Average bomber vs a Good VHF

[Colonel Z.e.r.o.]

Everyone's a little biased, but face it... the reason no balance changes are happening is because the number of bomber pilots on this server outnumbers everything else being flown, and they cry louder than anyone when it comes to specializing their ships or removing their ability to be gods of all types of combat.

My biggest issue is the fact that fighters are useless as escorts, and that stems from the fact that bombers are too much like fighters.

Compare any other two ship classes in the game, and you'll find vast differences. Cruisers use different weapons, shields, and tactics than gunboats. Gunboats use different weapons, shields, and tactics than battleships. So on and so forth - sure, there are some similarities and halfbreeds like frigates and battlecruisers, but these too come with a specialized purpose and disadvantages outside of that purpose.

Bombers, on the other hand, are the same size as fighters, use the same shields and weapons as fighters, but on top of that they have more power, more armor, the ability to use heavier weapons -in addition- to their fighter weapons, and only a slight loss in manuverability.

For that we might as well take every fighter in the game, give them an extra torp slot and a bomber powercore, and call this server bomber rp 24/7. Compare the advantages to the disadvantages bombers have over fighters... it's ridiculous, for lack of a better word. Bombers are, put simply, buffed up fighters.

Every shipclass needs to have a distinct playstyle and role, and that means focusing bombers entirely on capship battle. They arent meant to act as a jack-of-all-trades, they arent meant to act as anti-fighter or anti-bomber escort for other ships, they're meant to kill large targets - and that means caps.

So like I said, remove the fighter gun/missile hardpoints from bombers, add more torpedoes of specialized types, and buff fighter weapons.

Finally someone sees this.

ome one mentioned in this thread about boosting the bomber thrust speed (250-275?) for bomber runs (probably make specialized thrusters with limited energy) so when they make their run they're not absolutely sitting ducks against pursuers. But (and I stress you to consider this) when they have to turn around for another attack/recharge their thrusters, the fighter can take advantage. Granted the agility of these craft are snipped slightly.

Another point I tried to get out somewhere was about making a line of bomber guns/turrets with awful speed but extreme projectile range along with moderate damage/fire rate and energy consumption. This way bombers wouldn't be so often abused to bravely PvP fighters. We could also look into adding more torpedo slots (3-4?) and expanding the array of torpedoes/anti-capship weapons (emp torpedoes/bomber class pulse cannons and finally hull busting torps).

I also thought of possibly making very heavy "dept charges" for bombers with damage maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of the hull busting torpedoes just to make the bomber runs more interesting, of course probably knack the refire rate some, boost up the energy consumption (mines do/can be made to consume energy right?) so their not used by fighters, and of course, reduce their speed so they don't easily track and destroy fighters (unless they're stupid enough to get caught in it's blast radius.)

Then theirs the armor well in combination with the two above, the armor might be able to be left alone. The shielding could be bumped up again to freighter class just so they're aren't completely helpless against fighters and attackers despite the agility nerfing.

---

Nathan's Log || The "Real Story" of Lenox Casper