[Cobra]

This is a problem I've been facing lately, and it's made my recent playthroughs of various FreeSpace campaigns hell. It seems that now there is some tiny, arbitrary point that I must hit with my primaries in order to destroy the bomb. I can be right up close to it and not kill it or be on a perpendicular course, firing at the bomb's lead indicator, and still not destroy it. Even with something as generous as a Myrmidon's primary banks.

The question: Did something get changed, was it always this difficult and I didn't notice, or did I just forget how to properly intercept bombs?

[Phantom Hoover]

Try an old release or nightly build and see if intercept still seems as difficult.

[AdmiralRalwood]

This is a problem I've been facing lately, and it's made my recent playthroughs of various FreeSpace campaigns hell. It seems that now there is some tiny, arbitrary point that I must hit with my primaries in order to destroy the bomb. I can be right up close to it and not kill it or be on a perpendicular course, firing at the bomb's lead indicator, and still not destroy it. Even with something as generous as a Myrmidon's primary banks.

The question: Did something get changed, was it always this difficult and I didn't notice, or did I just forget how to properly intercept bombs?

How recently were these bombs fired? It sounds like you're running into the aspect bomb invulnerability bug which was present in retail, accidentally fixed by the SCP, and then between 3.7.2 and 3.7.4 somebody noticed the inconsistency and I had to make the fix be gated behind an AI profile flag.

[Cobra]

How recently were these bombs fired? It sounds like you're running into the aspect bomb invulnerability bug which was present in retail, accidentally fixed by the SCP, and then between 3.7.2 and 3.7.4 somebody noticed the inconsistency and I had to make the fix be gated behind an AI profile flag.

That definitely sounds right, and I was thinking "Do these things have spawn invulnerability or something?" But it seems to be on the order of several seconds, and I can destroy them when they're typically too close to nail all of them before the ship I'm protecting is slammed with several instead of one or two. Even when I'm actually able to shoot bombs, though, it's difficult to actually hit them.

Speaking of bombs, I should point out that the AI seemingly needs no time to acquire aspect lock. On more than one occasion I've watched a bomber loop around and immediately fire off a bomb... and watch the bomb do a 90 degree turn because they were turning away as it fired.

[AdmiralRalwood]

But it seems to be on the order of several seconds

It's a percentage of the lifetime of the bomb, and indeed, typically lasts several seconds.

Speaking of bombs, I should point out that the AI seemingly needs no time to acquire aspect lock. On more than one occasion I've watched a bomber loop around and immediately fire off a bomb... and watch the bomb do a 90 degree turn because they were turning away as it fired.

They do have to acquire aspect lock, but they also don't acquire aspect lock in the same way as a human: as long as the target is within a certain cone of the front of the ship, they can acquire lock, and evasive maneuvers don't make it more difficult for them to get a lock like it would with the player. So they can get locks on fast-moving targets that are extremely off-angle in exactly the same amount of time as it takes them to get a lock on a stationary target dead ahead of them, which also means that as long as they're not pointed away from the ship they're trying to bomb, they can be performing evasive maneuvers and still getting a lock on their target.

I have been considering an option to give the AI a "virtual" lock indicator (which would, among other things, mean that evasive maneuvers on the part of either the AI or its target would make it harder for it to obtain a lock), but since the AI doesn't have the ability to stabilize a lock indicator (like a player would, by trying to minimize relative motion of the target on the screen), that might just result in the AI almost never firing secondaries at all.

[Cobra]

Would changing the mv_assets-aip.tbm to include the entry fix the issue?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Would changing the mv_assets-aip.tbm to include the entry fix the issue?

Yes; enabling the fix flag should result in identical behavior to 3.7.2 and earlier versions of FSO (back until the bug was originally noticed, which IIRC was around 2010).

[Goober5000]

I modified the wiki description for that flag.  The original description was somewhat confusing and it took some studying to understand exactly what the code was doing.

[Cobra]

Well, enabling the flag in the .tbm seemed to do the trick. I can now actually do bomb intercept. Hooray!

[Bryan See]

And what of bombs in faster speeds in high-velocity mods like Shattered Stars and Dimensional Eclipse?