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[Arghy]

Yes to all things in the OP.

[Arrath]

I like most of the suggestions in the OP, and have one to add myself.

I may well be wrong, but I think that all of the missiles currently in the game are impact weapons, they must physically hit the target to explode and deal damage. Of course, they maneuver and track the target in an attempt to do this, but they aren't very good at it. What about Proximity Warheads?

Missiles with Prox warheads would have two flags that determine their behavior, arm distance and explosion radius (already exists in the projectile file but purely visual atm)

As a proximity missile closes with its target it would check the distance to the target against its arming distance. Once it crosses that threshold the missile is now armed. It will still attempt to impact on the target, in which case it would deal full damage. In the event of the target evading or the missile overshooting the missile would explode (triggered by the distance to target beginning to go up, rather than continuing to decrease, assuming of course the missile got close enough to arm the warhead) dealing damage to anything within its explosion radius. Damage could be modified based on distance from the center of the explosion, making proximity detonations less preferable to direct hits, but better than nothing.

[ClosetGoth]

MY GOD YES! Since SF ships tend to like dodging, it would logically follow that old technologies to make it harder to dodge would be implemented!

[JT]

I would in particular really, really love submunition-launching missiles and bomb-pumped laser missiles. Developing the general scenario -- a missile that can fire any other weapon arbitrarily, but only has one volley before the missile itself explodes or goes dead stick -- would cover both of those options excellently.

It might, in the far future, be really really great to have self-halting bomblets as an additional weapon type. These bomblets would instead decelerate rather than accelerate once they left their carrier vehicle, thrusting in the opposite direction of their initial launch velocity until they come to a standstill. Once they reach the end of their useful life, they self-destruct, but their main intention is as an impromptu minefield, intended to be launched directly at an oncoming enemy ship. Of course, there is nothing about them that innately prevents the oncoming ship from destroying them with PD fire, but the idea is to force the ship to steamroll over them. (The tactical implications of this -- why not simply fire them at the ship? -- are that they don't require advanced guidance/ECCM and can thus carry extremely powerful payloads in relation to their size and cost. They can also force enemies to divert course and manoeuvre into better kill zones, although the latter consideration would be unlikely to have much practical use for the AI.)

Ideally there would be two guidance options for the bomb-pumped missiles. The first guidance option would be the bombard option which simply attempts to track the target and if it lines up a kill shot, it takes the shot. The second type would be the vectoring gun-type warhead sometimes used in bombs and artillery on Earth today. Once the bomb approaches within range of its target, it aggressively turns itself while drifting on its last velocity until it's pointing at the target plus the calculated lead necessary to compensate for its own velocity, and then launches its kill vehicle at a dizzying speed.

If you're wondering about the bump, I came on here to suggest the very same thing as the OP -- missiles that can fire any arbitrary warhead --  and found the thread already exists. Therefore I'm chipping in my support for this, even though it seems like Alex has already given the "yea" and has the sprite lollygagging about until it can be put to work. =)

[CrashToDesktop]

+1 for most, if not all, of them.  I especially like the idea for missiles swerving to avoid CIWS fire, would be nice if that were implemented (Actually, the Swarmer tends to do that) and the Probe Missile.

EDIT
Wait...February?  Did you necro this thread?