Air Superiority Fighter Competition Unlimited [ON HOLD]

[HeroBrian_333]

9 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

-snip-

 

There are no missiles on the -11B-10. That's going to hurt routing capabilities.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

There are no missiles on the -11B-10. That's going to hurt routing capabilities.

The 11B-10 was for a guns only competition. Nope, the blk 15 was gunzo. The F is what im entering. 

11 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

@panzerknoef The Du-11 was built from lots of experience fighting the PEGASys-D6, as well as a lot of other aircraft. It should be pretty good.

That said, he'll probably want to fix up the -11F once he figures out what he did wrong going from the -11B, or else it might have a tough time getting to #2...

I have a hint for you @dundun92. The -11F is on the left, the -11B-10 is on the right.

ahh that explains a lot .is the original Du-11 the same as the -10? Because that's the one I modified, and I didn't make any structural changes. 

nvm, I just realized my mistake. I modified the original instead of the blk 10. As you may recall, the original du-11 was much worse at taking damage than the -11B-10. Since I am going to be designing a successor anyway tho, just run the F as is, unless the blk 10 still works properly. 

Edited March 11, 2019 by Guest

[Box of Stardust]

24 minutes ago, dundun92 said:

ahh that explains a lot .is the original Du-11 the same as the -10? Because that's the one I modified, and I didn't make any structural changes. 

nvm, I just realized my mistake. I modified the original instead of the blk 10. As you may recall, the original du-11 was much worse at taking damage than the -11B-10. Since I am going to be designing a successor anyway tho, just run the F as is, unless the blk 10 still works properly. 

I've been super lazy and running some old designs that I was still working on, without changing any parts. So the B-10 probably still works the same way as it did when it was first designed. I'll swap out the F from the queue.

Really, we could've just picked up the original thread where it left off without any changes, since everything would still work.

I might do some bonus battles using the old leaderboard against some of the newer craft, since the competition would have had to go through them anyways.

[sturmhauke]

I've been experimenting with armor made of control surfaces, but it's not enough to protect my core which is made of size 1 parts. Stuff flexes around in flight, and there may be armor penetration going on with the weapons also, which ends up leaving me with not enough coverage. I'm gonna have to rebuild from scratch around size 0 instead.

[panzerknoef]

8 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

I've been super lazy and running some old designs that I was still working on, without changing any parts. So the B-10 probably still works the same way as it did when it was first designed. I'll swap out the F from the queue.

Really, we could've just picked up the original thread where it left off without any changes, since everything would still work.

I might do some bonus battles using the old leaderboard against some of the newer craft, since the competition would have had to go through them anyways.

Feel free to add the old leaderboard to the current document and run parallel tests on that if you wish to do so. Would be nice to actually keep all asc related conversations and data in one place instead of splitting them up. 

[hoioh]

55 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

I've been experimenting with armor made of control surfaces, but it's not enough to protect my core which is made of size 1 parts. Stuff flexes around in flight, and there may be armor penetration going on with the weapons also, which ends up leaving me with not enough coverage. I'm gonna have to rebuild from scratch around size 0 instead.

I had the same issue, easiest fix is to get editor extensions redux and use the mass tweakables to set all rigid and autostrut all to heaviest. That should fix it

[Box of Stardust]

4 hours ago, panzerknoef said:

Feel free to add the old leaderboard to the current document and run parallel tests on that if you wish to do so. Would be nice to actually keep all asc related conversations and data in one place instead of splitting them up. 

I've been considering merging the boards, and I've actually already ran a few battles using old leaderboard aircraft. 

One of which, to my great irritation, actually works better now and would actually take the new top spot on the leaderboard, despite its design being something that I can only describe as 'ultra cheesy'. But more on that later.

For the curious, the board's top three would be the HSC, PEGASys-D7, and X-Fighter Hunter. Two of which have not received any updates whatsoever, and then of course, the D7 which replaces the D6.

As for what would happen to the rest of the board, well, there's a chance the SK-22 won't be able to place in Tier 1, depending if the UT-7-B4 is in spot #4 or #5.

