InfiniteDice -=Skillful=- Combat Damage & Weapons Mod

[Endersmens]

I don't know about that same tracking, I mean i get that SAMs are a kind of hyper missile, and that they constantly track and change directions, but i've never heard of a missile over shooting and then turning completely around and the missing again like that. I think the missiles turn/rotate too much, but they move around at an alright speed. I dont know maybe its just me

[sumghai]

I dabbled in Skillful for a couple of weeks, had some fun times with the example crafts. Unfortunately, my lack of patience in setting up a proper repair/rearmament logistic network meant that I would limit myself to deploying new vehicles rather than maintaining existing ones.

Hey dice is there any way I can modify the point at which parts die from overheating?

Using Skillfull and Deadly Reentry causes parts to overheat quickly and then die at only a portion of the way overheated.

The overheating point for parts should (in my opinion) represent the threshold for damage to the part not the point of explosion.

Having an engine reach 80% of its heat capacity and then fail seems unrealistic.

Shouldn't the parts work within their designed perameters not fail below their design ratings?

Just make the engine's HeatProduction value lower if you want it to overheat less. It's in the part.cfg file.

It's more of the concept that upsets me

Why should a part fail at 80% capacity?

KSP by default only simulates failure with detonation not like Skillful where it stops working

The overheat point should be where the part fails and can still be repaired not where it detonates.

Not to dig up a relatively old discussion, but unfortunately, part overheating was one of the reasons I've uninstalled Skillful for the time being.

I understand that part overheating is tied in with heat damage from incendiary ordnance, etc. However, when I launched a simple rocket consisting of a single S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster, a 3.75m fuel tank and a probe core, the engine cluster quickly overheated to just over 50% and stopped operating without exploding, at an altitude of around 1500m. I suspected that this may have to do with having Deadly Reentry Continued, although once I removed Skillful, the KS-25x4 would no longer overheat prematurely.

I'm not the least bit fond of Obnoxious_Gamer's proposed solution of simply changing HeatProduction values in all engines, even with a MM patch applied across all engines in-game, so I too wonder whether the 90% overheat limit has been implemented in the latest/future updates, and whether it would play nicely with DR Continued.

I don't know about that same tracking, I mean i get that SAMs are a kind of hyper missile, and that they constantly track and change directions, but i've never heard of a missile over shooting and then turning completely around and the missing again like that. I think the missiles turn/rotate too much, but they move around at an alright speed. I dont know maybe its just me

Yeah, I'm not too sure about the rapid direction changes in the SAM trajectories - I know first-hand footage of SAM intercepts aren't widely available (for comparison purposes), but I've always assumed missile direction changes were gentler meanders rather than Marcross Missile Massacre.

[LORDPrometheus]

I dabbled in Skillful for a couple of weeks, had some fun times with the example crafts. Unfortunately, my lack of patience in setting up a proper repair/rearmament logistic network meant that I would limit myself to deploying new vehicles rather than maintaining existing ones.

Not to dig up a relatively old discussion, but unfortunately, part overheating was one of the reasons I've uninstalled Skillful for the time being.

I understand that part overheating is tied in with heat damage from incendiary ordnance, etc. However, when I launched a simple rocket consisting of a single S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster, a 3.75m fuel tank and a probe core, the engine cluster quickly overheated to just over 50% and stopped operating without exploding, at an altitude of around 1500m. I suspected that this may have to do with having Deadly Reentry Continued, although once I removed Skillful, the KS-25x4 would no longer overheat prematurely.

I'm not the least bit fond of Obnoxious_Gamer's proposed solution of simply changing HeatProduction values in all engines, even with a MM patch applied across all engines in-game, so I too wonder whether the 90% overheat limit has been implemented in the latest/future updates, and whether it would play nicely with DR Continued.

Yeah, I'm not too sure about the rapid direction changes in the SAM trajectories - I know first-hand footage of SAM intercepts aren't widely available (for comparison purposes), but I've always assumed missile direction changes were gentler meanders rather than Marcross Missile Massacre.

As I stated before it's the concept I don't like.

If a part is designed to overheat at temperature X it shouldn't fail at 3/4X

[The Error]

Er...seeing the video, can I suggest the SAMs get a serious maneuverability nerf?

As in, when they launch, they can line up and track and such, but being able to fly past, then do a 180 and still hit, well... that just seems excessively cheaty.

Either that, or I'd suggest flares/chaff.

[LORDPrometheus]

Er...seeing the video, can I suggest the SAMs get a serious maneuverability nerf?

