WWII BAD-T V: The AI Strikes Back - BD AI Dogfight Tournament

[SuicidalInsanity]

The Tournament

It's time once again for a new BAD-T. Like the last four BAD-T tournaments, this will consist of 2v2 dogfights featuring WWII-era aircraft battling around and above sites scattered all over Kerbin.
Contestants will submit a craft, which will then be pitted against other submitted craft in a standard tournament ladder format, with fights recorded and posted to YouTube.

Defeat means a craft is out of the running, success means it moves up to the next bracket. Depending on the number of entries, a second-tier ladder may also be run, featuring craft that lost during the first round of fights.

To enter, simply create a WWII themed aircraft. Replicas of real-world craft are permitted, but not required. Craft design, AI configuration and armament are entirely up to you. As long as it follows the rules and looks like it could have been a real WWII-era fighter, it's a valid entry.

Brackets
Tier 1

Tier 2

The following mods are required:

FAR 0.15.11.1 'Mach'
Aviator Arsenal with the KSP 1.4.5 patch.
BDAc 1.3.x, with the BDAc S.I. patch, and DMG_MULTIPLIER = 1000 in the GameData/BDArmory/Settings.cfg.
BAD-T Props pack, which requires the FireSpitter .dll

Additionally, the following mods are permitted, but optional:
B9 Proc wings
Procedural parts
Adjustable Landing Gear with KSP 1.7 compatibility patch.
 

Aircraft Classes:
Entries will fall into one of two categories, Fighters and Heavy Fighters.

Fighters are single engine monoplanes.
They have one engine.
They must have a dry mass of at least 2.5 tons*.
They can use up to 100 points worth of engine and armament.

Heavy fighters are heavy twin engine monoplanes.
They have 2 engines.
They must have a dry mass of at least 5.25 tons*.
They can use up to 150 points worth of engines and armament.

*Dry mass is the empty weight of the craft, wet mass is the loaded weight of the craft with fuel and ammunition. Resources like Oxidizer and Ore which aren't used as fuel or ammo can be used as ballast and count towards dry mass.

Points:
Weapons cost their diameter in mm, rounded down.
*12.7mm MGs cost 12 points, etc
Engine cost is indicated by the number in their part name.
*'B27-D Brutus' costs 27 points, 'B32-D Gazelle' costs 32, etc.

Ammo is free, carry as much or as little as desired.

Rules:
- Craft must have no more than 60 parts.
-No Breaking Ground DLC parts.
-Only Aviator Arsenal weapons permitted, with the exception of the Ball Turret.
-Only BADT engines allowed (Widshed, Brutus, Gazelle, Wizard, Buzzer, Foxhound, & Falcon).
-Space (RCS/Ore/LF/O) fuel tanks are allowed as structural components, but please, no aerospace grade parts (RCS/fairings/heatshields/A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s/etc).
-No reaction wheels.
-Craft must have at least 1 Kerbal, either in a cockpit, or a constructed open cockpit using a command seat.
-No BDAc armor panels. Intrinsic part armor thickness is to remain at 10.
-Constructed cockpits must be safe, something that a sane (you, not Jeb) pilot would want to sit in.
-Part clipping is allowed, within reason. No clipping resource containing parts into other resource containing parts please. Clipping ballast parts into ballast parts is permitted.
-If using P wings, keep wing thickness for main wing pieces at least 0.120.
-If both craft on a team run out of ammo, they forfeit the match, as they can no longer shoot down the opposing team.
-You don't need to add a weapon manager or AI - they've been added to the Mk1 cockpits and command seat.
-No text editing of craft files.
-Kerbal G limits will be on.

-The Eidahill Clause: While cheesy Min-Maxed designs that take advantage of loopholes or game exploits may be technically legal, I ask that contestants respect the spirit of the competition, not just Rules As Written, when designing their airplane.

Recommendations - Optional, but might be a good idea:
-Try to have at least 15 minutes of fuel.
-AI min altitude should probably be above 300m.
-Test your plane against the Dummy. if nothing else, this certifies that your craft possesses basic flight-worthiness. Paintball mode may be useful here.
-Try to have at least a couple hundred rounds per gun. The AI is both wasteful and inaccurate.

