Need input from good fighter/bomber pilots

[Tenacity]

I want some honest opinions here... just how deadly is a gunboat with missile turrets, really?

I keep hearing how missile turrets are overpowered, and even a pair of them will let a gunboat waltz through fleets of VHF's and bombers and destroy all in the name of sweet, beautiful explosives... but are they really that good against you guys?

The top speed on order missile turrets is 145 m/s. Any fighter or bomber can thrust faster than that, and from my (albeit limited) knowledge of pvp... fighters/bombers are almost always using thrusters. It seems to me that the missiles would never even catch up to the target, and if they did all it would take is a single countermeasure or quick dodge to avoid them.

Now, the reason I ask, is because I've been planning on using the zoner gunboat Jinx designed once 4.85 is released. According to him, the plan for the gunboat is to have only 4 turret hardpoints - which will severely limit the ship's effectiveness in combat no matter which way you look at it. The ship will not be able to carry a 'balanced' loadout allowing it to be effective against numerous ship types, so it will be forced to specialize strictly towards anti-fighter/bomber, or anti-capship combat.

Now, being an Order pilot, I do have quite a few enemies flying capships. Moreso than fighters/bombers a majority of the time. I havent seen a single Bounty Hunter player flying a fighter or bomber in my entire time on the server - every single one of them is using caps. Most encounters with the Liberty Navy end up involving capships because of the large number of 'indy' capships that join up with liberty - everything from gunboats to dreadnaughts. Granted, most of the [SA] / =LSF= I've seen lately are using VHF's or bombers rather than capships, but there's still quite a few caps in liberty space, and Gafwmn is -always- camping alaska in his dreadnaught (no fun gaf! :angry:).

The other primary enemies I've got to deal with as an Order pilot are Das Wilde, the Keepers, and the Outcast alliance (generally in the form of smugglers trying to move through minor/100). Almost all of the wilde and keepers are in fighters/bombers, while those outcast smugglers are using transports and I'm unsure of how effective missile turrets would be against them.

Outside of players, I've also got to constantly deal with nomad and BH NPC's outside of Toledo, which include occasional gunboat/destroyer encounters.

Now... the one really appealing thing about missile turrets, at the moment, is ease of use. Due to lag and my terribad aiming skillz, I land -maybe- one in twenty shots on player fighters/bombers. The little buggers just dodge too much! :P
The Missile turrets require little to no aiming... really, I just need to have the target in front of me on my screen at the time of firing, and they'll track (at least, that's what it seems like, if anyone has input on how missile turret 'lock-on' really works please let me know).
The downside is relatively low damage, and very low damage-per-second when trying to use sustained fire against targets. In my experience... missile turrets dont even scratch an enemy gunboat's shields, so using four of the things would make my GB completely useless against anything larger than a bomber. The exception here is that, in group pvp situations, my missile turrets could potentially knock weapons and systems off of enemy capships once my group has taken down the target's shields.

I did some testing with various weapons tonight in open singleplayer as well - using a liberty gunboat (fairly manuverable and small, which is what i've heard the zoner GB will be) with four missile turrets and nothing else. Out of about 30 NPC fighters, I was only able to kill three or four - After a few volleys of missiles at each, they'd be nearly out of guns/equipment and would simply retreat. Of the few gunboat/destroyer NPC's I faced, all were fairly easy to kill... though I had significantly less sustained damage output against them with the missile turrets than I had with even four basic GB turrets.

So... ultimately, is it worth going completely anti-fighter/bomber by stacking up four missile turrets on the only four available hardpoints?

One other thing, supposedly the zoner GB will have a mine dropper as well - any ideas on how effective nuke mines from a gunboat would be in anti-fighter / anti-capship combat?

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[globalplayer-svk]

i think mjolnir is the right player to answer this:) good in bobmer and also good in gb.

when you are in gb and bomber is flying from front directly to you. you shoot missiles when he is really close so he has no time to avoid them.

and to speed. gb on thruster has 130, missile 145 that is 275. more as fighter/bomber on thruster.

i was using 2 kusari missile turrets on my afa gb. and they are the best again fighters/bombers. because damage to hull is one thing, but 2-3 hits, and ship is without guns. and what will make 95 percent of enemies when they loose guns? leave fight. becase they ar nothign more as flying target.

and missiles vs tranports/trains. again, their weapons are gone when yo u(sub) target them and you still can have enough guns to destroy that ship. (when you mount 2 missile turrets and 4 normal turrets)

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[Tenacity]

and missiles vs tranports/trains. again, their weapons are gone when yo u(sub) target them and you still can have enough guns to destroy that ship. (when you mount 2 missile turrets and 4 normal turrets)

Again, problem here being that the zoner GB, at this point in time, will only have four turret hardpoints. Two standard turrets wont even beat the shield regen rate on most ships.

So really, it's either all missile turrets or all battle razors/infernos, I need to specialize because of the limited capabilities of the ship.

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[Nysquist]

and Gafwmn is -always- camping alaska in his dreadnaught (no fun gaf! :angry:).

