saronsen summary of 5.0

[Exterminator]

As a former bomber main, I can confidently state that I have no intention of flying them for now because they're simply too weak to be effective. Even in large groupfights, I feel like I'm not actually doing anything, and am there more as cannon fodder than to provide so much as chip damage. Light and medium gunboats can do anything a bomber used to be able to do, and do it just as good or even better. The fact that formerly bomber-heavy factions like the Xenos and the Mollys are now turning to gunboat swarms to overwhelm fleets that largely consist of fighters and cruisers should be good evidence of this; bombers are only useful against gunboats, on the condition that they can dogpile the gunboat at a 3:1 or even higher ratio. I've always valued fair play in pvp encounters, so maybe it's a skill issue on my part, but bombers just don't feel fun anymore if you want to maintain a modicum of ethics while flying them.

The exception to this is with battleships. I haven't flown heavy gunboats or any caps since the update dropped, but even a swarm of medium gunboats struggles to deal with a battleship—I think this is good from a balance perspective, but not when bombers are also nigh-useless against battleships. Not every faction has access to cruisers, and those factions are usually the ones who get shot at by battleships the most.

I will +1 this as another bomber main.

Currently bombers feel more like super heavy fighters.
Taking almost 5 minutes to kill certain transports who can just use thruster speed and dock on the nearest base is ridiculous.
This new power recharge rework has made bombers dps completely worthless once they use up their core. If I was a transport I would be laughing at the bomber, because I sure felt like a clown when I saw how little damage I can do. I think low powercore recharge feels like an issue on other classes too. It's just not fun.

Freighters now feel like they the tankiness of the old gunboats. I need to drain over half of my powercore in a HEAVY BOMBER using Scorchers to destroy the hull of a NPC freighter flying in a STRAIGHT LINE. When I was shooting transports it felt like they have the cruiser armor and can just thrust forward to the nearest base laughing at you firing your NERF guns. "Trade ships" in general are now way too tanky and this feels like it was a huge oversight. + they were given a free CAU8 buff.

I did try flying a gunboat and @Petitioner is right. Gunboats do a lot of things current bombers do, but better. And I noticed a lot of players are now just spamming gunboats in battles, because they are simply more effective.

Years ago people were arguing #nerfSNAC to prevent instakilling on fighters and that bombers are supposed to shoot caps instead. Their role as anticap class was nerfed as well, multiple times in a row now. Low range, low damage output, they have nothing to properly deal with caps except maybe Nova torpedo, and that torpedo is only reliable against large caps. Incapacitator feels like it tracks far worse than it did before the patch, but perhaps it was lag making it useless. I am not looking to make bombers 1 vs 1 a cap or something like that, just don't make my ship feel as useless as turd in a dumpster fire.

Currently a lot of bomber weapon are undewhelming or too situational. SNAC is meh and ASURAS is completely pointless without any useful advantages over SNAC. Nova is super unreliable against anything smaller than a battlecruiser. All it takes is some turning to evade it and this is the only proper "special" bomber weapon that can deal decent hull damage.

Those "light torpedoes" are not something I enjoyed using. Way too low range and I can do the same job with SNAC better. Rockets were kinda fun to use before the buff so I think they could be finally one useful "heavy gun" that bombers can use, so I need to try them again when I get a chance. As for regular bomber guns, seems Arbalest is overall the most useful choice. Others depend on your setup on rest of the slots. No comment about coded guns, I dont have them.

With bombers losing majority of stuff that was fun about them and most of their anticap role, there is just no reason to fly them in this state. Grab a gunboat or a cruiser instead.
Fighters seem like the most fun class to fly right now and Im not a fan of the pinball physics on caps.

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Join the Corsair Brotherhood / [TBH]