Re-balance transporters please

[Sciamach]

Honestly the fact that the term "battle-transport" exists makes me cringe

Transports aren't combat vessels. They're meant to haul their bay-loads to and from desired locations- they shouldn't also be a viable combat solution to enemy forces.

A specialized combat vessel should always triumph over a jack-of-all-trades ship by reason of basic logic. The amount of equipment, internal structuring, wiring, targeting computers and power lines all make up for a rather large portion of a ship's internal volume. The benefit of transports over combat platforms is the increased size of the cargo bays at the expense of defensibly, aka at the expense of those things mentioned before that allow for the turret systems.

Disco's woeful misrepresentation of this is one of the many major disconnects between basic logic/science and that which is in place in the game- that has caused my latent apathy for the game. It is just too much ludo-narrative dissonance for my liking.

Furthermore, this could largely be the reason that transport groups don't hire escorts anymore- sure one or two are present in large convoys like the ones IMG run, but they're used primarily as lane scouts, not as actual defense vessels. I've no actual evidence or instances to point to on this one but it stands to reason that a reduction in transport weapon power or effectiveness would drive players to want to log, fly, or hire escorts more often. Interpret that as you will.

Finally, I'd like to point out an example of the overly inflated nature of combat effectiveness in so called 'battletransports." I'd ask that any and all following ignore the context of the video I'm about to link, and simply notice the PVP situation at play here.



22:43 for a good idea of the number of ships at play-

10 IMG vessels, 2 of which are snubs || 6 BD/Order vessels on-camera with another 2/3 or so off-camera that either come in later or aren't close enough to my vessel to be viewable at the timestamp.

Both sides were roughly equal in numbers, and yet the key difference present was that the IMG vessels were almost unilaterally transport vessels. And yet the BD side lost grevious amounts of ships. Combat vessels, took heavy casualties to transports. Now, a number of other factors were also at play here: IMG convoys like this are generally well coordinated meanwhile the BD group wasn't (use of Teamspeak vs lack of use of Teamspeak.) and the individual skill of the pilots at play here. Personally, I flew terribly when this was recorded. That much im fine with admitting. What im not fine with, and what I'd like to draw the reader's attention to is 22:45, wherein the transports were all firing on the battleship.

Now, the battleship exploded not long after but can we just take a moment to think about that? A massive war machine, dedicated to the destruction of other vessels at the behest of their owners, rendered obselete and destroyed by transports. Not only does that not make sense in terms of lore, but honestly- when something like this can be pulled off by assembling a few friends ( this is an extreme case im presenting, it's still possible with 2-3 people with enough patience), then what really is the point in having dedicated battleships besides genitalia compensation?

Any further buffs to transports could just make this situation worse- versus capital vessels transports just have too much of an advantage in my opinion.


Now, back on-subject with the OP after that tirade: should transports really get a buff to anti-fighter capability? Sure, but only slightly-
The turrets you're mounting are defensive tools, not offensive. They should be there to scare off would-be attackers long enough for a transport to have a chance at getting away. Anything more and we start to take away the usefulness of anti-fighter platforms like gunboats.

So whats the solution in my opinion?

-A slight increase in range and maybe refire/damage to transport dulzians
-A drastic increase in power requirements or drastic decrease in damage to Charons
-and hull reduction or cargo space reduction to battletransports to account for their increased capability

Anyway, just my opinion. I'ma go take cover in my bunker now to avoid dying to the inevitable fallout of this post. Cheers~

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.