Submissions:
Craft must be submitted by the deadline, 11:59 PM, Sunday, October 20th.
One entry per person. If something goes wrong during submission, or you realize your craft is not rules compliant and needs some changes, contact me via PM. Otherwise, all submissions are final. To submit, upload your craft to KerbalX or similar, and sent me the download link via PM.
Sharing links to your crafts in the thread is fine, but only craft I've been sent via PM will count as entries. (This is mainly to make sure I get them and they don't potentially get lost in the thread.)

F.A.Q.

Spoiler

Can I submit more than one craft?
-No. Entering more than one craft runs the possibility of your entries fighting another of your entries, and the purpose if this tournament is to see how your craft do against other people's designs, not your own. However, if there are not enough entries to fill a roster, secondary entries may be accepted.

I submitted my craft already, but it (accidentally) breaks the rules, what happens now?
-If your craft is an illegal design, I will PM you, and give you the chance to correct the design and re-submit.

I've updated my craft after submitting it, can I resubmit?
-No, simply to keep the logistics of managing entries simple, one submission per aircraft per person. You can edit your submission's KerbalX upload or similar as long as it retains the same name before the deadline, but no submitting multiple craft (i.e. you submit a plane, then resubmit a mk2 version later, then a tweaked mk3 after that...)

Can I submit a biplane?
-No. Biplanes were mostly obsolete by 1940, and the spirit of the tournament is modern WWII era designs.

What about a jet?
-No. While WWII saw the emergence of first generation jet powered aircraft, for balance reasons all craft should be propeller powered.

I'm bad at building craft in FAR, should I still submit something?
-Yes. Sure, there will be some entries that are hyper-competitive, but for the most part, this tournament is aimed at having fun, watching submitted craft fight bravely and die gloriously.A FAR tutorial will be posted, and either myself or other FAR vets in the thread will probably be happy to help should you have questions.

The rules said something about constructed cockpits?
-Take an External Command Seat and use parts to build an open cockpit around the Kerbal (proc parts are good for this). Just make sure it's a cockpit someone other than Jebediah would be comfortable sitting in; if nothing else, just strapping Jeb to the top of a plane is going to generate a lot of drag, and Kerbals have a low tolerance for hot lead poisoning. Ideally, you want something between 3-5:

Spoiler

What's up with the custom BDAc the tournament will be using?
-BADc 1.3.SI is a custom re-compile of BDAc1.3 for the tournament, and adds in stuff that previous tourney participants felt were missing. Includes the ability to have multiple engagement ranges for weapons in a group, some new advanced AI tweakable settings, and an experimental Reckless AI personality that places less focus on evasion; should help it retain more energy and stay on target, at the cost of nigh-suicidal disregard for safety in some instances. Also includes paintball mode for craft testing, and a fix for Proc Wings not having equivalent health to similar stock parts.
It also mods the stock mk1 cockpits to have more reasonable masses, and integrates an AI and weapons manager into them, to both reduce needed part count and prevent the AI antennas from getting shot off.

Tips & Tricks

Spoiler

-Manually fly your craft at least one before handing it off to the AI. This lets you make sure it flies as you expect, and is capable of hard turns/coming out of a dive with out ripping a wing off.

-Determine what the minimum altitude your aircraft needs to pull out of a dive from is, and set the AI accordingly. Last thing you want is for the AI to lithobrake your plane during a battle.

-Test your craft against the Dummy. The dummy is an aggressively sub-optimal design; if your craft cannot shoot down the Dummy, it is unlikely to perform well against tuned competition aircraft.

-AutoStrut your wheels. And whatever they're mounted to, for good measure. If stock landing gears are even a fraction of a degree off of perpendicular from the ground, they can cause a plane to veer off the runway instead of taking off

-Check your wing strength/mass settings. Right click on a wing part to see a slider to adjust the wing's mass and strength. Be careful not to increase or decrease it too much, though. Too little strength and the wing will snap off during maneuvers, too much mass and the plane becomes unnecessarily heavy.

