WW2 BAD-T IV BDAc AI Dogfight Tournament

[SuicidalInsanity]

Alright, next round, featuring the first of the Bots: Bot Tetra, who is flying what should be an instantly recognizable aircraft with an intent to redeem its reputation.
Round 5, between @53miner53's Delta, and Bot Tetra's DUMMY Strikes Back:

 

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

Now for Bot Maxim, who has taken an otherwise adequate interceptor and decided that the ideal armament for air combat is a pair of short-range anti-tank guns.
Round 6, between @Noir's Snowpiercer Mk.XI and Bot Maxim's RF-7 Crossbow:

 

[Noir]

That went slightly better than I expected it to go.

Although that last round was rather funny.

Spoiler

I love how it turns into a phoenix after losing a leading edge slat, followed by a successful ram.

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by Noir
Down force

[Sidestrafe2462]

Agggh... I totally forgot about this! will try to be here next year...

Bot Maxim was almost right!  

[Guest]

Ok... the snowpiercer is a sniper. Aims ridiculously well at long ranges, and very manuverable. 

Also, the dummy did strike back lol.

[Pds314]

Episode V: the DUMpire strikes back!

I'm curious why some planes become instant phoenixes when hit. Do they have fuel in the wings? When I've seen a plane ignite it has always been a hit to a tank.

[sturmhauke]

Mine does, yeah.

[Noir]

So I wrote a somewhat long post, but ended up accidentally clicking on one of the many links on the page, deleting all my work. It would be nice if there was some kind of conformation popup when you are about to leave the page when you have stuff written in the reply box. Lets try this again. 

On 11/4/2018 at 9:32 PM, aleksey444 said:

The plane I'm really looking forward to seeing in action, and the one I'm genuinely afraid of, is @Noir's Snowpiercer.

13 hours ago, dundun92 said:

Snowpiercer is a sniper.

Heh.

I don’t really have high expectations for Snowpiercer. There are many issues that I either couldn’t fix or couldn’t be bothered fixing.

My match against the Bot has been the closest so far, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out.

Images and details about the craft in the spoilers. Maybe someone will find my ramblings interesting or helpful.

The Guns:

Spoiler

The 3 20 mm cannons aren’t symmetric. Looks wise, I was going for something like the Mig 9. Functionality wise, each cannon is set to a different max range. 800 m, 600 m, and 400 m. The idea is that as the distance closes, more cannons would fire. So, between 600 and 800 m only a single cannon would fire, limiting how much ammo is used. The thinking was that at 800 m, it is unlikely that any shots would land with all 3 cannons, so why waste ammo by firing all 3? And once Snowpiercer was within 400 m, all 3 cannons would open fire, delivering the max burst mass.

The 7.7 mm was used to force the enemy into defensive manoeuvres and to force them out of head ons. During testing, I found that Snowpiercer (or the AI) would struggle to hit an aircraft flying straight. So, while closing the distance, the 7.7 can be used to force the enemy into turning, since the AI seems to have a slightly better time at deflection shooting. The 7.7 can also be used to force a faster aircraft into performing defensive manoeuvres, normally either fish tailing or spinning (I hear it’s a good trick), and bleeding energy while doing so. This can have the opposite effect however.

Using this method is also good at keeping the enemy at bay, continually forcing them into defensive manoeuvres, without wasting the 20 mm. Of cause, this is all good in theory, but it all depends on what the AI wants to do.

The wings: 

The fuel is only located in a single wing segment.

Spoiler

The biggest weakness of Snowpiercer is the wings. While they are very big, it makes them a massive target. It seems that in the first round, all (or at least most of, I don’t remember) defeats were because the ^front wing fell off. Obviously. But one of the changes I wanted to make, which older versions did have, is for the wings to be made up of smaller segments. Possible in such as way so inner wings can be removed without it effecting the outer wings. You can see in the image above how the wings are laid out.

Despite having the engines inline, like a normal push-pull configuration, the roll rate is still rather slow.

 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Noir

[SuicidalInsanity]

Re: Gunchat - the AI doesn't actually recognize different ranges on the same gun type, it will simply fire all of them if one is in range - you can see it in the Match 6 vid at around 3:51 if you look closely.
AI engagement code is fairly simple - Weapons are recognized by type - so all the Browning.50 Wing mounts are a weapon type, all the Browning Gunpods are another weapon type, all the ShKAS are a weapon type, etc, as determined by the weapons 'short name', the name that appears in the BDA weapon GUI.
The AI generates a list of all weapon types on the plane, then (for aerial targets) prioritizes weapons with the highest fire rate, then checks to see if they have ammo, then sees if any of the selected weapon is in range. If yes, it then tells [weapon type] to fire, which fires all the weapons of that type.

[Noir]

Opps, I had mentioned that in my original write up, but forgot to add it back in. Yeah, I knew that wasn't the case when I was testing the craft, which was disappointing, but it makes sense to keep the AI as simple as possible.

