Yes, Bustard, the "but its a RP platform ship" "Giving Xenos Cruiser Turrets" "It should not be a combat viable ship".
We had the drone plugin, conceptially cool, yet underwhelming, lacking in damage and godknows what other reason made them getting removed. "That does not really matter." and "How dare you bring that idea back?!" can be the reaction now. They had their problems, a stupid but barebones working AI that somewhat managed to listen your commands and extremely long drone spawn time, coupled with rather low damage numbers and needlessly shoving a Corona in was among them as the most glaring ones.
Then I thought, "What if we bring the damn thing back, for Bustards, shave the drone spawn timer by half or give it two drones that obey the same command so its not a ***** pain to command them seperately, because screw such complex systems," I can imagine how painful it would be to command two drones seperately too. So with that out of question. You may shriek in terror at the thought of making the bustard go from "an useless RP platform that is getting taken out by any sneeze" to "a somewhat useful, defensive focused, upgraded, command and control platform"
It would and (should) get an armor buff to standard light battleship levels(more like 1.55-1.6m, not truely Light BS levels). At the moment a heavy cruiser can simply carpe diem at it. Keep in mind the ship gets a mere transport shield, I do not remember if it can mount a cruiser shield, but it should if it cannot anyways.
(not so) small weapon upgrades, give it like 6 battlecruiser secondaries and 2 battleship primaries so it can mount pulses that is fitting for it's size, so it can actually have a fighting chance against a cruiser, if not against a full fledged battlecruiser and can somewhat reliably defend against snubs. (Bomberswarms would still YEET it to death, as always) You will not need that single Battleship Secondary slot that always becomes a flak too, turn it into a battlecruiser secondary as well.
TLDR; Give it the drone bay, up the weapons, up the armor, #MakeBustardGreat
The whole thing assumes that devs did not obliterate the drone plugin from orbit and only removed the hardpoint from Carriers.
How do Gunboats make sense then, why is there a CTE 5k transport if a freelancer cant even use it?? Gotta differenciate Civilians and Freelancers. You dont see a Civilian flying with a Hind-D military chopper around these days do you. Yet there are Civilians that have their own Tanks, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sure you could argue that those people have been in the Army before but money these days let's you acquire almost anything.
If you want Freelancers being treated as Civilians then remove Gunboats from their ID aswell just like the Maquis ID has. But then again, bringing up the 5ker thing, why is there a CTE Line of ships that a Freelancer cant use? That's how I would treat the Bustard imho, something which can be grabbed Sirius wide with the appropriate ID. By that logic you would also have to remove the bustard from the FL ID
I hate the stupid mentality of x faction can't have a certain ship "just because". I don't think the answer to that is a generic capital ship though, I'd like more unique faction content.
(06-04-2019, 01:39 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: I hate the stupid mentality of x faction can't have a certain ship "just because". I don't think the answer to that is a generic capital ship though, I'd like more unique faction content.
I was kind of getting at what the M.O. of each of those factions currently is.