WW2 BAD-T IV BDAc AI Dogfight Tournament

[sturmhauke]

19 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Er, yeah liftoff is at 60. I was pointing at the horizon and throttling down until I began to lose altitude, but that's not right. Let me get back to you.

Ok so I flew around 500-1000 meters off the coast at low throttle and high AoA. Stall speed is about 35 m/s with flaps up and 25 m/s with flaps down. However, I had to crank the elevators to max deflection for the flaps down test (it's normally limited for combat) - at the normal setting it's about 28 m/s.

[SuicidalInsanity]

First match should be up in half an hour or so.

[Pds314]

Hmmmmmm.. I wonder if, now that groundforces and boats can be somewhat automated using the experimental surface autopilit, it would be possible to reduce the complexity of each craft down to, say, 30 parts, possibly use cheat engine to slow down time, and do a full on air/land/sea battle in KSP with the goal being to take an Island or something.

 

Obviously there are a few things that won't work. Insofar as I'm aware, the AI doesn't know how to properly pick a landing site, even choosing to ditch in the sea as equally preferable to landing on land. This means that while we can start planes on a carrier or runway and expect them to takeoff fine, we can't expect them to land there. At best the might avoid landing straight into enemy territory, but they may do exactly that if they are not actively being fired on. I'm also not sure if any of the AIs would understand that for example trying to use a tank maingun against planes is typically a bad strategy, and likewise engaging ground targets in a fighter meant to kill other planes is a bad idea.

 

Similarly, it may be difficult for some craft to be air-spawned even though they would have difficulty with carrier launch.

 

Still, it's an interesting possibility.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Pds314

[SuicidalInsanity]

First match, between @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker vs. @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk4:

Sorry about the stuttering, especially near the end; I'm not sure what is causing it, possibly some combination of high part count + some BDA process - stutter didn't start until after planes reached min altitude - but I'm looking into workarounds to fix it.
 

[Pds314]

27 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

First match, between @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker vs. @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk4:

Sorry about the stuttering, especially near the end; I'm not sure what is causing it, possibly some combination of high part count + some BDA process - stutter didn't start until after planes reached min altitude - but I'm looking into workarounds to fix it.
 

TWO deaths on the initial merge. xD. Those are the first two gun kills I have seen on the merge.

aleksey444's plane is absolutely lethal with that Mk108, more lethal by far than my heavy was. Even though it has half the armament. (Not counting 7.62s because I didn't really see them do any damage, although they work for harassment).

WRT stutter, I've found that aside from glitching out sound somewhat, using cheat engine to slow time can give smooth FPS even under the worst possible conditions, often more than you'd expect (i.e. slowing down time by 50% can more than merely double the playback FPS) Of course, you have to re-accelerate it back up to realtime.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Pds314

[aleksey444]

Yay!!!

[Noir]

I was dealing with the stuttering while building my plane. It's extremely annoying because I almost never get/notice any major stuttering in my main game, which has more mods installed. I think it might also have an effect on the AI, as I noticed during testing that the AI would fail to fire or straight up miss during the stutter period. With what Pds314 said, I know a lot of Cities Skylines Youtubers slow down the in game speed with mods  to help with smoothing out the video.

Good fight either way. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out.

[sturmhauke]

Welp... I'm not winning this thing. I hope to win at least one round though.

[Pds314]

If I remember correctly I recorded this old BDA vid at 50% speed then sped back to normal because it was not even close to running smoothly while recording normally. It's still laggy, but it's at least mainly laggy when when something blows up or switches targets:

Please note this was in old BDA and not in FAR, planes do not break, they get annihilated. I didn't give people any limit on gun spamming either. I think I set the part count limit pretty high as well. Also note I had several visual enhancement mods and of course video recording running, in some of the most demanding terrain on Kerbin.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2018 by Pds314

[SuicidalInsanity]

Ran some tests, and determined the cause of the stuttering issue was Adjustable Landing Gear - I'd need to look at the code for ALG to see what the issue is, but something isn't optimized somewhere - but removing ALG gears and replacing them with stock ones fixes the problem, so I'll be doing that for all remaining planes with ALG. That said, @aleksey444, @Pds314: Are you content with the outcome of the first match, or would you prefer it re-run on the grounds the stutter may have had detrimental effects on craft AI and performance?

 

[Pds314]

2 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Ran some tests, and determined the cause of the stuttering issue was Adjustable Landing Gear - I'd need to look at the code for ALG to see what the issue is, but something isn't optimized somewhere - but removing ALG gears and replacing them with stock ones fixes the problem, so I'll be doing that for all remaining planes with ALG. That said, @aleksey444, @Pds314: Are you content with the outcome of the first match, or would you prefer it re-run on the grounds the stutter may have had detrimental effects on craft AI and performance?

 

It would be cool to see a second round with no stutter. That being said I'm pretty sure from the last one that @aleksey444 would probably still win.

[aleksey444]

I don not have any objections to a rerun.

