Some things about laser bombers that may not be immediately obvious:

Fire angles (Old Method)

Ideally all laser bombers would fire straight down all of the time. In practice, usually the laser bombers fire a little in front of themselves, occasionally going to a more shallow angle under certain conditions. The current behavior is a compromise between having the bomber fire at a steeper angle and reliability. There are two main parameters here: range and maxangledif.

For a laser bomber, I find that the minimum range at which the bomber is reliable is cruisealt * 1.67. At this range the bomber will fire reliably, only failing to fire if the targetmoveerror puts the target out of range or the bomber goes over a sudden decrease in terrain height just before its target. However, at cruisealt * 1.6, the bomber will reliably not fire, only firing if the bomber goes over a sudden increase in terrain height just before its target. Over flat ground with no collisions and no sudden bomber maneuvers, a fairly small maxangledif can be used. However, over bumpier terrain, with collisions, or if the bomber suddenly decides to do some kind of turn, as often happens in battlefield conditions, a small maxangledif may cause the bomber to not fire. At time of writing, I have the maxangledif set to 180, since this ensures the laser comes out of the bottom of the bomber, while giving a good deal of reliability.

Beamlasers

Beamlasers don't seem to work like other weapons (and aircraft don't work like other units, but that's a subject for another time). When a beamlaser is fired from the bomber, it sweeps corresponding to the bomber's movement, whereas other types of weapons all fire at the spot targeted. Also note that a beam laser "fires" every frame.

Commsassination

Perhaps the stickiest issue is commsassination with T1 bombers. The original Thunder, when ordered to attack a comm directly, would always miss if the comm was moving at any decent speed due to their time to impact. Lasers on the other hand, being instant-hit, need some sort of treatment to prevent easy commsassination. Previously, this was done using the (unreliable) targetmoveerror tag, which brought a host of problems of its own.

For those of you attempting to avoid commsassination by bombers, here's a simple guide:

If you think the enemy is targeting your Commander (hereafter referred to as "boi") directly (i.e., pressing A and clicking on your boi), simply walk your boi in a straight line, preferably perpendicular to the bomber's flight path. Do not try to "jink" or zigzag. Bombers do not automatically lead their targets, so it is most important to maintain a high speed in this case.

However, if you think the enemy is targeting the ground and trying to draw lead on your boi manually, it is better to "jink" and zigzag so your opponent has a harder time landing the attack on your boi.

Either way, if you see T1 bombers approaching your boi, MOVE YOUR BOI NOW. DO NOT COMMENT TO YOUR ALLIES/ENEMY/SPECS, DO NOT BUILD AA WITH YOUR BOI, DO NOT EVEN ALT-TAB TO LOOK UP THIS GUIDE ON WHETHER YOU SHOULD ZIG-ZAG YOUR BOI OR NOT. MOVE YOUR BOI NOW. It takes only five conventional T1 bomber hits to commsassinate if the boi is not moving.

Scripted Firing

Quantum developed and I refined a scripted firing system. Here's how it works:

  1. Bomber is equipped with a burst 2, burstrate 5, high mygravity (to make behavior consistent across maps) bogus bomb; and the laser weapon. Laser weapon is prevented from firing normally via script.
  2. When the script detects the bogus bomb being dropped, it waits for a while and then starts firing the laser via emit-sfx every frame for a while. The target is reached at about 2300 ms.