Logical balance

[Agmen of Eladesor]

Okay, let's look at what has happened:

Bombers have been nerfed with the bomber cannons. As an example of an odd power curve, the BHG Bomber can't even fire more than 3 bomber cannons (even though it has slots for 5) and maintain enough power to fire the SNAC. Before with the class 9 and 10 weapon slots available, you could get lower power guns and actually stand up to some fighters.

So now we take that ship up against it's opponent, the cap ship. You've your SNAC, so you have to run in, aim, fire, and then run while you recharge. Again, two or three bombers working in concert can and will take down a cap - it takes a while, though.

Regarding the comment about barges - when a dev says that a ship is considered a joke, you're in trouble. Players put the time and energy into gathering the credits to buy one of these things so that they can role-play with them, and to use them in game. What is a joke is when the player base isn't respected that way.

And I saw and was part of a barge combat on the defending side - barge had a Cap VIII armor, there were a huge amount of defenders, and the 4 bombers still simply stayed on target and blew the ship up at the loss of one attacking bomber.

Why is this relevant to cap ships? Because the SAME thing applies to battleships and you'll have the same result - escorts against a multiple bomber attack are useless. Even taking into consideration the differences between the Mako and the Osiris, the caps end up being irrelevant to the battles we used to stage in Lost. If a battle was restricted to caps only - then the battleships came into their own, standing off at 2 or 3K, shooting at each other.

But throw two or 3 bombers in on either (or both) sides, and it was quickly a case of which side would run out of caps first so that the bombers would end up shooting at each other. And even with a mixed force - 2 battleships, 3 bombers, and 3 fighters or gunboats per side - the defending fighters can't kill the bombers fast enough to protect the battleships.

So if you're going to say that escorts are a viable option for a battleship, then it has to live long enough for the escorts to do their job. The quickest and easiest answer I've seen for that is a simple one - increase the number of bots and bats available to a cap ship. It doesn't matter what the cap ship is, it seems. My Orca has 350 bats - it doesn't matter whether I have no armor or Cap IV on it, I hit the bat button, and I'm out of bats. Same thing with my Mako, LN Cruiser, or Geb - I hit the bat button because I'm about to die, and I'm out of bats.

So here's a new meme for Cam instead of Fix Cruise. Increase bots and bats.

(What's really sad is how much empirical evidence I gathered when I did my Happy Admin Day event for this back in April. The Venator lasted about 5 minutes against a combined fleet. The Sea Serpent lasted for the whole hour, and wouldn't have died then if I hadn't of lagged. They both had Cap VIII armor and battleship shields - just the Sea Serpent is a MUCH smaller and more manuverable target - like the guys said earlier, Voidrunner against 10 regular ships is a nightmare.)

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.