited November 5, 2015 by RevanCorana

[Hodo]

Heh yeah, I've tried turning some of my older ones into bombtrucks out of curiosity... problem is most of them are too small.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/781/22616715410_3f7e5076bd_z.jpg

That one didn't do too badly though - but even that ran out of spaces to hang things from.

I had the same problem, but if you look at like the FA-18C or the F-16 for that matter, they have surprisingly limited stores locations.

[Hodo]

So I finally took pictures of the loadout for my fighter from this challenge....

I kept the same hard point arrangement as I did in the challenge because, like real aircraft you cant swap out where they are on the wings, just because you need more of them.

So the fighter still has 6 hard points, 2 on the wing tips, 4 under the wings, and one electronic mounting point centerline.

[DoctorDavinci]

So after much R&D I have created a contender for this contest ... The CANUKWorks J1G-38 'Midge'

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The Craft File is HERE

Edited November 6, 2015 by DoctorDavinci

[Van Disaster]

Seems legal & didn't fall apart on it's own, added to entries!

[E805BzRo]

Yea I did watch a couple of them, your K191 is a born killer!.

Sure I'm taking the compliment ,-)

Yeah, K-191 turned out strong. It is the result of two weeks of continuous optimization. I ran it against D-10 and Swallow F-1 while testing until I could reliably beat both of them. I still can't claim I understand what makes it good. As I wrote before, It is easy to save 2 tons of weight while keeping control authority, lift, and thrust the same as K-191, which should be better. But isn't. Maybe having a bit more momentum helps going into a near-stall in a way that the KI can cope with.

I never optimized for low straight-line wobble. The moment in which your craft shoots the opponent is almost always in a steep curve, and in that situation the control deflection is maxed out, meaning no wobble.

I also played with rear cannons, which scored the occasional kill against craft that do a better job putting themselves behind me. Never got more than chance kills, however, so no way (for me) to design a champion on that basis.

Edited November 6, 2015 by E805BzRo

[Van Disaster]

I guess I'll run K-191 vs Hummingbird today, just to keep things moving.

Rear cannon work ok on heavy craft ( you don't have to point them directly behind ), not so much on the little ones.

Edit: 3/1 or 3/0 Hummingbird - need to take a close look at the possible K-191 win because I had a really horrible time trying to get these fights running, and for a while the planes seemed to be shooting boulders instead of bullets.

Edit2: I'll give it the lucky shot ( looks a bit dubious on my vidcap ), doesn't make any difference in the end.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Van Disaster

[Van Disaster]

Fights are up:

Wish I'd shot a bit more from the Hummingbird, maybe next fight.

Missing are several collisions

Edited November 6, 2015 by Van Disaster

[DoctorDavinci]

Seems legal & didn't fall apart on it's own, added to entries!

If you wouldn't mind could you increase the fuel in the tank to 240 before you run the fight? ... Seems I forgot to increase the fuel load before I uploaded my craft

It wont affect balance as the Midge is totally balanced regardless of fuel or ammunition

EDIT---------

Fueled Midge can be downloaded HERE

Edited November 6, 2015 by DoctorDavinci

[Van Disaster]

Just reupload it, you're the only one in the queue atm anyway.

[DoctorDavinci]

Just reupload it, you're the only one in the queue atm anyway.

Fueled and Uploaded

[Guest]

Damn good fights that was cool!

Looks like K191 met its maker alast lol

[E805BzRo]

So the K-191 found its master after all... So I herewith submit the K-201 10. Thanks DrDavinci for some inspriation concerning AoA and Spoilers. Never understood those before.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9fg758o6j11bhw/K-201%2010.craft?dl=0

[Van Disaster]

Added. Watching that fight the Hummingbird is good fun, although filming it is going to be a nightmare... will start filming again Monday if nothing's happened in the meantime.

What do you mean by "AoA and Spoilers" exactly?

[DoctorDavinci]

Thanks DrDavinci for some inspriation concerning AoA and Spoilers.

Not a problem

EDIT--------

Flaps/spoilers

A Positive angle will make the elevons go up and a negative value goes down (for the most part). The angle is in relation to the plane in which the elevon is oriented and represent degrees of arc.

One thing I'd like to point out is that balance across your complete fuel loadout is key .. notice that the Midge's CoM and her CoL stay in perfect harmony regardless of how much fuel she has

Edited November 8, 2015 by DoctorDavinci

[Van Disaster]

Well he doesn't actually have spoilers, that was what I was wondering about I have AoA fed into practically everything.

CoL moves with mach number ( ignoring supersonic effects/mach tuck ), you'll never have it in perfect harmony.

[DoctorDavinci]

CoL moves with mach number ( ignoring supersonic effects/mach tuck )

Very true, however what I am referring to is the relationship between the CoL and CoM at a chosen velocity ... pick a speed, adjust the amount of fuel from empty to full and the relationship should be the same between the two regardless of how many kilo's of fuel onboard

[Van Disaster]

Given 1.0.5 is imminent & the engines are being reworked, I have a couple of thoughts, mainly:

Keep a seperate 1.0.4 install for this tournament until we've seen what 1.0.5 changes; especially with the basic jet changing we might find craft are suddenly being ripped apart which wouldn't be terribly fair. If part masses change that might also unbalance craft to the point they're unflyable, or at least terrible.

Any more thoughts?

@DrDavinci: in other words, CoM is in the middle of the fuel tank

[E805BzRo]

What do you mean by "AoA and Spoilers" exactly?

Never used spoilers before. Saw them in action on DrDavinci's plane and started playing with them. Found out that configuring control surfaces to act as spoilers helps with cornering a lot. Before, I configured front-facing control surfaces with naught to -100% AoA. Higher means more stable at high AoA. But cornering is slower than without the AoA setting at least on some of my planes. Setting the same surfaces to act as spoilers, on the other hand, makes for faster turns with lower AoA and thus lower loss of speed. It is kind of the opposite of using AoA with negative deflections. I still wonder if setting the AoA parameter to something positive would not do the same as the spoiler setting, effectively. Have to try that out at some point.

Be that as it may, I now have another parameter that is worth playing with, and that's good! I use spoilers extensively in the K-201 10, and I find they help with cornering while slow. I saw 10G in a turn while slower than 150m/s! More importantly, when slower than 100m/s it runs like on rails where it was stalling before.

[DoctorDavinci]

@DrDavinci: in other words, CoM is in the middle of the fuel tank

Essentially .. make your CoM the center of your fuel mass which in the case of 1 tank is in the middle of your tank

However, once you start into multiple tanks it can start to get tricky as different mass tanks with different fuel capacities and loads will start playing havoc with the CoM/CoL relationship

[Van Disaster]

@EzBro: by spoiler do you mean pitch control? aircraft spoilers are usually surfaces that only act in one direction - +ve pitch only, for instance, more usually used for yaw ala FAR's yaw brakes, or roll - or used as air/speedbrakes. There are big problems with using leading edge devices like that, you'll discover them eventually but basically you're doing the same thing as canards.

@DrDavinci: it's not really *that* hard to balance fuel tanks, especially when they're fixed sizes like stock. When you've got wet wings it gets a bit more interesting.

If I end up running the fights for the craft we have I'm certainly sticking to 1.0.4 until they're all done - if you're a steam user you might want to make a copy of 1.0.4 now, before it's updated.

[DoctorDavinci]

@Van D: You're totally right, balancing fuel tanks is pretty easy although that is just a part of what I was talking about