The smallest gunboat, the Bount Hunter Gunship is too small to handle cap armor under 8. With 8 she's insane, without 8 she's very very very good. She relies more on size and maneuverability to evade fire.
Above that though gunboats need to be able to suck up some damage. A larger gunboat without cap armor is going to die very quickly at the hands of other caps in addition to bombers.
Cap armor is an investment on a gunboat that lends to her survivability but does not make her invulnerable.
I've squared off against plenty and never felt that a standard gunboat with cap armor is invulnerable.
i m a bit torn about cap armour 8 ( i got utterly sick of trading when i got me one ) ... so on the one hand, i think whoever has it - deserves it. - on the other hand, it seems "reasonable" on a 750 million ship ( well, not reasonable , but as reasonable as is ) - while it "feels" somewhat wrong to slap it on a ship that costs only 18 million.
a gunboat without armour is still an awesome ship - like most capital ships ( except battleships ) it relies mostly on its 140k shield anyway, once the hull takes damage, the captain usually starts to panic a little. all in all, i think its no big deal. - if the enemy bomberpilot is lucky, it makes a difference indeed, but other than that, it just takes alightly longer with armour than without.
' Wrote:Gotta admit, it's kinda weird to have the same armor fit gunboats AND battleships :/
Would be nice to have gunboat class armour, cruiser class armor, battleship class armor etc. but again, not sure if that's quite necessary.
Have to say though, cap8 on a BH gunship is a bit ridiculous.
Never saw that but, that would be insane. however I'll never have cap8 at least not for a Loooooooooooooong time. As it cost more than a battle ship. and cap 7 is very nice just it chokes out the cargo hold.
I like the idea of more class specific armour. Fighter, GB, Cruiser, Battleship... It would make a lot more sense than the way we have it right now.
I use a fighter mk8 on my one and only GB, that means it can soak up a fair amount of damage... but when people break that shield I do start to worry about the SN's flying in...