I'll run a few quick battles later to satisfy my own curiosity, but I should also mention that I already re-ran the X-Fighter and HSC, and that's what determined the 'combined' board I mentioned above.

3 hours ago, hoioh said:

I had the same issue, easiest fix is to get editor extensions redux and use the mass tweakables to set all rigid and autostrut all to heaviest. That should fix it

Rigid Attach All should be enough; I've heard that auto-struts have a greater chance of producing weird phantom forces around a plane. It's worked for all of my planes. 

[panzerknoef]

3 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

I've been considering merging the boards, and I've actually already ran a few battles using old leaderboard aircraft. 

One of which, to my great irritation, actually works better now and would actually take the new top spot on the leaderboard, despite its design being something that I can only describe as 'ultra cheesy'. But more on that later.

For the curious, the board's top three would be the HSC, PEGASys-D7, and X-Fighter Hunter. Two of which have not received any updates whatsoever, and then of course, the D7 which replaces the D6.

As for what would happen to the rest of the board, well, there's a chance the SK-22 won't be able to place in Tier 1, depending if the UT-7-B4 is in spot #4 or #5.

I'll run a few quick battles later to satisfy my own curiosity, but I should also mention that I already re-ran the X-Fighter and HSC, and that's what determined the 'combined' board I mentioned above.

I actually suggest we have a combined "super elite" board (which you run) alongside the default all new board (which I run) then, gives more battles, more excitement alongside chances for new players to get up high on the new, so far less competitive, leaderboard. I've already put you up in the OP as co-owner of this thread anyway since well, you are... Same rules apply for both board and every aircraft gets entered into every one of them, but the airplanes are just gonna be different. Over time it is quite likely that both boards become equal, and I think then we can start discussing a total merge of both boards. 

[sturmhauke]

3 hours ago, Box of Stardust said:

Rigid Attach All should be enough; I've heard that auto-struts have a greater chance of producing weird phantom forces around a plane. It's worked for all of my planes. 

I use EEX, but yeah maybe it's the autostruts. On the other hand, a size 1 core makes for a nice, exposed tailpipe that's hard to protect. I dunno, I'll test it out some more.

[Box of Stardust]

30 minutes ago, panzerknoef said:

I actually suggest we have a combined "super elite" board (which you run) alongside the default all new board (which I run) then, gives more battles, more excitement alongside chances for new players to get up high on the new, so far less competitive, leaderboard. I've already put you up in the OP as co-owner of this thread anyway since well, you are... Same rules apply for both board and every aircraft gets entered into every one of them, but the airplanes are just gonna be different. Over time it is quite likely that both boards become equal, and I think then we can start discussing a total merge of both boards. 

I mean, that was the point of the tier 1 and 2 boards; the tier 1 is populated by extreme hyper-competitive aircraft, and tier 2 has everyone else.

But if you want to just fully split them, that's fine; probably the sensible option at this point. The tier 1 board would have eventually been populated by hardcore-only aircraft anyways.

Honestly, the tier 1 board, once the old leaderboard is merged in, probably won't see much in the way of major activity, given the level of difficulty presented by those aircraft. Frankly, it takes a lot to build something that can take down what would eventually be the top 3-4, given the required knowledge of advanced ASC tactics, aircraft construction, flight AI programming, and BDA quirks.

ASC got really nuts when we pulled all stops and went into hyper-drones a year ago.

I may have to reconsider the percentages on what makes a good BDA fighter... probably 35% aircraft construction, 30% weapons and usage, and 35% flight AI.

Anyways, remember also that the original setup on the Recordkeeping document was for multiple judges, hence the 'next battle' section under the leaderboards, so that coordination is easier. 

Sure would be nice if we could get more people in the competition. Maybe we should move to Discord or something, idk, widen the platform so other people get interested outside of the forum community. Other KSP-BDA competitions run on Youtube generally have a larger submission pool.

