[1.4.x] BDArmory Continued v1.2.2.2 [8/8/2018] + Vessel Mover, Camera Tools, BDMk22, Destruction Effects, Burn Together

[stickman939]

8 hours ago, Galane said:

Two things BDA could use.

1. A way to turn off the AI pilot from the GUI instead of having to right click directly on the module. Some plane builders choose to bury it inside the plane so it can't be easily accessed.

That's already possible with vessel switcher. Alternatively you could just set "Toggle AI Pilot" to an action group.

_______________________________________________

Anyways, onto another thing; I was testing the armor to see how many rounds it took to destroy a plate at 90^o, 60^o, and 130^o. (IE, attempting to simulate armor on a tank)

Initial tests took around 8-10 for 90, 12-14 for 60, and 18-20 for 130 when using the M2. Distance didn't seem to matter as long as the bullet hit. Not sure if it's possible for "damage falloff" to be a thing, or if I just didn't test far enough ranges (5m intervals up to 100m total). But so far it seems armor is easily defeated. Perhaps adding tiers for a future update?


Anyways. thought this was an interesting bit of information that I should share. Wasn't sure if it was well known or not  

[Spartwo]

9 hours ago, Galane said:

Two things BDA could use.

1. A way to turn off the AI pilot from the GUI instead of having to right click directly on the module. Some plane builders choose to bury it inside the plane so it can't be easily accessed.

2. An AI landing mode for planes. MechJeb's SpacePlane Guidance hasn't been updated in forever and unless the plane is a very long way away from KSC it'll come in at any angle, put gear down then fly across the runway and try to circle back around. Its maneuvering is very herky-jerky, like it's hitting the controls full on and full off. It doesn't control the throttle or brakes either, all it does is (poorly) circle around to try aiming at the runway, put it onto a glideslope and leave it to you to attempt to get it set down without crashing.

With the way BDA can smoothly fly planes to their limits, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for it to line up with the runway from any distance-altitude then bring the plane in to a smooth touchdown and stop. The cherry on top would be to have it carefully taxi off the runway to make way for more planes to land.

I'd rather if the AI could pilot surface vehicles to be honest. 

Surface pilot and target prioritization.

Edited September 2, 2017 by Spartwo

[Oxygentlemen]

love BDarmory! maybe make a compatibility thing with KIS and allow kerbals to hold infantry weapons!

[stickman939]

5 hours ago, Oxygentlemen said:

love BDarmory! maybe make a compatibility thing with KIS and allow kerbals to hold infantry weapons!

Already a thing.

Not been updated for awhile tho

 

[MemeMarine]

12 hours ago, Spartwo said:

I'd rather if the AI could pilot surface vehicles to be honest. 

Surface pilot and target prioritization.

If BDA could support tank battles that would be pretty swell. But the Pilot AI system is already pretty much computer magic as it is. I've got no idea how it could possibly work.

[Galane]

Since people have made various addons for BDA, why not enhancements for the autopilot? Shutting off the AI's on the survivors one at a time then manually landing each can be a bit of a chore. Clicking a button to invoke a script to land them one at a time would be quite nice, especially if it could prioritize based on fuel remaining. Lowest fuel gets to land first.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

13 hours ago, Oxygentlemen said:

love BDarmory! maybe make a compatibility thing with KIS and allow kerbals to hold infantry weapons!

 

7 hours ago, stickman939 said:

Not been updated for awhile tho

Hi , following the introduction of KSP 1.2 it was discovered that Kerbals are unaffected by BDA products,  prior to 1.2 and in 1.2 pre  The weapons provided in FPS  were capable of removing Kerbals from this plane of existence, now this is not the case there's very little point n pursuing further development.  It's worth mentioning that the weapons still work perfectly in KSP1.3x, the damage output is appropriate for hand held weapons so with very few (3) exceptions the FPS weapons are unable to damage vehicles or buildings.

Spoiler

 

[LoadingTimeExpert]

what ammo does the MLRS use? i cant seem to find the missile

[XOC2008]

1 hour ago, [email protected] said:

what ammo does the MLRS use? i cant seem to find the missile

The MLRS is from North Kerbin Weaponry and uses the M-26 and M-30 rockets, also from NKW

[Taris]

One request, would you mind implement secondary binding? I would like to use a joystick and map its trigger to fire gun button.

