WW2 BAD-T III - BDAc AI Dogfight Tournament

[DoctorDavinci]

@Joseph Kerman's KF-87 vs @keptin's Rolf-75 Spicypepper

Sorry, no special arena this time ... The KF-87 needed the whole field beside the KSC just to get off the ground (see video)

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

@dundun93's P-92B vs @DoctorDavinci's Slap Chop:

 

Edited November 5, 2017 by SuicidalInsanity

[Guest]

2 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

@dundun93's P-92B vs @DoctorDavinci's Slap Chop:

 

I am TOTALLY SUPRIZED!!!

i though I would lose 0 to 3!

i am so happy that me and my brother will be going to the semi finals!(I really don't care if I win. I'm not expecting to go in first place)

Edited November 5, 2017 by Guest

[Van Disaster]

20 hours ago, tetryds said:

I would personally rather if the battle was the top priority, instead of obeying desired altitude parameters.

I have an idea for that - throwing out the "below min alt" behaviour & just shifting the current flight target waypoint altitiude upwards instead might do it ( the same for avoiding collision with ground ). Might also increase CFIT because the recovery will often be without the craft being wings-level, but you can just increase min alt at that point because it's not going to be so disruptive. Should be reasonably easy to test, anyway.

DrD your music choices are wonderfully appropriate

The P-92 is a pretty solid plane that could just have used a few tweaks, like a lot of entries - the wings are a bit stronger than they need to be ( and so heavier ), and you can put the ammo inside the fuselage where it won't cause drag - the rule was no clipping resource containers into other resource containers, not no clipping of anything. There's other little touches like making sure the tailwheel is inside the fuselage when it's retracted which only make minor differences but are worth doing.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Van Disaster

[SuicidalInsanity]

Could work, though there are a few situations where you want the Ai to break off what it's doing and pull up to prevent a crash - sudden change in topography/pulling up from a dive/etc. Maybe weight the pull up behavior? So instead of the current 'if RadarAltitude !>= MinAlt -> GoTo State PullUp', it's instead something more like
localval i; i==[RandNum(0,0.5)];  if RadarAlt < MinAlt && VerticalVelocity > -20m/s ->  get i; if(RadarAlt/MinAlt) < (i*2) -> GoTo State PullUp
so the craft would only be guaranteed to break off what it's doing if it's either careening into the ground or gotten way too low due to combat energy losses?

Anyway, enough musing on the code from me for now, it's time for another match
SemiFinal 1 - @dundun92's P-57 vs @Eidahlil's Wasp Mk3.3

 

[Van Disaster]

It does switch to "avoiding collision" sometimes when I think it's looking at terrain, I haven't really dug through that properly yet - even then just adjusting the current flight target a little rather than switching behaviour should be ok. You don't ideally want branching behaviour,  you want to combine multiple behaviours.

One other thing I don't believe hasn't been suggested already, how about turning on interior overlay of closed cockpits for videoing fights? I wonder if there's some flight suit textures around.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Van Disaster

[SuicidalInsanity]

All matches have already been recorded, so no interior overlays for now, but I can keep it in mind for future stuff.
Speaking of which, here's SemiFinal 2
@Bob_Saget54's Falcon XII vs @dundun93's P-92B:

 

[Matuchkin]

Anyone else watching round three like: "He had ONE GODDAMN WING, and you didn't think to LOWER YOUR THROTTLE just ONE MEASLY NOTCH?!?!"

Edited November 6, 2017 by Matuchkin

[Guest]

5 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Could work, though there are a few situations where you want the Ai to break off what it's doing and pull up to prevent a crash - sudden change in topography/pulling up from a dive/etc. Maybe weight the pull up behavior? So instead of the current 'if RadarAltitude !>= MinAlt -> GoTo State PullUp', it's instead something more like
localval i; i==[RandNum(0,0.5)];  if RadarAlt < MinAlt && VerticalVelocity > -20m/s ->  get i; if(RadarAlt/MinAlt) < (i*2) -> GoTo State PullUp
so the craft would only be guaranteed to break off what it's doing if it's either careening into the ground or gotten way too low due to combat energy losses?

