This is all plain crazy, balanced by bomber and gunboat whores? both of those ships got utterly nerfed for 485 and the pirate transport is now practically a gunboat, the liner isnt supposed to be a combat ship, its a survival ship and it does it very well with light cruiser botts and armour, if its swarmed it'll struggle.
But newsflash, same thing will happen to a cruiser, two bombers chased a destroyer for the length of a trade lane and it lost all its botts and died just as it reached the base.
Poor mans cruisers? no, poor mans gunboats? yep
Also, Liners are way superior to other transports in defence, a lux liner is much stronger than a shire in armour and botts (30k, 200b).
and finally Hornviper fighter guns suck? off topic sure, but its totally untrue, the weapon type is not weak to the common shield like every other 5,88 and 8,33, so you can use no debs and get away with it, the wraith (main user of said guns) has a Templar core (which is a very heavy VHF) and can fire 5 vipers easily, 4 is a joke. On top of this, they're very hard to dodge and 340 dmg is quite high, there are weaker damage 5,88 that use the same/more energy AND are photon/laser and thus you need to use a deb to make up for shield damage loss, and then you lose overall DPS.
