Yesterday in BHG| vs Order event I hopped into a shared BH bomber and flew to battle. I didn't pay too much attention what I had in equipment wise since all seemed to be ok. The forces were 3 x BH bombers, couple of GS, couple fighters and a dessie vs 1 Osiris, 1 Carrier, 4 fighters and a bomber.
I was getting missile massage from the fighters from the get go and for the weirdest thing happened. My CM was using half the energy of the ship when I dropped a CM (later it came evident that during 4.84 -> 4.84 it seems that Heavy CM was changed to mean Cap heavy CM). And when I was showered by missiles by fighters it basically rendered me totally useless in a battle, not being able to fire the SNAC. This was a very nasty surprise for me, BUT also it gave me a new look on things.
In 4.84, and it seems in 4.85b too, the fighters are not the bomber killers, as they where advertised to be, and bomber pilots pretty much can go about their business regardless of fighters. And this is seen somewhat badly by the cap fliers.
So the idea is this. Why not make bomber a CM dropper that drains energy? It made me really, really useless for several minutes in a fight. I'm not meaning the current Heavy CM for caps since that was a bit too much for not being able to do anything worthwhile.
If done right (meaning balanced experience for bombers) fighters or GBs hanging on the bombers tail would render bomber's efficiency by firing missiles at him "forcing" him to CM and thus using energy that it essential to fire the SNAC. Not drain the whole core but a small penalty to fire the CM would have an deterring effect on bombers.
or make a special bomber CM that uses energy but tradeoff is that it has unlimited ammo. Anyway, an idea, that will not be received too enthusiastically among bomber pilots, but could achieve the result of having escort fighters actually being worthwhile.
Of course this promotes missile spammage too, but we get that already so it would not change the equation too much in that regard.
And before anyone flies of the handle with NERF! or such things, let it be for the record that I've flown bombers in a group-fights and solo pretty long and have not flown caps yet. And I still propose something like this since it seems more balanced.
The problem is you can't make equipment like CMs ship class specific, at least not that I know of. You can still mount any thruster on a capital ship, as well as a capital ship thruster on any fighter. Bombers' simply won't use a CM that takes up energy... the first thing I did was sell all my Heavy CMs and buy Enh. CMs for all my ships. Even my Firefly can't use Heavy CMs efficently.
and if you make a CM that drains a bomber core and has no ammo... then every trader and capital ship user will mount one, because the energy usage will be meaningless to them.
And even if you could make them class specific... bombers are counted as fighters.
And if somehow this idea gets figured out, and added to the mod, missiles would need to take up a sizeable amount of energy to fire as well, to balance it. Or bomber pilots won't even bother to mount CMs. Nothing annoys you more than listening to the "incomming missile" message non-stop for an entire fight.
![[Image: SLRU.png]](http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv46/Nighthawkashes/SLRU.png)