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[MrRoboto75]

Can someone explain the air AI to me?

"Cruising Altitude" seems to mean diddly dick.  At best the plane decides to be at least 100 meters above whatever I set it at.  If its not turning its way into either the water or into space.  Speaking of which, no matter what I set the turning angle to the plane will either fall down or go into orbit.  I can literally fiddle with the slider until I can find adjacent values where either one or the other happens.

I swear, I avoid building anything air in this game because it always means fucking with the air AI for half an hour or more and still ending up with it being just as retarded a pilot as when I inserted the card into my poor mainframe.  And then I just delete the plane out of frustration.

I've found PID to be much much easier.  Thrustercrafts are no problem at all.

[StagnantSoul]

I find thrustercraft harder to do than regular planes honestly, they never even try to stay a little level and divebomb the ocean waaaay too often.

[LoSboccacc]

Air ai has no concept of pitching down so you want your planes nose heavy

Also in turns the ai doesn’t correct lateral/downward slip due roll, which is fine for planes that take little time to turn but causes large planes going either to space or water: best immagine the ai turning as it holding roll angle and pitching up as hard as possible

To fix that, just set ‘angle to use roll for turning’ to 180 and just make sure your plane has plenty yaw authority

[ThtblovesDF]

Missles are the only air unit you need : I


That and exploit-level-space-floating-death-platforms.

[MrRoboto75]

Missles are the only air unit you need : I

Maybe I'll take out my plane related rage by building absurd AA weapons and make it so no one else can have planes.

[moghopper]

Just curious, but would anyone be interested in making a realistic campaign?

Dangerous waters just doesn't scratch the realism itch for me, and has wonky physics...

EDIT: I had planned one out a bit, but getting people to contribute is tricky....

It would have used the After Cataclysm mod and I had even worked out armor thickness to protect against various calibers. Not sure if anyones interested, but if they are it would be a fun project.

[LoSboccacc]

faster route would be to get the ww2 faction into the standard campaign format using a more open map

the ai takes very badly large landmasses however, so you'd need to pick a more focused basin for the conflict or make the map centered on one ocean

[moghopper]

faster route would be to get the ww2 faction into the standard campaign format using a more open map

the ai takes very badly large landmasses however, so you'd need to pick a more focused basin for the conflict or make the map centered on one ocean

Well, I had planned for a map that was roughly 95% water. Bare minimum amount of land.

It would allow for fleet action without worrying about collision issues.

Edit: Also, it would be like 4 WW2 Factions plus one player. Realistic guns, armor, speed, etc. Would give nice long battles where shot placement and angling is important rather than just spamming a hundred shells/lasers/missiles like in normal campaign.

Further Edit: I should probably mention that the campaign was not going to based on actual history. I wanted to let people come up with their own designs. Honestly, I am surprised that no one has made a ww2 style wargame where you make your own units.

[Akura]

Air vehicles are hard. Built an assault craft, using two Custom Jets for main propulsion, two stubby wings made entirely of ailerons, and a large-ish tailplane section, and it's armed with a pair of pulsed lasers.

Currently it's sort of flyable manually, though half the time I feel like I'm fighting with the PIDs for control of the craft. AI flight however, initially went from pointing straight up to space, but now is just diving forward into the sea. Haven't even been able to test the laser cannons(which have an AP over 140 or so).

[ThtblovesDF]

I tend to maker floaters (from the very first vehicle I spammed - ballons on a turret) or silly old zeppelins to deal with that, but its just realllly hard, too.

[nenjin]

Is there a map creator for this now?

[Akura]

Got the aircraft to be mostly controllable, by adding jets for pitch and roll. I had wanted to avoid that, since it's currently using a very fuel inefficient engine - 2600 power from fuel injector engines in addition to the Custom Jets. Managed to get the AI to actually be able to fly as well, and even to occasionally open fire on a DWG-Marauder, but it has trouble getting the target into its firing arc. I've only seen it hit once, and that might not have been the Marauder it hit. I think it just cannot pitch forward enough to hit it with the(top-mounted) laser cannons.

