Gunboats balance

[frozen]

normally, people choose to turn off their forward guns, using them only when they are about to hit the hulls of capships. theres no point in having the forward gun active when ure fighting fighters or bombers. it only wastes energy, FYI.

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[AdamantineFist]

The best way to fix the BH gs is to increase size and decrease agility. Maybe the Liberty gb's agility or something in that ballpark. I'm very much against taking off hardpoints.

Mjolnir and Frozen, may I ask what wep loadouts you used against the Corsair gbs and that cruiser.

I ask out of curiousity, not out of a desire to mimic you guys or construct a peewee-juggernaut. I have managed to down 2 Talarcas and 1 Corsair gb with a solarius / 1 battlerazor config.

No snarky responses please. I would like to keep the tone of this discussion civil.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease increase its size.
Size comparison with Wrath:

Waaay too small. Doesn't matter what else you do with it, MAKE IT BIGGER. I don't care what you say about uniqueness, it's still too small for a GS.

I've been flying the BHG gunship, the Liberty gunboat, and the Orca gunboat a lot recently. A few thoughts:

1) The BHG gunship and capship armor issue is more because the the mkVIII is smaller (250 vs 300 cargo) compared to the other capship armors. Making it 300 like the others makes better sense to me than reducing the BHG's cargo size even more, since at 280 it's already much smaller than the 400 cargo of the other gunships. Once you can't mount the capship mkVIII armor on the BHG gunship any longer, its tiny 55000 base armor (half of other gunboats') will hurt them a LOT more.

Nice Idea. Remember, they can still mount universal upgrades, though.

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[jimmy Patterson]

Well I was mostly pointing to GB differences... powersupply is something else....

GB should be able to fire normal guns with some energy drain... just like all other ships (mount any class 9s any VHF.. and very soon you run out of power).

Firing all normal guns while gaining energy is crazy for me. But yes GB with forward gun can have a bit more power.. provided Liberty one loses the extra turret that makes it uber.

In a sense much more uber than the BHG gunship. Also.. "Liberty navy cut down it's production in favour of Cruisers and Avengers".... really? Take a look around Liberty....

EDIT: GBs should be good against fighters... and they are.. with normal guns (1400s), if you mix Cerbs in there => it throws your aim off against fighters... and then people complain that GBs can't hit fighters...

GBs should be "support" against Capships...
now they are very much Swiss army knife of disco.

lib gb uber wow either i cant fly it or you got the wrong ship most gunboats out turn it or out gun it the last thing it needs is to drop a gun ive flowen capships befopre she seems slughis(im allways getting shot in the A** avrage person cant hit fighrets with a gunboat as turret camra moves top slow(besides you need cerbs to do any dectn damage at least with the lib guns keep its power supply or do somrthing to lib guns in genral(there really huingry in the energy department )

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[Robert.Fitzgerald]

The Liberty Gunboat is quite agile, take it against a Corsair gunboat and see...

The Liberty Gunboat is really good. High firepower, high armour (compare to Bretonnian Gunboat) and high agility. It has more weapons than the Rheinland Gunboat, same amount than the Bretonnian one (more agility though) and more.

Removing the 7th turret would be the first step I'd take...

The average person can't hit fighters, well that is a good thing. If Gunboats could just turret mode, then kill a fighter instantly... Well, you'd see a massive shift to gunboats then.

Edit: by the way, if you are basing some of your opinions from encounters with the BH Gunship (Brooke Rosalind, maybe), don't:). That ship is already up for discussion here, I'm absolutely sure it is more agile and smaller than the Barghest. It has almost bomber turning, a small profile and the SAME powerplant. It has 6 forward and backward firing turrets, which can be used to great effect against fighters and bombers due to the agility increase.

In short... The Liberty Gunboat probably won't beat a BH Gunship. Lane Hacker, yes.

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[jimmy Patterson]

lasyt i checked the brent gunboat had more and your wrong on the hacker gunship the bh ont out tuiens me (yes oim in engine kill you should know as you fought me with brookes orca)besides it needs that 7th gun unless when you remove one you repostion the other guns (wghich would ruin its design)so i dont see why you call them uber(yes i know tugboat soled a spyglass but it was in badlands and the bs asked for that little insult)

Edit and you cal lit soo uber firstly liberty is the msot advanced navy there capships should reflect that (be somewhat balanced uniformly like americas fleet was in WW2 as this toime is essnetlaly like that)and 2 every gunship if faced utterly destroys it (thenagain if i had support hin hint navyu faction and security faction0a lort of times im solo or its me and the citadelle and the citadelel cant allways get to me so i fail to see how"uber" the lib boat is

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[Robert.Fitzgerald]

LI Gunboat 1*/7 400 120000 350 24,000,000
BR Gunboat 1*/7 480 130000 350 24,000,000
KU Gunboat 1*/5 360 95000 350 21,000,000
RH Gunboat 1*/6 440 140000 350 28,000,000

Liberty Gunboat has 10k less armour than the Bretonnian gunboat, better turret placing, better agility and more.

Rheinland gunboat has LESS guns, less agility, more cost, 20k more armour.

Kusari Gunboat has less guns (2 in fact), a crap Forward gun (if I remember correctly), 35k less armour, more agility than the other house ships.

