Daeson Aerospace DF-21 Tyche

The DF-21 Tyche is a twin-engine Competition Aircraft designed by Daeson Aerospace. It was designed specifically for the Fighter Jet Roundtable Season 2 Round of 16, but has been adapted and upgraded many times for other seasons since. Tyche is the Greek goddess of luck and chance, and is in-keeping with the Daeson tradition of naming military aircraft after these deities. The Tyche has seen various amounts of success in its competition appearances, ranging from strong victories in Fighter Ace Showdown II to rough defeats in both Fighter Jet Roundtable seasons it has appeared in. Despite this, various nations and aerospace companies have occasionally used versions of the Tyche as a competitive goal to beat in testing. Despite its seasoned and often controversial history, the Tyche is still being developed to this day, with variants of the Super Tyche planned for future competition appearances.

Deficiencies in the Ares
Daeson's DF-13 Ares fighter had proven strong enough to win the corporation a seat in FJRT2's Round of 16, but was overall too bulky and heavy an airframe to be viable against the ever-evolving competition standards. The Ares had already undergone several enormous enhancement programs by this point, including completely reshaping the tail, addition of rounded winglets, installation of a Wing Balancing system, and an additional above-wing canard configuration to increase roll rate. Despite these improvements, the airframe still fell short in many areas, and the increasingly outdated nature of the airframe made it exponentially harder to improve alongside an evolving competition. As such, Daeson went back to the drawing board to create their next generation of competition fighter.



Smaller, lighter
The Ares had been developed from the Cadenzan Zenith Forces' hefty air superiority stealth fighter the DF-27 Tekhne. As such, it retained its bulky frame and flight model, which would have to be painstakingly iterated on. The Tyche would also be developed from the Tekhne, but in order to avoid these problems, Daeson engineers completely redesigned the fuselage and tail section of the aircraft. However, unlike the Ares, which had avoided incorporating the at the time classified wing planform into its design, the Tyche opted to use the exact same wing. This was done to save development costs as the project had proved immensely ambitious for its development timeframe, and had the added benefit of freeing up time to incorporate the now-familiar Wing Balancing system into the design. Due to the lack of need for the Tekhne's large internal weapons bay, the frontal profile was much slimmer and sleeker, and the plane's mass was drastically reduced as a result. The slimmed airframe ended up with a angular shape including a noticeable Area Ruling indent towards the wing's max span. The first prototype rolled out of the Daeson Design factory and began testing in July of 2021.

Round of 16 Modifications
As expected, the initial rollout Tyche did not exactly meet the desired goals, but the engineers were keenly aware of the immense potential of the airframe. The following months of testing, led by an engineer overzealous with the progression of the letter designation standards, ended up with the production of the DF-21x Tyche. The x model Tyche featured larger vertical and horizontal tails, an improved Fuel Management System for continuous stability and balance throughout flight condition changes, and most importantly a now fine-tuned flight computer to herald in the pilot's controllability of the craft. An extraordinary amount of testing was conducted in coordination with Krieger Foundries KF-50 'Triage' design. This testing had proved invaluable in helping the engineers work out kinks in the missile avoidance routines, enabling the aircraft to dodge even the deadliest swarms of extended missile barrages. The airframe, now showing potential as one of the top contenders in the Penultimate round of FJRT2, was finalized in early November 2021 and shipped to the UKF. Unfortunately, due to the controversial seeding arrangement of the Round of 16, the Tyche ended up facing one of the few aircraft capable of meeting its kinematic performance, the F-22, in its first fight of the Round. The Tyche fell short and ended up eliminated, ending its extremely short career in FJRT2.



Fighter Ace Showdown 2 Revitalization
The advent of the Darian Republic beginning the new Fighter Ace Showdown II meant that competition design teams were up and running again much sooner than previously anticipated. After a separate design team from Daeson's foray into the competition with their new DF-31 Astraea, the teams managing the Tyche began to look into the future potential of the airframe in this new season. Due to previous designation rushes, a second letter was added to the designation of the DF-21x to make this new version, the DF-21xc. A brand new, sleeker canard layout was devised. This new canard was much more closely coupled to the leading edge of the main wing, providing a much more aggressive stability slope. This canard had the additional benefit of acting as an additional pseudo-leading edge flap, helping redirect airflow over the main wing at high angles of attack, allowing the aircraft to pull tighter without stalling. Despite these advancements, the configuration was controversial among competition participants, often being labelled as "ugly" and "why is it like that". Despite these comments, the airframe continued receiving iterations in its weapons systems, flight computer, and tail design.

