Munition:wake

Wake Homing Seeker

Wake-homing seekers detect the hot gasses emitted by the drive cones of ships, and in turn the direction of increasing strength. This leads the missile directly into the main engines of the target, excellent for disabling mobility. Note that the main drives must be active for this seeker to detect the wake.

Wake Homing Seeker
Type	Seeker
Base Cost	0.25 pts
Validator Cost	0.5 pts
Type	WAKE
Range	1,500 m
FOV (deg)	120 deg
Validator Reliability	100%
Steerable	Yes
Conical Scan	No
Maximum Steer Angle	15 deg
Position Targeting	Yes
Supports TRPs	Yes
Measures Position	Direction Only
Measures Velocity	No
Validator Memory	No
Time-to-go-Impact	2 seconds
Faction

Ships that are using their main engines will emit wake particles (listed as trailpoints internally). While the trail visually appears as a continuous line, only one "trackable" particle is emitted every 5 seconds. Each particle is propelled backwards at a constant velocity of 30m/s, and lasts for 45 seconds, resulting in a trail that extends at least 1.35km away from the ship.

Only the main engine will produce wake particles; maneuvering or reverse engines will not produce wake particles and will not be tracked by wake seekers. Missiles and decoy containers also do not emit wake; their trails are purely cosmetic.

WAKE will not see ships with inactive engines, but engines have to be off for 15 seconds before they become fully inactive and cannot be seen by wake.

WAKE is explicitly rear aspect, and will not be able to see the root if the seeker is more than 112.5 deg from the stern. The same applies to the particles, although the angle check is performed against the particle, which maintains its direction at the time it was emitted.

When WAKE seekers see the wake trail or the root, the seeker finds the closest location on the trail and then seeks toward the next particle from that location. If this particle is the most recent particle, the seeker instead seeks toward the ship itself.

Particles that are too far away from each other can become disconnected from the trail, and therefore the WAKE seeker will not consider the line between those particles as part of the trail. This can lead to WAKE ignoring the next particle and tracking particles that are significantly ahead or behind the seeker.

WAKE as a validator will only validate the root, it will not validate the target if it only sees its trail. WAKE val otherwise follows the same rules as the WAKE seeker.

Missiles do not produce a wake signature and cannot be seen by Wake seekers. Craft do produce a root wake signature, and can be seen from the same rear aspect as ships, but do not produce a trail or wake particles.