As in, when they launch, they can line up and track and such, but being able to fly past, then do a 180 and still hit, well... that just seems excessively cheaty.

Either that, or I'd suggest flares/chaff.

Flares are defiantly a must! That and there should be a lock on warning. Cheesey yes awesome yes!

[InfiniteDice]

As I stated before it's the concept I don't like.

If a part is designed to overheat at temperature X it shouldn't fail at 3/4X

I'd hate to be argumentative but that just isn't the case. Parts IRL are designed to meet certain specifications yes. In reality what they can sustain must be factored by time. Look at wheel bearings on your car or any moving part, friction and heat kills everything given time. Just trying to say... just because a part is rated or has a max heat of 4000 doesn't mean it can't fail at 2000. Maybe it's rated to 4000 for 10 minutes, 2 minutes or 30 seconds.

The issue with KSP is that there are stock events that happen at 100% max heat.... part X explodes into nothing. The heat bar seems to be not a 1:1 scale so when I'm intercepting part destruction from heat at 85% or whatever on the bar it's only showing 1/2 way.

Skillful now has every part report heat. So you'll be able to accurately keep an eye on that.

I really don't know what the issue with overheating is, I've made tons of aircraft and rockets, I had maybe 1 that liked to overheat, so I used a) less throttle till the temps declined or redesigned the rocket slightly to soak more of the heat. With SRBs that's the only way to solve it... redesign it so the engines are not so close, or so they have other parts to cool them.

Using Deadly re-entry seems to exacerbate the issue, probably because it's adding more heat to the part, which skillful then tracks.

Edited May 1, 2014 by InfiniteDice

[Endersmens]

Dice, any comment on the missile tracking and turning? It seems to rapid and insane

[InfiniteDice]

Easier said than done Proximity is now in, so with that the missile explodes about ~2m from the target, this should allow for more detonations and less hunting. The missile now also looks in a forward manner, meaning it shouldn't track your own plane, but it has a memory, so if it had aquired a target already in the past it will head for it.

Flares will be added - the warning sound I had thought of as well. For the time being dodging does help though it's not guaranteed. Snjo mentioned in a discussion yesterday that even separatrons might do the trick until something official is released - I'm not sure if they run hotter than the average jet engine or not. The seeker just tracks the hottest part for now.

[InfiniteDice]

Dice, any comment on the missile tracking and turning? It seems to rapid and insane

It's a balancing game of hit or miss. Even with the 'rapid and insane' turning, It can still take the missile a few passes to hit. If I restrict that maneuverability then I'll need to make other adjustments to lead the missile in.

Again I want a balance here, fun always takes priority over realism, but at the same time I want something somewhat more realistic than not. If I make it too accurate it's no good, if I make it too realistic then it's no good.

These are not supposed to be 100% lethal either. A cool excerpt from wiki on the sidewinder: "during the 1982 Falklands War; in this campaign the "Lima" reportedly achieved a kill ratio of around 80%, a dramatic improvement over the 10–15% levels of earlier versions,"...

Even though the first sidewinders were works of mechanical genius, they still only downed a target ~10 -15% of the time. (I'm sure more accurate performance info can be found).

Lastly the video shows the very first implementation of how it works, meaning it's not done/tuned in any final way. I just thought it was cool enough to include and share for the time being.

Edited May 1, 2014 by InfiniteDice

[KhaosCorp]

If your looking for realism your better off looking somewhere else.....

This is KSP...a game about blasting little green creatures off into space from an imaginary planet....you want realism, go play Orbiter =P

Havent had much time for games recently, but the little bit Ive messed with Skillful has been a blast!! You have really outdone yourself here ID, hats off to ya bud =)

[Endersmens]

It's a balancing game of hit or miss. Even with the 'rapid and insane' turning, It can still take the missile a few passes to hit. If I restrict that maneuverability then I'll need to make other adjustments to lead the missile in.

Again I want a balance here, fun always takes priority over realism, but at the same time I want something somewhat more realistic than not. If I make it too accurate it's no good, if I make it too realistic then it's no good.

These are not supposed to be 100% lethal either. A cool excerpt from wiki on the sidewinder: "during the 1982 Falklands War; in this campaign the "Lima" reportedly achieved a kill ratio of around 80%, a dramatic improvement over the 10–15% levels of earlier versions,"...

Even though the first sidewinders were works of mechanical genius, they still only downed a target ~10 -15% of the time. (I'm sure more accurate performance info can be found).

