WW2 BAD-T 2 - BDA AI Dogfight Tournament [SEMIFINALS]

[tetryds]

Does not exclude decimals

[Gnoyze]

7 hours ago, Aerolfos said:

Dam it. My idea of a heavy fighter with a bomber turret isn't going to work then...

Well, it was mostly to hit bombers in their blind spots anyway. Which there won't be any of.

 

6 hours ago, tetryds said:

@Aerolfos That is because the AI was not made to dodge turrets, it simply goes straight at the airplane, if you place a turret on the back aiming backwards you are invincible, no matter how slow the turret is.

Lots of people are wanting to make heavy fighters, this is going to be good.

So we can't have a heavy bomber with a turret on the front? (or specific range rules?)

[Doke]

39 minutes ago, tetryds said:

Does not exclude decimals

Noooooooo!

Fair enough, though. They weighed too much anyway.

[SuicidalInsanity]

6. You can cram 6 shKAS machineguns onto your plane

"-Maximum of 6 weapons of a single type on your airplane"

[tetryds]

@Gnoyze Nope, this is a dogfight tournament not a battlefield simulation

@Doke Yeah, that would kind of break the balance.

@SuicidalInsanity Pretty much
Or 6x .50cal if you are making a heavy fighter.

Edit: by the way, how many confirmed entrants do we have already?

Edit2: Ah, and remember that the AI can use more than one weapon now, it switches weapons when the one it's using overheats.

[Wolf123]

Is there anyway to make the ai fight as an energy fighter (boom and zoom), instead of trying to constantly turn?

[SuicidalInsanity]

@tetryds: Kinda partial to 6x 13mm myself

@wolf 123: Short answer; yes. Long answer: it involves a long process of tweaking both the Ai settings and the control surface settings and possibly the overall airframe of the craft itself to force the Ai to fly the craft how you want it to.

[Pds314]

Interesting that there is no minimum weight. This should allow for some interesting fiddling with the TWR.  <-- Apparently, I read "Must exceed" as "must not exceed."

On a related note, I notice a distinct lack of DynamicDeflection. I suppose I can just disable the DD on all craft.

"Procedural wings thickness must be greater than 0.120 for any reasonably sized wing part to prevent glitches."

Does this include at wingtip? Because almost 5" seems ridiculously thick for a wingtip.



Hurr... deleting so many mods to get B9 Pwings to work right.

 

Edited February 21, 2016 by Pds314

[Aerolfos]

1 hour ago, Pds314 said:

Interesting that there is no minimum weight. This should allow for some interesting fiddling with the TWR.

On a related note, I notice a distinct lack of DynamicDeflection. I suppose I can just disable the DD on all craft.

"Procedural wings thickness must be greater than 0.120 for any reasonably sized wing part to prevent glitches."

Does this include at wingtip? Because almost 5" seems ridiculously thick for a wingtip.

 

There is a minimum weight, 6 tons for heavy fighters... no maximum however, did you mean that?

Well, how big is the wingtip and how glitchy is it?

3 hours ago, tetryds said:

@Gnoyze Nope, this is a dogfight tournament not a battlefield simulation

@Doke Yeah, that would kind of break the balance.

@SuicidalInsanity Pretty much
Or 6x .50cal if you are making a heavy fighter.

Edit: by the way, how many confirmed entrants do we have already?

Edit2: Ah, and remember that the AI can use more than one weapon now, it switches weapons when the one it's using overheats.

I am an entrant. I'll try making it today really, along with updating my mod.

All the weapons. Too bad 6 is max. Also, how smart is the AI in terms of cannon vs. machine guns? It should use high fire-rate bullet spam up close, but try to snipe with cannons at longer ranges/after machineguns overheat or jam.

And you can use jet engines as long as their thrust is not too high or what? (Are there even any that you can fit?)

[Pds314]

9 minutes ago, Aerolfos said:

And you can use jet engines as long as their thrust is not too high or what? (Are there even any that you can fit?)

I don't think it's currently allowed. If I were tetryds, I might mess around with reconfiguring the Juno by reducing the ISP and thrust and making it a 10 kN turbojet, but make it cost substantially more than 10 points.

[Temeter]

2 hours ago, Pds314 said:

I don't think it's currently allowed. If I were tetryds, I might mess around with reconfiguring the Juno by reducing the ISP and thrust and making it a 10 kN turbojet, but make it cost substantially more than 10 points.

I think some of the prop engines are actually stronger than two junos combined, so thrust shouldn't be that much of an issue. 

edit: Nvm, It's of course a lot lighter!

Edited February 21, 2016 by Temeter

[alp3r]

My plane seems to wobble a lot whilst attacking other planes. I fiddled with the AI pilot settings but I couldn't get it to shoot straight. Anything you guys could suggest?

