If you could change one thing about discovery what would it be?

[Sand-Viper]

If it had to be one change, just one....


It would be to make bomber weapons have faster projectile speeds.

Right now, they're a meager 350m/s. While the damage and refire rate on these weapons seem to make them great, they currently suck against pretty much everything at the moment.

I think the concept of bombers having separate weapons that drain energy from their cores great (As opposed to the old style of endless firing with fighter weapons). However, I just don't think that they are living up to their potential. Bombers are supposed to be cap killers, right? And the 350m/s speed on their Energy Cannons/EMP Cannons justifies that, right?

Well, not exactly..

Let's take a look at this shall we?

Currently, all gunboats can thrust at a speed of 150m/s, while bombers may thrust at 200m/s. So that's a 50m/s difference. Then, take into account bomber Cannons. In a perfect scenario for a bomber, it will be able to head straight for the gunboat and fire its Energy/EMP Cannons and have them heading at the gunboat at the speed of 400m/s, after taking into account both targets are moving.

However, this will never happen. What normally happens 95% of the time, is that the gunboat is firing on the bomber. This makes it so that the bomber must now turn and dodge and strafe, and all that good stuff. At best, the bomber will only be able to take pot shots with his/her primary cannons. As well, gunboats being as small as they are, will most easily dodge these incoming shots. Thusly, in the end, the only way for the bombers to have any affect on the gunboat, is to SN them, which cannot be fired constantly.


Now I'm not asking to make bombers more effective against fighters, moreso than I am against gunboats and even cruisers. Personally, I would like to see one of two things happen to Renders and Lacerators (That's Energy and EMP Cannons for those that do not know):

Either,

A: Beef up the damage on both weapons, so that, the shots that do hit actually make a difference, or,

B: Bring the speed of the Lacerator and Render to 500m/s. A 150m/s speed difference is definitely noticeable from a slower speed of 350m/s. To add to B, let me just pull up the quote on the Render Energy Cannon...

As gunboats became more compact and gained agility, bomber pilots were having difficulty engaging them with Supernova cannons or Nova torpedoes. To bridge the gap the Render cannons were produced. While not as energy efficient as the heavier antimatter weapons, the Render's speed allows bombers to target and hit gunboats more effectively.

Now if you take a look at that segment of the info card, you shall notice that, seemingly, the Render was produced to hit speedy gunboats. As of right now, I really do not think that this is true to the info card.


And for those of you who think that "Oh, this'll make bombers too good against fighters," consider this: 500m/s speed projectiles, while they could be argued to be "too good" against fighters, are still slower than the slowest speed fighter weapons. And if anyone remembers the Magma Hammers of 4.84 and earlier, those weapons were 500m/s speed as well. Most obviously, almost no one (to my observations anyway) used them. That was because the Vengeances clearly outclassed them, for their projectile speed was 250m/s more than the Magma Hammers.


[color=#66FF99]TL;DR: Bomber weapons to 500m/s speed so that they hit dodgy gunboats more often. Refer to the paragraph above this one to refer to my "fighter balance" argument.

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