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

[tetryds]

@Veeltch last tournament had 16 entries, this one is expected to have either 24 or 36.

In case of 24, the three top planes would fight against each other, whichever defeats the other two wins.

Edit: I am not going to limit it at all, by the way, if we have many more let it be.

[TangerineSedge]

  On 2/26/2016 at 9:25 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

I could shave a few more Kilo's off of her but she performs nicely the way she is although I may still tweak her control surfaces ... Still got a week or more till the competition starts but the DF-43 is done, I can't squeeze much more performance outta her than I've already managed to.

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Just glad I'm not in the same category as you

[tetryds]

You are all fighting together tho

[DoctorDavinci]

  On 2/26/2016 at 9:44 PM, TangerineSedge said:

Just glad I'm not in the same category as you

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You haven't seen the DF-39 Bad Dog in action ... It was a close call on which I would enter, the DF-43 won out due to it's insane speed

EDIT-----------

And what @tetryds said

Edited February 26, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[TangerineSedge]

  On 2/26/2016 at 9:47 PM, tetryds said:

You are all fighting together tho

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Nooooooooooo...

 

</End Vader Impression>

  On 2/26/2016 at 9:49 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

You haven't seen the DF-39 Bad Dog in action ... It was a close call on which I would enter, the DF-43 won out due to it's insane speed

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Double nooo

[DoctorDavinci]

  On 2/26/2016 at 9:49 PM, TangerineSedge said:

Nooooooooooo...

 

</End Vader Impression>

Double nooo

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Lol ... Check this out -> DF-43 vs BAD-T Dummy [2v2]

Edited February 26, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[TangerineSedge]

  On 2/26/2016 at 10:15 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

Lol ... Check this out -> DF-43 vs BAD-T Dummy [2v2]

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Well...at least I'm used to losing by now...

[SuicidalInsanity]

  On 2/26/2016 at 10:15 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

Lol ... Check this out -> DF-43 vs BAD-T Dummy [2v2]

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Were those A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s on the end of the DF-43's empennage? I'm fairly certain those aren't allowed.

[TangerineSedge]

  On 2/26/2016 at 11:03 PM, SuicidalInsanity said:

Were those A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s on the end of the DF-43's empennage? I'm fairly certain those aren't allowed.

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From the rules A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s are allowed, they aren't classed as 'rocket grade' as far as I know. Oh, and Jeb completed his diet (I find re-entry without a craft to lighten anything up...if you catch my drift ) whilst Bill stripped some unnecessary weight off of the craft. Down to 5tons exactly in the hanger wet, 4.6tons dry. Thank god those engines are more efficient than jets, eh?

Here, have a preview of the current Arcadia Mk IV. By the time the fighting commences, don't be surprised if she's up to Mk X or even L...that's just how I roll sometimes

[tetryds]

Nope, unfortunately A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s are not allowed.
You can use spoilers, if you don't abuse it, but that specific part is overpowered, even on FAR it still utilizes stock code for the braking forces.
Remember that this is a WW2 tournament, so even if you use spoilers don't abuse.

[KamikazeF0X]

My plane uses some 4 * 0.5m x 0.5m B9 spoilers for example, it's waaay more smaller than the Stuka's air brakes !

Can we use small portions of B9 All-Moving Wings ?
(I'm starting my plane over for the 3rd time, I'm not satisfied by my actual one !)

[DoctorDavinci]

  On 2/26/2016 at 11:18 PM, tetryds said:

Nope, unfortunately A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s are not allowed.
You can use spoilers, if you don't abuse it, but that specific part is overpowered, even on FAR it still utilizes stock code for the braking forces.
Remember that this is a WW2 tournament, so even if you use spoilers don't abuse.

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Copy that .. I'll take them off and tweak it a bit more ... Do I have a deadline date?

[tetryds]

  On 2/26/2016 at 11:25 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

Copy that .. I'll take them off and tweak it a bit more ... Do I have a deadline date?

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No, you still have plenty of time to work on it as there were no news on KSP 1.1.

[gridghost]

Well, i went and made a compilation of the designs i've rejected so far...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Hope it'll give some inspiration

[ferram4]

Very nice!  Alright, so here's an update on that asymmetric monster of mine:

The FAR Tytonid's development is going along pretty well, that's the Tytonid Mk XII up there, and yes, there have been Mks from I up to XII, and there will probably be a few more.  Lots of incremental changes between them, mostly related to trying to solve problems related to the asymmetric design.  There's a lot of info in the spoiler on this, hopefully someone finds it useful / interesting.

  Reveal hidden contents

The Tytonid Mk I I posted earlier was a pretty decent design, but had its mass offset laterally relative to the CoL, so it got replaced with the Mk II which was visually identical but with the mass shifted around.  However, as a result of the asymmetric design it had a tendency to yaw to the left... and rudder trim to counter that produced enough side force to the left to put the plane in a steady left hand turn even with no sideslip.  So then I put a large fin underneath the cockpit angled to create a rightward force and yaw-right moment to counter that, and that became the Mk III.  To try and make the design more drag efficient, I switched the fin to a slightly smaller one mounted underneath the front engine further forward, resulting in the Mk IV.

