Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
The standard bombs are precision munitions that are already designed for orbital bombardment against planetary target with atmospheres (they have steering fins from atmospheric corrections). They have a S range against such targets (P range against space targets). They are the equivalent of the final stage of an ICBM.
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Bear in mind that they are smaller than an electromagnetic or grav gun shell (half the size and mass of a missile), implying even less manoeuvre capacity (though oddly they are more accurate than gun shells). Them having fins and some post-reentry manoeuvring capability puts them a step up from an ICBM final stage, BTW - they do their final adjustments before reentry.
The thing is, they have no meaningful delta-vee of their own, so unless the launching craft is on a high-speed reentry course when it launches them, the bombs will have to aero-brake to re-enter, and that's slow and will introduce course variations so unless they have terminal guidance they'll scatter all over - probably not far enough to matter if you're nuking a city, but otherwise far enough to make unguided bombs next to worthless. Their slow re-entry means a moving target will be out of their target area by the time they've re-entered (unless they randomly scatter to being over it), and during the re-entry phase the bombs will be surrounded by plasma and unreachable by non-superscience communicators.
So, either use a 'dive-bomber' to launch them, or fire shells or missiles.