bomber balance

[Dra1003]

id say give the changes a week or so before drawing a conclusion.

Ill get into a few fights on my bomber and see how it affects me..

---

Ive had enough of disco for now. I might be back at the next mod release.

The Master of all things cyborg

Bio Extensive Research

[Zero755]

As a SN whore I approve of these changes :3

And yes, you need to rebuy the guns only, the SN and novas and CDs are there to stay.

I also approve of these changes. The fact that fighters will joust a bomber and then complain about the overpowered bomber will never change. To the VHF pilots, the only way to balance this is to turn the bombers into a modern equivalent of the Hindenburg with 0 shield and 5 armor.

Ohh I know the perfect solution... Lets put an SN slot on the barge and use it as the new bomber....

Fighters will complain because a brick flew through their window and sucked their crew out into space.

lawl

---

[Jihadjoe]

Ok, I'm gunna drop in to this.

In the last version (4.85), the problem we had was that fighters could not kill bombers in time to save the heavy cap they were escorting. Take the following situation as an example.

- Four fighters are escorting a battleship.

- Four hostile bombers attack said battleship.

- The fighters fail to kill the bombers in time to save the battleship because they are incapable of doing enough damage.


The above situation had nothing to do with bombers being able to use fighter guns. Nothing at all.It was to do with fighters being too weak in offensive terms. The way to cure that problem would have been to increase the projectile speed of fighter's guns making them more accurate, and thus killing the bombers faster, allowing the escort fighters to protect their cap.

Rather ironically, the current bomber guns, particularly the shieldbuster, have made bombers more effective against heavy caps. Those shieldbusters strip a battleship shield in almost no time at all. Since battleships are easy targets to hit, the projectile speed doesn't matter.

The new bomber guns give fighter escorts less of a chance to protect heavy caps.

However, these bombers guns are not fast enough in order to hit gunboats to any great effect. In order to hit a gunboat reliably, you have to get very close to it. This leaves you being a fantastic target for razors, missiles, solaris guns, regular guns, everything a gunboat can throw at you.

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats. Now it is worse.

Bomber vs heavy cap balance was already broken in favour of the bomber. Now it is worse.

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

To top it off, it is no harder to supernova fighters or bombers. All you need is a fighter with you to drop their shield.


To clarify... The problem with the last version was not that bombers could indiscriminately kill fighters. If you got two pilots of equal skill, put one in a bomber and the other in a fighter, then the fighter would win, by fighting in a fashion which didn't give the bomber a chance to supernova him. Achieving this isn't hard... There are several million ways to fight which don't involved sitting infront of the business end of a supernova. You will never find me jousting a bomber unless I know it doesn't have the energy to fire a supernova.

The recent changes in bomber balance have addressed the issue of bombers killing fighters. This was never the issue. The problem was fighters being unable to kill bombers in time. That has been made more of a problem by making bombers more effective against heavy caps.

---

[Durandal]

I also approve of these changes. The fact that fighters will joust a bomber and then complain about the overpowered bomber will never change. To the VHF pilots, the only way to balance this is to turn the bombers into a modern equivalent of the Hindenburg with 0 shield and 5 armor.

Ohh I know the perfect solution... Lets put an SN slot on the barge and use it as the new bomber....
lawl

Right, because me and half the other people complaining about this joust bombers. :rolleyes:

No. I know how to fight bombers. This does not change the fact that they shouldn't be able to kill a damned VHF. Period. I also liked how the devteam bastardized my hull buster cannon idea (unless somebody else came up with it first, doesn't really matter anyway), added shield busters too, and kept the SNAC as the main damage dealer to the hull.

All of these problems can be fixed if we just change the way bombers deal damage, using the main guns and torpedos as hull busters and the SNAC as a shield buster. By the way, novas don't just sit in space anymore when you fire them so that's actually a step in the right direction.

Another thing. Why are you people all admitting to being SN whores? Oh, wait, I know. Because it works.

Edit: See, there you go. I guess this means Joe can't fly a fighter either?

[Tommeh]

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

To top it off, it is no harder to supernova fighters or bombers. All you need is a fighter with you to drop their shield.

/signed
Exactly my point.

---

[Jihadjoe]

/signed
Exactly my point.

Not exactly my point. And probably the least important part of my post.

---

[looqas]

Ok, I'm gunna drop in to this.

In the last version (4.85), the problem we had was that fighters could not kill bombers in time to save the heavy cap they were escorting. Take the following situation as an example.

- Four fighters are escorting a battleship.

- Four hostile bombers attack said battleship.