-Ammunition is heavy, so consider how much you need. Having a single box of ammo per cannon is generally enough, while machineguns can usually get away with one box per 2 guns. That said, remember that running out of ammo essentially counts as being shot down by the opposing side.

-The AI is not by any means a proficient marksman. It may be a good idea to lower max gun range down to something in the 800-1250m range. True, the AI might hit something at 2.5km out, but chances are all it will be doing is wasting all of your ammo at that range.

-FAR changes how the CoL indicator in the SPH works; it now shows the center of aerodynamic pressure of the aircraft, rather than the sum output of all lift generating parts. Instead of trying to line up the CoL and CoM indicators, try to align the main wing with the CoM.

-Pressing F2 in the editor brings up aim vectors for all guns on a craft, useful for gun calibration if you i.e. want weapons to converge at a certain distance.

FAR Tutorial

Spoiler

Building a plane in FAR is no different than in stock - CoL behind the CoM, wheels just behind the CoM, try to have fuel tanks placed so that CoM moves forward as fuel drains, remember to have proper control surface inputs for the control surfaces, etc.

Where FAR differs from stock is the level of granularity of the aerodynamic model being used, the level of control the user has in tweaking and tuning a design, and the data the user gets from the editor about how their craft will perform. In the stock game, adding wing parts and an engine is all you need (usually) to make something that will fly. FAR is a bit more complicated, in that it calculates the aerodynamics of the craft as a whole, rather than simply adding up all the lift produced by wing parts on the craft and seeing if the lift value is enough to counter gravity, and the settings on control surfaces matter much more - Stock you can get away with all control surfaces left on default Pitch/Yaw/Roll settings, in FAR you'll want to specify what axis each control surface responds to. That said, if a craft built with FAR looks like a plane, it will likely fly like one. But how well?

FAR includes a number of tools to get a detailed technical look at how your craft will perform; use of these tools isn't required or necessary, but they can help enormously, either for fine tuning, or helping someone new to FAR better understand why their plane is or isn't performing.
Clicking on the FAR icon on the toolbar in the Editor brings up the FAR Analysis window. This window has several sub-windows that all display information about different aspects of the craft's flight-worthiness.

Here is the default window that is opened, the Sweep Analysis window. There are several data fields that values can be entered, and a Graph readout.
The Lower, Upper, and Mach data fields allow specifying the range of Angles of Attack for FAR to calculate on a craft. Num Pts can be ignored, for the most part, it simply controls how many datapoints are calculated for the graph. More points, the finer resolution the graph ranges are. By adjusting these values, you can see how the plane is predicted to behave at the specified airspeed in mach. Clicking the Switch to Mach Sweep button will change the data inputs, and allow you to see how the craft will behave at a set AoA over a range of airspeeds instead.
Flap Settings allow calculating flap deployment if the craft has any, and what level of deployment, from none (0), to fully deployed (3).
Pitch setting is what level of deflection any control surfaces with Pitch enabled are deflected, ranging from 0 (no deflection) to 1 (full deflection).

In the example above, a sweep graph has already been plotted, testing craft performance from -15 degrees AoA to 40 degrees AoA, at Mach 0.5 (~168m/s). This yields 4 colored lines.
-Yellow (Cm): The Yellow line is a measure of Pitch movement, and can be read as an indication of craft stability. Ideally, this value decreases as AoA increases, such a craft will want to return to a neutral AoA in the absence of Pitch inputs; an increasing value as AoA increases means the craft has pitch instability – it will want to lawn dart or stall in the absence of control surface Pitch inputs; this is generally undesirable.
Here, the example craft is fairly stable, at least up to 40 degrees AoA.
-Red (Cd): The Red line indicates the coefficient of drag. Generally linear at low AoA, becomes non-linear at high AoA.
Here, craft drag is fairly low up to ~20 degrees AoA, and begins to rapidly increase past that.
-Cyan (Cl): The Cyan line is the coefficient of lift. This stays more or less linear up to critical AoA, at which point maximum lift is achieved and past this point the craft will go into a stall and begin losing lift.
Here, the craft will begin to stall at around ~22 degrees AoA.
-Green (L/D): The Green line is simply a measure of the Cyan line divided by the Red line, and acts as a general measure of how efficient the craft is at producing lift.
Here, best lift vs drag is achieved at ~5 degrees AoA.

