Using it#

Fitting a weapon#

Weapons are on the Weapons tab in the editor. The EO director, the LITENING pod and the IRST are on the Sensors tab.

• Stack on a 3 m node: the Pantsir, the Phalanx, the 5"/54, the YAL-1 turret and the MIRV bus.
• Attach to a surface: the missile rails, the B61 rack, the M197 (under a nose), the EO director, the LITENING pod, the IRST and the flare and chaff dispensers.

The Pantsir can control itself, so a craft made of nothing but a Pantsir can be launched on its own.

The panel#

Open it from KSArmory > Panel on the menu bar. (If you use the ModMenu mod, KSArmory is listed in its menu instead.)

The panel lists every craft that carries something from this mod, grouped by team. Each row has the craft's name (click it to fly that craft) and buttons for its weapons, auto engage (the shield), the chase camera and its team (the flag).

Pick a weapon with the picker next to FIRE. The rest of the panel then shows that weapon. If you fit the same weapon twice, for example two rails, it shows as one weapon with two stations and FIRE uses them in turn.

Weapons keep working when you fly something else. You can switch to another craft and watch a site defend itself.

Firing#

1. Press FIRE to shoot the selected weapon. There is no master arm. A missile needs a target locked first; a gun fires wherever it is pointing; a bomb rack drops its bomb.
2. Read the line next to FIRE. Ready means it will fire. Holding tells you why it won't: no lock, out of reach, still turning, out of rounds.
3. Tick Auto engage to let the weapon choose targets and fire by itself. It is off by default. The shield button in the craft list turns it on or off for every weapon on that craft.

Under auto engage, a weapon fires at a contact that will pass within its threat radius soon, once it has held a lock for long enough. Rounds per target (on the weapon's component row) sets how many it fires at each one. Threat radius, Threat horizon and Lock time are on the Tuning tab. A turret waits until it has finished turning before it fires.

To stop a weapon firing at the craft you are flying, tick Never target the vehicle I'm flying.

Aiming#

• Shift-click a craft or a spot on the ground to designate it. The turret follows it, FIRE shoots at it, and a guided bomb that is already falling steers onto it if it can still reach.
• Aim with the mouse points the turret wherever the cursor is. It doesn't fire; auto engage or FIRE still does that.
• Fire at the mouse makes a click on the ground fire a round at that spot. Tick it only when you want clicks to shoot.

Guns are aimed to land where you point, allowing for the drop. If a spot is too far for the gun, the line next to FIRE says so.

Sights#

The EO director, the LITENING pod, the YAL-1 turret and the Pantsir's roof camera are sights. Each one has its own row under Components:

• Main view shows the sight's picture in your main view.
• Camera opens it in a separate window. You can drag that window onto another monitor.
• Zoom sets the magnification.
• Track points it at what the craft's sensors are tracking.
• Mouse points it at the cursor.
• Hand lets you point it with sliders.
• Spot looks for a laser spot on the sight's laser code.

A sight can't find targets by itself. Fit an IRST or a radar on the same craft to give it something to look at, or shift-click a target.

A sight's Fire laser button turns on its laser designator, which marks a spot for laser-guided weapons. The YAL-1's high-energy laser is fired with FIRE, like any other weapon.

Bombs and the MIRV bus#

With a B61 rack selected, an orange ring shows where the bomb will land if you drop it now. After you drop it, a blue ring shows how far its fins can still move it; shift-click inside that ring to steer it.

The MIRV bus is flown by its own computer, on the Ballistic tab:

1. Designate the targets by clicking the world or KSA's ground-track map.
2. Tick Ballistic computer armed.
3. Launch.

docs/ICBM-GUIDANCE.md explains how it flies.

Teams#

A craft with no team can be shot at by anyone. Use the flag button in the craft list to put a craft on a team. The Teams window sets which teams are allies or neutral, and whether each team fires on unknown craft and on neutrals. Every weapon on a team follows those rules.

Switching off built-in weapons#

Under KSArmory > Built-in weapons you can switch off any weapon family. The change takes effect the next time you start the game. Saved craft that carry those parts still load, but the parts do nothing.

Tuning a guided missile#

These sliders are on the Tuning tab. They change that missile type everywhere in the game, not just on one craft.

Countermeasures#

Which decoy works depends on the missile's seeker:

Each flare or chaff cloud gets one chance to pull a missile away, when it first looks brighter to the seeker than you do. A fooled missile follows the decoy and can still explode near you if the decoy is close. Once the decoy burns out, the missile may find you again.

Chaff only counts if it is close to you (within about 150 m). Flares count anywhere in the seeker's view.

Beating the Pantsir. Fly side-on to the Pantsir, so you are barely closing on it, and drop chaff. Its radar loses you, and any 57E6 already in the air flies on unguided. It finds you again after about three seconds and then follows you with its camera while you stay side-on, so this works once per pass. Flares do nothing against it.

Using the dispensers. Each dispenser's row shows how many it has left. The first one has the controls for the whole craft:

• Flares, Chaff or Both fires two of each from every dispenser loaded with that type. A pair of dispensers fires to both sides at once.
• Auto-dispense fires by itself when a missile tracking you comes within 6 km: flares against a heat seeker, chaff against a radar seeker, both if it can't tell. It fires at most once a second.

Dispensers can't be reloaded in flight.

Missile seeker settings (seeker type, countermeasure resistance, Doppler gate) are on the Tuning tab under Guidance. Weapon pack authors: the matching <Munition> attributes are in docs/WEAPON-PACKS.md.