# SKYWARD combat Three generated naval fighters, steering AI, cannon ballistics and guided missiles. Registers with game.shared at order20. Boot activates the weapon input map; reset clears the encounter; update spawns the patrol eight seconds after carrier departure, advances AI and projectiles; stop releases controls and every owned temporary object. Weapons stay safe on the deck and during the catapult stroke. Space / left mouse / right trigger fires from a finite600-round inventory at15rounds per second. The gun sits2.5m right,0.8m below and5m ahead of the flight viewpoint, using the aircraft's actual banked pose. Tracers converge on the boresight at1200m. M / right mouse / left trigger launches one of six missiles after holding the selected enemy within a15-degree seeker cone and4km range for1.15seconds. A press during acquisition queues the missile for up to4seconds; changing targets cancels it. Tab / gamepad north cycles living targets. Touch exposes labelled buttons. Missiles eject from alternating wing mounts4m either side,1.4m below and3m forward, then accelerate and steer toward a predictive intercept point. A bright motor and persistent smoke show their trajectory. Damage requires a geometric proximity hit; cannon and hostile rounds use swept line collision. Three kills calls the shared victory state. Hostiles maneuver to intercept and only shoot when their nose aims at the player's flight path. s.weaponStatus is the HUD status string. s.missilePending is queued time remaining in seconds, zero when inactive. s.lastLaunchReject and s.lastLaunchRejectTime describe the most recent refused request. telemetry() exposes launch requests and reasons, actual mount origins, missile position/speed/smoke, and hit counters. Aircraft geometry has twin fins, paired engines and retracted landing gear. Units are meters, Y up and forward -Z. Owned entities are temporary and unsynced; each encounter stays local to the player's peer. Game lifecycle drives updates without a polling task loop.

# Sortie state and lifecycle Shared per-client game state, constants, system registration, ordered update/reset callbacks, UI callback routing, damage, mission outcomes and bounded sound/event history for SKYWARD. The scene entrypoint loads flight, combat, cockpit and environment modules and drives this registry.

# AI aircraft motion Shared bank-driven flight for Skyward's enemy fighters, wingman, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. Combat and mission director modules supply guidance; this module integrates attitude, speed and position. Require `game.flight.ai_aircraft`. Call `step(aircraft, desiredUnitDirection, targetSpeed, dt, profile, terrainHeight)`, then `pose(aircraft)` to update its entity. Aircraft tables provide position, unit forward and speed in metres/second; optional id selects the initial reversal side. Profiles are fighter, wingman, bomber and recon. terrainHeight(x,z) returns metres above sea level. Call reset after deliberately changing an existing aircraft's pose. Roll has bounded rate and acceleration. Heading follows bank and airspeed; pitch respects a combined load limit. Speed responds gradually to throttle demand, climb and turn drag. Predictive terrain clearance steers upward without snapping altitude. The rendered up vector follows the same bank used to turn. Numerical integration substeps at at most 1/120 second. This is a tuned kinematic flight model, not a full aerodynamic simulation. Missile steering is separate. Run /zero/source/design/verify-ai-flight.luau for motion limits, frame-rate consistency and terrain clearance; verify-sorties.luau and verify-tactics.luau cover the mission consumers.

# Mission actions Supplemental aircraft controls: X deploys countermeasures, T commands Viper 2 to attack the selected fighter or return to cover, and L engages assisted carrier recovery inside the approach gate. Keyboard and touch buttons; flight and weapons remain on their existing input maps.

# flares Deploy a countermeasure burst with X; limited ammunition and cooldown, effective when breaking across an incoming missile.

# recover L requests assisted recovery inside the south approach gate, with safe altitude, speed and heading.

# wingman T commands Viper 2 to attack the selected airborne target or rejoin cover.