Mods for propellers?

[Akagi]

I'm working on World War I planes for a BDArmory AI project, but my jet engine tomfoolery isn't going so well. Does anyone know of mods that add propellers to KSP?

[pmborg]

4 hours ago, Akagi said:

I'm working on World War I planes for a BDArmory AI project, but my jet engine tomfoolery isn't going so well. Does anyone know of mods that add propellers to KSP?

Hello, there are a few of them, these are the first ones that came to my mind:
-Firespitter
-Airplanes Plus
-Kerbal Aircraft Expansion (KAX)
-USI's Karbonite
-Freight Transport Technologies

Edited January 19, 2023 by pmborg

[Stone Blue]

-Heisenberg Airships also has a couple props

The thing about Heisenberg, is it has a WildBlue .dll that deals with *how* props work. The only other plugin which deals with *how* props work, that I can think of, is Firespitter. These are good if you wanted to make your own props to add to KSP.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 1/20/2023 at 9:57 AM, Stone Blue said:

-Heisenberg Airships also has a couple props

And some are the biggest.

[panarchist]

On 1/20/2023 at 5:57 AM, Stone Blue said:

-Heisenberg Airships also has a couple props

The thing about Heisenberg, is it has a WildBlue .dll that deals with *how* props work. The only other plugin which deals with *how* props work, that I can think of, is Firespitter. These are good if you wanted to make your own props to add to KSP.

That's done through Kerbal Actuators, isn't it? Several non-WBI mods also use that as a dependency.

[Pds314]

I will add that if you want the true WW1 experience, adding AJE gives you many variants of mostly correct WW1 and interwar engines as variants once you install whatever mod gives you the engine's model.

 

Now just to find BDA damage settings that make rifle caliber machineguns without incendiary or explosive rounds into viable weapons, since there's nothing like getting a sustained burst of fire on an enemy only for their engine to be at 499.27581000045 HP out of 500.

(and also don't completely ruin larger caliber weapon performance, i.e. 7.62mm punches holes in a plane's skin, damages the engine, and severely injures the pilot,  .50 cal goes straight through and damages it, kills the pilot, severely damages the engine, 20mm damages the structure or turns the engine off. 30mm blows up the structure of small planes and damages that of large ones, with pilots or engines being very squishy to it. Anything larger makes airplanes go boom. The trick is making it so you don't have to burn through 7200 rounds of 7.62 to achieve the results of a single 20mm. And without resorting to late war or interwar ammo types).

In my tests, with 500% damage and 25% proc frequency, somewhat optimized mid to late WWII dogfights tend to end quickly with the current state of BDA+. Usually the planes merge without dying and go one circle but then first turn kills aren't rare.

By comparison, I tried a fight with unoptimized WWI planes with inert slug ammo and couldn't get them to actually take each other down except by maneuver kills.

The matchup of optimized WWII plane vs unoptimized WWI was especially brutal. 1 WWII plane took out 3 WW1 planes within 24 seconds of the merge and wasn't even hit once even by a useless 7.62. Really it should be more like 18 seconds because it managed to circle back around and obliterate a stricken plane before it fell the 200 meters to the ground.

Given all this, I would say giving the aircraft decent weapons and tuning them in such a way that they will actually climb rather than hugging their lower altitude limit is probably a bigger problem than finding a supply of sub-200 horsepower engines.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Pds314

[Stone Blue]

7 hours ago, panarchist said:

That's done through Kerbal Actuators, isn't it? Several non-WBI mods also use that as a dependency.

Yuppers

[Pds314]

So, I figured out settings that make 7.62 slugs a viable, if not exactly strong, weapon for BDA.

1. damage 500% but you were probably gonna do that anyway.

2. ballistic damage multiplier = 3 (maximum value).

3. Procedural battle damage = 100%.

4. Engines flame out at 80% HP. Frequency of engine damage at maximum.

5. make sure pilot snipes are allowed.

 

Don't get me wrong, based on the tag mode, my new more efficient biplane still needs a lot of hits to kill a late WWII monoplane, about 80 concentrated in a small area, but 80 hits out of 1800 rounds is more than doable if the enemy is dumb enough to turn with a biplane.

To be fair I also made my biplane better than my previous one. It's about 570 kg in flight rather than 770, and it has a slightly better engine (130 horsepower vs 100) and much better turn performance with actual optimizations. That being said, it still doesn't have leading edge -aoa surfaces like literally every other plane I make. And the 10 meter wingspan isn't that unreasonable.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Pds314

[Akagi]

4 hours ago, Pds314 said:

So, I figured out settings that make 7.62 slugs a viable, if not exactly strong, weapon for BDA.

1. damage 500% but you were probably gonna do that anyway.

2. ballistic damage multiplier = 3 (maximum value).

3. Procedural battle damage = 100%.

4. Engines flame out at 80% HP. Frequency of engine damage at maximum.

5. make sure pilot snipes are allowed.

 

Don't get me wrong, based on the tag mode, my new more efficient biplane still needs a lot of hits to kill a late WWII monoplane, about 80 concentrated in a small area, but 80 hits out of 1800 rounds is more than doable if the enemy is dumb enough to turn with a biplane.

To be fair I also made my biplane better than my previous one. It's about 570 kg in flight rather than 770, and it has a slightly better engine (130 horsepower vs 100) and much better turn performance with actual optimizations. That being said, it still doesn't have leading edge -aoa surfaces like literally every other plane I make. And the 10 meter wingspan isn't that unreasonable.

Where would I edit these settings? Gun, weapons manager, autopilot, 2, all 3, or something else?

[Pds314]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:21 AM, Akagi said:

Where would I edit these settings? Gun, weapons manager, autopilot, 2, all 3, or something else?

press alt-b or press the settings icon in the weapon manager.