[panzerknoef]

First round with @dundun92's Du-11B-10 it faces @Rocket_man1234's Viper 11, which now finally falls out of the tier 1 leaderboard and goes into the tier 2 leaderboard with 0 victories. 

battles :

Spoiler

 

results: 

Spoiler

another quick victory against the Viper-11. Very easy pickings for the Du-11 with 0 aircraft lost in total. From what I've seen here I can pretty much say that the Du-11 is a very very fast aircraft, an absolutely crazy TWR means that it can simply control the engagement against the Vipers however it likes. Compared to the PEGASys I would say the Du-11 is a slight bit less maneuverable, but has the advantage in propulsion. The future will point out how exactly they stack up against each other I guess. The Viper played a fairly respectable first round for its standards, even though it didn't get any kills. It actually managed a missile hit on a Du-11, which was quite simply tanked, after which the Vipers were shot down regardless.

Next battle will see it facing the Kabuto, should be interesting to see, but I think the Du's edge in speed, armament and survivability will give it a certain advantage.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Box of Stardust said:

I mean, that was the point of the tier 1 and 2 boards; the tier 1 is populated by extreme hyper-competitive aircraft, and tier 2 has everyone else.

But if you want to just fully split them, that's fine; probably the sensible option at this point. The tier 1 board would have eventually been populated by hardcore-only aircraft anyways.

Honestly, the tier 1 board, once the old leaderboard is merged in, probably won't see much in the way of major activity, given the level of difficulty presented by those aircraft. Frankly, it takes a lot to build something that can take down what would eventually be the top 3-4, given the required knowledge of advanced ASC tactics, aircraft construction, flight AI programming, and BDA quirks.

ASC got really nuts when we pulled all stops and went into hyper-drones a year ago.

I may have to reconsider the percentages on what makes a good BDA fighter... probably 35% aircraft construction, 30% weapons and usage, and 35% flight AI.

Anyways, remember also that the original setup on the Recordkeeping document was for multiple judges, hence the 'next battle' section under the leaderboards, so that coordination is easier. 

Sure would be nice if we could get more people in the competition. Maybe we should move to Discord or something, idk, widen the platform so other people get interested outside of the forum community. Other KSP-BDA competitions run on Youtube generally have a larger submission pool.

I do think keeping them separate for now will be a good thing, it's easier getting high positions in the current leaderboard, making it more attractive for new players to get mixed up in the battles. I'm sure the people from the old leaderboard will submit their aircraft here as well if they still care anyway. 

I do think widening the platform is a good idea, the more the merrier after all! A YT based competition would for sure be interesting, but hard to organize when multiple people are uploading the battles, I'm sure we can figure something out though. Discord is a logical next step I'd say.

Edited March 12, 2019 by panzerknoef

[ZLM-Master]

Yop Yop Everybody  

I cannot stay behind my flat screen without submit something to this season !

Well , not a big surprise to come with a fresh X-Fighter version . Cannot say if it's better than the previous one , it's totally reset for KSP 1.6 , seems weaker than the old one , but BDAc damage seams a bit different too , so ! 

Let's see

[Box of Stardust]

35 minutes ago, ZLM-Master said:

Yop Yop Everybody  

I cannot stay behind my flat screen without submit something to this season !

Well , not a big surprise to come with a fresh X-Fighter version . Cannot say if it's better than the previous one , it's totally reset for KSP 1.6 , seems weaker than the old one , but BDAc damage seams a bit different too , so ! 

Let's see

 

oh look who decided to show up

Your X-Fighter Hunter fights better than it did last season without any changes, because they fixed Sidewinders.

Still not good enough to beat the PEGASys though.

I think you'll find this version of BDA to be very good though, very little problems to encounter.

[Guest]

@panzerknoef, yea, a discord server would be nice. it actually came to my mind yesterday

[panzerknoef]

37 minutes ago, dundun92 said:

@panzerknoef, yea, a discord server would be nice. it actually came to my mind yesterday

I'll get it sorted 

[Box of Stardust]

Bonus battles, which will explain the leaderboard merge I plan on doing.

The first battle is watching what ASC-1.4 leaderboard #2 spot, @ZLM-Master's X-Fighter Hunter, can do against @panzerknoef's Zircon UT-7-B4.

