How to make good missiles?

[Adyne]

I need help with building missiles.
My biggest issue is that they get shot down really easy, because they get armed when I launch them and there are 5 warheads unprotected on top, so they explode on impact, but they only need one bullet to destroy them. I tried arm them with sensors, but that doesn't work for me. The sensor registers the ship, but the missiles don't explode (If someone has a fix for that, please tell me).
I have shot 8 missiles with a one second delay on a Military Transporter (I mean that NPC ship) and non of them reached the target.
I am using Whiplash's optical guided missile script, but the evade function doesn't work.
Btw, I am talking about small grid missiles.

Here are the thing that I want on my missile:
- Lengh doesn't matter, but width and depth has to be both 3 blocks (or smaller)
- Very long range: I want to use them as a long range anti-capital ship weapon and maybe for
planetary bombardment
- Shouldn't get destroyed with one hit OR have insane maneuvrability (I would prefer decend
armor)

I don't know if this is too much or not, I am very new to this topic

I would appreciate any help either to the how-to-fix-the-sensor-problem, the how-to-fix-the-script-problem or any building suggestions.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Timer on the torp. Turn off power x seconds after launch. Now dosent get shot at and if armed warheads still go boom :)

Ps just thought if its a drone missile gets a lil more complicated. Your going to have to manually kill the reactors at around 1000m out just before turret range.

What type of missile is it?
Why no bigger that 3x3? Avoid pistons?

[Adyne]

The missiles have to fit in the silos which are protected by sliding doors. Anything larger than 3x3 will get stuck.
I can't manually kill the power. The system that I have build fires 8 missiles at once. I can't control 8 missiles and fly the ship. Plus if I kill the power, the script wouldn't work anymore so I can't hit moving targets.
I don't know why I should use pistons. The missiles are exiting the silos via their hydrogen engines and that works fine for me.

I think the sensor idea has potencial. I could (in theory) arm the warheads around 50m or less before the target.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Originally posted by Adyne:

The missiles have to fit in the silos which are protected by sliding doors. Anything larger than 3x3 will get stuck.
I can't manually kill the power. The system that I have build fires 8 missiles at once. I can't control 8 missiles and fly the ship. Plus if I kill the power, the script wouldn't work anymore so I can't hit moving targets.
I don't know why I should use pistons. The missiles are exiting the silos via their hydrogen engines and that works fine for me.

I think the sensor idea has potencial. I could (in theory) arm the warheads around 50m or less before the target.

In theory but can be unreliable in my experience, at 100m/s thats only 0.5 seconds for the sensor to fire. Sometimes i dont think it reacts fast enough, iv tried sensors to trigger things on torps either before impact or upon leaving my ship and never had much sucess. A big problem is when you reweld the torps sometimes names of blocks and groups dont stay so the sensor has no group to look for.

Which guided missile script are you using?

[Adyne]

That one:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=546494746

Its pretty good for this case, because the missiles will fly there where you are looking, so the have in theory infinite range.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

OK im more used to grav or drone torps myself but i have seen that in action on a friends ship. Like you say cant really power them all down at once with hat so maybe try something like this....

2 missile groups, first is 2 of your missiles, 2nd it the other 6.

The first group fires a single second before the next

The 2 that fire first have a decoy in the rear and a lot of armour up front.

Those 2 eat bullets and distract turrets with your 6 damage torps right behind em :)

[Adyne]

That could be possible, even though it is not exacly what I wanted, but I will try it out.

[Adyne]

Ok, I accidently found out something really useful.
Apparently the script automaticly arms warhead when launching, so the sensor actually disarms the warheads. I have build in a timer to disarm them when launching and rearm them when the sensor triggeres. I will test this further.

[Adyne]

Ok, got a solution.
The trick is to disable the proximity alert. This setting makes a small delay between detection and action.
I have disabled it and my missiles now makes some nasty holes. :D

[Pembroke]

You can use decoys to increase the survival time. Either the actual decoy blocks or just use cameras. Both will be targeted before anything else by AI turrets.