Arming and dogfighting the included stock planes?

[Galane]

Instead of building new planes for BDArmory fights, how about taking the stock planes that come with KSP and arming them? I've done a couple to see how well they do.

Rules? Replace nosecones with radomes but no other structural changes from stock. Oxidizer can be drained from tanks on spaceplanes to save weight or shift CG. Same for fuel. AI, weapon manager and control authority and pitch/yaw/roll settings of control surfaces and engine gimbals are free to change. Set default altitude to 3000 and minimum to 500.

Weapons. Any of the ones that come with the base BDA mod that you can fit on a plane and still get off the ground. No turrets or other guns that can change their angle, unless their ability to turn is disabled. If you want to mount a 105mm Howitzer, its pitch and yaw have to be turned off.

Maximum number of missiles???

Could have it where everyone has to use the same loadout of six AIM-20, two AIM-9 and two Vulcans with two 20mm ammo boxes (as maximum, use fewer if you want to run out of weapons first) but that could get boring. In 2 VS 2 team dogfights I've done, the majority of the time the survivors still have missiles left and haven't used many bullets from that loadout.

ECM pod highly recommended. It's heavy enough to be used as a center of mass adjuster. Should there be a limit on how many chaff and flare dispensers are allowed?

If you've never used BDArmory it's a good idea to download some armed planes from KerbalX to examine their build and pit them against one another to see what works and what doesn't. When you've found some good ones, arm up some of the stock planes and fight them VS each other and to other people's planes.

I recommend the ADF-01 Falken Crewed as an opposition force plane to try to beat. If your plane can manage to shoot that one down you're doing well. I've no idea how it flies so well. I've tried to make my own designs with the centers of mass and lift so close together, with controls cranked up to 150 and the aggressive AI steering settings, but I can't match it *and* make them fly that good. I have built one design that's close (Cranky Delta), two of it can beat two of the Falkens pretty often but I've not hit on a design that dominates the Falken.

If you can arm one of the stock planes and shoot down the Falken with it, my hat is off to you.

Unfortunately I don't have tons of time to run plane fights, nor does my PC have enough extra power to do video capture of games. It's a six core AMD FX (was that ever a letdown, barely better than the Phenom II quad core it replaced) with 8 gigs DDR3 but the GPU is an old 9800 GT with 1 gig RAM.

[Kernel Kraken]

Aww man, This I have to try! I have an amazing idea for the mallard! Is it ok for us to flip cargo bays upside down?

 

[Galane]

Anyone have a beefy computer and the spare time to record battles?

No changes to the original structure other than swapping nosecones for radomes. Will the rotary bomb rack work with the AI to launch missiles? Stock planes from previous KSP releases, that aren't included with 1.3, can also be used. If an old one won't load, it's possible to do a find and replace of part names with a text editor on the craft file. To avoid complications it's best to replace parts with ones that are the same size. For example I fixed the low fuel problem on someone else's plane where he'd used a single FL-T400 and used a couple more of them on pylons for drop tanks. Replacing the rocket tank with a MK1 Liquid Fuel Fuselage was a simple matter of find and replace on the part names from their cfg files.

One thing to note when doing this is if the part name has underscores _ they must be replaced with dots . in the craft file. Dunno why but that's the way it is.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Galane