Spoiler

 

Analysis:

Spoiler

Because the X-Figher has not fought in a while, nor against the UT-7, here are each aircraft's stats in comparison:

Despite not receiving any updates at all, the X-Fighter still has it. Its classical package of a small airframe with good damage mitigation and high speed meets BDA 1.2.4’s improved Sidewinders, making its missile usage absolutely deadly.

 

So what's the X-Fighter like against the PEGASys-D7?

Spoiler

 

Analysis:

Spoiler

The rivals meet once more, except this time, the X-Fighter is up against the improved D7, which has fixed the D6’s primary flaw of flight control hampering maneuverability. As well, the D7 is armed with SCRAPPER-II, which has shown to greatly enhance its lethality.

The results this time were far more conclusive, with the PEGASys pulling a clear win.

 

But to battle the #2 spot, it would have had to go through the #3 spot, @dundun93's HSC, a very... special craft.

So let's see @panzerknoef's UT-7-B4 take a swing at it.

Spoiler

 

Analysis:

Spoiler

Ah yes, the HSC. A terrifying supermaneuverable box of weapons that will refuse to go down unless properly hit. It takes advantage of a lot of BDA quirks and debatably cheesy tactics.

It’s a monster that should be the mission of ASC aircraft designers to vanquish. And maybe for BDA devs to take some lessons on about improving combat through AI improvements. We’ll discuss this later though.

First, watch it in action against the top combat drones of ASC, the X-Fighter Hunter and PEGASys-D7. Two drones that are fast, take hits well, and come packed with missiles. One has size on its side, the other has weapon efficiency and extreme survivability.

On the side of the HSC, a spray of 20mm cannon fire from 8 Vulcans and maneuverability that makes slowly float around the air like a flying turret.

 

So how does it fair in BDA 1.2.4 vs @ZLM-Master's X-Fighter Hunter?

Spoiler

 

Analysis:

Spoiler

In BDA 1.2.4, results are apparently different, with the HSC having fully effective Sidewinders to fight the Hunters. As well, improved damage means that a target intersecting the HSC’s gunfire means instant obliteration.

I’m not running more matches with the HSC for these aircraft because, quite frankly, the HSC disgusts me and it’s not fun for me to watch. However, I did run a standard battle against the PEGASys-D7, just to legitimize its inclusion to the leaderboard (and to give me more data).

 

And finally, @dundun93's HSC goes up against the top of the board, the PEGASys-D7 in a full battle:

Spoiler

 

 

 

After Action Report:

Spoiler

Battle Report:

Analysis:

The HSC was built to counter the PEGASys-D, and clearly, it does.

Frankly, while I respect this thing, I hate the damn thing, and not in a good 'respect the opponent' way either. A slow box of gun spam that just wallows around the air like a flying turret waiting to exhaust the enemy of its weapons and draw it close is just wrong. But results can’t be denied- it does work.

This thing is totally antithetical to the idea of jet dogfights, but it works because of BDA’s peculiarities and somewhat KSP physics. BD AI wants to dogfight hard, which plays into the HSC’s design, as most other planes will be traveling faster and will overshoot. But the overshooting plane won’t escape, it’ll try to turn back. Thus, the plane has fallen into the HSC’s trap, where its massive volume of fire does the rest.

Not even D7+SCRAPPER-II works well enough against the HSC. The HSC just floats around its flares too much due to its slow speed and tight turns, which causes many missiles to miss. The D7, while very aggressive, runs out of missiles faster than the HSC runs out of ammo. This is the battle I’ve tested against many times with the D6 and D7 prototypes that made me say ‘the PEGASys is an average at best gunfighter’.

Because this thing is one of the best gunfighters… though volume of fire definitely helps compensate for a lot of problems in gunfighting, especially BDA gunfighting. It just pulls off reversals and turnfights well. And it somehow gets away with it despite many times just floating in the middle of the air, where by all means it should be an easy gun target. But nothing ever hits a floating HSCs with guns for some reason!

This plane just feels cheesy. It shouldn’t work according to the principles of jet combat, but it does, because BDA does not work the way jet combat would; it’s like a weird WWII dogfighting system that happens to use jet-powered aircraft. So kind of like Ace Combat, I guess, where it’s really a lot about how well a plane can perform in a turning fight.

