Drop bombs directly above?

[Serail]

I made a small bomber with the intentions of making quick bombing runs at high altitude, and to drop the missiles when directly above or at least as close to that as possible. I thought that if I put the "required accuracy before fire" to it's lowest angle it would drop the bombs when directly above or as I said, as close as can be. However, when I do that my plane just keeps dropping bombs whenever it can, wether it's close or not to the enemy. Any suggestions?

[DoCtOr_CoOkIe]

Well you can try and make restrictions to the Field of Fire of the missiles, only allowing for a very small angle of attack. You can do this by going to the missile controller and allowing advanced constraints or something similar.

[Serail]

Originally posted by DoCtOr CoOkIe:

Well you can try and make restrictions to the Field of Fire of the missiles, only allowing for a very small angle of attack. You can do this by going to the missile controller and allowing advanced constraints or something similar.

Thanks ^^ That was basically exactly what I was looking for. I somehow managed to not spot the button to turn those options on. Thanks a bunch!

[whitefoux]

What I also did, and you may want to try was, since I set my altitude to be around 350, I set the maximum fire range to be about 380, so anything above that would be ignored and minimum fire range to 330, and anything below that would be ignored. Not in the actually Air AI, but in the weapons controller.

My thoughts behide this was so that my bomber would drop its missiles only when practically directly over the target, this way, due to the wavyness of its flight path it would fire regardless. At that height +- 50 blocks would be hardly consequencial. While allowing its AA turrets to keep my bomber, bomber ready.

[Karnivool]

Another option is to do it with a railgun. set up a short barrel 400-500 mm no coolers you wont need them. add as many autoloaders and railgun parts as you can fit. use the 3m mantel and set up your ammo with no gunpowder only explosevs. If you get it right the gun should have a cooldown time of 0 and can spit out multiple shells at once. With the mantel set up sideways the ship can only shoot when its directly above.

[Karnivool]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajy7Ixrktk4

[Serail]

It seems I've run into another problem. I managed to finetune the bombs so they drop where I want them to, the problem is however that my plane tends to fly to the left or right of my enemies, never towards them or directly (within a slight margin of course) above them. Any tips?

[Redstorm]

Try putting fins and ir seekers on your bombs. No thrusters, if I'm correct it will steer towards the target with the fins.

[Serail]

Originally posted by Redstorm:

Try putting fins and ir seekers on your bombs. No thrusters, if I'm correct it will steer towards the target with the fins.

Yeah, already got that. Problem is still that since it's a pretty high altitiude bomber, the bombs get too far off target (though they are equiped with magnets so it's not all bad) The plane also has a high-rate-of-fire cannon at the front, but the plane refuses to head straight towards any enemy. it's always off to the sides.

[Redstorm]

Post a pic if your AI's setup

[il]

If you have magnets on the bombs with IR seekers and fins, swap the magnets out for APN guidance, however if that is not the case, and you just have some bombs with IR seekers and fins, you may still want to throw on APN guidance if they're missing too much.

[Underscorecow]

Have you tried putting the *bombs* on an upside down turret so your bomber won`t need to fly directly over the enemies?

Although then it wouldn`t be a bomber anymore, more like a gunship.

If you really need the ai to fly directly over the target I suggest setting angle before we turn to 0 *first air ai card option* and use turning thrusters on the front / back of the bomber.

[whitefoux]

Originally posted by Serail:

It seems I've run into another problem. I managed to finetune the bombs so they drop where I want them to, the problem is however that my plane tends to fly to the left or right of my enemies, never towards them or directly (within a slight margin of course) above them. Any tips?

That is weird, I was having this problem with the Naval AI, but all My Air AI's fly directly above no problem, well 1 problem, when I have multipl air AI's they like to run into eachother while making a pass to fly over. Maybe upload the bluprint, and or take a picture of your Air AI set up?

[Benthedaddy]

Simply click the extra constraints button and change the angle of fire to a thin downward facing cone.

[Kage]

Don't remove the magnet, and APN isnt really neccessary, it helps, but so does another Fin, and from personal testing involving a stationary blimp firing at a dummy, a 1 Fin APN IR bomb is as accurate as a 2 Fin IR bomb. I have not tested 1 APN and 2 Fin, or 3 Fin, or larger set ups as it takes away from the payload at that point.

Additionally since you're interested in a bomber, I would suggest against the "carpet bomber" mentality as for every 2 rack bomb you have, you could have an equal number of up to a 6 rack bombs for the same ammo cost per second, and potentially do a lot more damage (3-6 warheads vs 9-10, larger bombs are slower firing). Also, due to how HE/EMP works, if you go with a 6 rack bomb, your primary load out should be Frag, with HE/EMP to help deal with shielded targets (that is targets with hull tight shields as those can bounce Frag shrapnel), HE is good for shielded wooden targets, or targets that use surge protectors, while EMP is beastly against unproected metal ships.

As for the heading problem, set up the top two settings in the Air AI as such, "Angle of Deviation before Turn" should be 0, while "Angle of Deviation before Roll" should be pretty high if not 180 to ensure your craft isn't constantly rolling and thus launching your bombs everywhere, but also so that it's not tempted to roll itself into the enemy below. It's not 100%, but it's good enough.

This should in theory set it on a very stable and straight bombing run, the next step is determining how fast your vehicle goes to set up a well timed strafing run ensuring that the ammo you make does not pile up for too long. From here it's simple, just determine how long it takes you to restock your bombs, with a 6 rack bomb it should be around 13 seconds, then take your average air speed, and figure out how far your plane travels in that time. You only really need to "Force an attack run" every 13 seconds, but in the event your plane vears off to far from the target, it's nice to have redundency.