Smartbomb mechanics

I never used smartbombs before, but last time, when I got pinned down by a huge FW fleet, with their drones and frigate tacklers I thought these bombs could be a nice solution against at least the drones.

So what I wanna know is:

  • are they effective against drone swarms (using 1-3 large EMP smartbombs, 7500m radius)?
  • do these things make also damage on friendlies, especially in a highsec environment, including standing loss and CONCORD aggro?
  • or are they really “smart” as the name said and attacking only ships/drones with aggro on my ship?
  • would a nearby cloaked ship be affected and damaged and forced to uncloak?

I think this could be a nice option for every kind of tank ship, but if the drawbacks are too high this is not an option anymore (dont wanna lose a ship in highsec in FW, only because CONCORD interferes due to friendly fire)

They damage cloaked ships, but not uncloak them.
They’re quite good against drones.
They aren’t actually smart, they kill literally everything.
You have to activate them manually.

Something to add:

Smartbombs have a hidden “bonus”, if you want to call it that. Their range is not actually what it says in their info, but your ships length (which you can easily see in “show info”, 3d preview, long axis) + the length in the smartbomb’s info. The smartbomb does not start at zero from you, but your ship’s hull size.

Large smartbomb on a cruiser < on a battleship < carrier < titan.

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Yes, as Yellow Parasol explained, the smartbomb range expands outwards from the hull (not from the center of the hull).

Yes, Smartbombs will hit everything within its area of effect including friendlies, your own/friendly drones and ofc the enemy ship/drones. In order to use SmartBombs in Highsec space you will have to set your Safety settings to ‘red’, should you happen to hit someone illegally, you will be CONCORDED.

Such a feature would be nice, but then again it would make them too much similar to Auto-targeting Missiles and go again the theory behind them, “Omni-directional Damaging Pulse” think of is as an Electro-magnetic pulse that actually does damage (and not just fries every eletronic system)

again as Yellow Parasol explained… Cloaked ships are still vulnerable to damage and will only be decloaked if object gets within 2000 meters of it.

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