bomber balance

[tansytansey]

The new bomber guns give fighter escorts less of a chance to protect heavy caps.

Have you ever considered.. maybe that wasn't the point of this change? Could it be possible that the developers are going somewhere with this other than what you want to see?

However, these bombers guns are not fast enough in order to hit gunboats to any great effect. In order to hit a gunboat reliably, you have to get very close to it. This leaves you being a fantastic target for razors, missiles, solaris guns, regular guns, everything a gunboat can throw at you.

That's okay. You already had to be relatively close to SNAC Gunboats any way, never made a difference. Most Gunboat pilots are noobs who think they're flying a fighter with bigger guns any way. I'll just continue shooting at Gunboats while they're trying to turn to face me.

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats. Now it is worse.

I would have said it was tipped in the Bombers favour before... Only Gunboat I've ever died to in 4.85 was a haxed Kusari Explorer with Eagle turning. Then again.. most gunboat pilots are complete idiots who think dual missiles are still worth a damn.

Bomber vs heavy cap balance was already broken in favour of the bomber. Now it is worse.

There is no balance between bombers and heavy capital ships. Bombers destroy capital ships, that is their role. Is a saw mill unbalanced for cutting through logs with no resistance? Cause that's a good metaphor for bombers. I motion we move to attach giant saws to the front of all bombers for 4.86.

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

I would specualte that the developers are weary to change the balance of fighters vs bombers (vs caps) too much at one time. I would think that the Developers have made this change to see how it effects fighter vs bomber combat first before 'nerfing' bombers and buffing fighters in the same version. Doing both could have drastic concequences..
But the developers are now in the position to make the changes you want, before if you buffed fighter guns it would also buff Bombers. Now, it won't.

Alternatively

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats. Now it is worse.

Get Gunboat Escorts, noob!

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|Ashes and Draya's Epic Adventure|Ashes "Nighthawk" Yotaka|Nightfall|Eva Jones|
[5:50:49 PM] JakeSG (William Darkmoor) says: I like you, Ashes. You're more cynical than God.

[Jonathan_Archer_nx01]

Ok, I'm gunna drop in to this.

In the last version (4.85), the problem we had was that fighters could not kill bombers in time to save the heavy cap they were escorting. Take the following situation as an example.

- Four fighters are escorting a battleship.

- Four hostile bombers attack said battleship.

- The fighters fail to kill the bombers in time to save the battleship because they are incapable of doing enough damage.
The above situation had nothing to do with bombers being able to use fighter guns. Nothing at all.It was to do with fighters being too weak in offensive terms. The way to cure that problem would have been to increase the projectile speed of fighter's guns making them more accurate, and thus killing the bombers faster, allowing the escort fighters to protect their cap.

Rather ironically, the current bomber guns, particularly the shieldbuster, have made bombers more effective against heavy caps. Those shieldbusters strip a battleship shield in almost no time at all. Since battleships are easy targets to hit, the projectile speed doesn't matter.

The new bomber guns give fighter escorts less of a chance to protect heavy caps.

However, these bombers guns are not fast enough in order to hit gunboats to any great effect. In order to hit a gunboat reliably, you have to get very close to it. This leaves you being a fantastic target for razors, missiles, solaris guns, regular guns, everything a gunboat can throw at you.

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats. Now it is worse.

Bomber vs heavy cap balance was already broken in favour of the bomber. Now it is worse.

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

To top it off, it is no harder to supernova fighters or bombers. All you need is a fighter with you to drop their shield.
To clarify... The problem with the last version was not that bombers could indiscriminately kill fighters. If you got two pilots of equal skill, put one in a bomber and the other in a fighter, then the fighter would win, by fighting in a fashion which didn't give the bomber a chance to supernova him. Achieving this isn't hard... There are several million ways to fight which don't involved sitting infront of the business end of a supernova. You will never find me jousting a bomber unless I know it doesn't have the energy to fire a supernova.

The recent changes in bomber balance have addressed the issue of bombers killing fighters. This was never the issue. The problem was fighters being unable to kill bombers in time. That has been made more of a problem by making bombers more effective against heavy caps.

Actually, this has helped:

Bombers can no longer use:
<strike>-Fighter guns
-Fighter missiles</strike>
-mini razors
-infernos
-starkillers
-sunslayers

[pruskis92]

note: i believe most of people can't use MR to hit a bomber, so fighter vs bomber are restricted to guns, normal fighter guns and missiles.