- The fighters fail to kill the bombers in time to save the battleship because they are incapable of doing enough damage.
The above situation had nothing to do with bombers being able to use fighter guns. Nothing at all.It was to do with fighters being too weak in offensive terms. The way to cure that problem would have been to increase the projectile speed of fighter's guns making them more accurate, and thus killing the bombers faster, allowing the escort fighters to protect their cap.

Rather ironically, the current bomber guns, particularly the shieldbuster, have made bombers more effective against heavy caps. Those shieldbusters strip a battleship shield in almost no time at all. Since battleships are easy targets to hit, the projectile speed doesn't matter.

The new bomber guns give fighter escorts less of a chance to protect heavy caps.

However, these bombers guns are not fast enough in order to hit gunboats to any great effect. In order to hit a gunboat reliably, you have to get very close to it. This leaves you being a fantastic target for razors, missiles, solaris guns, regular guns, everything a gunboat can throw at you.

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats . Now it is worse.

Bomber vs heavy cap balance was already broken in favour of the bomber. Now it is worse.

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

To top it off, it is no harder to supernova fighters or bombers. All you need is a fighter with you to drop their shield.

I was thinking along the same lines. To me the original bomber problem was not about them being too good against the fighters in 1 on 1. It was this that fighters were/are useless as escorts. Or in 1 vs 1 it took considerable amount of time to grind down a single bomber. I guess that's not changed in any way. The fighter still risks the SNAC and now the new more beefier hull busters.

Anyone who's been in fights with fighters vs bomber vs caps knew that caps had very few chances to make it out alive. As well as bombers are not the end it all weapons in a furball. Sure, there are people in the server that are good shots in SNACs in group fights chasing someone up, but the general consensus was you are better off having a fighter in those furballs than a bomber. Unless there are a lot of bombers around, when sooner or later you are going to eat the snac. In 1 fighter vs 1 bomber the bomber was way more practical since people get tired of dodging and start jousting.

All in all. It's well and good that bombers got their special slot weps, BUT at the same time fighter weps should have been buffed more to enable downing a bomber faster.

---

Flying under radar.

[Tommeh]

Not exactly my point. And probably the least important part of my post.

Well,it is my point.
That's why I only quoted that part.
I still think snac should be modified to avoid bomber's ability for insta kill fighters.
But,best thing is to wait a week or two.to see how things work in practice and reality.

---

[Zero755]

Right, because me and half the other people complaining about this joust bombers. :rolleyes:

No. I know how to fight bombers. This does not change the fact that they shouldn't be able to kill a damned VHF. Period. I also liked how the devteam bastardized my hull buster cannon idea (unless somebody else came up with it first, doesn't really matter anyway), added shield busters too, and kept the SNAC as the main damage dealer to the hull.

All of these problems can be fixed if we just change the way bombers deal damage, using the main guns and torpedos as hull busters and the SNAC as a shield buster. By the way, novas don't just sit in space anymore when you fire them so that's actually a step in the right direction.

Another thing. Why are you people all admitting to being SN whores? Oh, wait, I know. Because it works.

Edit: See, there you go. I guess this means Joe can't fly a fighter either?

Like I said before, pilot skill plays a bigger factor than any (reasonable) nerf. Yes a bomber should be able to kill VHFs if the Bomber pilot is better than the VHF pilot or the VHF pilot is just not that skilled in general. You joust a decent bomber pilot and you die... its your own dumb fault. Not the Bomber's, not the dev team's, not anyone's. And the only reason SN hoaring works is because of the overwhelming majority of people that try to loljoust a bomber in a fighter or another bomber.

Besides, all that crap is moot, Joe is right in the fact that nothing was really fixed. 2 average bombers can easily take out any cap in the mod. 1 exceptional bomber can now solo almost any cap in the game. My suggestion if you really want to survive the big bad bombers... Get a GB, throw some cap armor on it, put two missile turrets on it, and lolspam missiles at the bomber.

In the right hands, bombers still pwn. In the right hands VHFs still pwn.


EDIT*
So in conclusion, if you dont want to get instakilled by a bomber... dont joust it.

---

[Jordi]

The recent changes in bomber balance have addressed the issue of bombers killing fighters. This was never the issue. The problem was fighters being unable to kill bombers in time. That has been made more of a problem by making bombers more effective against heavy caps.

/signed.

Now one good step forward is that bombers cannot use same weaps as VHF.
Next step has to be:
-Increase fighter weapons projectile speed
-Drop bombers agility.

BTW thanks for dropping the Falcata's agility. It was really tiresome trying to battle those things.