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Seeker weapon abilities

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Sun, 2010-08-29 07:16

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Seeker weapon abilities

Just wondering, how much can a seeker weapon turn? I can see them being little more than rocket-propelled grenades that can fly very far but mostly in a straight line, but equally they could be little cruise missiles equipped with all sorts of sneaky manoeuvres, going around corners or hunting designated targets as they move (think the rocket gun in "Runaway"). If the intention of the game designers was the straight line (not too unreasonable given that the seekers seem to move very fast), then there is clearly room for designing slower but smarter cruise seekers. They would essentially be disposable bots with a rocket mobility system. "Bracelet, on my mark, fire at all people on this floor not emitting company ID."

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Wed, 2015-07-15 17:11

Admini

Bump.

I'd really like to know as well.

Wed, 2015-07-15 17:35

SquireNed

I think part of the important

I think part of the important question is not how far they can turn, but how fast their target can adjust course. Keep in mind that a micromissile in an atmosphere could happily do a 180-degree turn using aerobraking more or less right out of the barrel, then accelerate to hit a target behind them. However, I think that with what we've seen, micromissiles generally don't do that. They trend toward being more mundane weapons, not necessarily automated death machines. Some of that is probably because of limitations in how much we want our stuff to be able to kill, but there's certainly a strong forward impulse. I think of them like a gyrojet railgun, essentially. The book states that they have a magnetic soft launch followed by a scramjet (which should probably only work in atmosphere, but eh), and that they come with one of the seeker projectile traits. If they work that way, their only real means of turning is to use control surfaces (like a tiny plane), and they could easily face problems with stalling out. I don't know what a reasonable maximum rate of turn would be, but since they're not rockets as we would think of them, it may very well be limited.

Wed, 2015-07-15 19:25

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Seekers can't drop below mach

Seekers can't drop below mach 1, and must have pretty tiny control surfaces. Using some not great calculations it looks like a seeker pulling about as many Gs as an AIM-120 (60) would need around 700 feet as a turn radius. Any slower, and they risk losing engine power, and cannot reignite their engine. So it wouldn't be great. That said, missiles which aren't using scramjets should be much more agile, and much shorter ranged. http://www.csgnetwork.com/aircraftturninfocalc.html this is the calculator I used for this, it isn't great for this job, but it's enough to get a general ballpark.

Wed, 2015-07-15 20:48

Admini

Particulars

Here's what makes me think they are able to turn significantly: The indirect fire rules. They state that if a target is laser painted, seekers can be fired at it without the normal -30 modifier. In my mind, I saw that as shooting around a corner at the designated target.

Wed, 2015-07-15 22:14

Darkening Kaos Darkening Kaos's picture

Seekers

The seekers use rail tech to accellerate to scramjet speeds, ([b]s[/b]upersonic [b]c[/b]ombusting [b]ram[/b]jet), before the jets even fire. I would think even the best metamaterial control surface would have little time to adjust the course of the seeker before it arrives at its target, depending on if you purchase extra abilities for your Seeker missile. It might only allow for minor course correction/target tracking. Additionally, this means that seekers are straight line in vaccuum, and limited to whatever muzzle velocity they get launched with. Edit: doing some quick and dirty research seems to indicate that the minimum SCRAMjet speed is about MACH 6, with RAMjets going from MACH 1 to 6.

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Thu, 2015-07-16 09:15

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Can Has Ignorance.

Are control surfaces a necessity? I could imagine seekers maneuvering by redirecting their exhaust (thrust vector?) instead of using aerodynamics. If an argument from aesthetics can be made, considering the possible speeds of railgun/scramjet projectiles and their maximum ranges seekers should travel their complete range in couple of seconds, so all an observer would see is a point of light from the exhaust traveling very fast - in other words the EP version of SciFi weapons which fire a bolt of light into something which explodes.

