Gun Boat: Convoy Raider, Bomber, Screening Element (Gun Boats are a mix of the torpedo boats of WWII and specially armed and armored bombers flown during and after the Vietnam War, and for our purposes are really just superheavy bombers.)
Fighters should be able to take down Bombers and frieghters with little difficulty, and gunboats with some effort. However, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and Carriers should swat them like flys.
Bombers and Gunboats should be able to take down freighters and destroyers with little difficulty, and cruisers with some effort.
Destroyers should be able to take down frieghters and fighters with little difficulty, and cruisers and carriers with some effort.
Cruisers should be able to take down frieghters, fighters, bombers, gunboats, and carriers with little difficulty, and battleships with some effort.
Battleships should swat freighters, fighters, bombers, gunboats, destroyers, and carriers right out of the sky. That said, Bombers, Gunboats, and Cruisers should be able to take them if massed and/or used properly.
Carriers are not really intended for direct combat. Thier power has always been in the small craft they carry. As such, most everything should have a good chance of destroying them, assuming the fighter and bomber screen is taken care of.
The biggest problem, and why it seems so unbalanced, is because there can only be two hundred people on at a time. In real battles, a battleship could stand off entire flotillas all on its own, and the designers have tried to be true to that. That means, a battleship and four fighters can stand off several times thier own number, especially with that silly four hour rule. There just aren't enough people to make the combat work like it should, so certain craft have to be made stronger and more versatile than they should be. This, of course, means the craft that are traditionally supposed to handle them quite easily, cannot. I have seen bombers take down lfs, hfs, vhfs, and gbs.
Now lets take a look at the frieghters and transports. They traditionally only had a couple of guns(if that), and those with just enough power to see off lf's and hf's in small numbers and singletons. That's why convoys were invented. Only rarely were freighters and transports given heavier armament.
How to help the situation? Make it so only house navies get battleships, cruisers, and carriers. Mercenaries, Police, and Bounty Hunters should be able to get anything up to a Cruiser. House Corporations shouldn't have anything bigger than gunboats, and few of those. For the unlawfuls, they should only have up to Gunboats with a few exceptions. I said before that only rarely were freighters and transports given heavier armament. Here is the rarely. Take a freighter, boosts it's shields, add more mounts, and presto-chango, you have a pirate cruiser. Now, make all unlawful craft slightly more powerful than lawful craft. This should balance out the cap ship advantage, especially if you decree that a faction can have no more than one battleship and two cruisers online at anygiven time. Multiple players could have them, but they would have to take turns playing them. That way we can have cap-ship battles with limited players and not have to munchkin smaller craft or throw out the four hour rule. As it is, everybody and thier grandmother has at least a gunboat tucked away somewhere. People should be saying, "Holy crud, did I just see an Outcast Cruiser!?!?!?", not, "Oh joy, three Corsiar Gunboats and two cruisers. Yes, you can has millions."
I know that what I described poses a substantial amount of work, but it will solve the problems we are having. Unlawful factions shouldn't have player battleships and carriers, even the unlawfuls fighting the house navies are fighting guerilla wars, not civil wars. House Corporations shouldn't have security forces with heavy ships, armies cost to much and they already pay taxes for protection from the navies and police.
Mercenaries an Bounty hunters traditionally have contacts into navy and police surplus, so an actual refurbished cruiser isn't out of the question, but it's certainly stretching it.
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Quote:Carriers are not really intended for direct combat. Thier power has always been in the small craft they carry. As such, most everything should have a good chance of destroying them, assuming the fighter and bomber screen is taken care of.
Right now, carriers are balanced on similar terms to battleships, battlecruisers, and dreadnaughts, because they are incapable of fielding fighters and bombers.
When I can launch swarms of fighters and bombers from my Carrier, then you can reduce my ship's combat ability, not before.
' Wrote: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.
What the bloody duce is this. This is the -media- center. This is where you spam your sigs and requests for the same. Not another rant about balance. Moving this thing to the wank forum.
No it isn't! Oi, it isn't and Don't tell me youre flooding this now, foo!
*counter whacks with a toe ring*
It is now! Thread moved! How -dare- you speak back to me! I'm an admin you know! I demand your respect! I'll have your mustache! Then where will you be!?
//Ok but seriously the path this thread took has now placed it squarely within this section of the forum providing the community with a much needed place to discuss bombers which has for too long remained a subject which we've lacked the courage to explore.
Oi! My mustache will do a 360 and devide your adminining powah by zero and three quarters!
// Meh, I know, fair enough. I still think, however, that simply reducing the BB count on bombers and either reducing their cargo to prevent them from using armor upgrades, or/and reducing their armor to that of a fighter (or even less) may give LFs and VHFs easy chance to take them out.
*makes a statement which counters your own statement while simultaniously one upping it*
Blighter had a good idea in nixing their speed a bit. Knocking 10-20 top speed from the things would make them extremely vulnerable to chasing fighters in addition to further reducing snac speed.
A pretty simple solution, though it scares me something awful.
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