Some bomber issues

[Jihadjoe]

Note: This thread does not contain reference to the heavy bombers, such as the Challenger, Fafnir and Barghest, which are a completely different type of beast to other bombers.



Light bombers are a problem for overall balance.

Light bombers are attempting to be something they are not... This needs addressing in my opinion.

They are supposed to be able to defend themselves from fighter fire, and anti-snub cap-fire by evading it. However there is not sufficient difference between the light bombers and the medium bombers (Bergelmir, Praetorian, Kaichou, etc) to make this a good enough pay-off for the lack of plant, armour and nanobots.

Light bombers die faster than medium bombers, and do less damage then medium bombers over the same time period, by virtue of having a smaller plant.

If a medium bomber and a light bomber survive for approximately the same amount of time under similar conditions, the light bomber will have done less damage to a hostile cap, rendering the light bomber the inferiour ship.

Both light and medium bombers will be targetted early in a furball, because they are easy to hit. At present, the


The Upholder

This ship has some serious flaws.

One of the least desirable of the already undesirable light bombers, is the Upholder. This ship currently needs a reskin on it, to add a 'bullseye' on the top and bottom of the ship.

That in itself would not be a problem if the ship had the armour to absorb a few shots. However it does not. 85 B/B and 17,600 base armour does not provide enough protection for the ship's size and speed.

My suggestion for this ship would be to rebalance it as a medium bomber, more akin to the bergelmir, to compensate for the fact it is easy to hit in a chase. Turn speed would have to be adjusted along with the powerplant, naturally.

Slower turning, more armour, more bots, larger plant.

The Broadsword

Much the same issues as the Upholder. This bomber is just too easy to kill for the amount of damage it throws out. Infact, the similarity in shape between the Upholder and Broadsword causes me to be of the opinion that much the same should happen...

Slow the ship down, medium plant, more armour, more bots.

The Roc

This ship is one of the more capable light bombers. I would suggest that in order to increase it's survivability, it's turn speed is increased a little. Nothing major, just a tweak. I understand this runs the risk of it becoming a fighter-killer again... However even back in the days of bombers being able to mount fighter weaponry, I didn't regard this as much of an issue, as anyone who was capable in a fighter, would happily run rings around anyone equally capable in a bomber.

At present the Roc is not as effective as it should be in killing caps.

The Orchid

Dear god do I love shooting at Orchids. They're just so easy to kill. Low armour, and an easy shape to hit. I would suggest making this into a medium bomber, by virtue of it's shape.

The Falcata/Cutlass

These two ships do alright, generally speaking. However I would suggest that the Cutlass gets a slight armour upgrade, and a few more bots, as it seems to die a little faster than the falcata.

I'll edit more suggestions into this as time goes on and I do a bit more testing and shooting.

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[kikatsu]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head there, Joe. All of the bombers you mentioned here are dreadfully easy to shoot and just cannot dish out damage as fast as their medium counter parts (though with Nova launchers they get higher DPS). Some of these are very easy to hit, even with Cruiser guns, like the Upholder and Cutlass.

In a thread about light bombers I am surprised that the AFA one did not come up... then again that is a lot smaller than all of these ones here.

[Backo]

But I love Light Bombers, Joe.:(

The Roc's my current and favourite AGS-U bomber and it's doing insanely well. Whatever I can't really SNAC I can nuketrap to rough it up a bit. And yes, while not being as much of a cap destroyer as our Barghest was (well, before the tech nerf) it's still pretty neat. It's also decent at dodging so ye, not sure it needs that much extra love.

As for the Broadsword... Well I've tried it, flew it, still have it, really. A hacker one with 3 EMPs, Nukes, SNAC and 1 Hellfire missiles pod. It does the job done and I've had some impressive results. Sure the hitbox's a bit crappy but if they're EXACTLY behind you and you strafe, dodging is actually decent. Sure it could be better, but slowing it down would be bad in my opinion.

As for the Cupholder, ye it's definitely not on the Bergelmir's level of performance. I somewhat agree with what you're suggesting.

As for the Falcata/Cutlass, I believe they're a lot worst then Roc due to their shape. The whole ring around the main frame is kinda bad, makes deshielding the ship quite easy. Not sure if they're any different, as far as I know they share the stats and shape, just different textures.

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[Junes]

I agree on everything except for the turn rate buff for the Roc. I already deem that ship a tad bit of OP. Using the Roc in a pirate character, I often stumble upon lawfuls snubs which I can duel and SNAC without much trouble (if they make the mistake of jousting too often of course). Not only VHFs, even HFs can be dueled in a Roc while still having good chances to win. Imo it doesn't need a manoeuverability tweak. Roc is fine as it is.

[bloogaL]

I have to agree with all of this, except this bit

The Broadsword

Much the same issues as the Upholder. This bomber is just too easy to kill for the amount of damage it throws out. Infact, the similarity in shape between the Upholder and Broadsword causes me to be of the opinion that much the same should happen...

Slow the ship down, medium plant, more armour, more bots.

[sindroms]

Mmmmm, The only way I can see this fixed is by introducing a Light-Medium-Heavy version of ANY ship type for ANY faction. So apart from the Turtle, the Rheinlanders would get a medium and light battleships and the same goes for Liberty. They would also receive all three kinds of snubs and other caps, so if we do not consider the mountainous work it would require, it would simply come down to which of the three are used. So those who think their light bomber is meh, can use a heavier one.



