Dumb bombs and you

[Captain Vlad]

I just bought this game earlier this month and as an old Harpoon fan, I've naturally been doing cartwheels over it. But...I have a question.

In an attempt to play through one scenario where all my primary strike aircraft are equipped with unguided bombs, I simply could not figure out how to get them to drop the damn things.

I figured that I was flying in too low, as I'd made a high-speed run in at 500 feet and it was 2 a.m. and I forgot that, yeah, they would probably have to pop up for bomb delivery. That didn't dawn on me until after I'd already tried manual and auto attacks and had to make 3-4 runs on the target which was quite passive on the first multi-flight pass, but woke up very quickly when planes started apparently started making practice bombing runs over it.

Amusingly, one flight did strafe the hell out of a radar I'd allocated four planes to thinking it'd need multiple bombs...and completely destroyed it.

So the question is...anyone got any good guidelines for what altitude to drop your 1,000 pounders from?

[Sunburn]

Hello,

1) If you perform a manual weapon allocation (Shift+F1), the crew will tell you exactly which weapons are droppable at that very moment and which are not, and the reason for the latter.

2) From the description it sounds like you may are attempting to drop the bombs out of their altitude release envelope (too high or more likely too low), and thus probably micromanaging the attack. A good idea on bomb runs is to step back and allow the AI crew to finetune the attack (ie. cancel any manual throttle/altitude overrides). The AI knows the release sweet spot for each weapon (envelope restrictions are listed in the DB viewer) and will position the aircraft accordingly.

Thanks!

[Captain Vlad]

Originally Posted by Sunburn

1) If you perform a manual weapon allocation (Shift+F1), the crew will tell you exactly which weapons are droppable at that very moment and which are not, and the reason for the latter.

This part I knew. Which I say only to vent my irritation at the F-35's stealth and Meteor's giving me the 'can't target without precise whatever' message. Damned Norwegians.

2) From the description it sounds like you may are attempting to drop the bombs out of their altitude release envelope (too high or more likely too low), and thus probably micromanaging the attack. A good idea on bomb runs is to step back and allow the AI crew to finetune the attack (ie. cancel any manual throttle/altitude overrides). The AI knows the release sweet spot for each weapon (envelope restrictions are listed in the DB viewer) and will position the aircraft accordingly.

Yeah, I ran them in below the release envelope, it looks like. I didn't think to check the individual weapons in the database and while I changed to auto-attacks on the second attempt, I didn't think to cancel the altitude orders I'd already given.

I'll give 'er another try tonight. The basic plan I came up with for the scenario seemed to work pretty well...I do like to micromanage my air strikes, but I'll try and trust the AI a little more next time.

Thanks, Sunburn.