Dear Developers of Simpleplanes,

Thank you so much for that last update I’m not sure if you were inspired by my last post about the resizable inlets but those are so useful for making accurate designs. I’m also thrilled that there is now a much needed spread to my bullets I shoot. The parachute was also a very nice addition that I didn’t expect. The new convoys and land races are also great fun!

With the new convoy mission comes a new skill to master of attacking moving ground targets. I think it would be useful to implement modern military air to ground munitions to use in the game.
The game already has the dumb fire bombs and the air to ground missile but sometimes I need to accurately launch something with lots of power. Sure I could attach wings to your 50lb bomb and a camera but when controlling that, you’re not in control of the plane anymore. I propose you make two new bomb types, a 25lb smartbomb and a 50lb smartbomb. These smartbombs would have the same tracking abilities as missiles but they wouldn’t have any added velocity as they can only fall downwards. Maybe they could have some sort of gliding ability as they strike their targets. I’d imagine the models of the the bombs would resemble that of the GBU-12 and the MK84 JDAM. These smartbombs would take a shorter time to lock than their missile counterparts and would also have an active radar guidance system. With new weapons on my mind, I think it would be of great value for high maneuverability fighters to have a very close range but highly agile missile that takes about as long as the guardian to lock on. They’d have to maintain radar lock for them to guide themselves into their targets. These highly agile missiles could only be fired within a 2.5mi radius. I imagine the shape of these missiles would resemble the Python 5 Missiles. While I’m on the topic of weapons I think there should be a few changes to the existing weapons. I think the wing gun should be changed to just a machinegun which can be mounted on any block. I also think the rocket pod should have a slider bar in the setting to change how many rockets it has. Players would be able to replicate accurate armaments of modern aircraft that way. The weapon pylon can already be mounted anywhere but I think the small pylon should be able to as well. I hope these ideas are seen by you guys and it would be magnificent if you implemented some of these weapons.

With the new bullet spread, I found it's easier to hit targets but there's still a lot of guesstimating the pilot has to do to land those hits. That's why modern warplanes have aimers that track and show where the pilot needs to aim. In my research I’ve found they’re called funnel sights, similar to the funnel inside of sniper scopes to show range except these are able to twist depending on the roll and pitch of the aircraft. Personally, I think it would be great to have a toggle switch when changing the cockpit block to enable or disable “Hud Elements” These Hud Elements would show the artificial horizon lines, altitude, speed, and crosshairs, if gears are down, etc.

I really hope you guys read this. You’ve done an amazing job so far and I think you can go so much further with this game.

Sincerely,
Aaron