Their fault.

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[... kur nubėgo?]

Sn whoring will be kept the same. It might make things a bit more difficult, but. Bomber + hf which keeps the shields down may be quite a good team.. heh

And Lancer - X do not talk for all about that. : ) razor is ment to kill bombers and it does it well.

anyhow all in all I dislike a lot of changes were made. Heh, but it seems I'll need to adapt. Actually I was mad about update.. but in sake of solidarity i keep my tongue beyond my teeths. Just one note. If your a noob facing skilled pvp player, it doesnt automaticly means that your opponenets layout / ship needs a nerf. Please remeber this before you go whine on forums making pools and such.

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Omega Pirates Guild

History of OPG | Antonio "Vilkas" Devivar

[Radic]

are u kidding a fighter can take out a bomber any day if they have the same standed of gear if u know wat i mean. bombers just cant attack as well fighters. i think the balance is good on disco with fighters an bombers

[Jihadjoe]

Have you ever considered.. maybe that wasn't the point of this change? Could it be possible that the developers are going somewhere with this other than what you want to see?

That might well be true, however having been party to at least some of the balance talks, I have at least some idea of the general intention of the balance team.

That's okay. You already had to be relatively close to SNAC Gunboats any way, never made a difference. Most Gunboat pilots are noobs who think they're flying a fighter with bigger guns any way. I'll just continue shooting at Gunboats while they're trying to turn to face me.

While it may be true that you have to be close to hit with a supernova, due to the nature of the gun (one hit does a lot of damage, long recharge time) you don't have to stay close in order to make it effective. You dive in for one shot, then move away again, keeping yourself out the way of the gunboat's guns.

The new bomber guns require you to stay at close range in order to do damage to a gunboat's shield. This is not a good thing to do, as it means you are opening yourself to get chewed up by the gunboat, or instakilled with razors.

I would have said it was tipped in the Bombers favour before... Only Gunboat I've ever died to in 4.85 was a haxed Kusari Explorer with Eagle turning. Then again.. most gunboat pilots are complete idiots who think dual missiles are still worth a damn.

Heh. I remember that KE. Was interesting to fight for sure. Killed my Xeno eagle too.

There is no balance between bombers and heavy capital ships. Bombers destroy capital ships, that is their role. Is a saw mill unbalanced for cutting through logs with no resistance? Cause that's a good metaphor for bombers. I motion we move to attach giant saws to the front of all bombers for 4.86.

I love the idea of having a massive saw attached to the front of my bomber. I'd love one for 4.86, but this may just be because I spent yesterday sorting out a fallen tree at my house, which gave me an excuse to get the chainsaw out.

On a more serious note, Cap ships should be able to survive bomber attacks by the virtue of having interceptor escorts. Fighters, escorting a battleship or cruiser and preventing bombers from killing it. This promotes teamwork. As it stood in the last version, bombers were able to kill a heavy cap long before the fighters could kill the bombers. Sure, the bombers would all die afterwards while fighting the escort fighters, but the purpose of the escort is lost by the inevitable destruction of the cap they are supposedly protecting.

This was the problem with the last version, and now bombers are even more effective against heavy caps, meaning this has been even further buried.

Get Gunboat Escorts, noob!

Discovery Gunboatlancer Reunion!

In order to demonstrate the way I think we should see combat ships being flown (in terms of numbers), I shall use text size.

Battleships
Cruisers
Gunboats
Bombers
Fighters

Kinda, pyramid like.

My prediction with the new bomber balance is we will see the following.

Battleships
Cruisers
Gunboats
Bombers
Fighters

Just my opinion however.

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[mjolnir]

In the last version (4.85), the problem we had was that fighters could not kill bombers in time to save the heavy cap they were escorting. Take the following situation as an example.

- Four fighters are escorting a battleship.

- Four hostile bombers attack said battleship.

- The fighters fail to kill the bombers in time to save the battleship because they are incapable of doing enough damage.

True, but you might notice that BS weapons/loadouts have kind of been changed as well. But off course that's hard to notice or test after half a day of new update. Which is why drawing conclusion after half a day of new update is pointless.

