Air Defense

Air Defense

Air defense shoots down incoming missiles before they hit. It's good, but it's not a wall. Enough missiles, stealth, jammers or decoys will get through.

Parts

Block	What it does
Missile Defense Battery	3 × 3 launcher with 4 ready tubes and a magazine for Interceptor Missiles
Air Defense Console	Controls batteries and Multi Launch Pads over cables
Multi Launch Pad	Fires interceptors straight up for long range defense when linked to a console
Command Center	Can do everything the console does, plus a lot more

A battery needs a console or a command center. Without one it shows NO CONSOLE and does nothing.

Setting it up

1. Place one or more Missile Defense Batteries.
2. Fill them with Interceptor Missiles.
3. Connect them to an Air Defense Console (or a Command Center) with Power Cables.
4. Optional: connect Multi Launch Pads loaded with interceptors to the same console.

The console shows how many batteries and pads it has, how many interceptors are left, how many hostiles are inbound and how many you've shot down.

Ranges

Value	Distance
Battery radar	1000 blocks
Area a battery protects	targets within 160 blocks of the battery
Battery starts firing	when the missile is within 400 blocks
Multi Launch Pad starts firing	when the missile is within 900 blocks

So a battery only shoots at missiles that are actually headed for something close to it. Missiles flying past to somewhere else are ignored.

Multi Launch Pads launch vertically and need a moment to turn, but they reach much further out. Use them as the outer layer and batteries as the inner one.

How a battery fights

• It swings toward the target and locks on (1.5 seconds, twice as long inside a jammer field)
• It fires one interceptor, then waits to see if it hits before firing again
• Between two shots there's 1.5 seconds
• 4 tubes are ready to fire. An empty tube gets reloaded from the magazine in 4 seconds.
• Against nuclear missiles it fires 2 interceptors at once
• About 4 seconds before impact it fires one more, just in case

The console handles up to 3 targets at the same time. Each interceptor has a kill chance depending on the missile type, see Missiles.

Rules of engagement

In the command center you can set rules for your air defense:

• Targets: all, nuclear only, or only missiles aimed at the command center
• First: what to shoot first. The most urgent (closest to impact), nuclear first, or anything aimed at the command center first.
• Salvo: how many interceptors per target

See Command Center.

Testing it

Use /atomcraft attack <type> to send a missile at yourself. It comes from where you're looking, 140 blocks away and 90 blocks up. See Commands and Config.

Recipes

See Recipes.