[Wjolcz]

45 minutes ago, alp3r said:

My plane seems to wobble a lot whilst attacking other planes. I fiddled with the AI pilot settings but I couldn't get it to shoot straight. Anything you guys could suggest?

Try tweaking the surface deflection slider, or the pitch one. Also checking AI's damping would be a good thing to do.

[tetryds]

@Pds314 no dynamic deflection, they are ww2 airplanes.

Pick another very small piece of wing and put it on the wing tip, then you can make it thinner.

It has to be thick to prevent bullets from passing through or plain silly abuses.

@Aerolfos only the prop engines which come on the pack.

Maybe I have to make that more explicit.

@alp3r try decreasing the deflection on the control surfaces, maybe you are stalling.

[BahamutoD]

2 hours ago, alp3r said:

My plane seems to wobble a lot whilst attacking other planes. I fiddled with the AI pilot settings but I couldn't get it to shoot straight. Anything you guys could suggest?

If it's a control issue, try reducing the AI steer factor and damping to 3 and 1 respectively, then slowly increase it from there if it's not aggressive enough.

Edited February 21, 2016 by BahamutoD

[Doke]

10 hours ago, tetryds said:

Edit: by the way, how many confirmed entrants do we have already?

I'm definitely in. Currently trying to decide between my light and heavy designs.

6 hours ago, Aerolfos said:

Also, how smart is the AI in terms of cannon vs. machine guns?

Not very. What I left out of my previous question about ShKAS guns was that I was using them as backups for a pair of 23mm cannons. It's all moot, though, because the AI never used the cannons. It might depend on your particular gun setup; I haven't tested.

[tetryds]

You shouldn't think about using guns as backup, both types have to be useful, otherwise when one overheats it would get stuck at using the other if it does not overheat.

To "force" overheating to happen more often increase the scan interval.

[SuicidalInsanity]

@alp3r: Arm your plane with shKAS machineguns and go for the 'Moar Dakka' school of marksmanship?

Wobble comes from having too much control authority, the Ai tries to make a vector correction, over-steers due to too much control authority, and then tries to compensate with (again) oversteer the other direction; reduce the overall control authority via a reduction via Ai tweaks, control surface deflection/ size tweaking, or both. 

@Doke: The AI using different weapons is apparently more of the AI will switch to a different set when the primary set (apparently arbitrarily chosen by the AI) overheats/jams to continue firing at a target; it would be nice if individual weapons could be given a min range and a priority setting instead of a universal min range setting, but for now switching to a different set when the first stops working is what we have to work with.

Edit: I'm a definite contestant, I'll have an entry in soon-ish.

Edit Edit: I know rocket grade parts are forbidden, but is the FLT-100 still allowed like it was last tournament?

Edited February 21, 2016 by SuicidalInsanity

[MightyDarkStar]

I most certainly will enter, my design is going through some extremely rigorous testing as of this moment. However, I'm having problems when the AI pilot takes control and fights the dummy. It turns far too tightly and manages to fall into a recoverable spin. But to recover from it I find myself turning off the AI and correcting it, which is just not going to work for this tournament. It is extremely agile and has a fantastic rate of roll, but I think it's too manoeuvrable if you catch my drift.

Is there any way in which I can fix this problem? @BahamutoD

[SuicidalInsanity]

Reduce the AI Steer Factor  and/or Steer Limiter settings in the AI context menu

[Dwerto]

It seems to me that it would make sense to have a standard minimum and default altitude for the AI.

[DoctorDavinci]

13 hours ago, tetryds said:

Edit: by the way, how many confirmed entrants do we have already?

I'm in ... whether it's a light or heavy fighter remains to be decided

Currently working on the heavy

[Wjolcz]

I'm also in. Got my design ready and working. Will combat prove it tomorrow.

My stats look something like this so far:

•  147 pts (heavy fighter)
•  6,084 kg/~6,500kg (dry/loaded)

I was really working on the edge there. I had to use a full radial ore tank to add the ballast. Even though it seems like dead weight, it's pretty useful for fine tuning the CoM.

[JagerVonSmith]

I got a design in the hanger still testing ofc, but will be done soon. Still gotta find out how to make my 9.5t beast not try to out turn the dummy 

Here's what I got so far:

http://imgur.com/AFrQuFU

[ferram4]

I'll likely enter a heavy fighter as well, but I decided to be... well, interesting.  Already executes the dummy without a problem and has somehow managed to out maneuver and destroy most of the light fighter designs I've tried to create to kill it.  I may have to create a heavy fighter to try and kill it.  At the moment I'm tweaking it and trying to balance how much fuel and ammo it should start with to have the necessary endurance.