"Smart" Bombs

[=CJW= Zweistein000 (W)]

Firstly: I don't know if this is in Battletech or not, but It's certainly how things work in real life.

Secondly: If this type of bomb was implemented it should either be Expensive as hell or it should have the damage of 1/4 to 1/2 of a F-bomb

Now: Modern military uses bombs that Lock on and home to their targets to some limit (not nearly as good as missiles). This would be cool in MWLL as it would allow you to hit moving targets better, but should have serious restrictions as a "homing" F-bomb would be a serious game breaker.

Your thoughts?

[shadowkiller]

Personally i would rather see small scale carpet bombing or cluster bombs instead. Just my opinion tho

[7.[WD]Ragor]

Personally i would rather see small scale carpet bombing or cluster bombs instead. Just my opinion tho

QFT

[IG142]

Personally i would rather see small scale carpet bombing or cluster bombs instead. Just my opinion tho

I agree. Thunderbolts already serve well for guided airstrikes, using bombs as wide-area saturation weapons would differentiate them nicely.


Just a thought...what if firebombs were weakened and turned into a sort of Aerospace 'grenade'? All aeros get one (maybe two for large craft) free rapid-dropping bomb bay with no ammo by default, and use spare tons hold bombs for it. Individual firebombs do minor damage and transfer in a very wide area. Dedicated bomber aerospace just have less weaponry and more free tons for bombs. That way firebombing becomes very useful for supporting teammates, but loses the capability of Spontaneous Atlas Combustion and direct-killing in general. Enemy Novacat giving your ground forces a hard time? Have a friendly bomber make a pass, then charge while the Ncat is incapacitated by heat. A large-payload dedicated bomber could even carpet-bomb an entire battle line in a single pass, assuming it survived long enough.

Might have performance problems, though, with that many bombs.

[DFDelta]

Personally i would rather see small scale carpet bombing or cluster bombs instead. Just my opinion tho

QFT

+1, carpet bombs ftw

<snip>

So instead of dedicated bombers we would have smaller and weaker bombs on almost all ASF?
Sounds good to me.

Could be like this:
ASF have, additional to their free tons, a small amount of bomb space, how much that is depends on the ASF itself.
A Sparrowhawk has 1 bomb, a Sulla 3, a Shiva 5 and some other ASF that gets a primary bomber role maybe 8 or even 10. (Lets say a Chippewa)
If you buy a bomb all slots get filled with that type. You can drop 1 bomb every 1.5 second (Is a normal weapon with a 1.5 second reload)
A Chippewa could rain down a lot of bombs onto the battlefield like that. And while 10 small bombs would still deal more damage then a current 4 FBomb drop it would be streched out over a much longer time.
And even better: If there is a realistic chance that you will survive an encounter with a bomber, and if bombing damage is more damage over time and area damage then a onehit burst, we can tune down AA weaponry again, and mechs can finally "AA-crouch", without feeling like idiots for exposing themselves to the bomber.

Also:
Bombs should be expensive, to make sure that even a good bomber pilot needs to use his primary weapons and use bombs as special ammo... or be supported by his teammates to be able to deliver constant heavy air support.

[CHHš Sturmadler]

^ we may be on the right track here...

+1

[CHHš Aurailius]

Perhaps I'll design something carpet bomb-like after 0.4.0.  If nothing else, it can be proof of concept. 

[zephoid]

now were talking! no more insta-gib firebombers.

something to keep in mind about this though is that dive bombers can stall momentum to almost 0 at a high altitude and drop multiple bombs that will all hit the ground at the same time, creating the same prob we have now.

Just thought id throw that in after seeing so many games have that exact problem. 1942 and bf2 bomber insta-gib was annoying even when those were limited assets.

[(TLL)Siilk]

 I like the idea of carpet bombing. And I think making bombs closer to inferno missiles(a lot of heat and modest damage in large area -- I think that was one of the Frosty's ideas) would also work well. As for null-speed dive bomber, just think about it: it would have to baloon in place for 15 seconds to drop it's loadout. Any semi-decent AA would rip stationary aero to shreds in that time. Besides, only immobile ground targets would be at risk, as it would be a stream of bombs anyway, not the clusterfapp of 4xfirebombs of 0.3.X thus you can move out of it's way as soon as you get hit by the first bomb.

[Taemien]

Here's a good question.

Why does the Clan Sulla have an IS only weapon such as a Thunderbolt?