The HSC has made me reconsider that maybe there should be a weight-based gun limit; values I considered ‘balanced’ was 1 Vulcan per 0.9t of empty aircraft weight.

Because otherwise, the meta turns into small gunspam drones that fly in a small, slow, dogfight ball, which just feels wrong.

And now, a long digression on my gripes with the HSC and the quirks of BDA dogfighting.

Look, we dealt with a stage of ASC that was about gunspam. 8 GAU-8s on a flying turret was a bit early to the party, despite happening during the air-jousting period. Then 5 Vulcans on a gun-only aircraft.

Then I figured it out and put 10 Vulcans on a slim flying brick, and it worked as expected, which was terrible. Then dundun93 decided to go super dumb with it and put 16 on a plane. You can read all about air-jousting and that period of ASC and BDA's AI here:

Throwing an unstoppable stream of 20mm just isn’t fair. It’s a lazy solution that makes up for BDA’s AI gun accuracy deficiency, as well as plays into the AI's behavior.

The HSC annoys me because it’s so borderline on this. It’s 8 guns. 8. Some planes have 6, which is getting up there, but within reason.

But then it’s all put on this flying brick that just eats damage (which is fine, I guess, that’s good design), but also carries around its own debris, which potentially gives BDA lots of problems, and it annoyingly takes BDA AI quirks and drags its enemies into not really much of a dogfight, but really just a trap. It just circles around slowly in an area, shooting at enemies it will eventually pull in, and killing them when they try to run away after burning excess energy trying to turn and fight the HSC.

And now it has Sidewinders that work, thanks to BDA 1.2.4.

I don’t feel like planes fight the HSC as much as just fall into traps that should be avoidable if a plane were able to use the advantages of jet combat. The AI forces planes into a low-speed dogfight where this flying turret excels and wipes out enemies through sheer volume of fire. Not just that, but BDA is such that the lower you are the more advantageous your position. And the HSC is programmed to take advantage of that.

Obi-Wan may teach you that the high ground is the advantage, but in BDA, that isn’t the case. Because from below, the BDA AI will try to escape from the plane below it, while the chasing plane has the easiest gunnery target presented to it, because BDA AI sucks at gunning down targets in all other scenarios. BDA can’t boom-and-zoom, it can only turnfight.

Basically, the AI forces planes into a low-speed dogfight where this flying turret excels and wipes out enemies through sheer volume of fire.

There’s two paths against this thing: do what it does even more extreme and enter a stale, boring meta, or try to design a better aircraft that can defeat it in its own way. And let me tell you- the second path is incredibly difficult, because that plane still has to beat the rest of the conventional board.

Try to build that plane to beat the HSC, and it will probably lose to the PEGASys-D7. Build a plane that can beat the D7, and well, it might lose to the HSC.

But then, I suppose, that is the challenge of the Air Superiority Challenge Unlimited. To build the ultimate superior aircraft that can win in all aspects of combat, no matter how unfair the opponent may seem.

And I mentioned earlier about playing to the strengths of jet combat… and I may have an idea.

The HSC is a drone that gets stronger the longer a battle draws out and slows down. My philosophy for my drones has always been directly opposed to that- hit fast, end fights quickly. The problem with that is that the HSC’s tactics counter that philosophy very well if my drones fail- my drones get weaker through a battle, and the BDA AI will naturally drag them into the slow turning fight. To design a drone that can strike fast but maintain enough lethality into the mid-game if the initial attack fails, well, that’s the goal now.

This entire rant made me realize a few things, and I just came up with the solution.. and most of it was one AI setting change… one that no one considers to touch. It turns out there's more BDA quirks to learn, so get ready for another major meta shift.

The others were an ASC staple (routing device) and… another setting we might have been getting wrong for a while now.

HSC may have been built to counter the PEGASys-D, but I can tell you that the -D8 can potentially flip the tables just as hard against it. And I didn’t even touch the airframe or weapons loadout at all, which means it’s equally effective against all other opponents.

