WW2-Style Prop Plane! 🛩 From the Depths, Let's Build

[@arcsey]

For a fighter with primarily direct-fire weaponry, you often want it to have some sort of chase behavior, so it gets behind the target. Unfortunately, there's not a default behavior that will do this for you, but you can combine a couple of default behaviors along with some AI switching handled in a breadboard to approximate this without having to create an AI from scratch. For target approach, you want attack run 2, with a close breakoff distance. Your breadboard, when within a certain distance to target, then switches to the ram behavior, so the fighter will now try to fly directly at the target. Since you don't want to actually impact the enemy, you can use a PID that monitors target distance to regulate the propeller power scale, or the forward axis response, whatever you want. With a set point on the PID, you can try to keep the fighter at some constant distance from the enemy, and that way the guns will have more time on target. Plus, it looks really cool to have your fighter on the enemy's six. Then, if you get too close to the target, you can have the breadboard switch back to attack run 2 and delay switching back for a few seconds, so the plane has enough time to retreat before attempting to reacquire. It's still a bit of work to set up, and you need to have the additional behavior cards on your AI to do it, but I think it's a good compromise between a basic setup and creating your own custom plane AI.

[@inkyboi7687]

If you want something even more simple, you can use Attack Run with Flyover with a very short run end distance like the Gannet does. Combined with thrust power modulation and probably the new collision avoidance (which I haven't tested for this, but should help not crash into larger aircraft when disengaging) you can have a good fighter AI using only one AI routine and a breadboard, which is useful for smaller planes where space for components is especially tight for additional routine cards; and in a pinch, you don't even really need the BB. Of course more routines and more complicated bread can make for an extremely versatile fighter, too. But not everyone always wants to spend the same time it took to build the plane messing with AI lol. Or even worse, spend twice or more of the time it took to build (looking at you, my many failed BB AIs)

[@remkirkthegamer1157]

6:40 Actually, despite the Spitfire being more present in the public consciousness, the Hawker Hurricane was more influential in the Battle of Britain, inflicting 60% of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe during that campaign. Granted, the Spitfire generally intercepted fighters while the Hurricane mauled the bomber formations. The sanitized version of the B-52's nickname is the "Big, Ugly, Fat Fella"

[@BorderWise12]

Yup yup. Later in the video I read off Wikipedia and learn that. :D

[@ardantop132na6]

BUFF

[@Cobrax_x]

Found a way to make an effective gun plane is to use thrust powerscale adjustment so it stays behind the enemy

[@BorderWise12]

Ooh, that's a really good idea, cheers!

[@Arthorian]

Ive been trying to build planes with my 200 hours of game time, this helped so much! I have been using wings as literally wings and had no idea that doesn't matter with enough pitch and speed.

[@NearQuasar]

Next make a kamikaze prop plane with a nuke hidden inside- I have found that ICBMs with even one layer of metal or alloy over the nukes are many times harder to stop than one without armour as most anti-icbm weapons aren’t designed to destroy armoured craft.

[@BattleDroid-sd4rp]

1 layer of steel is enough. And propellers are much better than CJES is you want to hit any target, above or below water just include a inter vehicle transmitter.

[@FubukiKai]

One of the only things I don't love about FTD is that the smallest scale is 1m. It works well for boats and larger craft overall, but for planes.. they end up being massive. And/or requiring clipping cheese. Would be nice to have some sort of small block like space engineers does. Or perhaps more simple but effective single-block components. I end up usually just accepting that 2 or 3x scale is the only way to make things look and function reasonable, unless I really need a heli on the deck of a destroyer or something. Also, Vickers has a long history of making a lot of different war machines. Though renamed, partially nationalized, and merged many times, they made machine guns, autocannons, tank guns, were a major shipbuilding company for the royal navy, designed many tanks up to mbts, and of course worked on countless aircraft, including the spitfire.

[@stalking3013]

You should watch new Pakus guide about planes, right now!

[@kolaarami8897]

Build part of the wings because you can use some of that space for guns, also most wwii plane have their guns in the wings

[@inkyboi7687]

Watching you mess around with the angles on the deco around 4:15, I think trying to get it to rotate on an axis it didn't want to? Regardless of intent, if you or anyone else doesn't know, you can use the new-ish click-and-drag tools to rotate on weird axes without dragging sliders around forever, and it will also set the angles up so that you can fine tune them after the fact. Took me ages to realize so I hope I can help someone a bit earlier lol.

[@BorderWise12]

Thanks for reminding me, I keep forgetting that's an option! 👍

[@3dwrecker_4660]

Now i think i can build prop planes better :D Also yes that lazy phase in content creation can hit pretty hard sometimes (self experience)

[@thehive8476]

This video of actually building a plane in real time (kinda) helped me a lot because I have never been good at it, Thank you so much BW! ❤

[@BorderWise12]

You're welcome! 😁

[@dahlular]

Good video! Though I can't shake the feeling that the mimicked wings are not completely mirrored correctly

[@BorderWise12]

Darn it, now I'm going to have to go back and check. XD

[@dahlular]

@@BorderWise12 Please do! Because I can't tell if I'm gaslighting myself into thinking they're not mirrored correctly lol

[@mag3479]

My plane just flies in circles around the target even with very similar AI. It can score gun hits but very rarely as it never stays straight on to the opponent, just keeps circling it. Not sure why it wont fly towards it directly

[@BorderWise12]

You might need to tweak the distances in the AI a bit more. Attack run, breakoff, and so on. Or just add more yaw control.

[@donaldpetersen2382]

Take note KSP2 devs: the engine thrust goes backwards, not forwards🤡

[@nickjohnson410]

Nice BF109

[@BorderWise12]

Thanks! ... not what I was aiming for at all, but I'll take it! XD