[=CJW= Zweistein000 (W)]

yea interesting

[Frostiken]

FBombs [Inferno bombs] (canon)- Function more like napalm. Minor damage, but a single bomb saturates a huge area with flames dealing intense heat damage over time to everything within. Burning effect lasts considerable length of time. The idea is that they're used against groups of mechs to break them apart, forcing them to flush coolant, preclude using MASC / JJs, or just shut down. Laser weapons are a very unattractive prospect.

Cluster bombs (canon but not as a bomb) - Cluster bombs are air-burst weapons designed to saturate an area in bomblets. Cluster bombs will explode and release their payload when one of two conditions is met, whichever happens first: when they reach a minimum of 150m above-ground-level, or after 3.5 seconds of flight time. In this way, cluster bombs cannot be dropped in a manner that ensures most of the submunitions fall into a very tiny area (doing extreme damage), but lets the pilot drop them for larger area effect if needed. Bombs dropped under 150m will simply hit the ground and dud out. Cluster submunitions do non-specific damage in a modest area, useful for hitting a small group of two to four targets. Cluster bombs are also very effective against Battle Armor, practically killing them instantly.

Dumb bombs (canon) - Dumb bombs have no guidance and carry a simple high-explosive warhead. Dumbfire bombs can only be released from the launcher one-by-one and tend to spread out a small bit in-flight, making them ideal for carpet-bombing. Larger bomber-dedicated ASFs can carry a great many of these weapons.

Precision bomb (non-canon?) - Precision bombs deal high damage to a single target and can only operate in conjunction with a ground spotter. Precision bombs must be released within line-of-sight and within range of an active TAG illumination (this works better is you use my other idea of forcing units to 'lock on' to a TAG signal rather than just firing them whenever and wherever they want). Precision bombs carry very minor flight control surfaces to adjust their path, but the faster they travel the less effective this is. Precision bombs are best used on stationary targets, or targets traveling in a set path. Maneuvering targets will be extremely hard to hit with a precision bomb, and bombs dropped from higher altitudes may take so long to reach the target it would very well have moved, as the bomb will be traveling too fast to rapidly adjust. PBombs have an incredibly tiny but colossally damaging splash radius and very questionable accuracy if released without guidance. If they land within a meter of an enemy they will do incredible damage to that side, capable of blowing legs and arms off of very lightly armored mechs. The quintessential anti-camper weapon.

Air-to-Air Arrow [AAA] and Light Air-to-Air [LAA] missiles (canon) - ASF-mounted missiles that excel at attacking other ASFs. Not much to this - high damage, fast, good tracking. AAAs are massive and do colossal damage but take up a ton of space. LAAs are smaller but, obviously, do less damage and have less range. Effectively, AAAs are the AIM-120s, LAAs are AIM-9s. Locking method should reflect that of the difference between ELRMs and Streak SRMs.


Now - along comes the mechlab! Here's where Aeros get cool. Bombs and missiles are differently-sized, so you could mount, for example, 4 FBombs in the place of 1 PBomb. Prices should also reflect their size (no 'discount' for ammo - the bomb is the weapon so you're paying full price every time). If you dedicated all your rack space to carrying 4 PBombs and tried to Finger-of-God an enemy with them and missed (PBombs have very little splash so missing by more than a few feet would be harmless), you'd be completely bankrupt. This would demand that you carry a mixed loadout to be prepared to use any weapon in any desired situation. So you could, for example on your heavy bomber capable of carrying 4 PBombs, instead rack up 1 PBomb, 4 FBombs, 2 CBombs, and 2 LAAs. A very mixed loadout capable of many roles.

Here's a good question. Why does the Clan Sulla have an IS only weapon such as a Thunderbolt?

Why does the IS Atlas have the only AECMs, which has been mixed-tech since its inception?

[Frostiken]

Durp, post goes here.

[AlfalphaCat]

I think AECM just isn't 'done' yet.  Some one had a good suggestion on how to make it useful, fun, and mostly canon.  Was that DFDelta?  I'll try to find the post later.  Gnites all.

[Come and See]

The problem I foresee with a cluster bomb or carpet bombing Aerospace planes is that it will be too overpowered like the current F-bomb Shiva. Fly by, drop a shit load of bombs, and blow up like 4 mechs that are all clustered together. Next thing you know everyone's on the forum asking for it to be nerfed.