Liners used to use gunboat turrets, as I understand. That was perhaps overkill - or just a little strange, given the pulses and razors and their seeming slant toward war as opposed to defense.
The idea of placing good turrets on a liner, however, have been somewhere nearer to a goodly premise concerning these massive, battleship sized vessels that are supposed to be used to haul people. They're armoured beasts, designed to get their cargo from place to place safely.
I'd think that they, in realistic RP and common sense, could support better weapons than transport turrets quite easily.
Gunboat turrets, especially considering the razor/pulses, would be too much.
But a somewhat better transport turret might be a good idea.
It could be a liner turret that uses more energy than a normal transport powerplant has, so normal transports couldn't use them. Or maybe they'd just take up like 10x energy and normal transports could. They could definitely used some added firepower.
Maybe the turrets would cost 1.5 million.
Take up a hunk of power.
550 Hull, 275 Shield. 1400 Speed. 3.3 Refire.
Something along those lines.
Liners are battleship-sized ships, and in all reality, they could and should support better turrets.
As a disclaimer:
I have owned a slave liner. Once. I never entered any sort of combat with it.
I sold it after game mechanics made my RP impossible.
I don't currently own a liner. I have no agenda to push here, other than the agenda of general idea-throwing to refine viable solutions to potential problems.
I am simply posting what I've been thinking for some time.
(I am also aware of Liner "whoring" that might take place. Transports have been getting weaker and weaker, it seems. The fact of the matter here is that these large ships needs faster and better turrets, not just more armour - which has been getting taken away slowly and slowly, update by update.)
I'm not sure why I follow that if the Liners get stronger turrets developed, then the normal transports wouldn't follow suit, especially the -fighting- transports.
As there are transports, such as the BTrans and the KTrans (the Container transports) The pirate transport, and possibly the armoured transports and the Pirate Train, who's main defense (not that it actually counts as defense...) is actually their straight up and up firepower, I feel they would well be designed with whatever combat advantage they can be given...Isn't that why the Container Transports have twelve turrets?
I'll point out, here, that Cargospace is much more expensive than fighting capacity (ninety five million credits is the cost for upgrading an Ltrain to an Atrain, for the benifit of a larger profile, slower turning, and 500 more cargospace for some reason), as transports occupy the same price range as Gunboats, and up into the price range of Cruisers (some liners are even more expensive than cruisers). Given the cost of these ships, I would expect that they be able to deal much more pain to fighters and bombers, and even gunboats, than they currently can. I would expect, in all fairness, that they be the Floating Fortresses that their hundred million or higher price tag indicates. Piracy can and should be something done in groups, but even being pirated by a Gunboat should not feel like a ganking. As it is, a single fighter can take out a shielded, armoured train, of 120k armour, over a distance of 60k. The argumet was made that over 60k, a transport could easily reach a friendly base, and escape. True, most distances aren't that far. But assume the fighter is firing for about 70%(its not 100% of the time, but I made up the number, add your own for the thought experiment if you like) of the time, there, as it dodges and rechharges. Add in another fighter, and one assumes that the total ammount of distance traveled would be 30k, but I suggest it would probably be even less, as the average of the fighters has to spend less time doging, can fire more, and has a chance for more manuvering such as mine laying. That's Two fighters, the minimum needed to effectively hold down a tradelane without leaks. Even the one, and most every transport is struggling to survive.
I'm fine with the idea that tradeships should cost a lot, because that keeps more traders out, which has been accepted by the devs as good for the rp of the game (which is why the trade routes aren't very good, why things are getting more expensive, etc. Money is worth more because the devs have decided trade is good for the game) But damn me, if the traders are going to cost from 50 million to one hundred and EIGHTYFIVE million credits, (and assume you don't have a highlevel trader to -buy- that highlevel trader with...and it looks a whole lot more expensive) then they should, by all rights, be worth more in a fight. Transports, today, are ridiculously underwhelming.
Trader Factions, and Traders, have not gotten any of the love. They're the punching bag for the rest of the system, and even the pinnical of Transports are easy pickings for the lowliest of the fighting ships. I'm aware that traders are at the bottom of the food chain...but one could make it so the lowly carnivores have to travel in packs.
Trading indeed has been nerfed, in spite of its having an increased variety in 4.85.
But in response to the original post, don't underestimate the firepower of a group of Class 7 turrets. I've knocked out more than a few unsuspecting ships with Type 3's.
I agree. Realistically, it is highly expensive to haul massive amounts of cargo across massive distances. Escort fighters aside, shipping companies would spend a lot of capital ensuring the safety of their transports. The largest cost of creating a transport is the hull and engine, and upgrading the weapons system is a no-brainer if you look at the cost and benefits.
In reality as well, traders need better defenses. Escorts can be hard to come by. While armour is useful, it only delays the inevitable.
Basically, I think a transport should be able to shrug of 1 fighter and escape from 2. Gunboats, transports should be able to fight, but probably succumb to. I'll leave the methods by which this might be achieved up to better people than me.
EDIT: I'm chiefly referring to larger ships; trains, liners and the like. Smaller transports should dodge more than fight.
No wai man, linorz are overpowered! Nerf mor plox!
>.<
Really, something so big and chunky requires you to be half blind to miss. Pirates already have funtiem playing with it if they happen to be in a fighter or bomber, and yet its hull gets sheared.
A more viable option as opposed to stronger turrets, however, may be upgrading its shield class. Supertransports could also use a stronger shield due to their inability to do... Well, anything other than trade, really.
Who's saying Liners are underpowered? in what universe? Liners are the hardest thing to pirate by far, they're usually very hard to stop before they make it to a station without multiple pirates, 700/700 b/b and light cruiser armour (after a nerf) makes them a single gunboats nightmare, lone bombers have issues too.
Compare them to Ctrans (the most comparable transport) and they make the ctrans look weak, 200 less botts, 30k less armour and in the Bret ctrans case just as big and twice as easy to hit.
And the real kicker? 100 more cargo, the Lux liner's 4300 cargo makes it a real cracker of a trade ship (unless the infocards are out of date). it costs twice as much, but so does the Atrain and doesnt really count as balance.
While it's true that Liners should, logically, be very heavily defended, based on the overall Freelancer picture, they should also be primarily stationary and very rare. There are two vanilla Luxury Liners - the Shetland and Hawaii.
It just comes down to realism vs fun and balance. And it's hard to get a good middle ground.
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