Just because the background suggests the Liberty Navy is the most advanced, there is pvp in this game. So, the ships should be balanced reasonably.
If the argument of "advanced-ness" was the case, Xenos ships should probably lose health slowly over time, as they slowly break apart. Order ships should be able to cloak, hyper-drive and more. Outcast ships should be faster and more responsive, which would represent the pilot's cardamine-stimms. It'd be total chaos...

Edit: while the Lane Hacker gunship might out-turn you, it has a large profile for its "class", terrible turret placement for turret mode and low armour. It isn't good at all, compared to the Gunship and the LI Gunboat. I could probably solo one on my bombers, since it is such a big target (wide rectangle..).

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[frozen]

the bounty hunter gunships is truely what yo would call uber. there is no chance, unless youare an absolutely godlike gb pilot, and the other pilot is lower than average, that you will win.

you CAN win against a lane hacker gunship in a Lib gb, having done so myself. you also do not need a cerb based loadout (my preference is 2 cerbs, as always, but there are many people who dont use cerbs at all, ask LSF-Maverick ingame. i dont think he uses cerbs)

currently a lib gb can hold its own against many other gunboats out there. if you want, i can give ou a lil pvp in mine, and show you what i mean:P(though, i be having stupid broken hand, so i might not be able to show u anytime soon >.< )

an average gb pilot shouldnt survive against 2 hacker gunships/ or any other gb. not alone, unless you know what your doing. a Lib gb can be VERY devastating to many ships. hell, ive taken out a cruiser in a lib gb, alone. and a outcast dessie in a practice pvp.

also, as a sidenote, can you please use fullstops etc, its hard to understand some of the stuff you said (no offence)

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[jimmy Patterson]

this is the set i see


Liberty: well balanced no overly advanced in any areas avrage in all aspects
Bretionia: true to there naval history better armor(slightly)decent low energy drain turrets decent speed
Rhneland:heavy armor big guns slow power hungry able to match in turns but there guns and armor make up for it

Kusari: fast nimblwe light armerments there torpdos and main guns are powerful but there aglity should win them the day

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[Tenacity]

So how's the scorpion gunboat stack up in comparison to the others? Just curious.


To address the gunboat vs X issue here...

In my opinion gunboats really have a middle ground. Most gunboats have an extremely hard time hitting fighters - in turret view or 3rd view. The gunboat weapons dont have a quick refire, which makes dodging the shots very easy for even the VHF's - just alternate strafe direction every second or two and you'll almost never get hit. Server/connection lag plays a big part in that too - I try to avoid going up against any sort of fighter in my gunboat (at current, using a liberty rogue gunboat w/ outcast turrets for my pirate character - bloodsail).

Because of their manuverability, gunboats seem to be fairly effective when used in a -support- role against other capital ships - anything from destroyers to battleships. Alone, gunboats dont have the firepower needed to take out a destroyer/cruiser and up (usually) - but they provide more raw firepower than a fighter/VHF, and enough manuverability and shielding to survive fighting larger capships. Case in point - when I was an LSF pilot flying a liberty gunboat, I fairly easily chased a lane hacker spyglass away from manhattan because I was able to 'hide' underneath his ship, and keep up with his manuvers, in a spot where most of his turrets were unable to hit me - but almost all of mine could hit him.

Gunboats seem particularly effective against bombers, in my opinion. I havent gone up against any of the 'uber' bomber pilots yet, but I generally win against those I do fight. Gunboats have more firepower than a fighter, and bombers arent agile enough to dodge the turrets (most of the time). The gunboat is also quick and agile enough to dodge the heavy-hitting weapons (torps+) used by the bomber, allowing it to stay alive more easily.

Really though, the only encounters gunboats truly excel in is gunboat vs gunboat, and even then it's even ground. They dont have a significant advantage against either other capships, or against fighters. There are a few simple reasons why most players prefer gunboats over fighters/bombers (IMO):

1. GB's are much easier to do anti-NPC missions with. They're very tough for NPC's to kill, have a lot of firepower, and dont require excessive flying skill to do well on missions with.

2. GB's give the feel/RP of a capship, but dont cost 100+ million credits to obtain. Gunboats are an easy/quick alternative if the player wants to Roleplay a warship captain without spending weeks trading for money.

3. GB's allow a player to survive much longer in pvp situations when they dont have the uber flying skills some of the fighter/bomber pilots here have.

I fit into all three of those, honestly. The third in particular - i've tried several light fighters, heavy fighters, VHF's, and bombers... and frankly I suck in them, and I know a lot of other players do as well. Part of the issue is connection latency, which makes piloting more fragile craft in pvp exceedingly difficult - the other part is that capships, even gunboats, give combat a 'slower' feel to it. Not everyone wants fast paced adrenaline junkie fighter combat, and not everyone is capable of such either. I prefer combat to have a little strategy involved.

One other, semi-related reason gunboats are popular, especially among pirate and criminal groups: GB's can fairly easily manuver through scrap and asteroid fields, and have the shielding to withstand mines and explosive gas. The first two are the biggest points - a gunboat has firepower and survivability, but unlike cruisers and battleships the gunboats are small enough to escape into an asteroid field where larger ships cannot follow.

Just my input.

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[jimmy Patterson]

as i said before mabye i need retraining mabye im biased as i only flty a drago ngunboat and a lib gunboat i dont know they just feel diffrent

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