[SuicidalInsanity]

A study in contrasts - a small plane with a big gun that can't turn versus a large plane with small guns that can turn:
Round 7, between @sturmhauke's SAI K9 Krakenhound and Bot Maxim's RF-7 Crossbow:

 

[Noir]

Spoiler

It looks like Crossbow has a rather interesting advantage in that all incoming bullets end up flying past the rear engine and between the twin boom.

 

[Guest]

Very... interesting battle. 

SPOILER

Spoiler

The crossbows unique shape, and the krakenhounds slightly inaccurate aiming nearly gave another bot victory. 

 

[sturmhauke]

2 hours ago, dundun92 said:

Very... interesting battle. 

SPOILER

  Hide contents

The crossbows unique shape, and the krakenhounds slightly inaccurate aiming nearly gave another bot victory. 

 

 

Spoiler

I think the Brownings are also just underpowered. It takes a lot of hits to do any significant damage. I believe my killshots were mostly from the MG 151.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Round 8 between @Kunza's K- 1 and @dundun93's P-009:

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Round 8 between @Kunza's K- 1 and @dundun93's P-009:

 

Spoiler

Y E S !

1

 

[SuicidalInsanity]

Round 9, between @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk IV and @53miner53's Delta:

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by SuicidalInsanity

[Pds314]

On 11/17/2018 at 5:37 PM, SuicidalInsanity said:

Round 9, between @Pds314's Shadowbird Mk IV and @53miner53's Delta:

 

The Delta...
The Delta managed to follow it in a turn and shoot its wing off???

On round 3....
*Random explosions several seconds after the pass*
Ah, yes, you see, this is my brilliant invention, the ablatable ailerons!

Biggest takeaway from this round seems to be: Mk108 = death, my plane doesn't aim or dodge well enough.

Edited November 19, 2018 by Pds314

[53miner53]

15 hours ago, Pds314 said:

The Delta...
The Delta managed to follow it in a turn and shoot its wing off???

That’s what it was supposed to do in the first battle. It was not stalling this much in testing. 

 

I probably just didn’t test it enough

[SuicidalInsanity]

To be fair to the Shadowbird's design, it's had the bad luck to go against the one thing that's a hard counter to its ability to soak damage twice in a row now. Put the Shadowbird against, say, the Tallyhawk, and it would likely be a much more even fight.

The Delta's woes seem to mainly be a tendency to go into a flat spin - longer empennage or larger vertical stabilizer would alleviate that.

...

Round 10, between @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker and Bot Tetra's DUMMY Strikes Back:

 

[aleksey444]

On 11/19/2018 at 10:27 PM, SuicidalInsanity said:

Round 10, between @aleksey444's AF-516 Benign Lurker and Bot Tetra's DUMMY Strikes Back:
 

 

 

Not bad. Although I was really hoping for a 6-0 win. Midair collisions suck.

The dummy can be pretty accurate at times, but the .50 cals don't do enough damage.

I'm really looking forward to the next fight.

 

[Noir]

3 hours ago, aleksey444 said:

I'm really looking forward to the next fight.

 

Good luck me...

 

The Dummy is remarkably stable, making a pretty good gun platform.

[Pds314]

13 hours ago, Noir said:

Good luck me...

 

The Dummy is remarkably stable, making a pretty good gun platform.

Yeah I don't understand why the dummy is so stable.

On 11/19/2018 at 8:27 PM, SuicidalInsanity said:

To be fair to the Shadowbird's design, it's had the bad luck to go against the one thing that's a hard counter to its ability to soak damage twice in a row now. Put the Shadowbird against, say, the Tallyhawk, and it would likely be a much more even fight.

The Delta's woes seem to mainly be a tendency to go into a flat spin - longer empennage or larger vertical stabilizer would alleviate that.

...

 

Well, the Shadowbird isn't a flying tank by any means. It's more able to survive damage than simply avoid it. It does use separate wing spars and such but for example it has no dedicated tail strut, just the fairly flimsy visible fuselage.

My non-entry aircraft is much heavier, but also much tankier. I don't know if it can take many hits of Mk108 though. My guess is a long burst of Mk108 would skeletonize it.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Pds314

[SuicidalInsanity]

16 hours ago, aleksey444 said:

I'm really looking forward to the next fight.

Mm. One one hand, a fast, nimble brawler with so far the only 6-0 score, on the other hand, an even faster, nimble, powerfully armed attacker that less ably performed last match due less to flaws with the aircraft and more to the Crossbow being unusually difficult for the AI to hit.
I don't think the match will disappoint.
 

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by SuicidalInsanity

[Pds314]

I'm gonna try upgrading BDArmory and see if everything is still balanced in the latest (1.2.3 for KSP 1.5.1) release.

I know there have been bullet damage balances so it's possible 750 is now a super high (or not high enough) damage multiplier.
Also there seems to be a hitpoint multiplier of 3.0 now. It was 2.0 before.
Also there is a BALLISTIC_DMG_FACTOR of 1.55 whereas previously no such factor existed.

I'll report on any changes in the effect of guns I can see.

Pitch Ki is gone.

There is something called "Steer ki." The default value is 0.05.

Additionally, you can change the way the direction the plane turns when idling now. Either Clockwise or Counterclockwise.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Pds314