Better Guided Missiles/Rockets: Solid Rocket Motors, Wired/Laser Guidance Systems & HEAT Warhead

There are several hurdles facing the development of guided missiles, notably in practicality over vanilla grid weapons.

• Single-use Solid Rocket Motor that provides instant acceleration of small masses to 300m/s from 0m/s. Burn time should not exceed 20s, and does not replace the sustained flight capabilities of normal thrusters.

Air to Air missile using Rocket Motors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tYT75CEIDY

The faster the initial velocity of the missile, the less perceived drop of the missile in atmospheric flight, this effectively reduce the need to compensate for gravity when guiding a missile.

New Guidance systems. AI guided systems are just way too expensive to be fielded en masse. Plus, it would be nice to have a healthy variation of guidance systems depending on the scenario.

• Wired Guidance System This enables the use of either WASD or mouse manual guidance up to 3km. No need for batteries on the missile, making it lighter and faster. Otherwise specified, the wired part is mostly cosmetic.

• Laser Guidance Systems. This uses a laser designation block on the vehicle to ‘paint’ a target. The receiver end of the missile then ‘looks’ for the target like the raycast cone of a camera. Useful for aircraft that need to guide a missile while in flight.

** Why not a Remote Control Block?**

Remote Control systems are less practical to use in intense battles. Your vehicle has to remain stationary (thus vulnerable) and you have to fumble through the menus to get to your missile. You are also limited to a very narrow field of view of a camera and have to rely on the missile ‘frontend’ being perfectly in the line of sight of a target to be used effectively.

Warheads in SE1 lack the penetration necessary to be viable against heavier armour, as well performance reasons for calculating a larger explosive radius. Thus I suggest a variant to the warhead for missile systems.

• HEAT Warheads. Like their warhead counterparts, they do explosive damage, but directed into a single line of blocks rather than a radius. (More concentrated damaged on a smaller area) May be triggered electronically or on contact. Ideally with a flat front so more blocks can be stacked that way.

Alternate uses for above systems

• Rocket Grapple ‘Anchors’, using the wired guidance system with rocket motors. Players can make guided rocket assisted grapple systems to attach to adjacent ships for recovery for example or to capture fast moving ships (think piracy of cargo ships)

• Larger User-customised Unguided Rockets Multiple Rocket Launchers become more viable as substitutes for artillery using single use rocket motors. Can be mounted onto trucks, tanks, planes or helicopters.

• On Demand artillery/ air support systems. A friendly tank could laser designate a target, then guide a friendly plane’s laser-homing missile to the target instead of having every weapon system on you. Who knows, maybe call in a Tomahawk to a target if it's too hard to deal with!

• HEAT Warhead Mines. Mines are easy to be identified as they disturb the local area of voxels. So why not strap an HEAT Warhead Mine that detonates as a vehicle drives past it in a more urban landscape?

• Tandem HEAT Projectiles. Increase the penetration of Heat Projectiles by stacking 2 Heat Warheads, doubling its penetration in the process.