Advanced Air Superiority Fighter Competition

[Dwerto]

Here is an entry: https://www.dropbox.com/s/127vaqe3rfob2an/d-11.craft?dl=0

It seems to consistently beat the hummingbird in my tests, but it probably can't beat much else.

[gridghost]

If you outrun the Amraams you just have to wait a minute to see it plummet to it's death by itself...

[Van Disaster]

I was going to say it's not too happy about Pather-Hummingbird (P8 onwards, there's one on the first page somewhere ) either, that one got it while it still had fuel. Mind you it doesn't appear to have a cannon...

[Dwerto]

2 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

I was going to say it's not too happy about Pather-Hummingbird (P8 onwards, there's one on the first page somewhere ) either, that one got it while it still had fuel. Mind you it doesn't appear to have a cannon...

The only planes it can really beat are ones that take a long time to take off. Any plane that can maneuver much at all can dodge the missiles once above 1400 meters, and after the d-11 shoots its missiles it's only a matter of time before it runs out of fuel or gets shot down. That plane was only really designed to beat the particular version of the hummingbird I had.

[Pds314]

LOL. Just tested a fighter vs. the Aggressor. Initially, I was worried. Then I realized that since my fighter's default behavior was to do massive sweeping circles at 400 m/s, the Aggressor couldn't actually keep up. xD

EDIT: dozens of tests later, I have yet to see either get a proper kill. Mine just seems to laugh off Aim-9 after Aim-9 until it pulls up hard during a Mach 1 dive. Funny thing is it's actually supermaneuverable, and in the hands of a human pilot, will more-or-less turn on a dime at 400 m/s. The main problem is the AI seems to have absolutely no concept of over-Gee.

Alright. So far It's been gunned down by an Arrow II after about half a dozen worthless shots of AIM-9s because it decided "hey! Hovering nose-up at 15000 feet and all of 50 m/s to fight an enemy below you is a great idea! Helicopters always beat fighters!"

Just got mission-killed by an Arrow II, it flew maybe 10 meters away and fired three rounds in a burst, all hits. Took out both engines and a stabilizing fin. 0.o

Edited January 24, 2016 by Pds314

[Pds314]

On 1/18/2016 at 10:19 AM, gridghost said:

GG HRF-1x-p (right click and save as...)

GG HRF-2x-p (right click and save as...)

One singleengine and one twinengine craft for your testing pleasures... pulls some G-s and explodes in funny ways. Enjoy.

LOL, just took it out with a mid-air collision from a slower (read: definitely subsonic) aircraft.

[gridghost]

6 hours ago, Pds314 said:

LOL, just took it out with a mid-air collision from a slower (read: definitely subsonic) aircraft.

Ya, I''ve done that too a couple of times... the AI seems to be oblivious to surrounding obstacles

It would be fun to test against one of your creations.

Edited January 24, 2016 by gridghost

[Dwerto]

So I figured out a way to beat the hummingbird...

 

 

[Van Disaster]

22 hours ago, Pds314 said:

EDIT: dozens of tests later, I have yet to see either get a proper kill. Mine just seems to laugh off Aim-9 after Aim-9 until it pulls up hard during a Mach 1 dive. Funny thing is it's actually supermaneuverable, and in the hands of a human pilot, will more-or-less turn on a dime at 400 m/s. The main problem is the AI seems to have absolutely no concept of over-Gee.

Alright. So far It's been gunned down by an Arrow II after about half a dozen worthless shots of AIM-9s because it decided "hey! Hovering nose-up at 15000 feet and all of 50 m/s to fight an enemy below you is a great idea! Helicopters always beat fighters!"

Yeah, that's what Dynamic Deflection is for ( and also don't use the full gimbal range on a vectored thrust engine ). I try and avoid letting the things stall unless they're at the top of a loop because as you've found out the AI won't recover, and stalled wings murder your momentum; we found out in the previous iteration of this contest that being slow is not a good thing when the opponent has AIM-9s.

You'll find the AI has a lot more amusing ways to throw a fight as you get into it more... you're also up against people who had a couple of months worth of iterating designs, you might want to pull out some of the craft from the 1.0.4 thread to test against too.

