Reason for gunboat missile change?

[Recovery]

You all seem to be disregarding the fact that missiles actually do shield damage to caps now. They've simply changed role to a long-range shieldkiller.

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So basically you're shooting someone else's ship?
PvP abuse, IMO.

<div align="left">[center]<span style="color:#FF0000">[7:31:41 PM] Justin Hopkins: You are a morons.</span>[/center]</div>

[EisenSeele]

Subtargeting with gunboat missiles was pointless, even in 4.85 half their damage was shield based. For the exact reason I'll defer to the balance folk in dev central, but I suspect it has something to do with folks fielding 4 gunboats and just missile spamming the snot out of fighters - since there's no ammo to the missiles, fighters really have no defense against mass missile use by light caps. Switching them to EMP forces gunboats to actually start aiming at their targets (although missiles can still be used to surpress targets, especially bombers, by disrupting their power core).

Errm... shouldn't a group of 4-5 of ships with the dedicated role of being antifighter pose a threat to a fighter?

Actually... shouldn't a group of 4-5 combat ships of ANY class pose a threat to a ship of any other class?

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FEEDBACK

[Mao]

You all seem to be disregarding the fact that missiles actually do shield damage to caps now. They've simply changed role to a long-range shieldkiller.

If that's the case, they're taking the role of the cruisers when it comes to BSes. If devs wanted to make the GBs useful against caps, they should include some of them in a new class of heavy GB and leave some as light GB with the stats in 4.86 and the possibility to mount normal missiles, not what we have now.

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[Ursus]

Missiles were kind of OP against fighters in 85--I had a dual-torp gunboat and was able to 1-2 instakill fighters every once in a while. They also worked well when a fighter tried to shield-run since the missiles had good range. You could also use them to supplement CDs against bombers and mines sometime. On the other hand, missiles didn't work in close-up furballs, due to lag. And if you met a turret boat in your missile boat you were going to lose. So to me they pretty well balanced just a little bit OP against fighters. So to me the preferred tweak would have been to reduce hull damage so that it was not possible to instakill a fresh fighter, but you could still finish a shield-running figher. This would be the preferred loadout for my house gunboats that mostly interdict other fighters (my BH gunboat would stay with turrets).

As for use with deshielding caps... the only way gunboats will ever be a threat to caps is if the forward gun is allowed to be replaced with a torpedo launcher. That won't happen. Some of the turret-splitting changes did introduce blind spots on a few of the caps so it's possible to get up in the exaust on a specific ship and not take any return fire. That is something else though.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[mjolnir]

The turret view steering and zoom generally improves gunboat ability to fight multiple small ships. This is most notable when the GB is targeted. The fact that GB missiles don't do hull damage reduces the need to target the GB first so it partly offsets this change.
At the same time this makes GBs with missiles good at escorting capships since the large energy damage can keep bomber from firing Supernova/Nova.

All this said GB missiles are like all other missiles extremely affected by lag, with no lag they are clearly overpowered, with lot of lag they are useless.

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

[ryoken]

Oh well. Missiles useless now for fighters/bombers. New roll for my GB. Killing Embargo runners. Stripping Trans shields. This new "adjustment" just made GB's more useful in pirating, and less usefull against pirates.

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[Hielor]

Oh well. Missiles useless now for fighters/bombers. New roll for my GB. Killing Embargo runners. Stripping Trans shields. This new "adjustment" just made GB's more useful in pirating, and less usefull against pirates.

Why bother with missiles for stripping transport shields? Just use pulse cannons. More damage for 1/3rd the energy.

[ryoken]

Why bother with missiles for stripping transport shields? Just use pulse cannons. More damage for 1/3rd the energy.

True. So useless just became even worse.

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[Knjaz]

The turret view steering and zoom generally improves gunboat ability to fight multiple small ships. This is most notable when the GB is targeted. The fact that GB missiles don't do hull damage reduces the need to target the GB first so it partly offsets this change.
At the same time this makes GBs with missiles good at escorting capships since the large energy damage can keep bomber from firing Supernova/Nova.

All this said GB missiles are like all other missiles extremely affected by lag, with no lag they are clearly overpowered, with lot of lag they are useless.

Erm, to my limited knowledge GBs were targeted first because they were easiest to kill with a snubswarm (fighters only), not because they were a threat. At least this is how it was in every such encounter i've participated in, on both ends.

That, and when I saw a missile armed light-medium turretboat , while flying a GB myself, I knew I'll win the fight with it. Because they're balanced around full-turret setup (well, most of them)

Well, it was before turret steering. After that I didn't have that much GB experience.

[Hawk]

Missiles were kind of OP against fighters in 85--I had a dual-torp gunboat and was able to 1-2 instakill fighters every once in a while. They also worked well when a fighter tried to shield-run since the missiles had good range. You could also use them to supplement CDs against bombers and mines sometime. On the other hand, missiles didn't work in close-up furballs, due to lag. And if you met a turret boat in your missile boat you were going to lose. So to me they pretty well balanced just a little bit OP against fighters. So to me the preferred tweak would have been to reduce hull damage so that it was not possible to instakill a fresh fighter, but you could still finish a shield-running figher. This would be the preferred loadout for my house gunboats that mostly interdict other fighters (my BH gunboat would stay with turrets).

As for use with deshielding caps... the only way gunboats will ever be a threat to caps is if the forward gun is allowed to be replaced with a torpedo launcher. That won't happen. Some of the turret-splitting changes did introduce blind spots on a few of the caps so it's possible to get up in the exaust on a specific ship and not take any return fire. That is something else though.

Very well written response. We'll see if anyone actually pays attention.

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