What does this tell us? At ~170m/s, the craft is stable and will return to prograde in the absence of control inputs, it will begin to bleed energy past ~5 degrees AoA, and past 20 degrees AoA the craft is in danger of stalling.
But what about Yaw or Roll stability, or general information about the craft? Clicking the Static Analysis button in the top left allows transition to the Data+Stability Derivatives sub-window:

Lots of scary numbers.

The Stability Derivatives window is likely where the most time will be spent tweaking a craft in FAR. The Flight Conditions allows the user to select the planet, altitude and speed in mach you want FAR to simulate the craft in flight at, which will affect all the data values below the Calculate Stability Derivatives button once it has been clicked.
The top data field is raw data about elements of the craft. Of immediate usefulness are the Level Flight data. Here, Altitude and Airspeed have been set to 1.5km altitude and 0.5, and from here, the analysis states what that airspeed is in m/s, the coefficient of lift (Cl) and drag (Cd) the craft will have, and the necessary AoA required to maintain level flight. Checking various speed and altitude combos is a good idea, as needed AoA will almost certainly change, perhaps drastically. Setting altitude to 0 and airspeed to 0.2 mach (~68m/s, simulating takeoff)  would show needed AoA has jumped to 8.4 degrees for the example craft here, for example. Wing incidence (rotation of the wing along the Pitch axis to provide intrinsic AoA while flying prograde) can reduce this.
The Inertia fields state what sort of torque is generated during roll/yaw/pitch movements, with X = Axis of Roll, Y = Axis of Pitch, and Z = Axis of yaw.
Finally, Aircraft Properties simply measures wing dimensions and wing area.

The Longitudinal and Lateral Derivative numbers come in 3 flavors: Green, White, and Red. White numbers are neutral, and their values are simply data values. Green numbers indicate that that particular aspect of craft performance is within expected tolerances for stable flight, and Red numbers indicate instability in that particular aspect of craft performance.
Of the values listed, some of the main important ones:
Mw: Is your CoM in the right place? If this value is red, the craft will try to nosedive or back flip. Try shifting either the CoM or the main wing around to bring the CoM closer to what in stock would be the CoL indicator.
Yß and Nß: Yaw sideslip stability, does the plane want to fly straight?. Unless the tailplane is huge (i.e. large enough to be generating substantial amounts of lift), likely to be green. Dihedral (Wing is angled, with wing tips higher than the wing toot) improves this.
Lß: When the lift vector and gravity don't line up (when the craft has rolled and is not parallel with the horizon), sideslip occurs. Does this induce the craft to roll? Generally going to be green unless tiny tailplanes and/or excessive Anhedral(Wing is angled, with wing tips lower than the wing root) are present.
Mq, Lp, and Nr: Pitch, Roll, and Yaw rotation stability. If the craft undergoes rotation, will said rotation damp out? Generally not going to be red unless other things are also red.
Lr: Does the plane have a vertical stabilizer? If red, the craft lacks sufficient Yaw stability, and will want to flatspin. Fix with either a larger tail or a longer empennage)

The thirdtab is the Stability Derivative Simulation. This just takes the data from the latest Stability Derivatives calculation in the Data+Stability Derivatives window. The Stability Deriv Sim isn't something I've ever really used, and is entirely optional, it is entirely possible to design excellent FAR craft without even opening this window.
That said, here is a brief rundown of the tab.
Once you've run a Data+Stability Derivatives calculation, you get the aircraft's flight stats - properties, longitudinal derivatives, and lateral derivatives.
Switching to the Stability sim tab ports the D+SD numbers into the sim, and presents you with a subset of those numbers, a graph, and some data inputs.
For the longitude sim, these are: init w - downward velocity, in m/s; init u - forward velocity, in m/s; init q - pitch rate, in rad/s; and init theta - pitch attitude, in radians.
For the lateral sim, these are: init beta - sideslip angle, in radians; init p - roll rate, in rad/s; init r - yaw rate, in rad/s; and init phi - roll angle, in radians
EndTime is how long the sim will run for - i would suggest changing this to ~30 or so to get a better idea of overall stability.
dt I don't know, but it appears to change Y-axis graph scale.

