16 hours ago, Stay OT Leader said:

I don’t think anything will bring Blail round. He’s here to lecture not listen.

And yes I do it face to face because that’s how adults talk to each other in the real world.

Seems like you think adults should act a certain way. Let me tell you from experience, there's nothing more childish.

5 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Also, can this thread die already? It's making me sad.

Maybe we can get a bomb-related, ego-free, discussion thread?

19 minutes ago, LUZ_TAK said:

Maybe we can get a bomb-related, ego-free, discussion thread?

Maybe it could start with a genuine question instead of a disingenuous lecture on how the world is and how anybody who disagrees just hasn’t thought about it properly?

30 minutes ago, Stay OT Leader said:

a disingenuous lecture on how the world is and how anybody who disagrees just hasn’t thought about it properly?

It is honestly amusing me no end, how so many of your posts seem to be describing your own input.

At last we agree on something!

2 hours ago, Stay OT Leader said:

At last we agree on something!

Nice attempt!

I'm gonna mark this one 7/10 and consider this good progress

ANYWAY BOMBS ARE COOL.

Without reading all five pages of this:

1. If you drop them or if the opponent obviously considered the threat and did an obviously sub-optimal maneuver to avoid it.

2. If you drop it and it doesn't damage you but damages the opponent.

3. If you drop it and you both take damage but the point value traded is significantly in your favor (I would guess around a double trade in relative points per damage).

____

That last one would take probably having a cheap carrier like a Sentinel or Grey Bomber and your seismic damages that 3 HP ace who is worth around 24 points per hit as opposed to your 8-12 points per hit.

These three examples are generally when I'd consider bombs "worth their points".

4 hours ago, Bucknife said:

Without reading all five pages of this:

1. If you drop them or if the opponent obviously considered the threat and did an obviously sub-optimal maneuver to avoid it.

2. If you drop it and it doesn't damage you but damages the opponent.

3. If you drop it and you both take damage but the point value traded is significantly in your favor (I would guess around a double trade in relative points per damage).

____

That last one would take probably having a cheap carrier like a Sentinel or Grey Bomber and your seismic damages that 3 HP ace who is worth around 24 points per hit as opposed to your 8-12 points per hit.

These three examples are generally when I'd consider bombs "worth their points".

So how often do you see this? and how do you generally ensure your bomb usage is effective? (Knowing that that's a try and is always at the mercy of the oddities of life)

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

So how often do you see this? and how do you generally ensure your bomb usage is effective? (Knowing that that's a try and is always at the mercy of the oddities of life)

Well you can't lose if you just drop bombs all day. You're bound to hit something.

2 minutes ago, KCDodger said:

Well you can't lose if you just drop bombs all day. You're bound to hit something.

You underestimate my power!

(to lose!)

Seriously though, just dropping bomb all day DOES not guarantee victory. Shooting all the time though, generally does.

I see it fairly often. Unless your opponent doesn't expect the bomb drop, in general you will get the worse outcome for you, but none of the outcomes are better for your opponent than you.

A big thing in your analysis that you seemed to miss is that against many lists forcing your opponent to delay an engagement on your rear arc is huge. Jedi aces, for example, really want to stick to your back like glue and force you to try to keep stressing to get about. Bombs do a lot to prevent this strategy from working, so even though you aren't getting a shot off either forcing the ace to get a bit of distance or go from the sides helps a lot if your running a beefier list, which you should be because bombs.

Bombs are, in theory, extremely high value. 1 extra crit is valued at roughly 5 points (APTs, and regular proton torps for 2 with a 1 increase in cost for the range shenanigans) and bombs offer in theory a number of crits equal to twice your opponent's list size for only 5 points! What a steal! But, obviously, the practical reality is that you are going to get, vs an aces list, maybe one free crit out of it, while also forcing weird positioning from your opponent, which is still a really big deal. And, of course, vs swarms it isn't hard at all to land bombs.

So the question is VERY much not if bombs are worth it, it is a question of if you can use the value, or threat of that value, to influence your opponent. In that sense they are similar to APTs in that they exist as a threat to the enemy ace, but unlike APTs you are very free to just casually drop one if a target of opportunity comes, while with APTs if you fire them at a cruddy ship your often losing a ton of value. If the bomb is forcing the ace to play more passively that is already a huge win for a 5 point upgrade. Imagine it like your 5 point upgrade having beaten out their bid plus the cost of their ace's initiative to get a sense of the actual value there.

I am not a fan of 'spamming bombs' personally but it does preform well if the list is already beefy and can fit a ton of bombers. I fly rebels, which means that while I have some fantastic bomb platforms (The K-wing, Y-wing, ect) it tends to not be practical to spam them. You put bombs or prox mines on a K-wing to give it 360 arc coverage on your support ship so they can't easily snipe the ship tossing focus everywhere, or bombs on Norra because she can force one to hit their target flying by with an ion cannon shot, or to a proton torp Dutch because people are going to try to get at range 1 of him a ton to deny those torps. And in those roles they do their job well of making ships that are really bad on the rear arc much more prickly. 5 points to essentially give these ships a rear gun is a big deal because the main way to easily pop them is to get behind em. With the VTG nerf spamming Y-wings isn't a great idea so I don't really have great options for getting a ton of bombs to the field, but if your running say... a legion of Strikers it can make a lot of sense to put a few bombs on the list.

Like any upgrade, you don't shove em in to shove em in. But they are, in theory, one of the best values in terms of automatic damage you can get in the game. So if you can force that value to happen, or use that value to stop a loss condition, they are going to do WORK.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

You underestimate my power!

(to lose!)