Here's another prototype target: Hummingbird P9.3 . Don't have time to tune it so it's a bit wobbly, and it's deliberately got more fuel than is probably necessary because I'm setting my own duration limits ( and it can land again, which is another thing I set myself! no more disposable landing gear ).

Edited January 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[gridghost]

Speaking of set rules  

Here's some i've tested to give me a challenge.

All crafts have Radomes.

Drone: Max weight: 5 tonnes, Cost 20k, Must have at least 150 unit of fuel, Max 55% throttle (Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, probecore and at least 400 units electric charge.

Ligth fighter: Max weight: 7 tonnes, Cost: 25k, Must have at least 200 units of fuel, Max 75% throttle (Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo, and 2 missiles (and no disposable landinggear ).

Medium fighter: Max weight: 9 tonnes, Cost: 35k, Must have at least 400 units of fuel, Max 100% throttle (Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo and 4 missiles (and no disposable landinggear ).

Heavy fighter: Max weight: 12 tonnes, Cost: 40k, Must have at least 540 units of fuel, Max 80% throttle (Dual Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo and 6 missiles and Dual engines (and no disposable landinggear ).

This and using only stock parts to make good and viable fighters.

 

Will post my set of standard fighters with a side of testing drone when i get home.

Edited January 25, 2016 by gridghost
Cost for medium fighter was wrong, and added drone specs.

[Pds314]

16 hours ago, gridghost said:

Ya, I''ve done that too a couple of times... the AI seems to be oblivious to surrounding obstacles

It would be fun to test against one of your creations.

Unfortunately, my two fifth-gen supermaneuverable supercruising fighters are really tough for the AI to figure out. That makes sense with the first one, considering it has brakerudders and is unstable on all three axis for most of the speed range it's fighting in, but for the second one, it's just supermaneuverability stupidity. I.E "Oh! I just need to pull up harder! 60 degrees AOA is obviously better than 30!"

I could upload my tractor jet that your plane rear-ended though. It's reasonably controllable for the AI, fully stock+BDA, and a pure-cannon fighter.

Though TBH, it probably would lose against something like the Arrow, considering that thing's typical behavior is loitering in a 20-Gee turn.

Alright, the 2nd 5th gen is mostly working as a jouster. The first "works" until it rips itself to shreds in an awkward maneuver like pulling out of a dive (it has like no gee tolerance, I've seen it burst into a cloud of debris at 8 G). If I turn the maneuverability up, it just flounders supermaneuvering with it's drag coefficient of 2.5. If I turn it down, it loses control or goes in a 20-kilometer circle.

Grr... 85 degrees AOA... with the gimbal locked.

EDIT: Oh. Using dynamic deflection to decrease deflection at low speeds could help stabilize it and prevent stalling.

Alright. First successful test series vs. something other than the Aggressor. I gave it 5 runs vs. the Arrow II P1. 3 missile wins, 1 gun loss, 1 mid-air collision.

I'll upload pics or a video soon, as well as the .craft.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Pds314

[Van Disaster]

2 hours ago, gridghost said:

Ligth fighter: Max weight: 7 tonnes, Cost: 25k, Must have at least 200 units of fuel, Max 75% throttle (Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo, and 2 missiles (and no disposable landinggear ).

Medium fighter: Max weight: 9 tonnes, Cost: 30k, Must have at least 400 units of fuel, Max 100% throttle (Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo and 4 missiles (and no disposable landinggear ).

Heavy fighter: Max weight: 12 tonnes, Cost: 40k, Must have at least 540 units of fuel, Max 80% throttle (Dual Panther, Wet) and must have cannon, ammo and 6 missiles and Dual engines (and no disposable landinggear ).

This and using only stock parts to make good and viable fighters.

Price limits too eh, that's interesting. I dug out an old Swallow frame & pulled bits off until it got under 30k to meet the Medium requirements but the lightweight one might take some effort to meet the cost. I haven't built a twin fighter for ages, something new!

I'll take adjustable landing gear on top I think, not very fond of the stock gear.

