Commander McLane wrote:What's the difference between this unpowered bomb and a railgun projectile anyway? That's also unpowered and unguided, and only flies straight forward.

Interesting question

Velocity and payload: a railgun's damage comes from the kinetic energy its projectile imparts on contact, a bomb has a payload usually separate from its kinetic energy that it releases under certain requirements.

Velocity and payload: a railgun's damage comes from the kinetic energy its projectile imparts on contact, a bomb has a payload usually separate from its kinetic energy that it releases under certain requirements.

This.

+ The damage decreases the farther away from the target with a railgun, where as with a bomb - it's static despite distance / energy / speed used to fire it.

Typically a bomb's mass is greater than a railgun projectile, as a railgun projectile gets its destructive power from velocity (causing a change in momentum too great for the ship's structure to withstand at the point of impact), while a bomb gets its from a warhead.

AndyThompson wrote:The damage decreases the farther away from the target with a railgun, where as with a bomb - it's static despite distance / energy / speed used to fire it.

In real outer space the energy loss over time for a railgun projectile, for the distance between a ship and its target, is effectively zero.

Grumblesaur wrote:Typically a bomb's mass is greater than a railgun projectile, as a railgun projectile gets its destructive power from velocity (causing a change in momentum too great for the ship's structure to withstand at the point of impact), while a bomb gets its from a warhead.

Yes. With our current technology.
In a SciFi setting, you simply build a bigger gun.

In a space game setting the only difference between a rocket on terminal velocity and a railgun projectile is the warhead.
A railgun puts insane acceleration on the projectile so a warhead would probably not survive.
That's why they fire solid iron slugs.

But ultimately, they both have a ballistic trajectory. (A mostly straight line in space, and a parabola near objects with significant gravity.)

Gazz wrote:That's why they fire solid iron slugs.

Pshhh, please, depleted uranium with an iridium core and a conductive acceleration sleeve. We have the power!

Not to mention the fact that a 1 kg depleted uranium slug travelling at 10% the speed of light would put a hurting on anything it hit!

I think the original poster was asking if something where you just 'release' a projectile instead of firing it and whether or not it will have the same trajectory of your ship at time of release.

I don't know what the difference between that and a torpedo would be, when it comes to the game's mechanics. Why would I use a bomb I can release if I can just fire off a torpedo?

And before anyone says "Guidance" or "Lock", I'd also like to argue AGAINST such restrictions. If I want to let an explosive go early without waiting for a lock, it should revert to dumbfire. That's one thing I never really like--forcing you to get a lock before firing.

I imagine torpedoes accelerating away when you fire them. If they are guided they would have a large turning radius compared to misiles.

Bombs however are cruder weapons, they keep the speed and direction they had when they were released and guidance makes no sense without any engines. Compared to torpedoes they would have a HUGE amount of punch (like 50 to 100% more damage from the same size weapon) and really a lot ofbang for the buck, afterall they dont have any engines or computers, only explosives and a few detonators mounted on sticks.

The use would be different than torpedoes too, caps with bombs makes no sense. The only ones that can effectivly use bombs are fast manouverable ships that can get close to their target due to the bombs being unguided and slow and everything. One could imagine a battlecruiser laying down a cloud of small bombs, however battlecruisers are slow and the cloud would be easy ish to circumvent ( that is if we can detect bombs in any way, a light in the back maybe. No tail, only a light.).

Anyhow, this is basically the trenchrun anti cap weapon we have been waiting for, now we only need point defence turrets that can handle bombs from a distance so we dont get long range lugging of bombs and a reason to get close and personal.

As i am on vacation and i only brought an ipad all of my posts may have errors like four t's in aligattttor. ducking autocorrect.

One more point: railguns provide propultion for their projectiles and thus a lot more speed and reliability at range, imagine a pistol vs a handgrenade on a stick, you need to be a lot closer to use a grenade on a stick, but if you hit it is going to hurt a lot.

A battlecruiser laying down a cloud of small bombs! Sounds like mines to me.

well, in essence bombs and mines are the same thing, big bags of things that blow up when you hit them.

In space the difference between bombs and mines is really just that one is released while holding mostly still and the other is released while moving towards the enemy

gunnyfreak wrote:In space the difference between bombs and mines is really just that one is released while holding mostly still and the other is released while moving towards the enemy

That and in many space settings mines are set in position, and accelerate towards craft that near them.