Thank you.

[XOC2008]

6 minutes ago, Taris said:

One request, would you mind implement secondary binding? I would like to use a joystick and map its trigger to fire gun button.

Thank you.

Unless something is different that I haven't noticed, you can use the BDA input settings and map the fire weapon control to ANY button, including a joystick fire button.

[LoadingTimeExpert]

8 hours ago, XOC2008 said:

The MLRS is from North Kerbin Weaponry and uses the M-26 and M-30 rockets, also from NKW

thx

[Galane]

How do I stop the AI from always diving down to below 1,000 meters before it starts to attack? The jet I built mine to destroy has the same minimum 500 meter altitude and it has a 3000 max altitude. I can't get the max slider to go to 3000 so I set it to 3025.

At the default settings with 8000 distance, my planes always cede first shot to the enemy while they're wasting time heading for the deck. The enemy planes immediately launch their AMRAAMs from around 2600 meter altitude. Both are set to 3 missiles per target, mine has 6 AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders. My plane has three Vulcans VS two. The enemy has four AMRAAMs and two sidewinders.

I want to make my plane stay high and shoot early too!

If I shorten the distance to 5000, my planes win about 50% of the engagements because they haven't lost so much of the high ground before they pull their thumbs out and decide to fire missiles. At times they have managed to get first kill right off - then lose spectacularly to the single remaining enemy. There is much happiness when mine gets two kills without receiving a scratch.

My plane https://kerbalx.com/Galane/O-Twisted-FTP-BDA

Its nemesis! https://kerbalx.com/goduranus/ADF-01-Falken-Crewed

It took some work meeting the Falken in maneuverability. But I can't figure out its tricks for why it attacks the way it does.

[goduranus]

Sorry guy I saw your message about a new dev version coming out, but I haven't played KSP for a couple of days so haven't tested  the infinite fuel fix.

[Galane]

What does the Pitch Ki adjustment do? It's skipped over on the Wiki and in-game manual.

Will fiddling with it make planes stop trying to change direction by pitching up 180 degrees? Fighters need *smooth* turns to keep their speed up as high as possible. Speed = survival.

[Darth Jeb]

I am here to make a request. 

I know BahamutoD himself abandoned it. But can someone please think about reviving the Seismic charge? I think it was one of the coolest and one of its kind. (Ksp needs some good sci-fi weapons !) 

Please can anyone atleast provide the source? 

Sorry but I couldn't resist asking.

[gomker]

2 hours ago, Darth Jeb said:

Please can anyone atleast provide the source? 

The source has always been there - just no part for it - https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/BDArmory/blob/master/BDArmory/Parts/SeismicChargeFX.cs 

The team has many other things that need fixing right now from Damage code and Armor to , well look at the issue list  

Sci-Fi weaponry has been a topic of discussion but no roadmap has been put in place. I suggest if you make a request in the Issues - we use these to track projects and categorize Feature Requests, which I may be making a "Sci-Fi" tag for as we have a few others that are in that category.

4 hours ago, Galane said:

What does the Pitch Ki adjustment do? It's skipped over on the Wiki and in-game manual.

Will fiddling with it make planes stop trying to change direction by pitching up 180 degrees? Fighters need *smooth* turns to keep their speed up as high as possible. Speed = survival.

Pitch KI is used for stabilizing pitch usually for tweaking Small vs. Large planes (think F18 vs C130) Sounds like you need to tweak a few other values. Here are some notes that cover the controller in more detail

 

Steer factor is the amount it steers depending on the magnitude of the error.
So say a desired destination A is 10 degrees above the plane, and B is 30 degrees up.
With a low steer factor, it might do a 50% pull to steer to A, and a 100% pull to reach B (then decrease to 50% by the time B is only 10 degrees up).
With a high steer factor, it might do a 100% pull already to get to A.
Pulling hard when its not that far off might mean overshooting because you're building up angular momentum.

That's where damping comes in, as it applies steering to counteract angular momentum. 
So you want to tweak and balance both steer factor and damping until you get the results you want.
It's kind of like a spring and damper system, where steer factor is the spring constant.

