Traps for seeker and other means of detection.
Surely everyone has seen footage of aircraft shooting burning balls.
This is one of the first and oldest methods of protection against missiles with infrared seeker. What's going on in terms of the missile? There was one goal, there were two, or three, or ten. Which one do you want? There are many technical tricks that help the missile weed out false targets and continue to follow the true one. For the layman it looks like a fun fire show from an airplane, and for military engineers it is an eternal struggle. During the existence of missiles with IR seeker, both the capabilities of missiles and traps have grown. For example. One trap was shot, the target split for the missile. Going for a brighter or darker one? Are they the same? Can we compare angular velocities? Can we look through the filter? Measure the pulse rate?
Putting all possible options for the technical implementation of these issues into one rocket is impossible. Therefore, as the battle of the projectile / armor continues, the no less intense battle continues - the seeker / trap. However, due to the absence of massively large-scale restrictions in zero gravity and airlessness, this will be possible for us. The only question is the complexity of the production and cost of such a missile.
In our game, we simplify the mechanism a little and reduce it to a certain numerical parameter, which is responsible for the technical level and perfection of the seeker - noise immunity, and a similar numerical parameter - the quality of interference. If the quality of the interference is lower than the immunity, the missile will ignore the interference. If higher, then depending on the difference, the chance that the missile will switch to the trap will change. The value of trap quality and immunity is not limited, only the difference is important. So the reality is that missiles will always be trapped, and the opposite is real.
Now that we understand the mechanism of work, we outline the traps themselves.
Traps are divided by ranges of covered radiation. They are exactly the same as the ranges of sensors or the natural radiation of the ship. Thus, for complete protection, it is necessary to install a very wide range of modules on the ship. And here lies another unpleasant thing. As a rule, we can assume which missile seeker is approaching us. But not always. Shoot what trap? Or all? Here either make assumptions and conclusions during the battle, or set up a defense protocol. For example, if a missile emits a radar signal - shoot foil, if not - an IR trap and an active simulator of your main or main radar, while turning off your own.
Traps can be both active and passive. Active are those that emit a signal that mimics your ship. Passives are designed to fool enemy seeker and detectors. For example, a deployed solid field of foil will not only block your ship from a missile, but also from enemy detection means, both radar and optical and infrared. All the enemy knows is you're behind him. Or maybe not after him.
Some traps have a limited lifetime, some are destructible objects.
A short list of currently existing: IR flyers A cloud of dipoles (cut aluminum foil) Autonomous simulator of radiation (can be different for different ranges and radiation) Promising: Small-scale sprayers “smoke generators” Deployable film structures Artifacts Inflatable film objects