So that fixed the sideslip, but the fin reduced yaw stability, so I extended the tail boom downwards to meet up with the fin to counter that, which became the Mk V.  The Mk VI had the first use of differential rudder deflection for minor airbraking and a slightly different aileron design (it made the trailing edge more like that of an elliptical wing) to try and reduce aileron stalling in high AoA turns during roll inputs (which was only slightly successful).  I tried experimenting with a larger wing on the Mk V (the Mk Vb), but that didn't add any appreciable increase in turn performance and reduced continuous flat turn speeds by ~10 m/s and knocked another 10 m/s off of the top speed.  The Mk V also removed the central landing gear, as it was unnecessary and only added weight.  Another Mk V tried out a BK 7.5 but unfortunately it suffered a severe case of "can't actually make the shot" and "excessive gun weight."

The Mk VII involved structural changes to band-aid an interesting issue: due to the design, the plane could perform a left snap roll very easily, but a right snap roll aborted after a quarter turn when the plane's nose dropped and it yawed to the right.  If the pilot didn't do anything after that, the plane was fine but if the pilot came out of an aborted right snap roll and immediately tried to do a left snap roll the plane would tumble wildly, yaw heavily to the left, and if the maneuver started above ~120 m/s it would pull 6 gs sideways and rip the tail completely off.  The Mk VII didn't prevent this from happening, but did increase the speed that it could happen at to around 150 m/s, though at the cost of an extra 50 or so kilos.  The Mk VIII S variant switched the default 3x Vya 23mm for 3x ShVAK 20mm to increase the chances of a hit in maneuvering.

The Mk VIII kept the ShVAKs, but relocated them from the central wing section to a trio of guns around the cockpit (as shown above on the Mk XII) and had a slightly taller left vertical stabilizer.  The Mk IX switched from ShVAKs to Hispanos to trade some RoF for muzzle velocity; it could easily put enough rounds downrange to guarantee hits if it got on target, but the slower rounds made getting on target difficult.  The Mk IX was also the first version to just straight gain mass rather than try to shift it around as needed, to add extra strength to the central wing structure which was the most common failure point in battle.

The Mk X involved a significant redesign to reduce drag.  Bulking out the left fuselage a bit smoothed out the shape somewhat; if the cross-section is already relatively large it makes sense to keep it large and reduce it smoothly.  I made the tail boom a little taller near the fuselage to help with more yaw stability issues.  Redesigning the fin on the underside of the main fuselage produced less lift, but instead created more of a yaw-right moment through camber, which reduced its induced drag effects while still being similarly effective when combined with a counterpart underneath the cockpit to have the same effect.  The horizontal tail was shifted forward slightly to reduce stability slightly and drag during maneuvers.  The older-style ailerons for simplicity and slightly less drag when interacting with the fuselage.  Finally, mounting the wings slightly higher on the left fuselage reduced drag slightly as well.  The changes ended up increasing the peak L/D from 15-17 to 20-22, depending on the Mach number and its sustainable top speed at 150 m up to 235 m/s.

The Mk XI added a dive flap to the back of the central wing that would deploy with the differential rudder brakes and a lower drag cockpit underside fin and slightly larger main gear.  Adding a smoother tail to the canopy reduced drag a little bit more.  I also finally fixed the snap roll into tail breaking issue by increasing the strength of the tail slightly and tweaking the finer points of the tail shape, though that also added a little extra mass.  The cockpit-nose Hispano was also shifted more into the nose, rather than extending beyond it like the wing-root Hispanos.  I also experimented with a pair of Mk 108s but the low muzzle velocity and RoF from having fewer guns made it virtually useless.

Finally, the Mk XII redesigned the connection between the tail and the main fuselage / wing structure in a way that cut 150 kilos off of the structure but kept it just as strong.  It also got a slightly redesigned elevator; despite the CoL as a whole being aligned with the CoM laterally, the elevator was not, which would cause a slightly roll-right tendency during pitch-up.  As a nice benefit of this change, snap rolls in both directions are less severe, recovering immediately rather than tumbling, or going into a flat spin, and then recovering.  It still needs combat testing, but given that its predecessors have all done exceptionally well against virtually every design I can throw at them I suspect it will do quite well.

Well, that was longer than I expected, but yeah, I'm incrementally improving it as if it were a real war plane.  Unfortunately I can't throw an engine with a better P/W in there as I increment, but given how OP they are compared to real life, I'll make do.

[KamikazeF0X]

I'm getting a huge fleet of aircraft ...
I can't get ONE good plane, they all have defaults
There's my five favorites !

  Reveal hidden contents

Black and White Tip : Yaw control (It's normal after all ...)
Gold Tip : Slow turn (Pitch and Yaw problems)
Blue Tip : Speed (It's a Sesquiplane after all ! ) --- Blue and Red Tip : Stall when manoeuvring (Too high G)
Red Tip : Lack of accuracy

 

[pyrosheep]

  On 2/27/2016 at 2:59 PM, KamikazeF0X said:

Black and White Tip : Yaw control (It's normal after all ...)

