DroidCorp Inferno

(WIP)
The DroidCorp Inferno is a dedicated competition fighter series designed by DroidCorp for Daria's FJRT program.

Initial Development Overview (In-Universe Lore)
The Inferno's initial plans were drawn up during the preseason of Fighter Jet Roundtable S2. After the preseason success of the stealth AN-L17 Raven against capable opponents, DroidCorp decided to expand on its basic design principles. The Raven's full delta wing design, wide profile, and gimballing engines gave it very good maneuverability at subsonic speeds. These features would be implemented on the Inferno, however the Raven's signature stealth capabilities would be discarded in favor of further increasing flight performance. The findings of one of DroidCorp's lead competition designers, recently published as the "Stealth Irrelevancy Theory," had a profound effect on aircraft design going forward. Instead of the Raven's sleek and highly swept lines, the Inferno featured shallower angles at its wing roots, larger intakes for operating at low speeds and high altitudes, an additional set of all-moving rudders on angled lower wing panels, and a pair of low-set canards. It flew in early tests alongside various other prospective designs, one of which would be selected for entry into Round 2 of the competition first. The Inferno itself wouldn't be used in competition until Round 5, which it won in convincing fashion thanks to its maneuverability and stability.

Design logs from the Inferno team which have been selectively released from DroidCorp records provide some insight into the pre- and post- submission development of the aircraft:

04/03/21: "[The Inferno] focused originally on stable high-maneuverability flight. Focus shifted with the Mark VIIa and later the official Mark VIII to a well-balanced compromise between dogfighting capability and missile evasion reliability. A modified version of the Mark IX was used in the 5th bracket of FJRT2 with great success, showing promise as a balanced fighter. Development continued through to the current Mark XIII with a focus on increasing speed retention, with these changes in design direction made significantly less disruptive (than on the Ki) by the Inferno's more conventional design."

The original Inferno airframe was retired in April of 2021, with several further airframes developed based on its general shape and principles. The penultimate competition version of the Inferno was the Inferno Avenger, which was finally eliminated in the semifinal round of FJRT2.

Continuous Variant Design (Real Life Commentary)
The Inferno can almost be seen as a fluke of design. By essentially just copying the visual aesthetic of the AN-L17, I essentially stumbled into a very meta airframe concept, that being the delta-with-canard. It provides a very high amount of lift for any given size, even with the old stock-style design methods that primarily used non-lifting fuselage sections. Regardless, the original design could only go so far, and as I gained inspiration from the flood of development that FJRT2 brought on, in April of 2021 I decided a rebuild was in order.

Despite my own theories, stealth was the flavor of the week at the time, and so I developed the Inferno II as a stealth fighter. It opted for a very flat shape and basically got in its own way; I went backwards in terms of practical flight performance and gained basically nothing from it except slightly better performance against missiles, which is something I knew I could achieve by simply making a better-flying craft. The Inferno II remained in public testing rotation and in "maintenance development" mostly as a decoy as I pursued other ideas.

The CSO was a very simple concept: "increase lift". To that end, I essentially rebuilt the original airframe with some minor optimizations to lighten it and then shaped and attached much larger wings to the thing. Maneuverability did, in fact, improve, as did its speed retention. However, as you may be able to tell by the lack of an image, this design was developed for such a short period of time that I didn't even manage to preserve a trace of it to present to you here. I noted down that making something lighter and lift-ier was definitely worthwhile, and then moved on to a new design.

The CSO Alpha was a shit name for a fighter, especially considering the only parts it shared in common with the CSO were the main wings, which it also slightly tweaked. However, despite having a shit name, it did not have a shit airframe. This design used lighter and lift-ier parts than ever before, and it was something like 80-90% wing area, which was a big deal at the time; pwing fuselages weren't exactly common in mid-2021, so this fuselage, which made extensive use of the lightweight and lift-enabled B9 fuselage parts, had a significant advantage over those which opted for more familiar parts. The Alpha also implemented a funny bit of tech that I had accidentally discovered while using the Inferno II: the "Pulse Laser ERA". PLSL was the SPW of choice for most of FJRT2, since it was hilariously overpowered (with a combined fire rate of 500 RPM and rounds that basically one-shot every part they hit), so finding a countermeasure to combat it was incredibly valuable. Enter my strange obsession with RPF flag parts. Conformal Decals are all the rage today, but back then they were an unfamiliar sight, and myself and some others were using the actual physical flag parts to do some of our coloring. Yes, it sucked. However, these flags, despite being physics-less parts (contributing zero mass and zero drag), were very much physically present on the aircraft and could actually take a hit. One. Exactly one hit. However, against the Pulse Laser, that was all that you could expect out of any part. 9 of these flag parts were placed on the largest portion of each main wing to protect against incoming fire, and saved the main wings on many occasions in testing. (...)

