The drone bomb would be smaller than a light drone but would be armed with a war head in one of the four damage types.
The drone bomb would function nearly the same as a drone but would have missile characteristics.
The difference between a drone bomb and missile would be, the drone bomb could be targeted and destroyed, scooped when left behind and out ran by fast ships.
Five drone bombs could be deployed at once.
Typical damage would be 250 dps per drone.
So why would someone use this instead of missiles?
While missiles can easily be reloaded to your missile launcher from your cargo bay, âreloading your dronesâ isnât nearly as easy.
Your drone bay is limited in size, and after one or at most a couple of â250 dpsâ salvos your ship is now completely without drones.
Why would anyone want to do that?
I guess after rail and beam ganking destroyers drone boat destroyers could become a viable ganking ship as well. Not sure how true it is or if anyone would be interested to use them but I guess that is the effect of such a weapon would be.
Because the drone bomb does more damage. 250 damage each drone for a total of 1,250 versus a measly 250 damage is the reason why.
The drone bomb never runs out of fuel, like a missile does. So, unless the targeted ship warps away, out runs the drone bomb or destroys the drone bomb using Defender Vehicles, then the drone bomb will find its mark.
-1 from me.
Horrible idea.
Iâd rather have it 5m2 in volume, but 25mb/s in bandwidth, so that most ships would only be able to deploy one each time, and increase itâs damage
Good idea. Make the cargo bay small as well so that only ten drone bombs could be held at one plus five in the drone bomb launcher.
Basically the ship hull would be the launch tube and hangar from a wrecked carrier found in space.
One salvagable tube + fighter bay fit to a battle cruiser sized engine with the overall hull size being that of a cruiser.
Remember what the Triglavian mouse said, feed your head, feed your head.
Small bomb drones of 5 m3 would be for frigates and destroyers, 10 m3 would be for cruisers and battle cruisers and 25 m3 would be for battleships.
The chance for a small drone bomb to damage a battleship is minimal while a large drone bomb would cause considerably damage to a frigate, half hull, if the frigate is not moving at all and the large drone bomb is at max velocity and impacts the frigate along the correct trajectory.
On the other hand if this drone bomb was an Area Of Effect Weapon? and/or Able to tell it to go to a spot in space? And Able to detonate on demand? Then we have something to talk about.
Area of effect, like a smartbomb? The smartbomb drone bomb could be another variant. You would still have to on grid in order for the smartbomb drone to activate.
If you leave grid and your drones are left behind, the bomb deactivates until you reconnect to the drone.
Yes I was envisioning situations where u place the drones between u and an enemy (or set up between where u are and where the enemy would warp in at) and they would have to get past the drones before reaching you. Like mines, but mobile so just flying around them is not an option. But unlike smart bombs these are one shot and gone. (tho Smart bombing Drones are attractive, lol)
Setting them for manual detonation instead of auto detonating brings your skills into the operation too.
Too much work setting up auto-detonation and manual detonation.
The Drone Bomb could be set to orbit an object, based on skills, for a maximum time of ten minutes. Any ship that enters the zone of the drone bomb that is not friendly to the Drone Bomb user is then attacked, including NPCâs. After five minutes the Drone Bomb becomes inactivated until the user returns and re-establishes a connection with the Drone Bombs.
Sec Status is affected if a neutral is attacked by the Drone Bomb, even if the user is off grid. If the Drone Bomb attacks a neutral, the user is gifted a 15 minute subscription to yellow flashy status.
Homeworld had the kamikaze function for fighter craft. Maybe if you could order your drones to suicide-crash into the target for massive, single-use damage (compared to their regular dps), would that serve the intended purpose? Might save on implementation work and later on UI/UX as you donât need an entirely new class of drone, âjustâ a new drone command.
Pretty much. Good idea.
Why are you describing the damage in terms of DPS when itâs a kamikaze drone that only does one hit? 250 damage is pathetic when you could just launch a regular drone and do that much in relatively short order.
I meant it in an appreciable relation. I am aware that DPS is a rate where a single hit is a fixed amount, like power vs. energy. Take it as âdrone suicide collision should do 10, 20, 30, whatever seconds worth of regular DPSâ.
Yes, you could âlaunch a regular drone and do that much in relatively short orderâ. Point is to be able to do it at once to give you options. For example, keep the drones firing against active tank, try to win by attrition, or try to overwhelm it with a single strike but lose the set of drones you had launched, which can be either just a footnote in your cavernous drone bay or all you had with you.
The Drone Bomb would be similar to the Defender Vehicle used in the game.
Defender vehicle?
That doesnât make it any clearer.
Do you mean the defender launchers? The drone bomb automatically intercepts incoming bombs and makes them explode?
The Defender kill vehicle is basically the Defender missile that can only be used with destroyers.
I would have to say that only Navy Destroyers would be able to fit the Drone Bomb Launcher. The Drone Bomb couldnât be used to attack ships, but only drones and fighters.
you are basically describing something like a stealth bomber bomb but it can be targeted instead of just launched and it hits smaller targets.
This probably wouldnât work well even though it would have cool uses, too many of those uses would be abused. This would be a gankers dreams for one.
If it was AoE like another commenter suggested it couldnât be used in High, for one see above for gankers dream. Two, you would have people launching these at Jita undock just to crash the whole system as fifty bajillion concord ships show up.