What the sim panel is used for is determining flight stability in response to deviations from the initial static stability values calculated earlier - the stability deriv panel gives a snapshot of how the aircraft will perform in any one specific state of altitude, speed, and orientation; the sim panel shows how stable the craft is when subject to changing states.
When you enter a number into one or more of the initX fields and click the 'Run Simulation' button, you get a graph output with four colored lines , each corresponding to one of the 4  derivatives, that show the change in flight state that the specified deviation. This output will likely be an oscillating waveform. A craft that is stable should have a waveform that damps out and decreases toward a neutral rest state as time increases.. An unstable craft will have a waveform with increasing magnitude and frequency as time increases

So if you wanted to, say, see if a plane is stable pitching up 5 degrees from a 1km ASL level cruise at mach 1, you would go to the stability deriv tab, enter in the appropriate flight conditions, then go to the Sim tab and run a simulation with init theta set to 0.0872 (1 radian = ~57.3 deg; 5 deg = pi/36). If you wanted to see how it performs at 2km, you'd have to go back to the stability tab, run another stability calculation, and return to the sim tab to run another sim, etc.

For the most part, the vast majority of seeing if an aircraft is stable will be done in via Data+Stability calculations; the Sim tab is mainly there to give an idea if an aircraft's oscillations damp down in flight. It's a tool that's there for those who know how to use it, but is by no means essential for successfully building something in FAR.

The last tab is the Transonic Design tab. This has two main components. On the left is the Transonic Area Ruling Analysis. This updates whenever a change is made to the craft being built in the editor, and tells you the vessel's Max Cross-Section Area, Mach 1 Wave Drag Area, and Critical Mach Number. The max Cross-Section is self-explanitory, it tells you how large your craft is as a cross-section. Generally want this to be lower for lower drag. The Mach 1 wave drag is a measure of the area that will generate wave drag at mach 1, and Critical Mach number is  speed at which the airflow over some point of the aircraft reaches, but does not exceed, the speed of sound. Exceeding this speed will result in those areas of the plane creating shock waves , and a corresponding increase in drag coefficient.
Clicking the Raise Gear Button at the top will raise landing gear, and allow you to see what the craft performance will look like when gear is retracted.
The Right side of the Transonic Design Tab allos you to toggle on various curves (displayed as a 2D plane along the longitidinal axis) of either the craft's cross section, curvature, or pressure coefficient. Smoother is better.

Now, interpreting FAR analysis data has been covered, but what about tuning? In stock, Control surfaces have togglable pitch, Yaw, and Roll inputs, and deflection amount can be changed. In FAR, instead the Control Surface options become this:
Pitch, Yaw, and Roll inputs can be customized. In this case, the inner aileron here has full Roll input, and will provide a 20% Pitch input as well. Control Dflect is the same as in stock, except it is now in degrees rather than percent of the stock control surface's max deflection as listed in it's part description.