Anyway, enough musing on the code from me for now, it's time for another match
SemiFinal 1 - @dundun92's P-57 vs @Eidahlil's Wasp Mk3.3

 

 

42 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

All matches have already been recorded, so no interior overlays for now, but I can keep it in mind for future stuff.
Speaking of which, here's SemiFinal 2
@Bob_Saget54's Falcon XII vs @dundun93's P-92B:

 

Great Dogfights anyway!

Great job @Bob_Saget54 and @Eidahlil!!!(I didn't even expect to win my first dogfight. Much less being on the top 4!

[SuicidalInsanity]

Fun Fact: I went back and tested the Falcon's flight abilities post match, and the Falcon XII is still flight and combat viable with only one wing. I don't mean the wing and a half it ended round 3 with, I mean when one wing is entirely gone.

[Van Disaster]

That was quite brilliant. Mine has inboard ailerons to help it if the outer panel gets shot off ( you can see one flying around for quite a while in the fight with SI's plane ) but it's not *that* good.

[Bob_Saget54]

@SuicidalInsanity I "designed" the plane to fly with one half of the wing shot off (Hence the large ailerons on the wings) so it would have a chance in combat, never thought that it would actually shoot someone down with it. I never thought that my plane would be able to properly fly with only one wing, thank you for testing that for me 

@dundun93 I actually used the P-92B as one of my main opponents in the testing stage. It was a good match and it went near how I expected from the initial testing periods, with the P-92B nearly claiming one of the victories.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Bob_Saget54 said:

 

@dundun93 I actually used the P-92B as one of my main opponents in the testing stage. It was a good match and it went near how I expected from the initial testing periods, with the P-92B nearly claiming one of the victories.

Wow!

van dasater also commented about my airplane:

I fiddled around with your plane a little - basically cleaned it up a bit, tried to shift as much mass as central as I could ( that meant bringing the engines inwards, so the guns all went in the nose - that's also good because that's more central too ) without changing the character of plane and then removed a bit of the tail to bring the aero balance forwards a bit. And took a bit of ammo out, I think. Didn't really fiddle with the AI much but it beats the Slap Chop in a more convincing fashion.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ygem1oy3hb04qjq/P-92Bm2.craft?dl=0

As to *why*: when aircraft perform aerobatics they rotate around each axis; the closer to the axis of rotation each heavy part is, the less force it takes to start and stop rotating it - basically that means you can either rotate & stop rotating faster with the same controls, or you can rotate & stop rotating the same with smaller controls, which means less drag. The horizontal fixed tail in a fighter generally doesn't do much lifting but does cause drag, so you want that as small as will keep the plane stable ( the vertical one on the other hand does a lot of work because there's no other vertical surface ).

And I do have to say, my design was pretty sturdy. I still flew and fought when it lost its parts of its tail and the outer part of its wings. It was rushed, but was a basic, easy to fly design that would make it a good test plane.

[Guest]

On 11/5/2017 at 12:35 PM, Van Disaster said:

The P-92 is a pretty solid plane that could just have used a few tweaks, like a lot of entries - the wings are a bit stronger than they need to be ( and so heavier ), and you can put the ammo inside the fuselage where it won't cause drag - the rule was no clipping resource containers into other resource containers, not no clipping of anything. There's other little touches like making sure the tailwheel is inside the fuselage when it's retracted which only make minor differences but are worth doing.

Thanks!

[Van Disaster]

I liked it, took a little while to redevelop my plane to a point it could reliably beat it ( my entry was actually meant to be for the *last* BAD-T & was shall we say, a little unsettled by current KSP ), so I just fiddled with the P-92 a bit too . I do that a lot.

[SuicidalInsanity]

And so things come to a close with the Final Match for BAD-T III.
@Bob_Saget54's Falcon Mk XII vs @Eidahlil's Wasp Mk3.3:

 

[Van Disaster]

Good old Holst... you know, I wonder if someone's run a tournament on Duna. You can technically run IC engines in any atmosphere if you premix oxygen ( it was tried in subs recycling the exhaust ), you'd need a really huge prop for Duna though....