Seriously though, just dropping bomb all day DOES not guarantee victory. Shooting all the time though, generally does.

Nah dude you got reload actions you can just keep fartin' them bombs.

21 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

So how often do you see this? and how do you generally ensure your bomb usage is effective? (Knowing that that's a try and is always at the mercy of the oddities of life)

I'd say about 2 out of 3 games I bring a bomb I can fulfill one of my three conditions for value. Frankly, having tricky tools in your list that can create value can be it's own stumbling block and the mental conduit for errors.

I'd say that 3rd game, I'm probably creating negative value by auto-damaging myself in a bad trade or no trade at all.

Which really nets out to about 50/50 on the value scaled across three games.

So, you might argue that devices are a wash across a tourney unless you are extremely proficient and can manipulate the average value with skill and/or only use devices on specific platforms to help mitigate the skill gap (like Emon or Finch, etc) .

_____

That's just my two cents of experience, but I defer to @dezzmont s previous comment about AUTO DAMAGE, for which there is very little in 2e and it's worth considering for any list that requires a couple percentage points of increase on the offensive-variance-mitigation scale.

They come in handy either as a deterrent (sometimes you don’t even have to drop bombs, just the fact that you have them may make you opponent think twice about their maneuvers), or as an offensive tool, or both. Especially when they have some ships limping around with 1-2 health, it is nice for a Y-wing to be able to drop a proton bomb in their way then shoot them with another ship if the bomb didn’t finish them off, AND my ship that dropped the bomb still gets to shoot either with a turret at the bombed ship or with primary at some other ship. After that they think twice about chasing after my slow Y-wing...

I absolutely suck at placing bombs. More often than not hitting myself and missing the opponent.

Proximity mines on the other hand are gold.

Just last night I did 3 damage to Darth Vader from a lowly CIS Droid TUB dropping a prox mine. Sure it was pure luck to get 3 damage (which also killed Vader). But even getting that 1 damage through his dodgeings, agility and force makes it worth it.

From a marketing point of view, it gets new players into the game (me) and keeps them playing long enough to realize bombs suck in tournaments, but by then it is too late and they bought 4 factions...

Did you know the FO has 0 bombers.

Has anyone conducted any extensive testing with Cluster Mines vs Prox Mines yet? I tend to default to Protons if I'm wanting a payload upgrade, but I see the mines cropping up more and more these days.

22 hours ago, Xeletor said:

From a marketing point of view, it gets new players into the game (me) and keeps them playing long enough to realize bombs suck in tournaments, but by then it is too late and they bought 4 factions...

They don't suck but they don't always produce tangible results. They require a little more finesse than proc mines do.

An ace with good post maneuver repositioning can be tough to hit. BUT if he follows you into an obstacle field he's less likely to be able to boost or barrel roll out of the blast radius. This works well against the Empire and First Order because most of their ships are light on shields.

Bombs can be useful to protect a severely damaged ship. If you suspect an enemy is going to try for the kill shot, drop one where you think he'll end up. If he doesn't see it coming, he takes one in the kisser. If he suspects a bomb drop, he may forego the attack. Either way could be win for you.

In my local meta phantoms (namely Whisper and Echo) are still a threat.

For them proton bombs are their worst night are. They do not only work offensively but more important they force phantoms to choose bad options for their decloak.

Last game one proton killed a limping whisper with a direct hit and forced Echo once to stay cloaked.

21 hours ago, FriendofYoda said:

Has anyone conducted any extensive testing with Cluster Mines vs Prox Mines yet? I tend to default to Protons if I'm wanting a payload upgrade, but I see the mines cropping up more and more these days.

To much real life going on right now, very few occasions to actually play

So, no extensive testing.

But theory and math:

Cluster Mines 8pts. Not sure if that is worth it.

Prox is only 6pts, and has a less elongated coverage, but is bigger at center, so easier to hit an enemy. Has also 1 guaranted damage, on average 2 damage; min 1, max 3.

If a small base ship clips a Cluster mine's

1 part, then average damage 1, min 0, max 2.

2 parts, average damage 2, min0, max 4.

all 3 parts of a cluster average damage 3, min 0, max6.

Can in all c ases also be zero. So cluster at a higher cost is more random, and more dependent on board positions. One advantage of a Cluster is, that parts of it stay on the board if it is only partly crossed, potentially clogging more. And it potentially can affect more than one target. Still with really bad dice no damage even with 3 ships affected.

41 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

To much real life going on right now, very few occasions to actually play

So, no extensive testing.

But theory and math:

Cluster Mines 8pts. Not sure if that is worth it.

Prox is only 6pts, and has a less elongated coverage, but is bigger at center, so easier to hit an enemy. Has also 1 guaranted damage, on average 2 damage; min 1, max 3.

If a small base ship clips a Cluster mine's

1 part, then average damage 1, min 0, max 2.

2 parts, average damage 2, min0, max 4.

all 3 parts of a cluster average damage 3, min 0, max6.

Can in all c ases also be zero. So cluster at a higher cost is more random, and more dependent on board positions. One advantage of a Cluster is, that parts of it stay on the board if it is only partly crossed, potentially clogging more. And it potentially can affect more than one target. Still with really bad dice no damage even with 3 ships affected.

Yeah I feel like clusters are appropriately priced for 2 charges. Just 1 they seem way overpriced to me.

1 hour ago, mcintma said:

Just 1 they seem way overpriced to me.

I agree, with Prox being 2 charges they certainly seem like the better deal. If I recall Conner's started higher and came down, they may just be being cautious and I could definitely see Clusters dropping 2 points in the next change.

I tried Clusters. They’re very bad at 8pts