AoA% allows the control surface to respond to craft AoA. Setting this to 100, for example, would mean that if, say, the craft pitches up and increases AoA by 5 degrees, the control surface would deflect down an equal amount, the practical effect of which would be damping sudden increases in AoA. Setting it to -100%, likewise, would cause the control surface to deflect up 5 degrees, remaining parallel with the prograde vector and providing Pitch input after Pitch control Surfaces have ceased input.
BrakeRudder allows the control surface to be used similarly to A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s with Yaw inputs enabled, and permits Yaw inputs without needing vertical stabilizers/rudders.
Lastly, Mass-Strength Multiplier % allows tweaking the mass of the wing or control surface. Default Mass-Strength is somewhat heavy – the example craft has a mass of ~4200 kg with all wing parts at 1.0; reducing M-S Mult to 0.5 dropped the craft weight to ~3500kg. The lower the strength, the less aerostress the wing can tolerate before failing, but the lower the mass, the less the overall mass of the craft. Finding the ideal setting may take some trial and error, but main wings and control surfaces with more than 10 degrees of deflection should probably remain above 0.5.

Tuning control settings can take some time. Setting inputs too low results in a reduction of maneuverability. Conversely, setting them too high runs the risk of the control surface stalling at full diflection, resulting in a loss of control, which may translate to overall degraded aircraft performance or sudden oscillations as the craft reacts to the sudden reduction in control authority on that axis. Also of note is the effect of speed on control surface performance. At higher speeds, aeropressures increase on deployed surfaces. A control surface that could fully deploy without incident at low speed may undergo more aerostress than it can handle and break, or result in the craft undergoing too great a vector change, resulting in increased drag and unwanted energy loss.

So you've built a plane, tweaked it, and have now launched it. As mentioned earlier, if a craft looks like a plane, chances are it will fly like one. But what if it doesn’t? Some things to check, then. What is the Lift Coefficient of the aircraft, and what AoA is required to generate lift at takeoff conditions? If the Lift coefficient is small, consider increasing the wing area of the craft by adding more wing, or reducing the mass of the craft. The other option is increasing craft thrust - higher thrust can get away with smaller wings, and vice -versa. If the AoA required is high, consider adding some Angle of Incidence to the main wing – AoI is the measure of the angle of the main wing compared to the fuselage, with the leading edge of the wing higher than the trailing edge (usually). Be careful when adding AoI, as more than a few degrees of tilt to the wing may result in needing negative AoA at higher speeds to maintain level flight, as well as adding unnecessary drag. If both cL and AoA are acceptable, check CoM and Landing gear placement. If going for a modern tricycle arrangement, are the rear wheels just behind the CoM to permit the aircraft to pivot the nose up during takeoff? If going for a inverse tricycle arrangement, are the main wheels providing enough elevation relative to the rear wheel to add some extrinsic Angle of Incidence when the craft is a rest or taking off?

If the craft is yawing left or right on the runway during liftoff, are your landing gears on straight? non-perpendicular wheels can behave oddly. If your gears are fine, is the craft Yaw stable at low speed? If not, try a wider wheel base or larger tail/greater yaw authority.

Once the craft is airborne, do the control surface deflection settings permit a level of response appropriate to the craft? Most turns are accomplished by rolling, then pitching, rather than via yaw; Does the craft have a good roll rate, and sufficient pitch authority? If not, consider increasing either control surface deflection or more/larger control surfaces. Is the CoM more or less centered on the main wing to permit the craft to easily rotate around it for pitch maneuvers? If using a multi-fueslage design, is the CoM centered with the Center of Thrust, and/or is there sufficient dihedral or tailplane area to prevent sideslip and yaw?

The AI

Spoiler

Overview of the BDAc AI settings, both vanilla and the new ones the S.I. patch adds:

