Immersive Aircraft: Homing Missiles

Homing Missiles

Homing Missiles adds four purpose-built missile pods, proper target locking, missile warnings, and countermeasures to Immersive Aircraft.

Fit a pod to your aircraft, carry its matching ammunition, and select it in flight. Use unguided rockets for manual shots, or choose a guided missile made specifically for aircraft, creatures, or players on foot.

Required: Immersive Aircraft must also be installed. In multiplayer, install Homing Missiles on both the client and server.

Features

• Four distinct weapons: unguided, aircraft-seeking, entity-seeking, and player-seeking
• Four-cell pods with visible ammunition and matching Minecraft-style models
• A separate fire key, so missiles do not fire with the aircraft's main gun
• Single, pair, and timed ripple fire for unguided rockets
• Stable target tracking with range, angle, signal, and terrain checks
• Aircraft use a broken-ring marker; creatures and players use a diamond marker
• An impact marker for unguided rockets that accounts for aircraft movement and missile travel
• Lock tones, missile warnings, time-to-impact information, flares, and chaff
• A compact HUD showing the selected weapon, target class, ammunition, lock state, and incoming threats
• Separate 16x16 pixel-art icons and blocky models designed to fit Minecraft
• Survival recipes, Creative inventory entries, and datapack support for other aircraft mods

Weapons

• Unguided Rocket — a straightforward rocket for manual aiming, available in single, pair, and ripple fire
• Aircraft-Seeking Missile — locks aircraft only, including aircraft parked on the ground; ordinary flying mobs are ignored
• Entity-Seeking Missile — locks non-player creatures on land, in water, or in the air, including dragons and modded flying mobs
• Player-Seeking Missile — locks survival and adventure players on foot while ignoring aircraft occupants, Creative players, and spectators

Each pod consumes its matching ammunition from the aircraft inventory or pilot inventory. Creative-mode players do not consume ammunition.

Targeting and controls

A target must be visible, in range, and inside the seeker's forward field of view. Terrain blocks acquisition, while a brief obstruction will not immediately erase an existing track.

Each guided missile keeps to its own target class. The aircraft seeker recognizes actual aircraft rather than guessing from altitude or gravity. The entity seeker accepts living mobs whether they are walking, jumping, swimming, hovering, or flying. The player seeker respects owner protection, teams, friendly fire, Creative mode, and spectator mode.

• Orange — acquiring a target
• Amber — tracking, but not ready to fire
• Green — target locked

For other aircraft mods, add their entity types to aerial_rockets:aircraft_targets. Modpacks can exclude unwanted targets with aerial_rockets:missile_target_exclusions or opt decorative entities into the entity seeker with aerial_rockets:general_entity_targets.

Countermeasures and warnings

Install an Aircraft Countermeasure Dispenser and carry the cartridges in the aircraft inventory.

• Flares create heat decoys that can pull aircraft-seeking missiles away.
• Chaff is retained for compatible radar threats and modpacks.
• Recommended countermeasure checks the most urgent incoming threat and deploys the appropriate cartridge when one is available.

Flares work best when released at the right distance and while maneuvering. They can break a seeker, but they do not guarantee it.

Missile behavior

• Ejection, boost, sustain, and coast phases instead of one constant speed
• Turning limits, energy loss, target lead, and proportional guidance
• Seeker gimbal limits, short-term target memory, and line-of-sight checks after launch
• Bounding-box aim points for more reliable locks on large, flying, and modded creatures
• Swept collision and proximity checks for fast missiles
• Chunk continuity for missiles travelling beyond the pilot's current rendered area
• Persistent smoke and flame trails
• A real BGM-71 TOW launch recording and four longer-range explosion sounds
• Configurable explosions, terrain damage, warnings, HUD layout, trails, and camera shake

Configuration

Settings are stored in:

config/homing-missiles.properties

Server owners and modpack makers can configure:

• Lock range, field of view, acquisition speed, signal quality, and visibility grace
• Missile acceleration, speed, guidance, turn rate, lead, and seeker memory
• Arming distance, maximum range, proximity fuses, and missile chunk loading
• Explosion strength and terrain damage
• Countermeasure timing, range, and effectiveness
• Unguided accuracy, salvo size, and ripple-fire timing
• HUD scale, position, opacity, colorblind colors, warnings, trails, and camera shake
• Friendly-fire rules

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.20.1: Fabric and Forge
• Minecraft 1.21.1: Fabric and NeoForge
• Minecraft 1.21.11: Fabric and NeoForge
• Java: Java 17 for Minecraft 1.20.1; Java 21 or newer for Minecraft 1.21.x
• Fabric: Fabric API required
• Environment: Client and server

Download the file matching your Minecraft version and mod loader.

Version 3.2.0 was clean-built, resource-checked, and startup-tested on all six supported version and loader combinations with:

• Immersive Aircraft 1.4.1 on Minecraft 1.20.1
• Immersive Aircraft 1.4.6 on Minecraft 1.21.1
• Immersive Aircraft 1.4.7 on Minecraft 1.21.11

Other mods

Modpacks and servers

You may include Homing Missiles in public or private modpacks and servers with credit.

Bug reports

Include your Minecraft version, mod loader, Immersive Aircraft version, tested aircraft, selected weapon, multiplayer status, and any configuration changes.

Discord: crabban1337

Credits

Created by Crabb4n. BGM-71 TOW launch recording by qubodup on Freesound, released under CC0.

Special thanks to the Immersive Aircraft team for the original mod.

View all Crabb4n projects  •  CrabMods on YouTube