Barge Defenselessness

[TLI-Inferno]

At the moment, barges are ridiculously defenseless. Since they're so big, missing them is pretty much impossible. Their huge size also allows bombers to fly circles around them and use them as shields against anyone trying to chase the bomber, while the bomber turns occasionally to fire a SNAC.

Barges have a transport shield. 100,000 shield capacity on a ship that size? Really? The barge should have a stronger shield. Either a battleship shield mount, or a unique shield for the barge.

Barges have 7 transport turrets spread across a huge ship. That's nowhere near enough for it to defend itself. Not even against NPC's. Barges should have twelve cruiser turrets spread around the ship, and a larger power core in order to use them. Your first thought might be: "Twelve cruiser turrets on a transport? OP!". Think again, because they're spread across a huge ship. It would only be firing a few of those at a time, so it would still actually have less firepower than a shire transport would, but equipped with Solaris it would at least be able to tickle hostile bombers, forcing them to stay a bit further away rather than flying around it, using it like a shield against anyone trying to defend it.

At the moment, barges are defenseless. What I propose won't give them enough firepower to actually defend themselves, but it will be enough firepower to force bombers to fly further away from the barge when attacking it, so that people escorting the barge can actually defend it.

Even with 12 cruiser turrets, killing barges would still be pretty easy, but at least defending them would be possible.