Smart tactics is how we should properly win battles, without resorting to lazy solutions like overwhelming firepower. And I refuse to take the meta in a direction that can be beaten with increasingly lazy solutions.

 

The leaderboard and records have been updated with these aircraft. They are linked in this post and in the record sheet if you want to take a look at them.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Box of Stardust

[panzerknoef]

First of all, a link to a simple discord chatroom: https://discord.gg/XhYcj6M

 

Secondly, @Box of Stardust, I see you've decided to merge the boards anyway which is fine. I'm just wondering what's gonna happen to the planes which currently fall just outside of that board, and what will happen to the planes of the old leaderboard which aren't on the current one. It's quite messy now and I'm not exactly sure what you're gonna do with it. So please do tell me! On that other note, a gun per weight limit is probably nice, but it also takes away the "unlimited" part. Yes, the HSC is filthy dirty plane, but it has more than anything else exploited just how BDA works, which is quite impressive imo. 

[sturmhauke]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm looking forward to finding a weakness in the HSC and hammering it.

[panzerknoef]

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm looking forward to finding a weakness in the HSC and hammering it.

What I'm currently thinking is using a setup with an aircraft that flies very fast (400+m/s) and has a high cruising altitude. It should also have a low G limit to prevent it from pulling quick turns at high speeds. If the AI plays along (which it probably won't) there's a chance that your aircraft gets some shots into the HSC, over shoots, but instead of turning back instantly and falling for the trap, it's just gonna go more or less straight and turn in a very wide circle, hopefully reengaging with high speed again afterwards etc etc. 

It's all theory, and I highly doubt it's gonna work, but who knows... 

[sturmhauke]

The armored mk.2 Kabuto I've been working on is an improvement, but it still has trouble against the PEGASys and gets shredded against the HSC. I'll post it if anyone wants to pick it apart, but I think it's a dead end that I won't enter in the competition.

The supersonic lead sled concept has some merit I think. Staying out of range of those guns is really the only way to survive them. The EVE Online veteran in me wants to build an artillery platform, but I don't think the BDA Howitzer has enough range or accuracy for that.

[HeroBrian_333]

8 guns is too many @Box of Stardust?

I mean, if it works...

[Box of Stardust]

1 hour ago, panzerknoef said:

What I'm currently thinking is using a setup with an aircraft that flies very fast (400+m/s) and has a high cruising altitude. It should also have a low G limit to prevent it from pulling quick turns at high speeds. If the AI plays along (which it probably won't) there's a chance that your aircraft gets some shots into the HSC, over shoots, but instead of turning back instantly and falling for the trap, it's just gonna go more or less straight and turn in a very wide circle, hopefully reengaging with high speed again afterwards etc etc. 

It's all theory, and I highly doubt it's gonna work, but who knows... 

You'll lose to the D7 like that. Probably. Or just fail to engage at all. And will likely lose to the D8. 

But you did get one part right, which was part of the solution. 

Really, I'm just giving some time for others to do something before I enter the D8. Which has already beaten every aircraft including the D7... with 3-0 victories per sortie... with half-emptied weapon pylons

We're really entering 'advanced weirdness' territory here. That said, I expect those overwhelming victory results to shift back to something more normal once the meta fully shifts. The D8 is only as efficicent as it is due to the other aircrafts' AIs not being able to deal with the D8's AI weirdness.

As well, the tactics change doesn't really do anything else to improve from the D7 at the moment. There might be a few things left that can be done, but it's hard to improve when improvements at this point are on a case-by-case basis. I think there's a bit more flight tuning that can be done.

Still, it's also all a bit of a testament to the PEGASys-D's design, which has only seen incremental changes from KSP 1.3+BDA 1.0, so I like to believe that I've always been headed in the right direction.

3 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm looking forward to finding a weakness in the HSC and hammering it.

It technically has 'a weakness' according to the stats sheet, but it's a bit of an irrelevant weakness. 

The weakness lies more in tactics combined with BDA AI quirks. As well, I think it has a weakness in its design that will prevent it to simply adapting to the D8's solution. However, it can easily be tested, which I'll do later. 