Congrats to winner! still a few to go in the other tier.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Van Disaster

[Guest]

Spoiler

Once again, @Eidahlil makes a winning design.

SPOILER ALERT!

[Joseph Kerman]

May I host a BAD-T Vietnam? 

Also, one problem with the BDAI: they won't trun on Panthers and RAPIER's.

[Van Disaster]

2 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

May I host a BAD-T Vietnam? 

Also, one problem with the BDAI: they won't trun on Panthers and RAPIER's.

Should use bi-mode afterburning engines just fine. If it isn't now ( because it was in KSP 1.0.5  when the Panther appeared ) then that's a recent issue.

[tetryds]

5 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

May I host a BAD-T Vietnam? 

PM me.

 

Wow, this BAD-T version was fast, still didn't get the chance to watch the final but I'm sure it was a nice battle.

[DoctorDavinci]

@Joseph Kerman - Panthers should work perfectly fine unless you have changed your language in KSP .... English KSP is what BDAc was coded for and I belive Spanish localization works now as well (although unsure about this)

As for Rapiers, there was a fix done in v0.3.0.0 that I specifically brought up so there should be no problem .... that is unless you changed your localization to other than english 

Please raise an issue on our github (https://github.com/PapaJoesSoup/BDArmory/issues) and drop a post-it note at our help desk 

 

Edited November 7, 2017 by DoctorDavinci

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

May I host a BAD-T Vietnam? 

Also, one problem with the BDAI: they won't trun on Panthers and RAPIER's.

I can PM you my mod for @SuicidalInsanitys AA mm patch specifacally made for cold war guns. And my mod, KWS adds some cold war missiles.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Yeah, BAD-T III has gone by fast. Having only 16 entrants helped, but BAD-T III isn't done quite yet. There's still the remainder of Tier 2 to go, and there is a few bonus videos I can post to finish things off in the first tier.

Kind of surprised at how many people are champing at the bit for an immediate sequel, but then again, I suppose I really shouldn't be; there hasn't been a BDA contest of any flavor for a while. As discussed earlier in the thread, I was contemplating a BAD-T IV: 1946-1950 gen-1 jets edition myself, but it doesn't make sense to start another tournament if there are at least two other people who also want to start BDA tourneys set in similar time periods at the same time.
I'm not sure how missiles would fit into the BAD-T framework for a cold war era contest (I spent a several hours just testing the BulletDefs AA patch to make sure the AA weapons performed like they used to back in 1.05, and the addition of armor was another whole series of tests to decide if it should even be included, let alone how much it should cost, and I'm still not entirely happy with the values I arrived at), but it's tetryd's rules I using, so I'll let him be the final arbiter there.

 

[Alioth81]

Just want to say that I picked up Aviator Arsenal a few days ago and as I was late for an entry in round III I played BAD-T for myself

From my first old planes (where I just added weapons) that got shot down by the target dummy or nosedived (I blame that partly on the AI)....

...to designs that actually win easy was a lot of fun.

And they are also better to fly by myself - So I learned a lot!

If there ever is a BAD-T IV I will join.

I sepecifically created my account to tell you (and all modders that made this possible) how much I like the idea.

I never thought that I would enjoy watching the AI test my designs Finally I make use of the SPH.

Is there a repository of past plane designs?

 

I wished that the AI would use the first flap setting for take off (like it does with the landing gear) and than retract it. A few of the beautiful arenas are just difficult to use for some designs. Afterwards there is always the first head on pass that is a bit "spray and pray".

I think the only jet engine is underpowered or overweight compared to a 30KN prop engine but I will try it anyway (it could perform a bit better even if it is only for balance reasons).

To be honest I think I BAD-T with guided rockets would not be that fun for me. WW2 with guns and maybe other unguided ordonance is much better.

I also do not like the concept of invisible armor with no aero effect.

Maybe 3vs3, Mixed teams (where you submit different planes) or high altitude combat could be fun too.