Also tried it against the Flashheart plane. The Flashheart too a bit of the tail out with its missiles. The assault craft decided instead to ram the Flashheart, splattering the thing completely. The assault craft was little worse for the wear and kept flying.

Is there a map creator for this now?

From the main menu-> Workshop(on the right-hand side of the screen) ->Planet Editor. No idea how to use it though, I only just noticed it was there.

[EnigmaticHat]

Made a thin metal flak destroyer.  Solid guns, moves twice as fast as my previous boats (20 m/s), armored hull.  Very low in the water, which I prefer since the water protects against certain attacks.  Only problem is, it capsizes at the drop of a hat.

Put a lead keel on.  Now it stays upright... unless it turns, in which case it immediately goes sideways.  I feel like most people would have redesigned the hull, but it has too many different slanted pieces to bother.  Its fine tho,

Spoiler: I got this (click to show/hide)

Sadly now it only does 16 m/s.

Edit: I found a different solution than you, but the rudder was the largest problem.  On the internet's advice I moved it up to the center of mass.  I also put ACBs on to reduce engine thrust when the ship pitches.  For some reason despite making it heavier and slower it now tops off at 16.9 m/s, guess the props end up facing the right direction more often.

You can see the semi-finished (it has unused engine power and ammo) product here, tokyo drifting while swatting a sky viper out of the sky in the vehicle designer.  Its moving at a 45 degree angle away from the camera, its kind of funny to watch.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Akura]

...Faster than mine go.


One thing I've found that reduces capsizing when turning is not to put a single rudder on the lowest part of the rear, but two rudders on either side of the rear and about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the way up from the bottom.

[EnigmaticHat]

Scored kind of a cheap victory against the prowler (DWG scripted-ish fight from the caimpaign).  When it appeared I ran away and then rolled out a new, 47K mat cruiser to go against it that should have been massive overkill (in the designer it beat 4 OW bastions at the same time).  But its cannons couldn't get through the prowler's

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

way early laser defense system

and it was crippled pretty easily.  Its control systems were disabled so I rushed to the back and manually fired the rear turret at the (spoilery? if anyone cares?) ship that accompanies the prowler.  Through dumb luck I happened to target and destroy the AI with my second shot.

My other effective ship (the one from two posts ago, except more complete) had its entire rear half removed, barely leaving the AI and ammo customizer systems at its center intact.  That was enough for it to fire its remaining flak turret repeatedly into the Prowler's rear, where the aforementioned defenses were either damaged or weak.  The prowler's AI ignored the half ship and moved on to the two obsolete destroyers that were left.  I jumped into one and dodged.  That apparently bought enough time for the prowler to count as "damaged in enemy territory" and dissolve.  Its primary systems were all intact so that felt like an unearned victory.  The remaining airplane was taken out by the guns on my destroyer; a hilariously weak pair of 150mm flak turrets that fires at 106 m/s with no range, but between them over 700 rounds per minute.  It strips the wooden "flesh" off of the DWG ships, leaving a metal "skeleton" behind like some kind of vulture.

Overall what I've learned playing the campaign is I'm good at defending the inner bits of a ship but pretty much ass at keeping the exposed turrets on top alive.  What I've learned thus far is putting the explosive bits of the turret below the deck is ideal, but you need to carefully plan out the design of the turret and the hull beforehand.  The compartment needs to be safe.  The turret needs to be much bigger than the hole so that it can completely cover it.  It also seems that the actual turret should be 80% armor, with the rest being a tiny hole for the firing piece and barrel (ideally sunk into the turret so its protected by armor on all sides except a frontwards facing cone).  For ADCs, a 2m AA mantlet combined with a single axis turret has done great.  I'd recommend it over a 2 axis turret as that gets stuck on things.  Ammo ejectors have thus far proved to be mediocre if the ammo is abovedecks, and disasterous if the ammo is belowdecks (should have seen that one coming).  Does anyone know if the explosion from a ADC ammo rack is dependent on the ammo inside?  Because if so that would explain why my flak ship has been so all-or-nothing in regards to survival.