Default Alt. is the AItitude the AI wants to stay at in flight.
Min Alt  is the minimal altitude the AI will fly before breaking off whatever it's doing to climb and gain altitude.
Steer Factor is how much control deflection the AI will use when flying the plane. Similar to, but slightly different from Steer Limiter. Think of it as how hard the AI will pull back on the control stick to perform maneuvers.
Steer Limiter clamps max allowed deflection of all the control surfaces on the craft. A quick way of reducing the max maneuverability of a craft without having to manually tweak each control surface, but is a blanket setting.
SteerKi (used to be Pitch Ki, but it's used for both pitch and yaw now) is the user-determined value for Ki, the integral gain in the AI's PID controller, and is used for tuning the system to eliminate errors in the output( in this case, input magnitude to control surfaces); in layman's terms, it's a measure of how aggressively the craft will oscillate on the Pitch/Yaw axis to counter oversteer while coming to a new heading. Less is better if smooth steering is desired, which is why previous BDA contests have had people advising setting it to 0, but doing so will result in initial errors from the AI steering math going uncorrected (translation - your gunfire is missing 20m to the left) - some small amount should be present for more accurate outputs.
Speed Adjusted Steer Limiter (NEW) is a secondary Steer Limiter is a multiplier applied to the Steer Limiter that is used once the craft has reached a certain speed to have the AI use lower (or higher) control surface deflection past that speed. Useful if you want, say, to have a maneuverable fighter at sub-mach, but not have the AI rip the wings off at trans-mach speed. Leaving this at 1 will result in no change to flight characteristics regardless of speed.
Adjusted Limiter Speed (NEW) is the speed at which the AI will begin to use the Speed Adjusted Steer Limiter.
Steer Damping  is how aggressively the AI will try to damp out over steer.
Max Speed and Takeoff Speed should be fairly self-explanatory.
Min Combat Speed is the threshold the AI will use to determine if it needs to break and extend to regain energy or can continue combat maneuvers.
Extend Distance (NEW) is the distance the AI will extend to when breaking and regaining energy. Primarily there for craft the AI just wants to fly to the sunset with instead of fight, but can be used to force turnfighting. Setting it low to 100 is probably suicidal, though.
MIssile Evade Dist (NEW), irrelevant here, but is the distance at which a craft will break and evade an oncoming missile; mainly intended to stop crafts from breaking and burning energy to evade that AMRAAM that's still 10km away.
Max AoA and Max G are the maximum angle of attack the AI is to use and the maximum Gs the plane is to pull during maneuvers.
AI Personality (NEW) is a toggle between vanilla and Reckless AI behaviors. Reckless AI places less focus on evasion; should help it retain more energy and stay on target, at cost of nigh-suicidal disregard for safety in some instances. !!EXPERIMENTAL!!
Unclamp Tuning removes the limiters on the AI and takes things up to eleven. Max values pretty much everything can be set to is massively increased.
Disable/Advanced Settings (NEW) - On by default. Disables advanced settings, and hides them from the GUI, reverting AI to vanilla functionality.

Edited November 23, 2019 by SuicidalInsanity
Second bracket

[splatn't™]

What KSP version is this? 1.7.3, 1.7.1 etc.

[SuicidalInsanity]

 KSP 1.7.3, though that said, craft made in 1.7.x should work equally well.

Edited September 23, 2019 by SuicidalInsanity

[GDJ]

I'm in!

 

[splatn't™]

Aw hecc.

I was going to submit a Do. 335 lookalike but I would have to stuff it full of ore tanks for it to meet the 5.25 ton minimum.

[SuicidalInsanity]

You can always make the airframe a little bigger or use the FAR mass-strength sliders to increase wing part mass. But yes, in some cases, twin engine craft may need ballast to meet weight requirements - that's the cost for having a lower drag/TWR ratio relative to single engine craft.

[Me1_base]

Remarked, will submit something before my midterm

Very Curious on what G loads can a kerbal sustain?

[GDJ]

1 hour ago, Me1_base said:

Remarked, will submit something before my midterm

Very Curious on what G loads can a kerbal sustain?

Depends greatly on experience if you are playing Career. Newbies are pretty fragile, and start pooping the chairs at around 6 G's. Old characters (like mine (GDJ Kerman, whom I've carried over since 0.90))  is a 4 star pilot and it won't break a sweat until 12 G's.

If the tournament is in a Sandbox format everybody is maxed out, but I am curious to know if the G force feature is going to be used in the tournament? @SuicidalInsanity

 

2 hours ago, splatn't™ said:

Aw hecc.

I was going to submit a Do. 335 lookalike but I would have to stuff it full of ore tanks for it to meet the 5.25 ton minimum.

