Air Superiority Fighter Competition

[Abraxis]

Honestly, I don't have all that much hope. I've been having so many problems with BD AI, ranging from it doing nothing but flying in a straight line, as can be seen during some moments in the video where planes seem to become inactive, to refusing to fire both sidewinders and AMRAAMs even presented with the perfect opportunity. I can only hope they devote an update entirely to remaking the AI portion of the mod, as its sometimes questionable performance isn't necessarily a single glitch or bug per se, but rather the cumulative result from numerous, individually-tiny oversights, most of which, upon being eliminated, would help the dev team's cause overall.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Abraxis

[exbyde]

Well, lets get two more battles out, the Pike seems to be beating the pants off of everything else here. First was @NotAnAimbot's Novi, which had an impressive first round, but lost 2 and 3.

Then it took on @drtricky's dorito, whose missile-based strategy meant it never had a chance. The Pike is exceedingly hard to lock onto, and by the time you do, you can be guaranteed the pike has already shot at you. That was a massacre.

And finally, the Pikes crushed my Mini Val fighter pretty thoroughly, as that primarily uses a missile routing strategy of all AIM-120s.

 

And so, today we have a new, uncontested first place fighter in @Eidahlil's Pike. This may usher in a new age of drone supremacy, once held by Sanngrior.

Edited December 29, 2017 by exbyde

[Guest]

Is @dundun92 next?

[Mukita12]

@dundun93 YO CHILL OUT EVERYBODY HAS THEYRE CHANCE!!!

[drtricky]

@exbyde The Dorito was actually designed around the assumption that its missiles would not hit. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, drtricky said:

@exbyde The Dorito was actually designed around the assumption that its missiles would not hit. 

I definitely noticed that. It is a DOGFIGHTER!

[Piatzin]

4 hours ago, exbyde said:

This may usher in a new age of drone supremacy, once held by Sanngrior.

*And very briefly by the controversial Berzerkers

Looks like smaller planes are better. Might scrap the Lancer and focus on making the Berzerkers more maneuverable, and without turrets....

[Eidahlil]

On 12/29/2017 at 6:45 AM, Abraxis said:

Honestly, I don't have all that much hope. I've been having so many problems with BD AI, ranging from it doing nothing but flying in a straight line, as can be seen during some moments in the video where planes seem to become inactive, to refusing to fire both sidewinders and AMRAAMs even presented with the perfect opportunity. I can only hope they devote an update entirely to remaking the AI portion of the mod, as its sometimes questionable performance isn't necessarily a single glitch or bug per se, but rather the cumulative result from numerous, individually-tiny oversights, most of which, upon being eliminated, would help the dev team's cause overall.

I've actually looked at the code considering maybe I should just fix some of that myself, and turns out it really would be an impressively large amount of work.

Also, to be fair, the Pike does use and abuse some of these quirks. It is very much a meta build. I can do a "quick" postmortem if anyone's interested, though my "quick" tends to get rather wordy anyway.

• Extending, aka flying in a straight line doing nothing:
  1. The intention here is to build some distance so you can get a clearer shot.
  2. It seems there are people (who build hyper-maneuverable fighters), who wish this behaviour just went away (me included), and there are people (who build high speed interceptors), who think the AI does not do enough of that.
  3. What can you do about it? Well, the most common scenario is when the AI decides it wants to use a missile, but is too close for a clear launch. To counter this, you can make it think it's going too slow to pull the maneuver off by raising the idleSpeed. Or just go the way of the Pike, and don't bring missiles.
  4. The other scenario is when the AI decides that it is already turning in circles for 15 seconds and cannot achieve a kill. Well, kill faster.
  5. There's also a more obscure scenario involving a target under you and below your default altitude. So, generally, don't set the default altitude too high.
• Weapon selection, aka not shooting when you have a clear shot:
  1. The AI will have one, and only one type of weapon selected.
  2. The selection is primarily done based on what's in range and the "situation" of the target, "airborne" in our case.
  3. In theory, the AI will pick its best missile when above "gun range" set in weapon manager, and best gun when below. It doesn't actually always obey the gun range, I'm not sure why.
  4. The AI thinks the AIM-120 is better than the AIM-9, because of reasons. So while you have AIM-120, it mostly won't use Sidewinders.
  5. What can you do about it, especially against stealthy fighters? You could increase the minRange of AIM-120 to about 5km, which seems to be the effective range of Sidewinders. Or just accept that this is the era of stealth fighters, and relegate the AIM-120 to history. Which brings us to:
• Stealth, aka being unlockable by radar:
  1. The basic Radar Cross Section (RCS) is rather uncomplicated, you can see the number in SPH, radars have a detection curve, the larger you are, the further away they will lock on you.
  2. ECM are rather more complicated. They both increase your signature, and give you a multiplier for your signature for lock-on purposes.
  3. Chaff also give you a similar (just very temporary) multiplier.
  4. We can get rid of a lot of that complexity by focusing on the lock-on multiplier. I know the minmaxers among you are already thinking "can we make it go to zero?". Turns out, we can do better. We can make it go negative.
  5. You can check out the specifics on git, but this is engineering, not science, so, of course, we can have a nice table instead of complicated formulas:

     Number of ECM	How much RCS can they hide completely
     1	5 m2
     2	8.25 m2
     3	10.36 m2
     4	11.73 m2
     5	12.62 m2
     Infinite	14.28 m2

     As you can see, you will still want a rather small RCS, but the choice can be more informed about that design decision.

