Nuclear thread - can we go ballistic?

It also makes no sense for nukes to have a ballistic trajectory since they are propelled for the whole flight. They function more like cruise missile which also roughly matches their current trajectory of staying low and doing a sharp turn near the target.
It's more weird that tac missiles have a ballistic trajectory, but that could be argued with that they are low cost and thus only use some cheap unguided rocket that only propells during the launch phase.
There is also research being done to have long range missiles that don't fly in ballistic trajectories, because that's just slower than flying straight. (at least for shorter distances of <5k km)
So there is zero reason why an expensive missile in a futuristic game should have a ballistic trajectory.
At best you'd give it like the trajectory of a hypersonic glide missile, where it goes up, then down a bit into the glide until it's above the target and then drops.

I thought tactical missiles fire up into the air, then glide towards the target... This ballistic trajectory stuff regarding TMLs is confusing me!

@xiaomao

This is an excellent point (even worse, an SMD will waste an interceptor on a missile coming down in much of the red area) and would need to be addressed if parabolic trajectories were introduced.

@sylph_

You're correct, at no point is the TML projectile subject to gravity.

@xiaomao said in Nuclear thread - can we go ballistic?:

Y-yeah. We need more ways to fuck the air player in random ass ways. It's not enough that you can ctrlk below asf to win airfight or just fly a flippin transport into enemy air.

Full share issues

Y-yes. Having to avoid the flight path of the nuke with ASF is fullshare issue...

@slicknixon I mean, that's just wrong lol

@indexlibrorum

@deribus I spoke without knowing what I speak about! I figured to get the curve you'd need for a missile gravity was necessary. Sorry @SlickNixon

There are two ways to get a projectile to curve. One, fire is ballistically, meaning gravity is on and flight controls/propulsion are off. Second, reverse it, but give the missile instructions. This is what the nuke does. It flies up, turns 90 degrees towards the target, then another 90 degrees when it's very close to the target. A rectangular trajectory.

Parabolic or parabolic-ish trajectory could be easily programmed similar to how it's done in MMLs: Set the missile's turn radius to be a function of it's distance from the target upon launch. With calibration, this will make an eliptical trajectory. It will also clear terrain easily, except possibly tall mountains on short distance shots. The main problem with this would be that it would make nukes spend a lot more time in the air generally, and this problem would be much worse for further targets.