Project: Air System

Project AirSystem

A NeoForge 1.21.1 mod about the air picture: unmanned aircraft, an air raid alarm system and ground-based air defence. Works with TACZ as a soft dependency — the mod runs with or without it.

NeoForge is the only dependency. The models use the vanilla ModelPart system and are animated in the renderer.

Drones are not entities. In the air a drone is an object inside DroneFlightManager; on the ground it is a block with a block entity. The reasoning is under "How it works".

What is in it

Drones (20 aircraft)

| Class | Aircraft | |---|---| | Shahed loitering munitions | Shahed-131, Shahed-136, Shahed-238 (jet) | | Reconnaissance | Orlan-10, Orlan-30, Eleron-3, ZALA 421-16E, ZALA 421-08, Granat-4 | | Strike and loitering | Lancet-1, Lancet-3, KUB-BLA, Inokhodets (Orion), S-70 Okhotnik | | Ukrainian systems | Leleka-100, SHARK, PD-2, Liutyi (An-196), UJ-22 Airborne, RAM II UAV |

Every aircraft has its own model built to the proportions of the real thing: a Shahed is a delta with fins on the tips and a pusher propeller, a Lancet has two X wings, an Orlan is a conventional layout with the tail on a boom, the PD-2 is an aeroplane with four lift rotors, the S-70 a flying wing with a turbojet. Performance — speed, ceiling, toughness, warhead — lives in DroneKind and differs from type to type.

The models carry the detail that is actually visible in flight and on the pad: a gimballed sensor with a lens window and a thermal channel, a pitot boom ahead of the nose, ailerons and elevons as separate strips along the trailing edge, a dorsal spine and access panels, navigation lights on the tips (red to port, green to starboard), intakes and exhaust stubs on piston types, warning stripes by the warhead. Types that land have real gear: tricycle legs and wheels on the aeroplane layouts, landing feet under the booms of the PD-2, a skid on the twin-boom aircraft and flying wings.

Anti-aircraft guns

• Gepard — tracked SPAAG, twin 35 mm guns, two radars.
• Slinger — compact remote weapon station, 30 mm.
• Terrahawk Paladin — container mount with a 360-degree radar, 30 mm.
• MANTIS — unmanned auto air defence: a 35 mm revolver cannon on a pedestal

with its own masted radar and no crew at all.

The first three work two ways: a gunner sits at the sight (left click fires), or Shift + right click switches to automatic. MANTIS always runs itself.

IFF. In automatic mode a mount knows where every drone took off from. Anything launched within 70 blocks of the mount counts as friendly and is never engaged, deliberately or by a stray burst. Everything launched further out is tracked. The radius is configurable (turret.friendlyRadius).

Automatic fire misses. Every burst rolls a hit chance that falls off with range and with target speed. On a failed roll the burst is deliberately walked wide, and you can watch the tracers go past. The base chance is turret.autoHitChance (0.55 by default), multiplied by the accuracy of the individual mount.

Air raid alarm

• Alarm loudspeaker — wails, audible over 160 blocks. The sound is

synthesised as a real electromechanical siren: the rotor chops the air (two ports at a ratio of 1.2 give the characteristic chord), the signal passes through a horn resonant at 1150 and 2300 Hz, and spin-up, coast-down, rotational amplitude modulation and urban reverberation are added.

• Air raid button — raises the alert and sounds the all-clear.
• Linking cable — binds loudspeakers to a button: click the loudspeaker,

then the button. With nothing bound, a button drives every siren within 64 blocks.

Players within earshot get an "AIR RAID ALERT" banner on screen.

How it works

A Minecraft entity is convenient while it stays near a player. A drone flies kilometres away while the operator stays put, and at that point the entity gets in the way: it stops being tracked beyond the tracking radius, it ticks with the rest of the world, and it needs the client to "see" it. So the aircraft are built differently:

| State | What it is | What draws it | |---|---|---| | On the ground | airsystem:drone block with a block entity | DroneBlockRenderer | | Airborne | DroneFlight object in DroneFlightManager | DroneFlightRenderer, in the world pass | | Released bomb | Munition object in the same place | the same renderer |

What that buys: