Funky Trees Ballistic Missile

The very first true Ballistic Missile in Simpleplanes

Player Usage

• Every time you change the coordinates of the Missile you must re-orient the missile and re-load the coordinates by pressing the "Orientate" button
• The missile has a maximum range of about 100kms. The console will not allow you to fire if you have targeted something more than 100kms away.
• Once the missile is fired it cannot be self-destroyed or recalled!!! (yes the self-destruct feature was planned as indicated by the button. However, something weird happened with the collision of the missile and a fuse was no longer possible)
• The missile is accurate to around a radius of 1km!

How it works

• If you've taken basic physics class you would know that every falling object follows a Ballistic Trajectory. In an ideal scenario (no other forces other than gravity), although the absolute value of the velocity of a freefalling object is increasing, the horizontal component of the velocity is constant.
• This allows us to predict the initial angle of elevation and the speed at which we need to fire a projectile in order to hit something far away.
• The missile is fired and begins to change its elevation angle, increasing its speed / potential energy by firing its boosters. A formula continuously calculates how much further the missile would fly horizontally if the boosters cut off at the instant, call it the Range.
• As soon as the Range of the missile matches the leftover horizontal distance it needs to travel, all booster and controls are cut off, and in theory, the missile should freefall to its destination.
• What was described above only applies to constant gravity and a flat earth scenario, which the Simpleplanes world is. For a round earth the calculations of the range and distance are quite different but the concept of matching the two together and letting gravity do the rest is the same.

Problems and Limitations

• The missile is not quite as accurate as I intended it to be, with a nomial accuracy of about 1km in radius, sometimes even more than that.
• Due to the fact that the warhead travels so fast when it's freefalling, it oftentimes will simply clip through terrain and not blow up
• The map is not 100% accurate and I'm aware of how difficult the cursors are to see
• All engines in Simpleplanes are air-breathing and struggle to produce any thrust at altitude, even with plenty of inlets. Hence the range limitation.

Notes

Needless to say, this is a humongous leap in Funky Trees missile technology and a dream project of mine for a while. This project has been ongoing for about 3 months now and it is, again, eye-opening. It really forced me to go back to the fundamentals and reinforce some foundational knowledge before I could make the missile work. Have fun blowing up various points across the map! More of this type of stuff to come...

Please report any bugs in the comment section or contact me on discord @kuatta4