Edit: fresh out the oven Lightweight: P210 is untuned but seems to work pretty effectively for guesswork control setup. Hopefully I can get time to tune all these things sometime, but last contest I was spending days running fights for a single craft. The Arrow would work a lot better if it didn't try pulling right-angle turns at low speed for instance, and probably also if it wasn't carrying so much fuel.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[gridghost]

1 hour ago, Van Disaster said:

Price limits too eh, that's interesting. I dug out an old Swallow frame & pulled bits off until it got under 30k to meet the Medium requirements but the lightweight one might take some effort to meet the cost. I haven't built a twin fighter for ages, something new!

I'll take adjustable landing gear on top I think, not very fond of the stock gear.

My bad, the Pricelimit for the Medium fighter were 35k, not 30k (Messed it up when i typed). Will edit.

[Pds314]

Alright. It's an X-heavy, at nearly 15-tonnes, but it works.

I present, the XFA-4. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx5IDYRs0obMZW1jQUtud0JDa3M/view?usp=sharing

On a related note, I did try another supermaneuverable fighter.

[Pds314]

17 hours ago, Dwerto said:

So I figured out a way to beat the hummingbird...

Gun-Killed the blasted thing on first encounter. (I lost the round afterward, thanks darn little unhittable things...)

 

Edited January 25, 2016 by Pds314

[Van Disaster]

7 hours ago, gridghost said:

My bad, the Pricelimit for the Medium fighter were 35k, not 30k (Messed it up when i typed). Will edit.

I reckon the 30k should stay, that's quite tight. Budget class? is there a price/fuel break for using a dry engine?

Reference list for target drones I've thrown up, given this is getting messy.

Hummingbird F5 - reference craft as a 1.0.5 version of the previous contest winner. I put real landing gear on it. Not actually a prototype, I guess!
Hummingbird P9.3 - dry thrust, fuelled for my own duration class
Swallow P8 - wet thrust, GG's medium fighter class
Arrow II P1 - wet thrust, my own duration class
P210 - wet thrust, GG's lightweight class

Should point out this is a 1v1 contest rather than 2v2.
 

Edited January 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[gridghost]

Drone (i know it's out of play but wanted to give it away anyhow) GG DR-1S (right click and save as...)

Ligth Fighter GG LF-1S (right click and save as...)

Medium Fighter GG MF-1S (right click and save as...)

Heavy Fighter GG HF-1S (right click and save as...)

All are within my own set of rules (budget, weight and so on) and are pretty decent fighters...

 

And @Van Disaster The rules are slightly bendy, so if you want to use a dry engine, i would compensate accordingly (1/3 the fuel or something) and making the craft lighter and thus more competetive in some cases. I used Panthers just cause i wanted it, it's not mandatory

Edited January 25, 2016 by gridghost

[Pds314]

I'm tempted to make an open FAR+DD fighter challenge, with no restrictions on engines, cockpits, or weapons (want a goalkeeper or Pac-3? Sure!), but a power rating system so when one fighter vastly outclasses another, the fight will be skewed in numbers. I.E.:

Power rating ratio - combatants:
1.0-1.25 - 2v2
1.25-1.75 - 2v3
1.75-2.5 - 1v2
2.5-3.5 1v3
3.5-4.5 1v4
4.5-inf 1v5.

Cockpits, radomes, etc would have a power rating associated with them, so that would prevent people from making super-cheap fighters. Turrets would also have a substantial power rating, meaning just putting a few M230s on a fighter puts you against superior numbers. I'm not sure if the situation of absurdly high power rating ratios would show up, but if it did, I seriously doubt the flying Armageddon mega-fighters would win. Nobody is gonna be able to build a flying vehicle that carries a pile of goalkeepers and a bunch of giant engines that can still dodge effectively, and so I doubt it would win against the cheaper fighters, seeing as a 20mm cannon can pretty much kill anything short of a flying tank.

This would allow total creative freedom while maintaining a semblance of balance. Want a fighter with 2 Gau-8s? Whelp, you're going to be fighting 2 vs. 3, but have at it. 10 AMRAAMS and 3 Panthers? Again, probably gonna be fighting multiple opponents, but sure. A single locked .50 caliber turret and a Wheesley? Enjoy your 3:1 numerical advantage!

[Van Disaster]

Beware lazer turrets the countermeasure is basically more lazer turrets.

There is a mechanic where if a plane is getting shot at it'll evade; a few of us flirted with rear firing 20mms to try and use it, but it wasn't worth the weight in the end given how rarely the opponent was in the right spot to trigger. Turrets on the other hand are going to set that off constantly. Still, knock up a few demos & film some fights to debug the idea a bit.