All this said, I'm hoping that my solution isn't just avoiding the problem, which would leave it in the same losing position with just a few adjustments to the HSC. But again, I'll test that later. 

 

We're entering the stage of the cycle in ASC where it really shines, when it goes from a competition to a BDA testing grounds. I suppose the BDA devs could be interested in the insights from the coming battles. 

 

42 minutes ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

8 guns is too many @Box of Stardust?

I mean, if it works...

It's borderline, but then it's also combined with the various tactics it employs, which just disgust me, because of how the BD AI deals with it, or rather, fails to.

But again, this is where ASC is at its best, when we start trying to discover solutions to deep BDA behaviors. 

 

@panzerknoef Anyways, the primary tier 1 board will stay as it is, just continue the testing. The 'extras' board I'll do more bonus battles for, but they would've been knocked off anyways, I think. I'm just curious as to the results; the results won't place them on the actual board, regardless of what the results are. 

 

As for the gun limit, it's been a long-time considered thing, and we (including me) have always decided against it, because I do feel that it's our 'duty' to try and get ever more creative solutions to beat cheese tactics and find out more about how BDA behaves.

Like the routing device development, but that's a niche ASC feature; it's kind of indirectly banned in most other places, but also generally unnecessary anyways. It does, however, teach the importance of gaining the initiative.

Speaking of 'other places', if any of you are so willing, spread the lessons of air superiority to other BDA competitions by beating them! Our goal here in ASC is to teach how to build smartly around BDA's functions; that's why we have the open testing environment. 

Let's make this clear: ASC isn't 'better' than the other competitions, it's 'different'. Working around others' rules pushes creativity within bounds, but here, with minimal rules, we can discover new things about BDA. It's an R&D environment, really.

The rules we put in place here are simply to ensure that we keep pushing towards applicabe solutions, rather than cheesing the battles, which probably won't get you far in other competitions, if you can enter such a craft within the rules at all.

That said, I was the one that submitted the Magic Carpet air-jousting mini-plane to JollyRogerAerospace's PFC (which I lost in what would've been an easy victory because I forgot the important lesson of 'initiative' that air-jousting stemmed from), then broke/shifted a subsequent PFC season's meta by using the PAC-3 SAMs on my plane instead of the AIM-120s, so I'm plenty guilty of cheese solutions as well. 

Edited March 13, 2019 by Box of Stardust

[hoioh]

While testing a very promising new desing I unfortunately discovered I'm one of those people that has bought a faulty RTX 2070 card, so I can't continue development untill my RMA gets approved and a replacement arrives

Good reading btw! Makes tweaking the AI easier

Still experiencing F9 issues though, after I launch a new fleet and set up a battle scenario to test everything work great, but after each F9-load KSP starts misbehaving more and more, which is totally weird. Sometimes one of the fighters becomes invincible (manually flown it into all the ksc buildings without losing a single part) or one or more of the planes just fly off into the sunset or start suicide runs into the ground, totally wack

(Yes I am using the latest updates)

At first it may look like savegame corruption, but it's a runtime thing because restarting KSP fixes it

 

Anyway, long story, I got a design in the works that can beat the Zircon UT-7-B4 without fail, 4 battles in a row, couldn't test against the PEGAsys D7 unfortunately, maybe more next week!

[panzerknoef]

@Box of Stardust I'm just wondering if I'm supposed to continue testing against the Kabuto now, or rather the SK-22 right away. Not that I really think it matters because the Du will most likely just blast straight past them anyway. 

I gotta say that I'm quite afraid of the D8 now though, if it is as good as you claim it is, then it will take one hell of an effort to build anything better! Hell, I haven't even managed to build anything which can consistently beat the D7...time will tell I guess, but it sure feels like we're at the brink of something new! 

I would actually love to compete in other competitions as well, but as it is I think this one is the only one running. Guess we'll all have a set of aircraft ready when the next one shows up. 

[sturmhauke]

Well there's the Juno Ace tournament, if you like to torture yourself with FAR. I feel like it models transonic weirdness well but doesn't give you enough tools to figure out how to build an aircraft that can handle it.