  6. This is not an absolute truth, you might still get locked-on at extreme (~10km) range for larger RCS, because ECM jamming has a limited range. I also saw a few times when AIM-120 were fired in the videos above after achieving a lock for reasons unknown, but they lose interest immediately.
  7. NB: The AI will only turn on ECM when AMRAAMs are fired at it, you have to turn them on via action groups for this to work. And make sure you have enough electricity to run them all. And no, you do not need chaff if you do this.
• Heat, aka now that we're immune to AMRAAMs, what can we do about Sidewinders:
  1. Turns out, not too much. The signature is measured in Kelvin (if I understand correctly), which currently means the difference in lock-on range between a room temperature glass of water and a red-hot engine is 4 km vs 5.5 km. EDIT: Actually a room temperature glass of water is locked at 1km, so the method below is more effective than I expected when writing this.
  2. So, what can we do? Well, the AI of the other side will start dodging as soon as you fire that Sidewinder, so those 4 km vs 5.5 km can still be rather critical in making sure you fire first.
  3. The engines are by far the biggest source of heat, so cutting throttle before entering Sidewinder range will give you that edge. You might notice the Pike does exactly that - sort of "gliding in for the kill".
  4. To make the AI do that simply limit its maxSpeed (and make sure it can reach that speed on limited throttle).
  5. This also has the benefit of reducing Sidewinder friendly fire, by the way.

And now that we've solved these problems, we're left with the good old-fashioned gunfighting problem, where more dakka, higher TWR and lower wing-loading carry the day.

EDIT: Guess I might as well post it, since I went through the pages looking through the current queue:

1. Looks like next up is @Mukita12's https://kerbalx.com/Mukita12/FL-2-Triango-Combat
2. @53miner53's https://kerbalx.com/53miner53/Fighter-3-Mk3
3. @Abraxis's https://kerbalx.com/Abraxis/DN-65C
4. @dundun92's https://kerbalx.com/dundun92/IV-1 with its 118 parts
5. And, maybe possibly lastly, my https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Tank

Edited January 1, 2018 by Eidahlil

[exbyde]

7 hours ago, dundun93 said:

Is @dundun92 next?

 

On 12/18/2017 at 8:41 AM, exbyde said:

New rule, your submission(s) get delayed 24hrs each time you ask how their testing is going. 

nope

 

7 hours ago, Mukita12 said:

@dundun93 YO CHILL OUT EVERYBODY HAS THEYRE CHANCE!!!

thank you. It takes a while for me to test everything out, especially on a plane that goes the entire roster.

7 hours ago, drtricky said:

@exbyde The Dorito was actually designed around the assumption that its missiles would not hit. 

right, the missiles are for routing, should have figured as mine's designed in the same way, but narrating dogfights at midnight is .

4 hours ago, Earthlinger said:

*And very briefly by the controversial Berzerkers

Looks like smaller planes are better. Might scrap the Lancer and focus on making the Berzerkers more maneuverable, and without turrets....

you can put tank turrets on them now. and good luck!

3 hours ago, Eidahlil said:

I've actually looked at the code considering maybe I should just fix some of that myself, and turns out it really would be an impressively large amount of work.

*some sciencey shtuff*

EDIT: Guess I might as well post it, since I went through the pages looking through the current queue:

1. Looks like next up is @Mukita12's https://kerbalx.com/Mukita12/FL-2-Triango-Combat
2. @53miner53's https://kerbalx.com/53miner53/Fighter-3-Mk3
3. @Abraxis's https://kerbalx.com/Abraxis/DN-65C
4. @dundun92's https://kerbalx.com/dundun92/IV-1 with its 118 parts
5. And, maybe possibly lastly, my https://kerbalx.com/juzeris/Tank

thanks for the list. Didn't realise the IV-1 made the super category...@dundun92 put your plane on atkins, 100 parts or less please or it will be fighting Monstron.

Also @admin any chance i can get control of the first post?

Edited December 29, 2017 by exbyde

[exbyde]

@Abraxis @dundun92 @dundun93 @drtricky @Earthlinger @Eidahlil@HeroBrian_333 @l0kki @SuicidalInsanity @Thor Wotansen @Joseph Kerman 

Just a heads up, there apparently isn't a way to transferr thread ownership. I'll probably request a lock within the next few hours after a new thread has been started, since herobrian will be gone for a bit, and it would be nice to be able to update rules and leaderboards without going back 8 pages on a quote. I'll probably ask for no one to post on the new thread to create a second "reserved" post for any new updates or the roster.

On 12/23/2017 at 2:43 PM, HeroBrian_333 said:

Sorry, been very busy. I don't think I will have a lot of time to devote to this thread for a while. So, I was wondering if @exbyde would like to have ownership of this thread, seeing as I will not have time to devote to this for the foreseeable future.

EDIT: NEW THREAD IS HERE:

 

Edited December 29, 2017 by exbyde

[HeroBrian_333]

That works, just link to this one first.

And post a link on this one.

[Mukita12]

So MOD CAN YOU PLS LOCK THIS

[Piatzin]

5 hours ago, Mukita12 said:

So MOD CAN YOU PLS LOCK THIS

Just stop posting