Have other players noticed how NPC's only seem to use them as a dead-man-bomb. <mutters under breath>Bastards.
NPC's mostly deploy the bomb it on death, but I consider that as a flaw in the ships design. In most cases it is because the oxp writer did not know that it is possible to let the ship drop the bomb itself before death and made it part of the death handling.
But you are right, it seems completely pointless to have such a super weapon and only use it when it is to late. (read: when the pilot was killed. ) When I would fly a ship with such a weapon would deploy it before death.
Not all NPC's do it wrong. e.g. the super cobra really uses it in a way to shake of persuaders. And also the targets in random hits have programmed the bomb in the correct way and can deploy it as part of their fleeing tactics.
In Second Wave I set the Command Thargoid Warship up initially to use one (the mine Tharglet, their equivalent of a q-bomb) as a cover when it ran away (it's designed to be the only Thargoid craft that does so).
But in play as the Command ship can be spawned as part of an interstellar space battle, it does tend to spoil the fun a bit by blowing everything up. If the equivalent happens in a pirate/police fight it could have just the same spoiler effect. I coded around it with the Thargmine, but the AI for the q-bomb would need to be considered in the same way if its usage as an escape cover came into play.
I would suggest a special "ass covering" variant of the q-bomb for this, specifically used under controlled conditions when the mothership will be known to be alone (e.g. in a Random-Hits type mission).
dead man bomb? as in "you're a dead man if you don't use it"?
As in "when I die, you are dead, too!". They use the q-bombs when they die, thus a ship that's trying to pursue them has a big chance of being caught in the blast - even with injectors.
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... i thought they were automatic 
