[Hartzaden]

well i was making a few missions in FRED for me and some buddys to play and i was wondering about how well slammers and grimlers would actually do as far as Killing a cruiser/corv.  so i am here for a opinion from some vets/devs as to the effectiveness of this before i blow a few hours on making a bOrken mission. 

also another question.  why cant the ulhan and kent carry bombs  on there external mounts(other than balance reasons)

[The E]

Slammers are a pretty good anti-fighter weapon. Against Cruisers or Corvettes, their effectiveness rapidly decreases.

Grimlers, on the other hand, work about as well as Trebuchets.

[Dragon]

You could defang a cruiser with Grimlers and finish the job with guns, the should also be able to destroy a corvette with enough rearms.
About Slammers, they had to be nerfed against capships, since they were doing way too much damage to them.  So now they're not too effective, since they weren't meant as an anti-ship weapon.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Yeah, I've noticed Grimlers are pretty much identical in function to Trebuchets. They're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place in BP, though. Want to kill fighters/bombers? Slammers, oh god yes Slammers. Want to shoot turrets/subsystems from long range? Paveways. Maybe this isn't the place to ask but I'd rather do it here than open a new thread - does the BP team think Grimlers are in a good place? I acknowledge the fact that I'm not the best player ever and I could be missing something, but I never really had much use for Grimlers in WiH.

[MatthTheGeek]

IIRC the Grimmler has a better compatibility than the Paveway, and you can carry more. So you can use it as a makeshift anti-turret missile, with bonus damage and anti-bomber capability. Kinda jack-of-all-trades compared to the more specialized Paveway and Slammer.

[Dragon]

I found it useful, clobbering bombers from long range can be helpful, disrupting and weakening fighter formations too, especially if you don't have many Slammers.

[Droid803]

Grimlers are for n00bs that can't use Slammers or the Archer properly. Like me.

[Aardwolf]

But! They're also good against subsystems, and (unlike paveways) can't be shot down.

Are they ever going to get their own model, instead of just being a reskin of the Trebuchet?

[MatthTheGeek]

Wait what.

Paveways can't be shot down. You're mistaking with the Stiletto.

[Mars]

I'm pretty sure paveways can be, they just move too fast to actually be hit.

[MatthTheGeek]

Code: [Select]

$Flags: ( "Huge" "Puncture" "player allowed" )I do not see "bomb" anywhere, which is a requirement for shootable missile.

Look at your tables folks.

[Mars]

Code: [Select]

$Flags: ( "Huge" "Puncture" "player allowed" )I do not see "bomb" anywhere, which is a requirement for shootable missile.

Look at your tables folks.

lol, so I was wrong.

[Dragon]

Are they ever going to get their own model, instead of just being a reskin of the Trebuchet?

Double wrong, in fact - they also have a unique model, complete with external rack.

[Aardwolf]

That is most peculiar, I could have sworn that I've had my paveways get shot down at least once in the past... yet they do not have the bomb flag, nor do they use $Weapon Hitpoints: 

FYI not having the "bomb" flag alone is insufficient, as $Weapon Hitpoints also does that.


As for the treb/grimler... upon looking at the .pof, it is indeed a unique model (which it would seem was originally intended as a "Trebuchet 2"). Touché.

[bigchunk1]

Well i was making a few missions in FRED for me and some buddys to play...

I would be interested in seeing them as well if you finish.

...why cant the ulhan and kent carry bombs  on there external mounts(other than balance reasons)

Uhlans can't carry any bombs. The reasons why fighters don't load bombs in real life are weight constraints; a heavy target is a slow target and this is murder in a dogfight. The same concept would apply in space with acceleration/inertia, but I don't think the freespace2 game engine accounts for the weight of bombs. In theory, a fighter that loads bombs might as well be a bomber which is designed to fill the role, while fighters should stick to dogfighting. There have been exceptions with fighters loading bombs in WWII, launching their salvo, and then later joining the dogfight. I don't know how effective that was. If the reason above isn't good enough to satisfy you... how bout Uhlan targeting systems aren't meant for bombing... yeah that's it.   

Anyways, the Uriel can carry the Jackhammer which is good against prettymuch any warship. If you are making a mission from scratch, consider using  one of the newer ships. The Izriel can carry a very cool anti-cruiser/corvette weapon called the warhammer which is a 'swarm bomb' of 4 missiles per volley. Durgas might be a little overkill for the mission you have in mind, their redeemer cannons can make short work of even Chimera corvettes and is effective against larger vessels.

If you're looking for more fighter mounted options, the Gattler actually makes pretty handy work of cruiser sized vessels. Also hellfire missiles have more DPS than the tempest (a decent cruiser hunting weapon), which Quantum Delta demonstrated in the BP commentary when he flat out strafed an Aeolus to its demise solo.

[Dragon]

IRL, fighters do carry bombs, F-16 can serve as a ground support plane (same goes for F-15, and, in fact, every modern fighter), F/A-18 even has it in it's name. Dropping your bombs and engaging in a dogfight works quite well, as long as you don't get nailed before you make the pass (then, you can use emergency jettison to gain maneuverability, but you lose the bombs). Whether fighters are issued bombs is another thing, your squadron in WIH wouldn't have them even if Uhlans could technically carry them.
In-universe explanation would be that their targeting systems and interface rails weren't made for torpedoes.

[-Norbert-]

You can't compare realworld bombs with FS torpedoes.
In the real world bombs don't have an engine, were missiles do. So as someone with no idea of real bombs I'd guess the room that the rocket engine in missiles takes up is used for more explosives. Thus you get the same weight for a bomb and missile. And even if that theory about weight is wrong, bombs are not bigger than missiles. Actually the bombs I know of are smaller than the Pheonix missile carried by the F14.
In FS2 torpedoes and missiles are all self propelled and torpedoes are considerbly bigger than missiles and thus most likely also have considerbly more weight. Now with more size, that also means more area that the shield has to cover. In the best case this just gives the fighter a bigger target profile, though it might very well decrease the shield power, since the same amount of energy needs to be spread over a larger area. And from the weight, the fighters manouverbility is reduced.

[Dragon]

Bombs are much heavier than missiles, and when carrying them in racks, fighter does become very difficult to handle (Hornet can't even land on carriers with full load). Jackhammers on Uhlan don't (at least I think so) stick out of the shield mesh. Maneuverability is still an issue though.

[MarkN]

Bombs in freespace are not comparable to bombs in real life. What they are comparable to in real life are torpedos and anti-shipping missiles. The difference is large. An F-16, for example, can carry 12 Mk82 bombs, but only 2 Harpoons. Even then, the harpoon is more comparable to the Trebuchet than a Freespace bomb. There are very few modern aircraft that can carry any torpedos suitable for use against surface warships, while anti-submarine torpedos are generally limited to use in large lumbering ASW aircraft such as the P-3 Orion.
So in short
I think Freespace bombs are more like torpedos and ASMs than they are like RL bombs, and even when such a weapon is carried by a fighter it is in very small numbers, and usually prevents the fighter being used as a fighter even after they are expended (due to having nothing else on the underwing racks).

[Dragon]

You still have your gun, wingtip missiles and IIRC, at least one pair of Sidewinders/AMRAAMs could be fitted besides Harpoons under the wings. Enough to get you out of a dogfight.