Capital Ship Point Defense

[mjolnir]

so - a bomber can NOT be blown up by even a battleship in a second ... unless its sitting still.

I saw an Osiris killing some 3 bombers yesterday that were not sitting still. One of them even died in under a second yes (since he ate 2 Razors) and the pilot was no noob. *winks to ***** *)

the real problem here is that a capital ship starts with a size like a BHG GS and goes up to the size of a zoner juggernaut ( roughly 500 times larger [ volume ] ) - you don t get that much of a size difference in any other shipclass. - yet, the "supernova" is THE universal weapon vs. them all... and it NEEDS to be ( in the current state ) able to hit both, the BHG GS and the juggernaut and also produce sufficient effects.
to compare that to a fighter. - its having a ship with 4 lvl 10 guns fighting both... a starflier with lvl1 shields and a nomad fighter with lvl10 shields. - and for both, you ll only have ONE type of gun. - the difference is to get a gun that is both.... not unfair towards the starflier AND the nomad fighter - and thats where the trouble starts.

Yes the size differences are what make it messy, obviously an Osiris/BHG BS can dodnge more than half SN shots from 1k, Zone juggy close to none.

- revise the point defense. - it might not kill a bomber, but it should jolly well make the bomber work as hard as the capital ship player. a bomber should pay heavily for a mistake ( "should" yes, that is a subjective term )

I think it does that now (with new flaks)

- revise the shields ( they are currently the best defense vs. bombers ) so that they regen fast enough to make it only possible for 2 very well coordinated bombers to take it down - or 3 that are working together casually. ( 2 bombers working VERY well together should be rewarded indeed... but it isn t required at the moment. - right now, 2 bombers vs. 1 cruiser have a fairly easy life )

Bombers are the main counter to cruisers, so yes 2 bombers have an "easy" life vs cruiser.

- swap nova / supernova roles ( that fixes the anti-fighter role, too ) - even a good SN gunner fails like 50% vs. a fighter ( or more ) when firing his SN. if every SN shot cost 10.000 it would make such behaviour less attractive. - and 70 SN are still enough not to run dry. - the nova would then become the main anti-cap weapon, without ammo, but significantly more torpedo like.

How would you down shields then? Projectiles need "explosion" which then needs to be very large to move BS shield. So this is not possible.

- increase bombers roll / reaction delay - but thats such a global effect that its hard to predict what it does to the bombers as such ( might well go from the best ship down to the worst )

You answered yourself there

- decrease bomber thrusters to 140 instead of 200 - that would also be a HUGE nerf that yields unpredictable results.

Yes exactly as you said.

- turn the supernova into a huge pulse gun ( so that the "gun" type is more logical anyway ) - so it can be used to kill capship shields like before - but a REAL bomber would NEED guns and nova torps to hurt the caps. ( no more universal weapon ) - that would also make SNing fighters pointless, cause if its only a shield gun... they don t kill fighters.

Keeping current SN shield damage and lowering hull one to be the same or just some 90k would be an option. But again this does change the balance vs cruisers and gbs a lot.

=============================================

Flak turrets I don't have any experience with but word is is that they are nigh useless.

Try the new changed ones. And try to learn how to use them. I have heard a of people with same commets like this or loadouts that you point in the end of your post.

Generally: "I need to be able to kill caps, so I use only anti-cap guns, anti-fighter guns suck anyway".
Then people come and post how the caps suck vs fighter/bombers.

Escorts, you say? Yes, they are very handy. When they are around and their connections are stable. Last night in Delta my escort tried to courageously fight off poor connections and 3 bombers who showed up to "own" the BS.

1. How did it go?

2. It's close to impossible to take into account laggy connections when balancing, since they can be on both sides



Nice comparison with RL. As posted before even a Ticonderoga class anti-aircraft cruiser uses missile which have shorter range than those fired by bombers in the other direction.

But yes at that range most of the bomber missiles will be destroyer or miss due to countermeasures. Just like when firing SN from over 1k the BS can dodge some 50% of them. (depending on which bs off course).

---

Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.