Bombs have a sacred place in Zigfrak's history, and are a major part of the game's flavor. There are lots of bombs, used in a variety of ways. From the development side, though, bombs are a very rough concept. What players perceive as "bombs" are produced by an ad-hoc smattering of runtime side-effects. There's a lack of formality to them. I won't be nice to myself here, it's a sloppy implementation.
Some bombs come as payloads, in stacks, dispensing bomb items which must be handled individually. Now you've got a bomb: do you want to jettison it, arm it, disarm it, or give it to an enemy? Some bombs require remote detonators, some have timed fuses. Using payload bombs effectively involves juggling several items in the UI, with an understanding that arming a bomb is even a thing you can do in Zigfrak in the first place. Sometimes bombs take the form of RPGs or Mines, eating up a weapon slot.
And what is Flak? For our purposes here, Flak is a shaped explosive shrapnel charge, detonated towards your enemy at very close range. So effectively, yet another specialized type of bomb. An underdeveloped bomb at that, represented only by a smattering of minimally effective items throughout the game. Sure, it's fun if you know how to play it, and are into "melee" style spaceship combat.
Looking at the pre-BBQ bomb situation, it's a complete clusterfrak. Using payload bombs is incongruous to the rest of gameplay, and it's really hard to justify equipping Flak, RPGs, or Mine weapons in place of a top-end guided missile launcher. We're cleaning it up, and the result is a fun new dimension to combat in Zigfrak. In Backyard BBQ, we'll be unifying Mines, RPGs, Bombs, and Flak into a singularly kick-ass Grenade mechanic. No matter the situation, the play flow for bombs is being collapsed from several convoluted UI interactions into one button. Thousands of Grenade Mods will be available, representing all of your favorite old-school bombs, and more, flavor-blasted.
Grenades will be launched pretty much how you expect, via an alternate fire command, probably taking over the "G" keybinding by default. Grenade deployment will consume a charge from a tightly limited pool of Grenade ammo. The generic Mine and Flak ammo types are to be retired.
More as I know it, thanks for reading!