Lastly the video shows the very first implementation of how it works, meaning it's not done/tuned in any final way. I just thought it was cool enough to include and share for the time being.

Yeah I understand. But like when its done will it still flip all the way around when it misses and stuff like that? that's pretty much the only real problem that i meant

[LORDPrometheus]

I'd hate to be argumentative but that just isn't the case. Parts IRL are designed to meet certain specifications yes. In reality what they can sustain must be factored by time. Look at wheel bearings on your car or any moving part, friction and heat kills everything given time. Just trying to say... just because a part is rated or has a max heat of 4000 doesn't mean it can't fail at 2000. Maybe it's rated to 4000 for 10 minutes, 2 minutes or 30 seconds.

The issue with KSP is that there are stock events that happen at 100% max heat.... part X explodes into nothing. The heat bar seems to be not a 1:1 scale so when I'm intercepting part destruction from heat at 85% or whatever on the bar it's only showing 1/2 way.

Skillful now has every part report heat. So you'll be able to accurately keep an eye on that.

I really don't know what the issue with overheating is, I've made tons of aircraft and rockets, I had maybe 1 that liked to overheat, so I used a) less throttle till the temps declined or redesigned the rocket slightly to soak more of the heat. With SRBs that's the only way to solve it... redesign it so the engines are not so close, or so they have other parts to cool them.

Using Deadly re-entry seems to exacerbate the issue, probably because it's adding more heat to the part, which skillful then tracks.

When you put it that way it does make sense. The real issue is I guess the heating exponent in DRE but I can modify that. The issue really is with the mainsail and some mod engines that just go crazy and overheat too fast in general it isn't much of an issue.

Is artillery within reach or a distant dream btw?

[Tanya Sapien]

conventional SAM, you're absolutely right, but there is a kind of missile called an "auto swarmer" (not to be confused with the Twisted Metal "Swarmer Missile")that is capable of overshooting and doubling back, they're designed for taking down large numbers of aircraft by sheer air saturation, and in the event that one misses, the computer controlling all of them reassigns a new target for the one that missed, or if none are available plots a return trajectory for another swipe at the original target. They're really nasty little buggers.

[InfiniteDice]

conventional SAM, you're absolutely right, but there is a kind of missile called an "auto swarmer" (not to be confused with the Twisted Metal "Swarmer Missile")that is capable of overshooting and doubling back, they're designed for taking down large numbers of aircraft by sheer air saturation, and in the event that one misses, the computer controlling all of them reassigns a new target for the one that missed, or if none are available plots a return trajectory for another swipe at the original target. They're really nasty little buggers.

Cool reference.

IRL there are 'loiter' missiles that will basically fly a circle till it picks up a signal... these tend to be the radar-homing or HARM anti-radiation missiles, they can also remember the last known position and be programmed to strike that location. Modern torpedoes also can behave the same way.

[Krosulhah]

I think we might need some ejection seats now.....

[sumghai]

I really don't know what the issue with overheating is, I've made tons of aircraft and rockets, I had maybe 1 that liked to overheat, so I used a) less throttle till the temps declined or redesigned the rocket slightly to soak more of the heat. With SRBs that's the only way to solve it... redesign it so the engines are not so close, or so they have other parts to cool them.

Using Deadly re-entry seems to exacerbate the issue, probably because it's adding more heat to the part, which skillful then tracks.

In my tests where Skillful was used in conjunction with DR, the following cases overheated, became damaged and unresponsive shortly after launch

- A rocket consisting of a single SRB and a probe core

- A rocket consisting of a single S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster, a 3.75m fuel tank and a probe core

It definitely seems that both add-ons are adding heat to the parts separately, and removing one or the other mitigates this issue. I'm wondering if there is a way for both mods to detect the presence of each other, and if so reduce their respective heat-generation functionality accordingly. (I have certain trepidation about simply dialing back heat generation completely in DR, since I'm not sure if Skillful will handle re-entry heat properly as well)

Or is that a bit too much to ask?

[JTG]

Ha, now I can blow up kerbals with style.

[Hellbrand]

conventional SAM, you're absolutely right, but there is a kind of missile called an "auto swarmer" (not to be confused with the Twisted Metal "Swarmer Missile")that is capable of overshooting and doubling back, they're designed for taking down large numbers of aircraft by sheer air saturation, and in the event that one misses, the computer controlling all of them reassigns a new target for the one that missed, or if none are available plots a return trajectory for another swipe at the original target. They're really nasty little buggers.

