Missiles

Missiles

Missiles are projectiles with thrusters and on-board guidance systems and may carry some type of explosive warhead. Missiles cannot be fired at extreme velocities like typical railgun rounds, although they do often employ a rapid launch technique to catapult them to a relatively fast initial velocity. They can be fired directly from spacecraft or stations, or laid and left dormant to be fired from their current position when needed. Ship-based launch methods have the advantage of allowing for an initial propulsion boost with magnetic acceleration, while missiles hiding inert in orbits can maintain an element of surprise.

Missiles fulfill a powerful role in the weapons hierarchy. While railgun rounds are extremely fast, their ultimate shortcoming is their limited maneuverability; they can only be fired in straight lines. This is critical if a target is behind a planetary body or has enough time to perform erratic maneuvers to avoid the shot.

Missiles on the other hand act as essentially individual spacecraft, able to be fired at targets on the other side of celestial bodies, perform precision attacks in crowded space, or spend days to weeks crossing interplanetary distances to seek out their target on arrival. Missiles typically possess reaction-control thrusters which they use when in range of a target’s point-defense to perform their own series of erratic evasions in an attempt to dodge the stream of fire.

Destructive Potential

Missiles often carry an explosive yield with them, since their velocity alone does not always yield sufficient impact energy for their cost and function. Instead it is a far more cost-effective solution (especially at closer ranges, such as within the orbit of a single body) to create slower missiles with high explosive yields, favoring numbers over speed and complexity. In these cases the missiles will still utilize what they can to their advantage, such as the energy-intensive velocity difference inherent between two points in different orbits.