Capships, increasingly slower fighters? Or strategic weapons?

[Dusty Lens]

Hmm, that's a good start and somewhere along the lines of what I was mulling over.

Gunboats already fill that role nicely, or so I've observed from my multitude of encounters with them, both in the cockpit and facing off against them. Many of the generic gunboat turrets offer a less than substantial return against smaller craft such as enemy bombers, but Solaris turrets and missiles make for exceptional anti fighter craft weaponry while offering limited capabilities against heavier ships.

But let's use a vessel that I fought against the night before last. A pair of gunboats, both rogue (my own armed with three solaris cannons, a cerb and two missiles and the other with what appeared to be... Uh... A full rack of Cerbs) were able to wear down a Liberty battle cruiser and ultimately destroy it without necessitating the use of a single bat.

Truthfully the only real use that his ship provided was to serve as a distraction of the enemy ship's fire on occasion as he wasn't able to sustain his loadout long enough to provide much real use, but upon reflection I'm fairly certain that I could have bested him solo based simply on the fact that my ship was able to easily absord the damage he could dish out at closer ranges and then fall back beyond 1k where he was unable to land appreciable hits on my craft.

So let's recap how he might have been able to more effectively carry the fight.

1) If the weapons on my rogue gunboat had their ranges greatly reduced to be in line with an anti-fighter role. Say to 750 meters to keep at odds with the maximum capabilities of current fighter weapons. This would have demanded that I remain within his appreciable kill zone to net out damage. The gunboat cannons on lawful house ships would provide a longer range to fall in line with their emphasis of being ships of war as opposed to piracy, but my own rogue vessel would have been hard pressed to carry on the fight while sitting within a battlecruiser's turret smackdown zone.

2) A greater emphasis on weaponry designed to strip my shields, such as pulse weaponry other than the inferno, would have made it much more difficult for me to rely on my greatest strength as a gunboat: My shields. A gunboat stripped of its shields is in a very difficult spot indeed, and the vulnerability of my powerplant makes heavy pulse weapons that much more effective when used to reduce the power available to me.

Gunboats can very easily swarm and destroy larger craft because there are few options available to put them out of the fight. Cruisers and Battleships have few options available to neutralize such craft and are forced into a battle of attrition, which the gunboats will simply win as the one can retreat a short distance while the others carry on unheeded, only to return when target priorities have been switched.

The trick would be enabling these tactics against Ultra Heavy fighters such as gunboats (as that is largely the best way to view them) but not granting them overwhelming potency against smaller craft such as bombers and fighters.

Ergo, I have contributed nothing save a bit of reflection. Dangit.