Here's a really low power turret demo straight out of WW2-1946 ( doesn't really need the forward guns but it looks cute ). Eats all my craft ( yours too! ).

Also note that a radome is a *penalty*; we demanded all craft carry radar after we found that radarless craft were taking off & flying circles out of visual range of each other.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Van Disaster

[Pds314]

4 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

Beware lazer turrets the countermeasure is basically more lazer turrets.

There is a mechanic where if a plane is getting shot at it'll evade; a few of us flirted with rear firing 20mms to try and use it, but it wasn't worth the weight in the end given how rarely the opponent was in the right spot to trigger. Turrets on the other hand are going to set that off constantly. Still, knock up a few demos & film some fights to debug the idea a bit.

Here's a really low power turret demo straight out of WW2-1946 ( doesn't really need the forward guns but it looks cute ). Eats all my craft ( yours too! ).

Also note that a radome is a *penalty*; we demanded all craft carry radar after we found that radarless craft were taking off & flying circles out of visual range of each other.

Hmm. I will definitely have to playtest such an idea. Laser turrets are definitely extremely destructive, both in attack and defense. If there's no way to beat them that results in interesting combat where the non-laser fighters can win, I might have to ban them if I make that challenge. Yeah, I know turret fighters are truly lethal as long as the turrets aren't too weak.

[Pds314]

On my phone so I can't post any pictures at the moment, but I've been working on a couple more fighters. One is a tailless X-heavy flying wing made of just stock+BD that I'm desperately trying to area rule (it's currently got a drag area of 2 m^2). That one has very good rate of turn. The other one is a tiny 5.5-tonne 4x-Juno missile jousting plane. It seems to be very tough to hit due to its low profile, and I'm not sure if thermal emissions are a thing, but I swear Aim-9s just ignore it and go for the flares, even if it is basically a sitting duck. Same goes with AMRAAMs. They just go for the chaff or outright miss. Heck, even bullets fired from 200 meters miss so often it was running away from a GG HRF 2x for over a minute, with burst after burst simply going over and under the wings. I think the AI doesn't really know how to shoot a fighter with a 4- meter wingspan.

EDIT: "Some part that cannot be reinforced failed due to aerodynamic stresses." NooOooOooOOOoo0!

Edited January 27, 2016 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Grrrrrrr.... Apparently, when planes descend below minimum altitude, the AI has NO IDEA what yaw control is. This means that if the plane is unstable in Yaw, one minute, it will be dogfighting at 1420 meters doing all sorts of aerobatic bullet-dodging while maintaining course, and the next, it will blow itself to smithereens because it's sideslip will go from 3 degrees to 30 degrees in all of 2 seconds.

[Pds314]

Apparently, flying wing fighters immediately lose yaw control when they go below minimum altitude. The instant the altitude goes below 1410, they start sideslipping and explode.

Sorry about the music. It was playing in background. It was leave it or delete the audio.

And just to show it isn't over-gee from trying to pull up too hard, take a look at the G meter in both cases. The first one is about 12. The 2nd is about 15 for a split second. It maintains 15+ Gees through multiple turns totally unharmed.

Edited January 28, 2016 by Pds314

[gridghost]

It could be atmospheric pressure in combination with Gee-forces. I've had planes doing high-g turns at altitude w/o problems just to explode when going below 1500 m just because of it. 

[Hodo]

20 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Apparently, flying wing fighters immediately lose yaw control when they go below minimum altitude. The instant the altitude goes below 1410, they start sideslipping and explode.

Sorry about the music. It was playing in background. It was leave it or delete the audio.

And just to show it isn't over-gee from trying to pull up too hard, take a look at the G meter in both cases. The first one is about 12. The 2nd is about 15 for a split second. It maintains 15+ Gees through multiple turns totally unharmed.

Looks like you are hitting the dynamic pressure wall at those alts and speeds.  While trying to pull 9+ G turns will cause your plane to fold like a leaf.   The other issue I see is your flying wing is STRUGGLING to maintain control normally, the gimbles on your engines are doing way to much work.  Your roll rate is worse than most of my aircraft which says something.