I've built a twin engine Heavy Fighter and it weighs in at  8 1/2 tonnes (mostly stock parts). Don't let the weight scare you. If you have enough wing and the CM/CP/CT is well matched and tweaked a heavy plane will be as light as a feather.


Well, I've pretty much finished the prototype of my craft (148 points). Still tweaking a bit.

Edited September 25, 2019 by GDJ

[SuicidalInsanity]

Yes, Kerbal G Limits will be on, more as a formality than a serious restriction. It'll be run in sandbox, so everyone will be a 5-star Pilot, which means your Kerbals should be fine as long as you aren't pulling sustained 15+G turns. (I seriously doubt you will be able to build something with the BAD-T prop engines that can do this {No, this is not a challenge}, so GLOC shouldn't be an issue anyway.)

 

[splatn't™]

In my experience, the Dummy cant get off the runway.

[SuicidalInsanity]

Found the issue, Dummy's been fixed. You can fix your Dummy locally by autostrutting the small hardpoints the front landing gear is attached to, and setting friction control to 0 for good measure. (SQUAD Wheels! ) There's a general lesson to be learned from this for anyone else suffering from inability to takeoff - If your craft is veering off the runway instead of taking off, your landing gear is probably the cause.

[Me1_base]

Tried to build something...

Twin Propeller Heavy Fighter Faster than Me262, really?

Fly like a Bomber

[splatn't™]

My ShKAS will only fire one round before stopping, and I have to switch weapons before it will fire again.

 

[GDJ]

On 9/25/2019 at 12:46 AM, SuicidalInsanity said:

Yes, Kerbal G Limits will be on, more as a formality than a serious restriction. It'll be run in sandbox, so everyone will be a 5-star Pilot, which means your Kerbals should be fine as long as you aren't pulling sustained 15+G turns. (I seriously doubt you will be able to build something with the BAD-T prop engines that can do this {No, this is not a challenge}, so GLOC shouldn't be an issue anyway.)

Hee hee hee............

Edited September 27, 2019 by GDJ

[splatn't™]

One thing I've learned from testing:

the ai likes to dive my plane into the ground .

[SuicidalInsanity]

@splatn't™ The ShKAS sometimes does that. I think it's due to being clipped too deeply into whatever its mounted on.
As for the AI crashing, you'll need to either increase your Steer Limiter/Steer Factor or increase the Min Alt, which should at least greatly reduce lithobraking tendencies.

[splatn't™]

Are radars allowed?

[SuicidalInsanity]

Technically yes, but why? It's only AA weapons, so no radar-guided missiles, and if it's to see distant targets, the Weapon Manager Visual Range slider does that already.

[Guest]

Prototyping

Currently looking solid, excellent controllability at low speeds, high pitch rates, and good energy retention. Still debating on LEF/Maneuver Flaps.

[GDJ]

23 hours ago, splatn't™ said:

Are radars allowed?

 

23 hours ago, SuicidalInsanity said:

Technically yes, but why? It's only AA weapons, so no radar-guided missiles, and if it's to see distant targets, the Weapon Manager Visual Range slider does that already.

I'm with @SuicidalInsanity on this one. Yes, it would work, but it would be overkill. Eventho' RADAR did exist in WWII (re: the British had a network of radar installations covering the English Channel and North Sea coasts) and it was installed in some aircraft between 1939 and 1944, it was not commonplace and difficult to implement with the technology of the time.

[Hinden]

I started building too, twin engine craft are surprisingly fast, but could not make them stable unden 90 m/s speed yet.



And already having fun pitting them against each other.

[Pds314]

"Kerbal G limits will be on."

[The grim reaper has joined the chat]

On a serious note, did you tweak the weights of the engines? I don't remember the higher end ones being so light.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Uh... oh wow.... That L/D... that is... uh.. well, it looks like permanent GLOC will definitely be a concern....

Edited September 30, 2019 by Pds314

[Pds314]

B E G O N E
D R A G

[Pds314]

Something is wrong I think... I will try reinstalling everything. This conventional design, albeit with a fairly crazy 17m wingspan, is getting L/D spikes up to 90. And sustainable at 40+.