Sounds to me like your Steer factor needs to come down a bit.  If your plane is super maneuverable in manual flight you will always need to lower this value , also Steer Limiter to prevent jerking adjustments.

[gomker]

On 9/5/2017 at 1:44 AM, Galane said:

How do I stop the AI from always diving down to below 1,000 meters before it starts to attack? The jet I built mine to destroy has the same minimum 500 meter altitude and it has a 3000 max altitude. I can't get the max slider to go to 3000 so I set it to 3025.

Galane, you may just be bumping into the limits of the system as designed. For context, the code for GaurdAI and AI Pilot is pretty much the original from Baha and Ferram.  The avoidance routines are being triggered by missile lock and part of how the code is expected to work.  Do you have countermeasures installed as well (Flare, Chaff and ECM?) You should see those firing immediately on missile lock. Also you can see more about "what" the AI is doing by enabling Debug labels and toward the bottom you can see more diagnostic messages.

 

On 9/5/2017 at 1:44 AM, Galane said:

I want to make my plane stay high and shoot early too!

There may be more we can do later with @TheDog's pending Radar improvements. My thoughts were using the lock strength as a limiter for the avoidance routines that are being triggered. 

If you could create an issue here and put in your craft and test scenarios we can start looking at the logic and discuss further with the team.

[Galane]

Flares and chaff plus ECM pod. Part of it is due to my planes literally flipping out when the fight starts. Instead of executing a smooth turn towards the enemy they try to pitch over 180 degrees. Then they either flap around for a bit (and usually get blown up) or they regain control and dive. Then they get their act together and fly properly - if they haven't been blown to tiny bits.

More fiddling with AI and control authority settings... I can get less craziness and more shooting sooner at the start, at the expense of reducing maneuverability later. Win/Loss ratio is getting better.

ADF-01 Falken Crewed, what is your secret? (Other than weighing about a ton less?)

[Galane]

Flying Missile Rail. Can this be done? It's a drone with one or two missile rails, fitted with AMRAAMs.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a28100/darpa-factory-in-a-can-drones/

[XOC2008]

1 hour ago, Galane said:

Flying Missile Rail. Can this be done? It's a drone with one or two missile rails, fitted with AMRAAMs.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a28100/darpa-factory-in-a-can-drones/

I don't see why it wouldn't work. Use any number of drone cores, add wings, rails, and missiles. Launch. Watch the carnage.

[Galane]

The FMR would need BDA AI and weapon manager modules of its own. Until the FMR is launched its AI would need to be dormant. Any way to launch it and activate its AI, with the drone inheriting the mothership's team association?

[XOC2008]

24 minutes ago, Galane said:

The FMR would need BDA AI and weapon manager modules of its own. Until the FMR is launched its AI would need to be dormant. Any way to launch it and activate its AI, with the drone inheriting the mothership's team association?

You'd have to make it as a subassembly with its own ai and WM and just make sure that it was on the same team or switch it using vessel switcher, after you decouple and activate pilot. Which can also be done via vessel switcher, so long as the engines are already on.

as far as the ai being dormant I'm not sure of much there as they'd be considered a single vessel till it was decoupled.

Edited September 9, 2017 by XOC2008

[Galane]

I'd want the FMR setup to be fully AI controllable, treated pre-launch as a single missile. The mothership AI launches an FMR as one missile, then the FMR AI launches both of its missiles at the same target, having inherited targeting from its mothership.

Could have different FMRs for different missile types. One for heat seeking, one for RADAR homing. Could build them from Oscar-B's drained of oxidizer, a small circular intake, a Juno and a few bits of wing. Having a dedicated FMR core piece with built in wings, liquid fuel tank and Tiny size mounts front and rear would be good. Add the intake and jet, or an Oscar-B with just oxidizer, a small rocket engine and a nose cone. Many possibilities.

[Galane]

If I fly with unbreakable joints and no crash damage and infinite fuel, does that make the planes invulnerable? That'd be easier than making a practice ammo mod for BDA. Why? For an easier job of AI and control tuning. The task would go faster if a plane with poor settings isn't getting shot down repeatedly. Adjust until it's flying acceptably and getting more hits on the opposition than its getting on you.