Air Superiority Fighter Competition Unlimited [ON HOLD]

[HeroBrian_333]

1 hour ago, hoioh said:

I suggest downloading some other craft that do flip the way you like and see how the AI is configured, then tweak that untill you have a result you like

The SK-22 is basically made out of control surfaces, so it needs the settings tuned down a little, but it also depends on the stability of your plane (how far the COM is removed from the COL) because the AI mostly has limiting settings. Also, getting it to flip too easily can cause the aI to do so all the time, which slows down your plane and makes it easy pickings, so it's important to test, tune, test, tune, etc fighting against the #1, once you can beat that, try the others in the queue to see if you can reach the #1 spot

That's basically what I'm doing right now. Although there are no airplanes this maneuverable with an AI programmed.

[sturmhauke]

Sounds like I'm gonna fall off the board eventually. Guess I'll get started on a redesign.

[Box of Stardust]

Man, you guys have been busy. Cool.

Fun to see things starting from zero this is what V2 was for, with a lot of the previous ASC's veterans not present. But I think trying to rediscover known lessons is a bit of a waste of time. So let's just continue this class in air combat from where ASC left off and...

Spoiler

How about a proper challenge?

PEGASys-D7

 

Remember- ASC is as much about dissecting the competition's aircraft and learning from it, as it is building your own.

@panzerknoef

Spoiler

This aircraft actually already had its stats released in the previous ASC recordkeeping document (as well as a few other craft that never saw battle), so I've taken the liberty of adding said aircraft stats to the statistics board. You... may want to reconsider some of the rest of the board's stats post-testing.

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Box of Stardust

[sturmhauke]

Ooh, that's pretty.

[panzerknoef]

6 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Sounds like I'm gonna fall off the board eventually. Guess I'll get started on a redesign.

Yeah it would seem that way, I honestly didn't expect the Kabuto to get erased in the way it did, it flew admirably and performed very well again the Vipers... Regardless though, good luck with the new design! If I can recommend anything it's looking at everyone else's plane here, but also at craft from the previous iteration of this challenge. 

@Box of Stardust, damn, that is one scary aircraft right there, I'm curious to see how it devours this board of aircraft! I'll definitely update the stats after testing and battles as I always do, no worries! Thanks for filling them in already though! 

6 hours ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

That's basically what I'm doing right now. Although there are no airplanes this maneuverable with an AI programmed.

Well, feel free to give us a link to whatever aircraft you've already got, and maybe we can take a look at it, try to either fix it, or point out what has to be fixed

[HeroBrian_333]

4 hours ago, panzerknoef said:

Well, feel free to give us a link to whatever aircraft you've already got, and maybe we can take a look at it, try to either fix it, or point out what has to be fixed

Sorry, secret. I haven't even given you a full picture of the craft yet.

Aso, the PEGASys will destrpy everyone. It held no. 1 on the last one for a while.

[panzerknoef]

2 hours ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

Sorry, secret. I haven't even given you a full picture of the craft yet.

Aso, the PEGASys will destrpy everyone. It held no. 1 on the last one for a while.

As you wish, good luck with further design and tweaking! 

And yes, it most likely will, I've already jumped into development for a contender though, it's looking promising 

[Box of Stardust]

14 hours ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

That's basically what I'm doing right now. Although there are no airplanes this maneuverable with an AI programmed.

I've discovered that BDA is actually quite cooperative in taking craft from old versions and just plugging them directly into the current version. You could take a look through the list of aircraft in the previous ASC-Unlimited for some tips on AI settings, since they'll probably work just fine in 1.6, actually. If I'm to be honest, the PEGASys-D7 was actually designed about 8 months ago, and all I've done was swap out the Pilot AI and Weapon Manager for new ones in 1.6, just in case something weird might happen.

Aircraft I recommend taking a look at from the last ASC's queue are the HSC and Basilisk-C4.

[Box of Stardust]

@panzerknoef I was reading through the thread and came across @hoioh's SK-22 missile problems. I don't think I mentioned this when going over how I ran the competitions, but while the rule says 'judges will not make changes to aircraft', I did make an exception for missiles exploding on the launching aircraft. This can typically be fixed by fiddling around with the launch settings, which in the SK-22's case, needs its drop timer down to zero (which is typically the best setting for Sidewinders in any case), max ejection speed, and firing forward seems to resolve the issues. Which is great, because when I was running the KSP 1.4 version, they had not yet implemented Sidewinder fixes, and even these fixes wouldn't help much.

Just in case you run into 'planes killing themselves' issues again.

[Jeb-head-mug kerman]

My entry:https://kerbalx.com/JebHeadMugKerman/SX-16-Peregrine

[sturmhauke]

That looks like a banned turret. Also, a manned airplane is unlikely to be competitive against a drone.

