How about we COMPLETELY redesign gunboats!?

[Lythrilux]

Well, with gunboats being really pointless and all and with suggestions flying around such as what they could be use for and people being to to stfu and just use other loadouts, how about we just completely redesign the way gunboats work?

We could have two types:
Anti-snub Gunships focused on anti-snub only
These ships would be smaller, agile, have lower core and have lower armor. They would thrust at 150M/S, as before. These ships are more orientated to 'insta-killing' snubcraft.

Average Gunship stats would be around:
Hit points: 55,000 to 95,000 (Depending on other stats)
Turn rate: 42.00 to 37.00
Powercore: 400,000
Low cargo space.

They would only be able to mount weapons that work similarly to Gunboat pulses and razors, they would also use 'light' missile turrets. These gunship-unique turrets could be put into a group called 'Light Gunship Turrets' (E.g Class 5 turret slots). Gunships would be able to only equip light gunship turrets.
I guess the turrets could look something like this:

Gunship Pulse Cannon (Same as the old one, with minor alterations):
Hull damage: 700
Shield damage: 13,000
Refire rate: 1.00
Power usage: 45,000 u/round
Speed: 650M/S
Range: 1,500

Gunship Battle Razor (Same as the old one, with minor alterations):
Hull damage: 20,000
Shield damage: 2,000
Refire rate: 1.00
Power usage: 80,000 u/round
Speed: 640M/S
Range: 1,500

Gunship Missile Turret:
Hull damage: 12,000
Shield damage: 9,000
Refire rate: 0.20
Power usage: 100,000 u/round
Seek Range: 2,500 meters
Thrust Speed: 145 m/sec
Lifetime: 10.00 seconds
Travel Range: 1,450 meters
Turn Rate: 464.10 deg/sec (8.1 rad/sec)
Hit-Points: 4,000
Explosion Radius: 50 meters
Detonation Range: 4 meters

As mentioned, these ships are meant to be targetting snubcraft. These would be effective against snub(s) on their own, so Gunships are snubhunters. Gunships would get beaten up by heavy gunboats, Capitals and huge swarms of snubs.

Here's the second type:
Heavy Anti-Gunboat/Gunship and Anti-Cap Gunboats
These ships are large beasts of burden, with high power cores, high armour but pretty slow and not very good at fighting off snubcraft. These would thrust at 150M/S. As mentioned, they're suited for more heavier support roles.

Average Heavy Gunboat stats would be around:
Hit points: 110,000 to 150,000 (Depending on other stats)
Turn rate: 25.00 to 31.00
Powercore: 600,000 to 800,000
Enough cargo space to mount Cap8s

The general idea of these heavy gunboats, is that they're essentially mobile weapons platforms. They're near cruiser-gunboat hybrids, focusing on high firepower over speed in order to provide heavy support against capitals and gunships. They would only be able to equip 'Heavy Gunboat Turrets' (class 12?).
They would be similar to this:

Gunboat Heavy Turret MK1:
Hull damage: 6,300
Shield damage: 2,000
Refire rate: 1.00
Power usage: 75,000 u/round
Speed: 600M/S
Range: 2,500

Gunboat Heavy Turret MK2:
Hull damage: 2,300
Shield damage: 500
Refire rate: 4.00
Power usage: 30,000 u/round
Speed: 400M/S
Range: 1,000

Heavy Gunboat Pulse Cannon:
Hull damage: 20
Shield damage: 20,000
Refire rate: 0.50
Power usage: 100,000 u/round
Speed: 650M/S
Range: 2,000

Heavy Gunboat Missile Turret:
Hull damage: 25,000
Shield damage: 11,000
Refire rate: 0.33
Power usage: 120,000 u/round
Speed: 200M/S
Range: 3,000
(The tracking of these Missiles will be far inferior in comparison to Gunship missiles, to avoid them being used as anti-snub)

And that's heavy gunboats, made for anti-cap and anti-gunboat.

Both missile turrets will use ammo, by the way.

So what do people think? I'm no god at calculating weapons stats, so feedback is welcome.

---

[STILENS]

According to your idea heavy Gunboats should deal more damage then cruisers ?
Madness in my opinion .

[Omicron]

Bassically splitting them into anti-fighter corvettes and heavy hitter frigates. I would not mind that happening but it would put factions with less than 2 gunboats (BHG... and nothing else really comes to my mind right now) on some kind of disadvantage.

---

[Lythrilux]

According to your idea heavy Gunboats should deal more damage then cruisers ?
Madness in my opinion .

Like I said, I can't do calculations ;_;
Surely, they would probably do less damage than cruisers (if balanced properly), but their main weakness likes in their armour and size.

Bassically splitting them into anti-fighter corvettes and heavy hitter frigates. I would not mind that happening but it would put factions with less than 2 gunboats (BHG... and nothing else really comes to my mind right now) on some kind of disadvantage.

That is true, however there's things like Civillian gunboats to choose from and I'm asking that most GB stats get redone, so that we can properly spilt these into categories. Surely there's something on the Order tech chart that could be a gunship, right?

---

[Govedo13]

Gunboats cannot be balanced. They are in the middle of all ship classes. If they preform good vs snubs it means that they would be overpowered against the caps.

If you want to balance them the whole balance should be based on shield reflection.

---

€œ

Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[Lythrilux]

Gunboats cannot be balanced. They are in the middle of all ship classes.

Which is why I suggest splitting them into two classes.

If they preform good vs snubs it means that they would be overpowered against the caps.

I don't see your point, with my method I make it so that Gunships are deadmeat against Heavy gunboats and capitals. They're just effective against snubs, which is what a snub killer should be.

If you want to balance them the whole balance should be based on shield reflection.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you mean altering the shield stats?

---

[Veygaar]

We don't...

We remove zoom down to like 3 clicks on all ships, and return old GB stats.

---

Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Lythrilux]

We don't...

We remove zoom down to like 3 clicks on all ships, and return old GB stats.

And still keep the crap-tier faction/basic guns that gunboats now have?

But yeah, reducing the zoom on both of these would be a cool idea too. Insta-killing works best out of turret zoom and anti-capital gunboats wouldn't really need to zoom out a lot.

---

[Dratai]

I still maintain after all this time, that until gunboats/cruisers get the ability to fire on several things at a time, they're never going to be as powerful as they should be. (basically why are big multi-manned capships only able to handle one enemy at a time?) Because that's how this game works, and I guess in-game doesn't reflect the actuality of such a situation.

Now, I haven't played in ages, but I still recall snubs/bombers being the one thing able to take on EVERYTHING on its own with the right pilot. or in one vs one situations.
Even VHFs that are supposed to be intercepting said bombers, and so on.
I think having an option that specifically counters something like that but isn't nesseccarily powerful against other things would be nesseccary.
But this thing shouldn't be the gunboat. It should be an agile fighter. The bomber ought to be a little less agile in that respect.
And gunboats need to be the sort of palisade that blocks direct fire to bigger caps so said bigger cap can get into range against other, dangerous targets.

Just my two cents from when I last played. which admittedly was a while ago.

---

One of these days, there will be a clever, stylish and/or funny signature here.
This is still not that day, however.

[Mlone]

Gunboats just must not die to cruiser or two bombers!

---

User was banned for: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=106923
Time left: (Permanent)