Advanced missiles
From MegaTravellerWiki
Here are some additional missile designs:
Laser-Guided Homing Missile
The laser-guided homing missile is a semi-active homing missile that is guided by a painted laser dot on a radome installed on the parent aircraft. The missile behaves in a semi-active radar fashion, but the target cannot break the link by any means except by managing to escape the 60 degree tracking cone of the parent aircraft or by travelling behind a cloud.
TL Type Weight Min/Max Speed Dmg Cost ---- ------------------ ------ ------- ----- ----- ------- 9 LGHM 200 10/30 10 28 4,500
Silhouette Recognition Air-to-Air Homing Missile
The silhouette recognition air-to-air homing missile, or "SRAAHM", uses a sophisticated AI system to look at the enemy aircraft with its many electronic eyes and commit the shape of the target object to memory. The missile is equipped with 360° vision and can see in all directions. The drive plume of the missile's rocket booster does limit its ability to see immediately behind itself, but this accounts for the tiniest fraction of the viewable area and can be safely ignored, especially considering that the missile "waves" slightly while searching in order to get an accurate three-dimensional image.
Once the silhouette recognition missile learns what the target looks like, usually taking less than a second or two of examination, it then homes in relentlessly on the target as long as it can see the target. If it happens to lose sight of its target due to the missile or target passing through a cloud, smoke cloud, or sandcaster plume, it goes into a reacquisition mode where it looks everywhere for its intended target and pursues any target which it thinks matches its intended parameters. Otherwise, however, the missile never loses track of the target and cannot miss unless it runs out of fuel before arriving.
TL Type Weight Min/Max Speed Dmg Cost ---- ------------------ ------ ------- ----- ----- ------- 9 SRAAHM-9 200 10/30 10 24 12,500 10 SRAAHM-10 200 10/30 10 26 12,500 11 SRAAHM-11 200 10/30 10 28 12,500 13 SRAAHM-13 200 10/30 10 30 12,500
The effectiveness of the shape recognition is determined by a throw on 1D6. Apply a DM of -1 if it is night time. If SRAAHM-10, apply a DM of +1. If SRAAHM-11, apply a DM of +2, and when rolling on results on the table, be sure to exclude the firing platform from being considered a possible target. If SRAAHM-13, do not roll on this table: assume a 5+ result.
Die Result
---- ------
1 Dud. Missile flies ahead in acquisition mode (a pattern resembling a
jumping salmon), failing to recognise any target.
2 Poor recognition. 3- on 1D6 means the missile randomly chooses a
target, 4+ means the missile chooses the correct target. If tracking
is lost, the missile will fly forward and continuously scan for any
possible target in its tracking cone; as soon as one or more targets are
presented, the missile will randomly choose one of them.
3 Mediocre recognition. Missile will home in on the target. If tracking
is lost, missile will randomly choose any target it can see.
4 Good recognition. Missile will home in on the target. If tracking is
lost, missile will fly forward and scan for its target. Each turn it
attempts to re-acquire, throw 4+: if successful, the missile can only
re-acquire its intended target (and will continue flying dead ahead if
the target is not available). On 3-, the missile will randomly choose
any possible target it can see.
5+ Excellent recognition. Missile will home in on the target. If tracking
is lost, missile will attempt to re-acquire each turn. The missile will
immediately home in if the original target presents itself. The missile
will not acquire an unintended target.
SRAAHMs are notoriously poor weapons during fighting in clouded skies; there are many recorded incidents where SRAAHMs lost tracking of their original target and acquired their own launching platform as their intended target. As minor errors in the SRAAHMs were worked out, however, this behaviour became less and less commonplace.
The SRAAHM-10's chief improvement over the SRAAHM-9 was an enhanced suite of electronic eyes, eliminating the incidences of dud missiles and increasing their recognition ability, strengthening their "perfect" recognition probability from one in three up to one in two.
More advances in computer intelligence allowed the SRAAHM-11 to carry a list of known aircraft and spaceship shapes in an internal database, preventing SRAAHM-11s from ever attacking their launching platform: the launching aircraft cannot ever be chosen as a target if the missile wants to choose any possible target. This also served to improve their recognition considerably and substantially reduced incidences of random retargetting during lost tracking events.
The most advanced SRAAHM-13 has an artificial intelligence module that borders on self-awareness; the SRAAHM-13 is not only capable of taking a holographic image of the enemy target, but also capable of deciphering the IFF code of the target and recognising a wide variety of spoofing methods. Though it still relies on visual targetting with its suite of electronic eyes, it always obtains a perfect image of the target and does not give up its pursuit until it runs out of fuel. SRAAHM-13s can be installed on Pre-Stellar aircraft with little or no difficulty; in spite of the fact that TL13 marked the end of jet aircraft, Average Stellar worlds sell SRAAHM-13s to the militaries of Pre-Stellar worlds in massive lots.
