I was reading TV Tropes' Headscratchers page for Prometheus and I saw this:
If the Engineers intended to wipe out humanity circa 2,000 years ago, why would they have gone to the trouble of engineering a sentient—if not sapient—biological weapon to do so, when they could have, say, simply resorted to orbital bombardment? After all, we've only had flight technology for roughly 100 years, and we've only had spaceflight technology for roughly 50 years. 2,000 years ago, the Engineers could have wiped Earth off the star maps with total impunity, and they wouldn't have lost the facility on LV-233.
There's this whole thing about different factions of Engineers and "wanting to save the plants," but I don't exactly buy it. I know there's probably a real world equivalent to this situation, but I'm not a scientist.
Maybe they didn't even think about it. If their technology is sufficiently advanced, something like bombs could be considered obsolete and become forgotten. I mean I'm sure that if we could find a way kill each other without destroying architecture or the environment, we would eventually give up weapons of mass destruction in favour of those weapons that facilitate the takeover. Not having to rebuild and not losing valuable artifacts would significantly reduce the resources needed for winning a war and settling into the newly conquered area. So the Jockeys probably found this technology so long ago that the only bombs they have are in a museum and it doesn't even cross their mind to use something like that. I mean we don't even think about going fishing with spears now that we have huge fishing nets and fishing boats capable of carrying tonnes of fish at a time.
The goo would also save time. Instead of going through the trouble of orbital bombardment, just chuck a few canisters of black goo pretty much anywhere and come back in a year.
About the time and "building preservation" things - unless they had an anti-black goo to instantly deactivate their weapons (assuming they want their planet immediately after getting rid of its inhabitants instead of waiting for the Xenos to die on their own), getting rid of Xenos would just waste even more time in the long run, wouldn't it? Of course, this would all depend on the Xeno's age, and it's never been explicitly stated that they live for how long we think they live, so... I guess coming back in a year would probably be fine if Xenos don't live long.
And the preservation of architecture is a lost cause when you consider the fact that Xenos bastardize their surroundings with the hive structure.
I do think they probably have an anti-black-goo and I also think that some of the things that happened, such as the xenomorphs starting to appear, weren't routine. Maybe they developed the goo to fight each other and it reacted differently to humans. Maybe it was the wrong kind of goo that was used against the humans. Maybe some faction of Jockeys sabotaged the mission and replaced all the goo with the wrong kind. We will probably never know.
But yeah, a biological weapons' test is also a good idea.
the same reason why the human didn't use orbital bombs in avatar
though I guess a bomb destroys a city but a whole species
that takes a special type of bomb perhaps the xenomorph were that perfect bomb
Maybe their evolution didnt have the bomb or that black stuff was their bomb. Just because they're supposedly like us it doesnt mean they to have the same technology as us
Alright, maybe I asked the question wrong; rather than "Why not use bombs," it should be "Why use such a wildly unpredictable new super weapon as OPPOSED to something like a bomb?"
By now I know bombs probably aren't the best alternative, but at least the bomb won't start walking around making MORE bombs that'll go off where you don't want it to, cost be damned. Did they want to do it, or did they want to do it right?
In that case maybe they didn't fully understand their own creation. What I mean is they had the general idea of what it would do, but they would never have been able to predict the events that would come from their creation. An example is the Atomic Bomb. The U.S. had one idea of what it was for, complete devastation and ultimately ending the war, however, what they could not have known is that the creation of the Atomic bomb would also lead to making the world living in fear of annihilation/extinction. Thus the Cold War would follow, and many countries coming to hate each other. For the engineers maybe they understood what would happen, but what they didn't understand is that what their creation did would end up leading to their demise.