Idea on Capships, Bombers, and VHFs

[Dab]

Fighter/bomber classes = VHFs with Mini-razors. A fighter/bomber in WWII had no more armor, but was still a little slower than a normal fighter.

A pure bomber was 4 times the size of a fighter.. The bombers in FL carry enough firepower to be equal to that large bomber. Supernovas = Carpet bombs imo, except without an 'area' effect, its just delivered all at once.

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[Akumabito]

"But Chris, with such destructive potential, and such huge energy drains, the ship would need to be big enough to house a thermonuclear reactor". Perhaps, but again, we're One Thousand (1000) years after Sol. We've already sent small nuclear reactors called RadioIsotope Thermoelectric Generators into space since the 1960s on spacecraft. It's reasonable to assume that this technology would have been enhanced and built upon to be able to put a small fusion (thank you HFuel) reactor into all ships

Then why do my fighters run out of juice so fast when firing their guns? :laugh:

To fire an SN requires a massive amount of power, that's where the size difference should come in.

As far as WWII analogies it's simple, that's the "flavor" of the game. If we based the game on reality we couldn't dogfight and fighter/bombers would be killed long before they got to hurt a cap ship.


Back to the point, we could come up with a reasonable way to weight the ships, tying size and maneuverability to mass (derived from armor and power plant output). I think that would be worthwhile, although having a somewhat level playing field might upset some people who now fly ships with advantages.

[bluntpencil2001]

tying size and maneuverability to mass

Mass does affect maneuverability. Higher mass means lower strafe. However, it does make you less likely to be bumped around by other ships due to ramming.

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[Akumabito]

Yes, but what I am talking about is making ships follow a preset mass equation based on powerplant and armor, basing the size of the ship on that plus cargo/nano's so the size makes sense, then using those to determine mass that is plugged into the ships handling characteristics.

That way all the ships are basically equal, some have different strengths and weaknesses but they make sense and are reasonable tradeoffs, so you don't have some ships with huge advantages (BHGS, BD bomber, etc...) and some that just suck (and this would be a long list).

If you have a huge powerplant, the size of the ship is increased (to hold the larger plant and fuel) and the handling is worse (because of the extra mass) but you get more gun time.

[Yngen]

On the whole I agree with the sentiment, Dab.

I don't think you'll get the results you want by changing the BS shields like that though. Capital ships well and truely should be the monstrous terrors we all want them to be. In other words they should be augmented and then their usage limited artificially on the server, perhaps like Panzer says making BS licenses Admin distributed. I don't think making cap ships slightly less dangerous will affect fighter usage one wit.

I see the bombers themselves as the real problem. Look at Piracy. Arguably, piracy makes the most demands on a ship's ability. You must fly the most versatile ship possible when you pirate alone. You have to be able to do massive amounts of damage in a short period of time, be fast enough to overtake a variety of targets on thrust while at the same time be able to defend yourself against lawfuls. The ship of choice for piracy is unmistakably the bomber, no other craft offers that combination of manueverability, speed, versatility and firepower. The only people pirating in VHFs are sorry masochistic purists like myself who like the 'sport' of it. Then you even have whole lawful battlegroups made up of nothing but cap ships and bombers...they obviously don't see a need to have a fighter in the mix...and they are right.

There's a battle of rhetoric surrounding the bomber that should be aired out. Current wisdom places the bomber in the same ship class as the VHF (LF, HF, VHF and bomber are all considered 'fighters' according to ID limitations.) This was the first mistake made on the road to the ultra uber bomber, we equated the bomber to a very heavy fighter which of course led people to believe that they could put fighter guns on the bomber, effectively making it a very very very heavy fighter. Then we made these bombers the same size as the fighters and (originally) made them almost as maneuverable. All of these ghastly unbalancing options became common place, de-facto standards for bomber configuration. People fell in love with the ship and bemoaned every bomber nerfing the same way they are fretting away in this topic. And we're really just putting ourselves through a lot of flames to make uselessly small changes to a fundamentally unbalanced ship. All of these petty little arguments we have about pilot skill and how not to get yourself killed while flying fighter on bomber simply reinforce this ridiculous notion that the bomber is only slightly unbalanced, or that there are only a few uber bombers in the mix that need to be toned down.

Bombers need to be more specialized to their role. Right now with 4 class 10 guns they make better than mediocre fighters, and that just shouldn't be. A bomber's one and only credible weapon should be their payload. They should sacrifice much in terms of defensive capability in order to deliver that payload. The payload should be of such a magnitude as to justify the risk they take.

Solution:

-increase the yield of the supernova and nova torpedos to something that would be almost catastrophic to an unshielded battleship.
-optimize the size of the bombers, i.e. no more 'light' or small bombers.
-remove elite fighter guns from the bombers entirely, put guns or turrets on them such as they would need to complete missions effectively but be useless against a VHF. class 7 guns or less in other words. And no missles.

**There is an interesting option with bombers not explored yet. Why not increase their thrust speed to something faster than normal, like 250. Give them the extra speed to in effect make them 'dive bombers.' You could compensate for the increased speed by further decreasing their maneuverability (much like WW2 dive bombers that were slow turners but fast climbers and divers.) This would of course mean the supernova/nova speed would have to be decreased to compensate.**

There you go folks, bomber hater signing out-

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[AU]Anton_Blix
-Signature by Doom

[Orin]

You ignore the simple fact that a good VHF pilot can annihilate bombers. Even bombers with good pilots.

I'd say give bombers two class 9 mounts and two 10s, as opposed to the current full 10s.

If anything.

[Cellulanus]

You ignore the simple fact that a good VHF pilot can annihilate bombers. Even bombers with good pilots.

I'd say give bombers two class 9 mounts and two 10s, as opposed to the current full 10s.

If anything.

/singed


Also, an idea to toy around with, Super heavy bombers: 4 torp slots, 2 class 10 guns, heavy armour, handles like an x-shuttle or a humpback.

[Dab]

When you can kill 3 Chimaeras in a bomber by yourself, the bomber is too strong.. So no, a VHF can't easily beat a bomber when well piloted. Terrance, Lotek, and some person I can't remember. They are rather decent with VHFs, but still fell to the amazing speed of bombers and their SNs.. And for an example not using the Redcat, Taiiden bomber vs 3 Ravenclaws. Beat every one of them. 2 went to SNs and 1 to guns. SNs are way to easy to hit people with, and bombers have way too much agility.

I'd agree with the 2 9s and 2 10s. But SN speed also needs lowered. (I'm not sure if this is done for 4.85 or not.)

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[Orin]

Sorry mate, those VHF pilots blow chunks then. And or you're an excellent pilot.

SN speed as it stands has an extrememly hard time hitting a good VHF pilot. If it goes any lower, it'll be near impossible, and VHFs should destroy them in almost every encounter.

I still think it's fine how it is, or the small change I stated above.

[Dab]

SN speed as it stands has an extrememly hard time hitting a good VHF pilot. If it goes any lower, it'll be near impossible

and VHFs should destroy them in almost every encounter.

Your saying VHFs should always win, but your also saying SNs should be good enough to hit VHFs.
One or the other..

It should be impossible for those bombers to SN the VHFs.

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