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Fri, 2015-07-17 23:01

Admini

Just found this:

Just found this: "Seeker weapons are support weapons, used to bring down firepower on heavy targets or deal with specific problems. A character with a seeker weapon and a tacnet can rely on their allies and use indirect fire to rain down minimissiles on targets without being exposed to significant risk." Transhuman pg. 109

Sat, 2015-07-18 14:56

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Ultimately it comes down to

Ultimately it comes down to how many G forces a seeker can pull. Air-breathing seekers need to stay at very high speeds to function properly if they're using scramjets. The equation for estimating the turn radius of flying objects is pretty simple V^2/A, where V is the velocity of the missile, and A is its turning acceleration. A lot of missiles which use control surfaces can pull 50-60 Gs, the A-Darter missile uses thrust vectoring, and can apparently pull 100+ Gs. I'd expect seekers to be in the 100-200 G range, but I used 100 for the calculations. Assuming seekers need to stay at mach 5 or higher to keep the scramjet running well, a seeker pulling 100 Gs would need about 3 kilometers to make a 90 degree turn, and if one made a u-turn it would end up 6 kilometers to the side of its launching point. Things get a lot better is the minimum speed in only mach 1 though, with a 120 meter turn radius, which makes them quite agile, not really following people through windows or anything, but pretty agile. Either way, they can definitely be used for indirect fire, but the firer may need to stay a lot farther back in the case of hypersonic seekers.

Sat, 2015-07-18 22:45

#10

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

This is tough for me to say...

Ultimately, I'd go with something a bit more in the spirit of things and disregard the fluff. If you're launching a ramjet fast enough to work it's already hitting the target unless you have a really long range. I'd treat them like subsonic guided missiles- able to turn corners to hit indirect targets. Maybe throw in a range penalty for the number of course corrections or something. I should note that it's mostly the mini- and micro-missiles I'm talking about here. The Standard missile is in the range of current man portable SAMs or ATGMs and could be supersonic, but I still like them being a conventional rocket. The movie Runaway had an excellent example of this kind of missile. Something kind of like it popped up in The Fifth Element as well .

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Mon, 2015-07-20 06:08

#11

Kojak

Doesn't the fact that a

Doesn't the fact that a seeker missile can be jammed just like a drone imply that it has enough maneuverability for it to gain precision from being flown by a pilot?

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"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Thu, 2015-07-30 00:31

#12

Kommando

rule of cool

I have the feeling this might be a part where the designers 'cool' factor of future tech leads us to conclude they're not going to be the knife missile they were expecting. I'd go with ideas seekers are agile little missiles with cameras and payloads rather than Mach 6 kinetic kill rockets.

Thu, 2015-07-30 05:26

#13

Kojak

Kommando wrote:I have the

Kommando wrote:
I have the feeling this might be a part where the designers 'cool' factor of future tech leads us to conclude they're not going to be the knife missile they were expecting. I'd go with ideas seekers are agile little missiles with cameras and payloads rather than Mach 6 kinetic kill rockets.

Exactly. I prefer to run seekers as something a little more like knife missiles that need a launcher.

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"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Sat, 2015-08-01 08:04

#14

Chrontius

I'd actually be inclined to

I'd actually be inclined to split seekers up into the fast kinetic-kill "guided bullet" weapons, and slower ones with some significant warhead, and deep throttling on the engine - an air-augmented rocket captures the spirit of seekers nicely, while giving them some ability to maneuver and accelerate in the void.

Quote:
It represents a hybrid class of rocket/ramjet engines, similar to a ramjet, but able to give useful thrust from zero speed, and is also able in some cases to operate outside the atmosphere, with fuel efficiency not worse than both a comparable ramjet or rocket at every point.

Quote:
Many modern solid fueled 'ramjet' powered missiles, such as the MBDA meteor, may in fact be air augmented rockets, and the distinction between a ramjet and an air augmented missile is rather blurred. Many solid fueled ramjet missiles seem to be solid fueled ramrockets in all but name.

Give it a lightweight, smart-matter intake that can open in multiple places, and it shouldn't cut into the mass budget too badly, while simultaneously doubling as some very aggressive control surfaces.