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You have nice split spoilers near the root of your wing, if you moved them out to the wingtips you could use them as rudder brakes.

They aren't ideal for energy retention, but the can help with stability; afaik both the Horten brothers and Northrop used them in their experimental designs so they are authentic enough. 

Edited February 27, 2016 by pyrosheep

[KamikazeF0X]

  On 2/27/2016 at 3:33 PM, pyrosheep said:

You have a nice split spoilers near the root of your wing, if you moved them out to the wingtips you could use them as rudder brakes.

They aren't ideal for energy retention, but the can help with stability; afaik both the Horten brothers and Northrop used them in their experimental designs so they are authentic enough. 

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The wing is in three parts in the back :
Roll | Brake Rudder | Pitch | Pitch | Brake Rudder | Roll

And there is some little (~0.500m) tails upwards and downward the wing
The split spoiler already acts as break rudders up and down the wing

[Wjolcz]

  On 2/26/2016 at 12:26 AM, ferram4 said:

So, a heads up to you guys.

Assuming @BahamutoD ends up accepting the PR (when it's ready) and there are no serious bugs, and yada yada qualifiers, I've got some AI modifications in store for BD pilots.  Mostly I'm tired of it turning into flat turning battle with whichever plane turns better / doesn't start the evasion code winning all the time and no AI coming to the other's aid.  Right now I have it set up so that the AI will attempt to do Immelmanns, split-Ses, and chandelles as needed to conserve energy or get into position to attack the opponent.  In addition, the AI will also call for help from its teammates when under fire, so it won't turn into a pair of independent dogfights 10 km apart.  Right now I'm working on making the evasion routine a bit smarter so that it actually tries to dodge the enemy plane's guns rather than just do something stupid and get killed or set up a really nice deflection shot for their opponent.

Should certainly make the battles more interesting, but at the same time will likely result in the design-meta favoring slightly different craft than before, so you guys should know.

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Can we expect this to be implelented when tetryds runs his battles? I have a great energy fighter which loses almost everytime because a slower, but more manouverable plane outturns it.

@BahamutoD @tetryds

[DoctorDavinci]

So I took dem A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S off the DF-43

After the refit she has now reached a new top speed of 251.5 m/s (905.33 Kph) ... Still a bit shaky close in but she's super light and really quick

Off to tuning now but just thought I'd show how having to change something to fit within the rules can be beneficial to your design in the end ... I will probably add a bit more fuel but that will only increase the weight by a fraction

Edited February 27, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[Wjolcz]

  On 2/27/2016 at 7:40 PM, DoctorDavinci said:

So I took dem A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S off the DF-43

After the refit she has now reached a new top speed of 251.5 m/s (905.33 Kph) ... Still a bit shaky close in but she's super light and really quick

Off to tuning now but just thought I'd show how having to change something to fit within the rules can be beneficial to your design in the end ... I will probably add a bit more fuel but that will only increase the weight by a fraction

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I managed 920 Kph on mine. Too bad it doesn't mean anything since the AI tries to outturn eachother...

 

EDIT: OK, I got my plane ready, but it's an energy fighter, so I really need that AI improvement first.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Veeltch

[DoctorDavinci]

  On 2/27/2016 at 8:58 PM, Veeltch said:

I managed 920 Kph on mine. Too bad it doesn't mean anything since the AI tries to outturn eachother...

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Nice ... Speed is key but you also have to have a good turn rate

Taking those air brakes off and removing the bottom fuel tank reduced the DF-43's drag and made me have to adjust her control surfaces quite a bit to accommodate the additional speed ... However she has a tighter turn radius now

[KamikazeF0X]

@DoctorDavinci
You should use Adjustable Landing Gears for this one, you will not have those awful pylons !
And you can rescale the gear in the Adjustments options - Smaller gear = Smaller weight !

[DoctorDavinci]

  On 2/27/2016 at 9:12 PM, KamikazeF0X said:

@DoctorDavinci
You should use Adjustable Landing Gears for this one, you will not have those awful pylons !
And you can rescale the gear in the Adjustments options - Smaller gear = Smaller weight !

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The pylons serve a very important purpose

[ferram4]

Anyone who would like to try the AI changes should grab the dll from this repo; it still might need some tweaking, but I think that it's pretty good.  The AI isn't really capable of telling if it's a turnfighter or a BnZer, and in any case, the engine power boosts in the pack actually make BnZers not really all that great anyway, considering it's way too easy to prop hang and climb up to them that way, shooting as you go.  It's far more valuable to be able to maintain a good amount of energy in your turns while still being maneuverable or be able to do boom-and-extend-level rather than a traditional zoom climb.

One other thing you'll notice is that the guns probably seem to fire faster.  The barrage code in the release has a bug that actually limits fire rate based on framerate, but that has been fixed here, so very high RoF guns can be really scary now.  Part of me thinks that a highly Zero-like plane on a 20 kN Widshed w/ 4x ShVaks might end up being one of the best options with that assuming that it can get into range and has enough ammo.