A missile that bursts
A short barrel that fires when the missile dies is a warhead. Put that barrel on a second, short-sighted turret and the missile goes off by itself when something comes close.
What you see
Two missiles. The first flies as a seeker (lesson 16) and bursts into ten bullets when it hits something, runs out of time or the player right-clicks. The second needs no click: it bursts on its own the moment something comes within reach, like flak.
The warhead
A projectile's Burst section has three triggers: right click, getting destroyed, running out of time. Setting it off only ends the projectile; the explosion comes from barrels on it with Fires when it bursts, which fire once as it dies. One short barrel with a lot of Spread and many Bullets per shot is the cheap warhead; several short barrels round the bullet are the consistent one.
The proximity fuse
The game has no "explode when near" switch, but it has something as good: a gun on a projectile's turret fires by itself at whatever the turret sees. So give the missile a second turret with a short Range and a narrow Arc, make the warhead that turret's gun, and the missile fires its warhead the moment a target enters the small field. A long Reload on that gun is what stops it firing again and again.
Numbers that matter
| Field | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Warhead Length | 27 | Very short, or the barrel pokes through the target and fires behind it |
| Bullets per shot, Spread | 10, 10 | One barrel, a wide fan. Several accurate barrels give a full circle but cost more entities |
| Bullet speed, Launch speed | 2, 1.5 | How fast the burst expands |
| Warhead Lifetime | 0.3 s | How far it reaches; short is cheap in the budget |
| Fuse Range, Arc | 400, 80 | The small field that sets it off. Keep the Arc at 80 or under: a wide fuse misfires |
| Fuse gun Reload | 20 | The rate limiter: about one blast per missile |
Gotchas
- Bullets and traps work as a warhead. Drones only work on a right-click payload (Fires on right click instead of Fires when it bursts) on a missile that stays alive.
- Random Troller could not get a warhead to work when mounted on the seeker turret itself. Keep it on the bullet, or on its own fuse turret.
- A Burst with nothing marked Fires when it bursts just ends the missile: on the Flak missile a right-click trigger would be a self-destruct, nothing more.
- The fuse gun counts once per live missile in the budget, like the engine; at Reload 20 that is almost nothing.
The guide to creating missiles is a write-up supplied by Random Troller, the author of the seeking projectile technique.