Since this was bumped, I'm going to jump in again.
From a balance perspective, this makes basically no difference whatsoever. Transports (with armor!) are already immune to any instakill short of like, battlecruiser mortars, and I don't see those being used against them very often. The main benefit is to those transport pilots that regularly fail to buy regens, because they forget autobuy exists or something. Mostly it would provide better immersion, since it looks weird to see a gigantic supertrain go from flaming to unscathed in a fraction of a second. Giving them a handful of bots also solves the pirate restocking issue Actually that's obviously not true, since the transport will inevitably use the bots if dying. Even if it won't help them, so at least to just deny the pirate.
I don't see why this shouldn't be done (besides the effort of going through every transport entry in shiparch).
(08-25-2019, 10:57 AM)Capt. Henry Morgan Wrote: I'm sure, in a 12 page thread (Edit: Now 13 pages), that this has been brought up before, but why stop with transports? Why not merge the bots on anything larger than a fighter? It would make a nice distinction between single-seat ships like snubs and freighters and larger, multi-crewed transports and capital ships.
Not desirable for Gunboats, as they are intended to be instakillable by certain heavy cap weapons. For cruisers, eh. It's pretty difficult to instakill a cruiser and they could probably stand to lose their bots, too.
Edit: Honestly I wouldn't mind it for freighters either, although I'm sure there would be many tears about not being able to SNAC them anymore.
Double Edit: St. Denis, 5ks are supposed to be vulnerable. Prior to their nerf, we had the ridiculous situation in which a Shetland, in a situation in which transport weaponry wasn't an effective defense, would actually outlast a Shire.
If you maximize your cargo space by using a 5k you should also have your survivability minimized. A Cau8 5k not named Zoner Whale is still reasonably durable anyway.