[panzerknoef]

3 hours ago, Jeb-head-mug kerman said:

My entry:https://kerbalx.com/JebHeadMugKerman/SX-16-Peregrine

Yup, Sturmhauke is right, that turret on top is banned I'm afraid, just replace it with some vulcans or a some gaus and you'll be fine. I'm also not sure what armament you put under the wings, but it doesn't look very competitive 

[hoioh]

8 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

@panzerknoef I was reading through the thread and came across @hoioh's SK-22 missile problems. I don't think I mentioned this when going over how I ran the competitions, but while the rule says 'judges will not make changes to aircraft', I did make an exception for missiles exploding on the launching aircraft. This can typically be fixed by fiddling around with the launch settings, which in the SK-22's case, needs its drop timer down to zero (which is typically the best setting for Sidewinders in any case), max ejection speed, and firing forward seems to resolve the issues. Which is great, because when I was running the KSP 1.4 version, they had not yet implemented Sidewinder fixes, and even these fixes wouldn't help much.

Just in case you run into 'planes killing themselves' issues again.

That's good info! I'll reset the missiles to those settings and re-upload to Kerbal-X

[panzerknoef]

First battle of @Box of Stardust's PEGASys-D7, it faces the not very feared @Rocket_man1234's Viper-11, and the results aren't a surprise at all.

battles:

Spoiler

 

 

results: 

Spoiler

The only thing that was perhaps surprising is the speed at which it all went down, especially round 2. Almost all Vipers died at the same time, one for sure to gunfire and the other ones I didn't even see for myself. We didn't really learn anything from this battle, apart from the fact that the PEGASys is scarily efficient with its weaponry. I can also for sure say its agility is next level, I think I even saw a PEGASys doing a supermaneuverable turn to get onto the tail of a viper, then to kill it. One thing I have for sure seen for the first time now is the Viper-11's howitzer firing. It isn't broken after all, and it even got a hit into one of the PEGASys', sadly not killing it. Further battles will surely further point out what the strengths and weaknesses of the PEGASys-D7 are (if there even are weaknesses).

The PEGASys-D7 moves up to place #4, the Viper-11 goes down to 5. 

With the tier 1 leaderboard not filled in, I'm going to see for the next few battles and contestants which current tier 1 aircraft will drop down to tier 2, and which won't. Once the tier 2 leaderboard has also been filled, the standard rules will start applying. I can already for sure say that the Viper-11 is gonna go into the tier 2 leaderboard should it be defeated again, since its a completely different level of aircraft as the tier 1 top aircraft. The case for the Kabuto is not decided yet since I haven't seen it in action enough times to judge. The Zircon and SK-22 will not be dropped down to tier 2 should they be defeated enough times, they'll just be removed from the leaderboards instead.

[Box of Stardust]

@panzerknoef Okay, so what I was going to say earlier was that I actually had a last-minute update to the PEGASys, so if you want to grab that before you get further, that'd be cool.

Also, it does have a weakness... a few odd ones.

One being that it's so aggressive, it actually has a tendency to friendly fire missiles in the middle of dogfights. Not much I can do about that...

The next one being that it runs out of gun ammo pretty quickly. While I could just add more ammo bins... well, maybe I will, maybe not. The plane comes from the BDA 1.0 era where guns were practically insta-kill, and I've just never felt the need to update the ammo capacity. Also keeps the weight down. So it doesn't do well in extended fights where it hasn't won quickly, or if enemy planes are damaged, but don't go down, despite being otherwise disabled. BD AI is annoying like that.

Also, it's just an 'okay' gunfighter, in my opinion. I have another aircraft for guns, but that one's far more finnicky to tune the AI for. Neither aircraft are very stable when trying to get guns on target, but I haven't figured out how to get the AI to be both highly maneuverable and be super stable when trying to use guns. Potentially also part of the aircraft's physical design.

Anyways, I'm not sure when that supposed howitzer hit was, but the start of the second match did have a friendly fire. That can sort of be mitigated by spacing out the aircraft at the start so they don't end up directly behind a plane at the turn-in, plus placing them close enough together (such that there is no distance marker between them) generally means they're close enough for missiles to not hit a plane somewhat in front of them.

Nonetheless, you'll see what "Damage Mitigation: 10" means eventually.

And, because I've just been doing my own tests against the board, if you fix up the SK-22's missiles, I think you'll find it to be a fairly credible threat.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Box of Stardust

[panzerknoef]

2 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

-snip-

I'll update the pegasys before continuing yes, thanks for mentioning it! 

I did indeed notice that friendly fire incident at the start of round 2, but since no damage was taken, I decided to just continue the battle anyway (a hint of damage mitigation 10 right there?). Taking extra ammo is always a hard choice since it adds quite a lot of weight to an aircraft, not much use either when the primary weapon system is missiles anyway. 

