Labs should have bombed variants

[NetSysFire]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Lore says so.

• April 16: In response to portal storms, the government nukes as many lab facilities as it can, pinning the attacks on China.

Originally brought up by me in #59975.

The government nuked many labs, so there being a nuked lab equivalent would make sense. Basically a giant crater with remnants of a lab. The horrors are mostly dead and if not weakened or twisted by the radiation.

Solution you would like.

For the upper z-levels, a crater mutable going on until the lab complex on z -2. Then lots of collapsed and damaged floors. There are some goodies left to recover there if you dig through the collapsed walls, but most will be destroyed.

Kevin (I have no idea about explosives, so blame him for these ideas) said maybe for the actual bombing it would use MOABs, which are designed for specifically punching through multiple armored floors of underground facilities and then exploding at the bottom. However, the lore doc says "nuked", so it could also be fully fledged atomic bombs like a nuclear bunker buster. People in the government with blob psychosis would make that a viable option, too. I mean rhode island split off. But given the implications it should probably be rare.

Erk said the government would use non-nuclear bunker busters. But maybe this is a possibility for the far future.

For the nuclear variant, having scorched/radiation affected nether creatures and so on would be fun.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

No response

Additional context

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[Procyonae]

I'm happy to work on this once the details are worked out (idk anything about explosives)

[natsirt721]

The MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) is not a penetrating bunker buster - as the name suggests it is an airblast bomb which means it detonates above the target and causes structure damage by the blast wave. Bombs of this type are extremely effective against soft and medium structures, but are less effective against hardened structures. The labs we have aren't buried particularly deep this may be effective against the upper few floors but I would expect the lowest levels to remain more or less intact. It also won't produce massive cratering as the blast energy is directed down towards the ground from above, so you don't get any excavation of material by the blast, although you might see some surface effects as the floors below collapse and fill with debris.

If you want a penetrating weapon, the US has the 4,000 lb GBU-28, its fledgling replacement the 5,000 lb GBU-72, and the very large 28,000 lb GBU-57. These are designed to penetrate deeply buried reinforced concrete structures and cause internal damage, primarily by shock damage collapsing load-bearing elements. The GBU-28 only has a 675 lb warhead, most of the weight is the penetrator, so don't expect huge blast effects from these. The GBU-57 - while being a huge step up from the 28 with a 5,200 lb warhead - can only be carried by strategic bombers and isn't available in large numbers (several dozen, maybe up to 100?), so I'd expect to seem the used sparingly and only against the largest priority targets, if at all. That said, they are definitely be capable of causing massive damage. These weapons probably won't cause any cratering at all because they're going to be detonating far below the surface.

There's a mismatch between the game and RL here - usually things that are buried are buried for security and built accordingly, but the labs we have are largely open space and appear more like a building that just happens to be underground. The GBU-28 is probably overkill in terms of penetration, but would lack the explosive punch to case massive damage. The GBU-57 has the explosive kick to cause against larger labs, but is way overkill in terms of penetration and not available in quantity. You might even get away with using general purpose (GP) bombs against shallow labs, - you'd get some nice excavation cratering and collapse sinkholes, but they could have trouble have trouble against the lower levels. The MOAB would behave similarly to a large GP bomb - just without the excavation craters - and would also struggle against lower levels.

[AcidAntOnAMinefield]

Those lore snippets are somewhat old as well, from the time the game used to take place in the future instead of "present realistic year." However, All Research Facilities already start in a shape akin to swiss cheese, full of craters and what nots though. The zombie population density in them is a bit weird, in the sense that it feels like it is a little bit too much. This and the amount of portals and/or tears in reality that often spawn alongside it is also a bit on the exaggerated side.

[NetSysFire]

Research facilities (aka lab_surface) are probably like this because of general chaos and has been that way since before the new lore. No reason they can not be utterly destroyed by the government in their bombing spree though.