Heatseeker Missile
Type	Tracking Missile
Available From	Everyone
Fitted To	Tracking Launchers
Role	Anti-Fighter, Anti-Medium
Required Licence	None

In-game Description

Light Heatseeker

The Light Heatseeker missile, known by many pilots as the Stormbolt, is the Paranid answer to the need for a missile system with minimal prelaunch lock-on time. Given the often tightly choreographed Paranid approach to combat manoeuvres, and the frantic nature of dogfights in general, where split-second decisions and actions can have severe consequences, this targeting logic was deemed in accordance with the Holy Three-Dimensionality. Funding for its development was allocated, and what they got in return was a weapon that has virtually no lock-on time requirement whatsoever. That advantage, however, comes at a significant cost to threat-identification and countermeasure burn-through capability. In practice, this means that the weapon is easily foiled by decoys and best used either in massed volleys, often from multiple ships, or in drawn-out engagements in which the enemy's supply of countermeasures is depleted. Naturally, this sort of approach does not sit too well with a military that prides itself on efficiency.

Exactly how the blueprints for the Stormbolt found their way to the open markets is unknown, but while the weapon failed to gain traction with the Paranid, other races with a less frugal view on munitions expenditure have since made good use of it.

Heavy Heatseeker

After evaluating the performance of the Light Heatseeker missile, the design-team responsible for its creation noticed something peculiar. During testing, a significant number of encounters resulted in mission failures that could have been prevented by fitting the missile with just a slightly more powerful warhead. Unfortunately, when the team brought this matter up, politics got in the way and what was intended to be a simple upgrade turned into a weapon so different that it became its own development program entirely.

This new Heavy Heatseeker weapon, nicknamed the Icarus, is a heat-seeking missile with a powerful warhead capable of dealing significant, possibly even catastrophic, damage to most fighters, heavy fighters and corvettes. While multiple impacts may be required to take out a frigate, the weapon is more than capable of that as well. It is not too agile though and like its smaller cousin, it suffers from the same design compromises on its guidance package, meaning it can be fairly easily defeated by decoys.

Tactical Overview

Heatseker Missiles do not require a Lock-On which allows them to be fired freely. They also offer the second highest damage output of all tracking missiles. Though they are some of the most vulnerable missiles to Flares.

Light Heatseeker Missile
The Light Heatseeker Missile, much like other light tracking missiles, is a rather hard sell. Its damage output is relatively low, often requiring around 7 hits to destroy a single Xenon M Fighter, with even more missiles sometimes needed when accounting for flares and misses. Needing so many missiles to destroy a single target it rather impractical, especially when engaging the better fighters of other factions. When arming capital ships with them, its effectiveness doesn't significantly improve, with their missile capacity barely lasting for five minutes, and rarely destroying more than a dozen targets.

Heavy Heatseeker Missiles
Similar to other Heavy Tracking missiles, the Heavy Heatseeker Missile struggles to be effective. Its slow speed means most targets can easily outrun it, despite being the fastest heavy missile. Pilots often find themselves only able to launch the missile during head-on attack runs, hoping the target has exhausted its flares or is too close for dodging it. While it can deal impressive damage to fighters, larger targets just don't care that much.
At most one could blow up the turrets of a capital ship. Though there are better options for this.

Specifications

Construction Cost

Universal Build Method

Closed Loop Build Method

Terran Build Method