The SK-22 is indeed an excellent aircraft, I'm not entirely sure how the Zircon got its victory so smoothly over it tbh, none of the battles there has an actual missile problem in it since I just reran them if it did occur. I'm pretty sure the SK-22 will at some point rack up enough defensive victories to go for a reengagement, that would be interesting to see! 

[Guest]

wait this is a thing again? WOOHOO!

[Rocket_man1234]

This is not an entry but could you guys give me some feedback/tips about this drone I'm making for the comp? I would like to redeem myself after the failure of my Viper-11 https://kerbalx.com/Rocket_man1234/D-104 

[hoioh]

1 minute ago, Rocket_man1234 said:

This is not an entry but could you guys give me some feedback/tips about this drone I'm making for the comp? I would like to redeem myself after the failure of my Viper-11 https://kerbalx.com/Rocket_man1234/D-104 

Okay, so lose the radar and the radar guided missiles, they're dead weight. The drone will fire them early in the match and chaff will deal with them quickly.

The trick is to make something mostly flat with some vertical stabilizers for balance. Canards on the front and control surfaces on the back will make it maneuverable. Make sure your vulcans are firing directly forward, any angle will be detrimental and put any missiles under the craft. More smaller eninges and TWR above 1 to make sure the afterburners cut out at about 300ms, which I found is a good max speed. Larger engines attract heat seeking missiles

The rest is fine tuning of the AI to make it control the plane smoothly, but also quickly and make sharp maneuvers when needed, but be stable on the tail. Start with the settings of a similarly shaped plane and work it from there

[Rocket_man1234]

3 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Okay, so lose the radar and the radar guided missiles, they're dead weight. The drone will fire them early in the match and chaff will deal with them quickly.

The trick is to make something mostly flat with some vertical stabilizers for balance. Canards on the front and control surfaces on the back will make it maneuverable. Make sure your vulcans are firing directly forward, any angle will be detrimental and put any missiles under the craft. More smaller eninges and TWR above 1 to make sure the afterburners cut out at about 300ms, which I found is a good max speed. Larger engines attract heat seeking missiles

The rest is fine tuning of the AI to make it control the plane smoothly, but also quickly and make sharp maneuvers when needed, but be stable on the tail. Start with the settings of a similarly shaped plane and work it from there

I'm not sure you are talking about the drone, it has no radar guided missiles and it has canards. But thanks for the tips regardless! 

[Guest]

Alright here goes my entry:

https://kerbalx.com/dundun92/Du-11F

@Rocket_man1234, the first thing i notice about ur drone: too much fuel, and not enough engine thrust/wing area. Aim for at least 2:1 TWR, ideally around 2.5:1. NVM, i was looking at the stats with dry thrust. But still, more wing area, the current amount just isnt gonna cut it. And like hoioh said, ditch the radar. U arent gonna need it. 

And more of a nitpick, but just use all tigers. The panther is heavier per kn of thrust, and you just dont need thrust vectoring. Improving aerodynamics is a much better way to increase manuverablilty

 

EDIT. just did a 1v1. definitely ditch the thrust vectoring, and move the COL just behind the CG. The plane is too aerodynamically unstable RN. It flatspins a lot.

and more flare dispensers. and why 70 eject speed, thats a bit much. No more than 40 ideally.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Guest

[Box of Stardust]

@dundun92 What's changed from the Du-11B-10?

[Guest]

Just now, Box of Stardust said:

@dundun92 What's changed from the Du-11B-10?

removed 2 engines(too much IR sig), and added a 4 more AIM-9s, and a bit more fuel. plus 2 more flare dispensers. And a RBS-15 as a routing device

[Box of Stardust]

9 minutes ago, dundun92 said:

removed 2 engines(too much IR sig), and added a 4 more AIM-9s, and a bit more fuel. plus 2 more flare dispensers. And a RBS-15 as a routing device

More engines don't actually increase IR signature, at least, last I knew of. Unless they've changed the system, BDA only cares about the hottest part on a craft.

With the amount of weapons you're packing though, I might just consider skipping entering the Basilisk-C and skipping straight to the Super Basilisk-E.

35 minutes ago, Rocket_man1234 said:

I'm not sure you are talking about the drone, it has no radar guided missiles and it has canards. But thanks for the tips regardless! 

Also, go change the launch settings on the Sidewinders, just in case the missiles do weird things that cause them to detonate right after launch. Forward launch, max eject velocity, 0 drop time.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Box of Stardust

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Box of Stardust said:

More engines don't actually increase IR signature, at least, last I knew of. Unless they've changed the system, BDA only cares about the hottest part on a craft.

hmm, thats odd. it appeared to fool IR missiles better after removing the engines