And we cannot just not love him for doing us that favor.

However, I'm not a great pilot I'd say but if a gunboat goes up against a few fighters with a missle loadout, I wouldn't say she can "Walz trough". The only thing fighters have to do is to stay on you butt and fire on you're engines.

Every fight I've had vs a gunboat when I was able to get behind them I've survived, but if It took more than 20-30 seconds to get up there I allways get blown out of space.

[Elvin]

Oh you guys reminded me... I have a REALLY REALLY stupid question, when you loose guns in fight, will you have them after the respawn?

(Sorry for breaking the topic)

And from what Ive saw, not experienced, skiled bombers/VHF were usually loosing to misle gunboats, altough missle gunboats were totally unefective aginst other BG or Transports(with 100k shield)

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I buy things I don't want to make an impression on people I don't like.

[mjolnir]

2missiles:
A good bomber pilot will always loose against an average GB pilot with missiles. 2 good fighters will always loose against average GB with missiles.

With good bomber/vhf pilot I mean one that can dodge, with average GB I mean a pilot that knows how to e-kill and when to fire missiles.

more than 2 missiles: Any pilot under ace has no chance.


GB missiles don't work in turret view. They also don't work much if you lag.
I would avoid any full missile loadout, yes it can be great against fighters only. But I consider it abusing missiles, and yes you will be hopeless against even a transport.

With a 4 turret GB I would go for one missile and 3 turrets - to up damage you can use 1 cerb, or 2 Cerbs and 2 missile turrets. Keeping same gunspeed is most important factor when hitting fighters.

Anyway if you want to try in a fighter against my GB with missiles, or the other way PM me and I will meet you in Connecticut.

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Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[Tenacity]

Thanks for the offer mjolnir, but I currently have no gunboats or fighters on my account - only a cruiser and transport.

Maybe after 4.85 is released.

Anyways... I'm not that concerned about only being effective against fighters. I really dont care about the smugglers moving through order space, and there's other order pilots that can take them out. A lot of order pilots also fly bombers, cruisers, and battleships - so if I can make myself effective enough in taking out enemy fighters/bombers, they can handle the enemy capships. I prefer to pvp in groups, and it usually ends up being larger-scale group combat when the order goes up against the keepers or liberty.

Really, the RP I'm writing for the gunboat focuses on stealth use. It's a prototype ship, designed by zoners and modified/refit by the order with experimental tech that allows it to remain hidden from scanners. Most RP involving the ship will be covert/stealth/infiltration missions where little to no combat is involved - but I still need to be effective in pvp when helping the order with group battles and engagements.

Oh you guys reminded me... I have a REALLY REALLY stupid question, when you loose guns in fight, will you have them after the respawn?

If you do not die during or after the engagement, yes, you lose them. Basically, if your equipment is blasted off and you land/dock afterwards, the equipment is permanently lost. If you die during the engagement, or suicide afterwards, you gain all your lost equipment back on respawn (at least, you get weapons back, i dont think CM's/CD's/Mines respawn)

And we cannot just not love him for doing us that favor.

Really, I dont have too much of a problem with liberty protecting alaska, primarily against smugglers/powertraders who are using the system as a shortcut (because it also annoys the order - those ships are going through our space as well).

The biggest issue is that having a dreadnaught camping the gate in alaska prevents any sort of stealth incursion into liberty by the order for RP purposes. Technically, we're supposed to have cloaking devices, but because those dont exist within the mod and players tend to ignore your stealth RP in systems chat, it makes things difficult.

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[Robert.Fitzgerald]

The biggest issue is that having a dreadnaught camping the gate in alaska prevents any sort of stealth incursion into liberty by the order for RP purposes. Technically, we're supposed to have cloaking devices, but because those dont exist within the mod and players tend to ignore your stealth RP in systems chat, it makes things difficult.

Well, the Order don't seem to be in New York yet, as they are having lots of trouble in Minor and Alaska.

I like the idea of a Dreadnaught camping the gate. The Liberty Navy surely has picked up on the intrusions by gate-hackers, so they stationed a classified Dreadnaught to guard the inside of Alaska. Might be the staging grounds for further attacks into Omicron Minor, as well.
Plus it stops all those silly named Smugglers using the gate.

About cloaking, how would the Order get through the Gate? Surely the defenses would see the gate opening up, shining and so-forth.

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~Gateway Interstellar~ Gateway)Gibraltar
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[Tenacity]

that gate is really the only path the order has into liberty space. Without it, we've got to travel all the way around the edge of sirius and through rheinland or bretonia.

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[Jihadjoe]

Ok... here is the problem. I am a fairly good fighter pilot. I fly largely vanilla ships. I have more than once come across gunboats wth full missile turret loadouts and it is more than unfair.
You basically dump all your counter-measure ammo in about 5 seconds then the next volley of missiles makes you explode, no matter how much you dodge.
Then when people go out and set these ships up with the expressed purpose of doing nothing but hunting xenos, who can't fly anything other than fighters or bombers... not so cool.

I think it would be fine if only the GB missiles used ammo, then we would have way more balence in game.

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