But back on topic, imho the survivability of a bomber comes from its shape. The Roc is relatively flat and can doge better. The cupholder, however, is just very big...for its agility anyway.

So meh. There is no real easy way to fix it all. Unless you replace all ships with one generic shape.

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[Jihadjoe]

But I love Light Bombers, Joe.:(

I like a few of them, those that are a little faster/smaller and can stay out of trouble more easily. They fulfil their role rather nicely. The problem is with the light bombers that are easy to kill.

The Roc's my current and favourite AGS-U bomber and it's doing insanely well. Whatever I can't really SNAC I can nuketrap to rough it up a bit. And yes, while not being as much of a cap destroyer as our Barghest was (well, before the tech nerf) it's still pretty neat. It's also decent at dodging so ye, not sure it needs that much extra love.

The Roc is definately one of the better light bombers. It has the ability to avoid a lot more fire by virtue of it's turning.

As for the Broadsword... Well I've tried it, flew it, still have it, really. A hacker one with 3 EMPs, Nukes, SNAC and 1 Hellfire missiles pod. It does the job done and I've had some impressive results. Sure the hitbox's a bit crappy but if they're EXACTLY behind you and you strafe, dodging is actually decent. Sure it could be better, but slowing it down would be bad in my opinion.

The broadsword is extremely similar to the Upholder in many ways, particularly in terms of shape. Infact from the front/back it presents a marginally harder target to hit, but that doesn't save it in the three dimensional environment that FL presents.

As for the Cupholder, ye it's definitely not on the Bergelmir's level of performance. I somewhat agree with what you're suggesting

I think it's definately rather sub-par for bombers overall.

As for the Falcata/Cutlass, I believe they're a lot worst then Roc due to their shape. The whole ring around the main frame is kinda bad, makes deshielding the ship quite easy. Not sure if they're any different, as far as I know they share the stats and shape, just different textures.

The falcata has an extra thousand armour, and ten more nanobots, if I recall correctly... It dies marginally slower than the Cutlass as a result. Very similar model, sure, but they are slightly different.

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[Govedo13]

I would say to remove the med bombers at all, they could be made small or large depending on the bomber:
Bergel is ideal for small, Pretorian- the worst med bomber is ideal for heavy, Thor got already changed, SCRA one is mega OP as well and should be light.
Only GMG bomber should stay as part of their cap- snub exchange.
Second point would be the removal of the 5th gun for BHG bomber( the best light bomber) and Bergel while giving 5th and even 6th gun to the heavy ones- in snub brawl the heavy one do less DPS then light ones because they cannot dodge to use their superior DPS capabilites- giving them 6 bomber guns would compensate for it.
In some extent I agree with you but cannot agree about boosting light bombers- cupholder indeed is bad, but roc is ok, Broadsword needs also small agility buff- it is nerfed roc right now- some movement but a way more easy to hit. Never tried cutlass and falcata they always looked ugly for me and roc was always superior then them.

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Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[CommanderX]

First off I will mention that rheinland tech was alwais more noob friendly than liberty tech.

With realy afect rheinland vs liberty balance giving rheinalnd advantage.

But even if I can understand that LSC as a very bad cruizer was destined to snipe Rheinland big battleships, LABC was upgraded to fight or scare off RNC cruizers and navy gunboat is a good gunboat ( a little bit better than rheinland gunboat when it comes to agility ).
It still require alot skills to win again better rheinland tech, when rheinland forces can overpower navy without much skills.

However there is somethink I never understand, why since RNC ships are so big and powerfull, navy have just upholder to counter it ( even if it have 2 slots, SANC/Nova ), because of it is size. it is realy realy easy to hit, and with weak powercore, it can not do much damage to big and hard RNC caps.

And rheinland this entire time had 2 bombers, 1 very heavy bomber what is very hard and can give a hard punch, and secound one is totaly OP.

If you compare upholder to bergelmir.

Bergelmir have more armor, more regens, stronger core, is alot smaller and what is very weird, cheaper than upholder.

From many experience in battles, I find upholder to be unbelivably easy to hit and damage, and at the same time evade it is fire on my navy gunboat, when fighitng off Bergelmir prove to be unbelivable hard.


So basicaly Navy have worse caps what require skills need to fight rheinland caps what are stronger and more noob friendly.

And when navy get a 1 crappy bomber to hunt very strong RNC caps, rheinalnd have 2 bombers and 1 of tham is OP to deal with weaker navy caps.


I do not have enoght experience to agree with Joe about all bombers he said about.

but I totaly agree that liberty/rheinalnd tech balance is screwed, giving rheinalnd alot advantage, and navy bomber was for faaaaar to long terrible in front of one of most OP bombers there are.

( In many battles I saw how bombers under fighter fire require cover or assist when bergelmir can be under alot of fire from fihgters,gunboats and still do the job ).

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[Pepe]

If you make light bombers heavier and more powerfull, how will anybody do magic with them? How to stay alive under heavy GB fire long enough to kill it. Make them slugish and they will have no time to show any power at all.

If light bombers are too easy to kill comparing to their firepower, than make more firepower. Or let them carry snac/nova/CD. Nova boosts power vs. capitals, but takes CD slot.

Heavy bombers with more guns? Not bad, not bad at all... But at a cost: freighter shields must go away.

Falcata/Cutlass issue: just make Cutlass smaller. Remove that ring. If Falcata is Sabre-bomber, let Cutlass be a Switchblade-bomber. Many pirates will fly it soon, instead of all flying just a Roc.

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