Bomber balance

[Sonja]

Currently, if you are good enough, you can still destroy all manner of things in a bomber. The top tier bomber pilots still find it relatively easy to hit things with capital ship killing weapons.

For instance, yesterday I was in my Rheinland bomber, Mariko Kietan, and myself with my escort of three fighters engaged a Corsair fleet whilst on our way to kill the keepers (this was in Omega 5, a direct threat to Bretonian space). I got a few kills with the nova, and a few kills with the supernova. One particularly hard nut to crack was Globalo in his titan, but a nova solved that problem (he was comeing head on to me, but strafing like a madman).

Truth is, though, I never now take my bomber anywhere without a fighter escort. It is imperative that I have one, because even avid bomber pilots cannot withstand the firepower of a hoard of fighters now. Many times I saw myself charging my energy bar, waiting to fire the supernova.

It is very hard to use, now, and for the slower bombers, its balanced. The issue with the mini razors can't be stopped, but the maneuverability of the highest bombers is a problem.

It is my opinion that the bomber class limit of agility should be around 1.08 for the most agile bombers.

Back on to the mini razors, this isn't a problem caused by bomber balance. Apart from this gun, slower bombers are properly balanced. For me it is a challenge to kill even slower, less well pilotted fighters in my bomber in good time. The new bomber style, especially the nova torpedo, has forced me to develop some new tactics which also worked surprisingly well in the first proper bomber engagement I've had since the mod came to the RP server. The mini razors are a problem, but the set up is weak against capital ships. I have no doubt that if I met two bombers in a cruiser with a loadout of my choice, they wouldn't be able to kill me before they either both ran or both died. It's a trade off, and I can't see a clear cut way of solving this trade off.

Slower bomber's, byenlarge, are not very hard to counter unless their pilot is Dboy. What makes it easy to shoot down a bomber is what makes it easy for bombers to shoot down fighters. The mini-razor. Put a few into the slow bomber's while your turning and you have significantly depleted the nonabot and shild battery supply of that bomber. What I see time and again though, is no one who has actually developed proper anti-bomber tactics. Everyone just jousts bombers as they do against fighters. Complete stupidity! And they expect it to be easy at that point to kill bombers? One must remember that you are facing a ship with multiple insta-kill weapons, and jousting with that simply isn't going to work. Its not a failure of bomber balance now (with the slow bombers, that is; the fast ones need some maneuverability taken away). Its the failure of the common tactic used by most people.

To AoM: My Rheinland bomber uses 4 advanced debilitator guns and 2 debilitator turrets, so that isn't a problem, for me at least.