But I am very concerned about changing the landing gear. I picked ALG (and scaled it down) because it weighs less than stock. Changing will probably increase the plane's mass and correspondingly TWR.  It might also change CoM position. And possibly some aerodynamics. Planes are tricky - you can change one thing and it doesn't behave the same anymore. Also, stock gear won't be as tall, and it'll make my prop touch the ground. It won't matter in flight, but it won't be as pretty

So, if you do change it, please be surgical about it. There's a mod that tells you the precise location of CoM and CoL. I think it's called Precise Editor (I'm writing from my phone, so I can't look it up right now). You could use it to get the original CoM location, and make sure the new CoM is the same. Also, if weight changes, you could drain a little fuel. My plane has about 20 minutes of fuel in the wings, as shown by Kerbal Engineer in SPH. I couldn't make it less, because the fuel slider's next step was only for about 10 minutes of fuel. But you (unlike me) could change that with a text editor.

So, please be very careful. Try to keep the mass and CoM the same.

Thanks.

[sturmhauke]

3 minutes ago, aleksey444 said:

I don not have any objections to a rerun.

But I am very concerned about changing the landing gear. I picked ALG (and scaled it down) because it weighs less than stock.

...

So, please be very careful. Try to keep the mass and CoM the same.

Thanks.

Seconded. My plane needs a relatively tall nose wheel, given the overall geometry. Using a tail wheel instead is possible, but not preferred, especially since I didn't tune it for that.

[Van Disaster]

On 10/24/2018 at 5:13 AM, SuicidalInsanity said:

I'd need to make some minor changes to make it legal for BAD-T IV/fix B9PW weirdness when loading an older craftfile, but that shouldn't take more than a minute or 2; other than that it should be good to go. Should I include the D.A.C. Deimos X in BAD-T IV's roster?

Whoops, sorry - life got in the way there. If you're still short & need a bot plane, feel free - I think I did a slightly updated one post contest but no idea what state it's in ( I seem to have a Mk XII with extended wingtips, but I suspect it's not tuned ).

 

On 10/29/2018 at 1:39 AM, Noir said:

Thanks. I would have made the centre tube/fuselage wider, to make it more seamless which is how the Mk.I was. But, I didn't want  to cover up the engines to much and be consider cheaty or anything. That part isn't even connected to anything, it's just there for looks.

This is what I was originally basing the design on. The British also had a bi-plane with a similar configuration.

I don't know if Retrofuture is being updated still, but that did have a centre prop part -

Edited October 31, 2018 by Van Disaster

[sturmhauke]

I can't tell if that's an airplane or a grappling hook...

[SuicidalInsanity]

Good News, Everyone! I've done some more testing, and determined it's the ALG wheel motor module, rather than the landing gear and primary gear functions itself, so the stutter issue can be resolved by simply removing the offending sub-module, rather than having to remove and replace the whole gear and the mass/shape/CoM issues that leads to.

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

Match 2, between @Kunza's K-1 and @dundun93's Tallyhawk Mk XIVb

 

[aleksey444]

4 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Good News, Everyone! I've done some more testing, and determined it's the ALG wheel motor module, rather than the landing gear and primary gear functions itself, so the stutter issue can be resolved by simply removing the offending sub-module, rather than having to remove and replace the whole gear and the mass/shape/CoM issues that leads to.

 

This is indeed excellent news!

I thought my concerns about mass, CoM, aerodynamics (and even aesthetics) were legitimate.  And as you probably know, after you build, test, and tune an airplane for a few weeks, you get defensive when someone wants to change something in it.  It seems your found a perfect solution.  Plus this saves you a lot of time.  I check this forum many times each day for any new fights or discussions, so I'm very happy the tournament can continue.

I also have stutter issues.  I thought i was because my laptop was overheating. Please explain how remove the wheel motor sub-module to fix the stutter.

Thanks!

 

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

Yeah, I really didn't want to mess around with other people's aircraft either, so being able to fix ALG is very much the preferred solution.
As for how, easiest way is via MM patch - create a new .cfg somewhere inside your GameData folder, open it and add the following:

@PART[KF-ALG*]
{
        !MODULE[KSPWheelMotor] {}
}

 

[Guest]

15 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

@dundun93's

its @dundun92 not 93 lol.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, dundun92 said:

its @dundun92 not 93 lol.

yeah lol... that got me hyped up there.....

[SuicidalInsanity]

Round 3, between @Van Disaster's D.A.C. Deimos X and dundun92 @dundun93's P-009: 

 

[aleksey444]

10 hours ago, dundun92 said:

its @dundun92 not 93 lol.

It's also misspelled as "dudun92" on challonge.com.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Here is a stutter-free take two of @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker vs @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk IV: Now with ammo counters and kamikazi:

Lurker pilots are anything but benign, apparently.

Edited November 4, 2018 by SuicidalInsanity

[Pds314]

42 minutes ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Here is a stutter-free take two of @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker vs @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk IV: Now with ammo counters and kamikazi:

Lurker pilots are anything but benign, apparently.

THREE midair collisions in one round. Also "you spin me round right round like a record baby round round round round." Just wow.

 

Also +1 for opening 'chute xD

Edited November 4, 2018 by Pds314