Ultimate
The advancements made in the x-series of Tyche led to the development of the xj variant, featuring a blue and white paint scheme often dubbed "The Golf Polo". This variant sported one of the newer loadout options of four GAU-22s, giving it immense close-in firepower. After a flight computer upgrade and being designated the xk variant, the design was finalized and shipped to the Darian KSC Peninsula. The aircraft performed exceptionally well in its episode, using its superior kinematic performance and immense frontal firepower to quickly dispatch its opponents. The final round of the episode was quite a difficult challenge, however. But due to the advancements made in FJRT2 against extended missile swarms, it was able to survive the onslaught from the Twin Crown FF-243 Knightmare in a suspense-filled victory. This victory had proven Daeson's extended efforts in maintaining and upgrading this airframe worth it, and provided a much-needed boon in advertising for designs from the Daeson team.



The Final x-variant
The Daeson team and their Tyche were invited to participate in the Fighter Ace Showdown II Finale Episode, leading the JCS-01 Crimson Squadron. As such, multiple upgrades were made to the airframe, flight computer, and weapons loadout to accommodate this new challenge. Due to previous successes with the design, the Cadenzan Zenith Forces decided to sponsor the Daeson team, permitting the decaling of CZF Roundels on the wings and CZF-reminiscent tail markings design featuring the JCS-01 logo. For this episode, the Tyche was refitted with the new 50mm Skymaster II autocannon, stripping out the previous armament of 4 gatling guns. The weapon was integrated in a non-protruding way into the belly of the aircraft, and included a new door for ejecting the large spent 50mm casings as the gun was fired. The conformal pods that previously housed the extra two GAU-22 weapons were kept, and had their internals replaced with new fuel tanks to carry the fuel displaced by the new primary armament. After numerous flight tests and computer upgrades to account for this new shifted mass layout, the design was finalized. The JCS-01 Squadron included the D.K.R.K. designed Ba-12 Griffon, and the Erqaedian Twin Crown FF-242K Alicorn. The team made quick work of the Darian F-26 squadron, suffering no losses. However, thrown first against the final fight against YX-30A's and the YX-30C Inferno Omega, only two aircraft were defeated before the team had succumbed to the boss fighters. Despite this loss, the destruction of two final fighters was still considered a huge success to the JCS-01 team, and the accomplishments of all 3 aircraft were celebrated.

Super Tyche


After Fighter Ace Showdown II came Fighter Jet Roundtable Season 3, and the numerous successes of the Tyche airframe led the teams to desire a new airframe built around the Tyche's principles. The same main wing planform was kept, but the fuselage was redesigned with parts much closer to the increasingly declassified DF-27 Tekhne. A much sleeker curved fuselage and a brand new V-tail configuration dominate the look of this design. The airframe retains a much slimmer look compared to its counterpart the Tekhne, and remains rougly the same size as the legacy x-variant Tyche. Two variants of the DF-21z have appeared in FJRT3, the original DF-21z and the DF-21z/LCSE in Episodes 5 and 6 respectively. Both variants failed to secure an episode victory, but proved the airframe is still viable as competition standards are rapidly ever-increasing, and as such additional variants are still in development for future episodes.

Major Variants

 * DF-21a Tyche
 * Initial rollout and testbed Tyche for proving concept of lighter Tekhne airframe.


 * DF-21x Tyche
 * Round of 16 Appearance, Featuring updated flight computer, new tails, and a black and yellow paint scheme.


 * DF-21xc Tyche
 * Initial explorations of a new canard configuration and weapon loadout,


 * DF-21xk Tyche Ultimate
 * FAS II Episode 2 Appearance, Equipped with 4 GAU-22's as primary armament, with a blue and white paint scheme.


 * DF-21xn Tyche Vengeance
 * FAS II Finale Appearance, Equipped with a 50mm Skymaster II autocannon, with a red and grey paint scheme.


 * DF-21z Super Tyche
 * FJRT3 Spec redesigned Super Tyche.