Wait... are you talking macross missle spam here >_>

[InfiniteDice]

Well I tried sepratrons on decouplers... lol I dropped two pairs, in two groups (total of 4) and they seemed to deflect the incoming missiles. So that works!

I have tweaked the code more, built in some speed relative triggers and it seems to have all but eliminated fly-bys and 180's... not saying it can't happen... probably will 10% of the time but I think that's acceptable,

Generally the missile flies towards the target, then once at a certain range it will begin to regulate it's thrust to + match it's closing speed within a specified range. The faster the target the more closing speed it has.

Lastly I've updated the auto firing so it now arms the next missile on the ship/vessel. Example: If you place 4 Kerbenders on the ship and set 1 to guard, once that missile fires it will wait 7 seconds then arm another of the 3 remaining missiles. It does this until all missiles have been fired.

Just a side note: these are short range defensive missiles - the guard mode for them works only if the vessel is uncontrolled and when a target of the opposite team flies within 500m. To use manually you can place on any vessel and fire as a normal missile... this missile doesn't radar target lock... it heat locks, so you'll need to fire it in the direction where something is a little hotter than ambient air temperature. The missile does look forward so it shouldn't double back on the firing aircraft.

Edited May 2, 2014 by InfiniteDice

[Endersmens]

Well I tried sepratrons on decouplers... lol I dropped two pairs, in two groups (total of 4) and they seemed to deflect the incoming missiles. So that works!

I have tweaked the code more, built in some speed relative triggers and it seems to have all but eliminated fly-bys and 180's... not saying it can't happen... probably will 10% of the time but I think that's acceptable,

Generally the missile flies towards the target, then once at a certain range it will begin to regulate it's thrust to + match it's closing speed within a specified range. The faster the target the more closing speed it has.

Lastly I've updated the auto firing so it now arms the next missile on the ship/vessel. Example: If you place 4 Kerbenders on the ship and set 1 to guard, once that missile fires it will wait 7 seconds then arm another of the 3 remaining missiles. It does this until all missiles have been fired.

Just a side note: these are short range defensive missiles - the guard mode for them works only if the vessel is uncontrolled and when a target of the opposite team flies within 500m. To use manually you can place on any vessel and fire as a normal missile... this missile doesn't radar target lock... it heat locks, so you'll need to fire it in the direction where something is a little hotter than ambient air temperature. The missile does look forward so it shouldn't double back on the firing aircraft.

YES!! YES YES YES!!!! This is almost exactly what i was talking about. I didn't know if it was possible so i didn't get specific. Maybe a video update showing us the improved tracking?

EDIT: and the makeshift flares in action?

Edited May 2, 2014 by Endersmens

[LORDPrometheus]

Hey dice I may have figured out something key with the audio bug

When you use soundtrack replacer with an sfx pack The engines sound fine! Maybe its just Skillful's interaction with the stock sounds

[Frostbenjamin]

Well I tried sepratrons on decouplers... lol I dropped two pairs, in two groups (total of 4) and they seemed to deflect the incoming missiles. So that works!

I have tweaked the code more, built in some speed relative triggers and it seems to have all but eliminated fly-bys and 180's... not saying it can't happen... probably will 10% of the time but I think that's acceptable,

Generally the missile flies towards the target, then once at a certain range it will begin to regulate it's thrust to + match it's closing speed within a specified range. The faster the target the more closing speed it has.

Lastly I've updated the auto firing so it now arms the next missile on the ship/vessel. Example: If you place 4 Kerbenders on the ship and set 1 to guard, once that missile fires it will wait 7 seconds then arm another of the 3 remaining missiles. It does this until all missiles have been fired.

Just a side note: these are short range defensive missiles - the guard mode for them works only if the vessel is uncontrolled and when a target of the opposite team flies within 500m. To use manually you can place on any vessel and fire as a normal missile... this missile doesn't radar target lock... it heat locks, so you'll need to fire it in the direction where something is a little hotter than ambient air temperature. The missile does look forward so it shouldn't double back on the firing aircraft.

Indeed a Video representation would be most apreciated and loved!

[Djolox]

Hey auto turrets are not working for me i set teams but they even dont track!

Can you help?

[ATrooper]

can someone give me a tutoral that show s tou how to install the mod? it is a great mod but i need to know how to install it.

[LuciferNZ]

Thos SAMs - WANT! Nice mod, been using it since start of April.

I havent 'updated' it however, and was wondering if you had a repository or something so I can play with the test-bed version

I completely understand if you dont have this accessible.