Anyway countering this issue was not the goal of this change . Yes it possibly needs addressing in the future but for various reasons it was not directly addressed now. Ask some of the testers or maybe even read the dev forum that you are a member of. About a week ago there were discussions if one very important additional measure against the problem you mentioned should be included, I though it should, but in the end it wasn't introduced.

Edit:

That might well be true, however having been party to at least some of the balance talks, I have at least some idea of the general intention of the balance team.

Oh really?

Rather ironically, the current bomber guns, particularly the shieldbuster, have made bombers more effective against heavy caps. Those shieldbusters strip a battleship shield in almost no time at all. Since battleships are easy targets to hit, the projectile speed doesn't matter.

This is highly questionable. The shieldbuster has similar damage/energy ratio to Colada (which can very easily be changed) and it needs the bomber to actually aim and point towards the target. Something Inferno or Mini razor don't require => bombers are more open to fire from escorts.

Gunboat vs bomber balance was already broken in favour of gunboats. Now it is worse.

A lot of people wouldn't agree with that one. Sure 1vs1 gunboat will mostly win, but 2vs2+ it's another story.

It also makes gunboats as escorts less likely to be attacked, so they can do their escorting job. Which they are rather very good at.

Bomber vs heavy cap balance was already broken in favour of the bomber. Now it is worse.

See first paragraph.

What has this new bomber thing achieved? Nothing.

It achieved exactly what it was meant to achieve. Made killing fighters in a bomber a bit harder. Yes it's still possible to kill a fighter in a bomber, but sure it's harder now than with a bomber that has 3 Debilitators, Paralyzer and dual mini razors.

To top it off, it is no harder to supernova fighters or bombers. All you need is a fighter with you to drop their shield.

To clarify... The problem with the last version was not that bombers could indiscriminately kill fighters. If you got two pilots of equal skill, put one in a bomber and the other in a fighter, then the fighter would win, by fighting in a fashion which didn't give the bomber a chance to supernova him
...
...
The recent changes in bomber balance have addressed the issue of bombers killing fighters. This was never the issue.

Bombers killing fighters 1vs1 were not that big issue yes. Groups of bombers killing groups of fighters were

In say 3vs3 fight it was fully possible to use 3 bombers and win because bombers had no big problem with keeping fighter shield down even if the fighter wasn't attacking them. Then when you had 3 bombers firing SNs at a fighter who was shieldless all the time, it didn't take that much of skill to hit one of those 60 SNs fired on the fighter.

As you said, now "all you need is a fighter to drop their shield". Sure, but if we continue the 3vs3 example then if 1 bomber has 2 fighters with him it means: a) less shieldbusting power than before, b) 1/3 SN shots fired towards the enemy and from one avoidable target.

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

[ProwlerPC]

I got to play around with the new Bomber stuff now. Interesting, so far I kind like it, it's different that's for sure. Those guns use energy and can miss readily. If used heavily (particularly against Fighter or Bombers) the SNAC doesn't get enough energy to use. I find this new powermanagement needed for bombers a rather positive addition as it maked the pilot more careful on what, when and how much he shoots like all the other ships rather than being able to fire continuously and only worry of the SNAC draining power. Those guns do indeed require skill to use. I can hit often with SNACs but with careful aim which is done since there is so much time between SNAC shots. I can't say that I have the same accuracy with those guns, however, as tendancy is to fire them as normal guns......adapting. Destroyed over 20 NPC Hogosha at level 16 just now to test the aims. Gonna try fighting a bomber in my Eagle soon too.

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[Jihadjoe]

Edit:
Oh really?

I spent the week during which this idea was proposed and started to get tested in the dev bazaar chat. You seemed not to notice. I will not drag up the reasons I have stayed out of the balance chat recently. I will also not bother dragging up the reasons I tend not to bother with the dev forum.

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[... kur nubėgo?]

Mjolnir, show me an idiot who uses fighter pulses to take out bs shields?

Snac is all what is needed. In this point nothing changed about the big caps. Only range was increased of bomber pulse guns, which makes bombers which are not underfire (and from 3 bombers 2 will be not underfire, believe me on this one) more powerful agianst big cap shields.

Anyhow all these changes will increas tridentes in new york (all perhaps its all divine plan about LABC becoming more useful around NY ... could it be?), imperatot gunboat and legate lolwuttery in gamma and such... so thanks.

Il just silenty wait for another wine wave..

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Omega Pirates Guild

History of OPG | Antonio "Vilkas" Devivar