Real-Time Development Logs (Hybrid Commentary)
Starting in April of 2021, I began keeping a journal on the development of the Inferno. I wrote it using a combination of actual personal notes and in-universe writing (the ideas of things like FJRP did not exist at this point, so this was a half-hearted attempt at writing "canon" notes). Attached here are sections of this journal lightly edited and abridged to improve the current-day reading experience. The end of the first entry was referenced in the "lore" section of this article, so we will pick back up with the second entry and continue to the end:

Overview of Airframes
The following is a list of the major airframes in the Inferno series (not including short-run experimental designs), along with brief descriptions of their major differences and usage.


 * AN-L20 Inferno (Inferno I)
 * The original Inferno design. The Mark 9 variant was used in FJRT2 Episode 5. Its final public appearance was the use of the Mark 20 "Liberator" as a strike aircraft during the Boss Fight. The Mark 20 was the final variant of the Inferno I.Inferno1mk12.png
 * The original Inferno design. The Mark 9 variant was used in FJRT2 Episode 5. Its final public appearance was the use of the Mark 20 "Liberator" as a strike aircraft during the Boss Fight. The Mark 20 was the final variant of the Inferno I.Inferno1mk12.png


 * Inferno II
 * The Inferno II was a stealth design which implemented an internal weapons bay, re-swept the wing roots, and overall "flattened" the airframe to present a smaller, more angular profile. It did all of this at the expense of maneuverability; the Inferno II was noticeably worse at dogfighting and was not extensively developed as a result. Variants were produced up to the Mark 9 to study the effectiveness of stealth in modern FJRT combat; after this the airframe was retired.
 * Inferno2mk9.png

Inferno CSO (Inferno III)


 * The Inferno Competition Superiority Overhaul was essentially an optimized rebuild of the Inferno I with much larger wings. This design showed promise, but the old proportions of the legacy Inferno hindered further development. Two marks were produced, with limited private testing being conducted. Data from the CSO would inform major design decisions of its successor concepts.

Inferno CSO Alpha/Evolution (Inferno IV)


 * The Inferno CSO Alpha was a complete redesign of the Inferno into a much larger overall airframe size. It featured the same basic center fuselage and engine pod design and used the larger wing structure of the original CSO. The Alpha maintained some older design conventions, as well as using raised "shoulder" canards instead of the low-mount canards found on previous airframes. The Evolution variants removed the canards entirely and angled the rudders to 45 degrees, using them for control in all axes to make up for the lost torque. The Evolution III added a third engine in a centerline mount for increased thrust and post-stall capability. The Avenger, the last competition variant of the Inferno, is essentially a hastily modified Evolution III; it was internally designated as the Evolution IV. DroidCorp often uses the Evolution II, the last twin-engine competition Inferno variant, as the "face" of the Inferno series.
 * Infernocsoalpha.png

How to Use the Specifications Seciton
The Specifications section is a modified version of the Aircraft Specifications section you'll have seen on countless Wikipedia aircraft articles.

Really, this section is here for flavor and to enhance the fun of having a wiki article about your plane.

Our version comes with some modifications to better fit KSP and FJRT. For one, the default speed measurement is in meters per second (m/s). There are also additional KSP-only sections, such as a unitless measurement of wing area (as the BDA readout would give). Lastly, the weapons section has provisions for Upgrades and Special Weapons, as per FJRT.

Visual Editor
If you click on the whole Specifications area, you'll see it highlight.

Clicking on the highlighted section will open up a template editor. This is because the Specifications section runs off of a fully-formatted, automated template. Just fill out the fields in the template. Additional options are available by ticking the boxes on the left side.

Source Editor
If you're using the Source Editor, you probably don't need much help.

That said, it can be easier to edit the Specifications section specifically, within the Source Editor. The visual Template editor is a bit clunky for the purposes of the Specifications section.

Aircraft Configurations and Competition Appearances
This table is probably where more competition-oriented information will go, instead of the Specifications section. This section is especially helpful if your craft has competed in multiple competitions, or if you want to note different versions of your craft that have appeared in community battles (e.g., testing).