Bomber Thread

Originally posted by Second Chance

Oh! There’s so many ways we could go with this! It needs its own thread.

Ok, Her we go! 😉

Now: OMG, I think the idea of energy bombs is an absolute stroke of genius (and I’m furious that I didn’t think of it!). The possibilities for this are enormous. We can now make bombers act out their role exactly as they should, mainly attacking stationary targets (like stations). A flight of bombers would need to be escorted to the target by fighters, and enemy fighters would try to intercept the attack before they reached the target. Once at the target area the bombers would have to run the gauntlet of heavy station (or whatever) fire to get close enough to launch their bombs (and still get out again). All this time there would be a fighter battle raging around them. Being a bomber pilot on one of these bombing missions would be really exciting. Especially if the bombers were slow handling, cumbersome beasts; that could take huge amounts of damage but still manage to limp home.

Thats the idea. [^]
Just as an example of a tougher ship look at the “pioneer” used for the Turret simulation. It can take a a good bit of of damage. we can make them a bit more cumbersome too.
We can also fix bombers, since the are much larger ships, so the disruption phase only lasts a couple of seconds. Then they won’t be sitting ducks if the get hit by the Tie/Int’s Ion cannon.
Friendly CUVs can repair bombers by docking to them. They can also deploy “repair drones” which the bomber can pick up by colliding with them.
fighters have two things to worry about: protect the CUVs and the Bombers. [}:)]

On running the Gauntlet: The “heavy station (or whatever) fire” could also be mobile defense Turrets (“mini” gunstars) that can be placed dynamically by an enemy CUV. (the pioneer has them in it right now, just press the key G when you are in it)

All this time I always thought of the bombers the way they were shown them in the movie, rediculously dropping bombs onto the asteroid as if there was gravity (well, maybe they were used to bomb planetary ground targets also). The idea of a more reasonable space-borne bomb delivery system really appeals to me (in fact, I’ve just added it to the must have arsenal of Spacemaster [8D]). The bomber would have to get close to the target and be set up to deliver its bomb load all at once (maybe a rapid fire slug thrower with only about 5 – 10 bombs). Or maybe different numbers of bombs with different firing rates for different damage amounts!

Somewheres I saw a scene with a Tie bomber in action as it deployed bombs. They looked like big white bolts that went down at an angle to the target.
Basically the “energy bomb” would be a sniper cannon set up as a wide arc weapon with a really large vertical_fire_arc and markedly less horizontal_fire_arc. Then set the range (compared to a sniper cannon) fairly low.
That way it can target stuff outside the hud view (i.e below it). (maybe we can even make a sort of Bomb-Site beeper to tell if the target is locked, I dunno.)

we can time the “refire_delay” and the “shot_energy_cost” of the weapon(s). Then it would be possible to do 3 or 4 shots before you have wait for the weapon energy to Ramp up again. Alternativly we could make it use the complete energy reserve with each shot so it takes a long time to charge up enough energy again for the next shot.

It also means the Tie Interceptors and A-Wings could more accurately fulfill their role as interceptors. With the Regular Ties and X-Wings as the dogfighters they should be. And the Y-Wing could just be a light bomber option with fewer, less damaging bombs and a defense turret (it does have a turret, btw).

Could the turret on the Y-Wing be Ai controlled so it fires automatically?

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