Fighter-Bombers.

[notjarvis]

QUOTE (Shizoku @ Jun 13 2009, 10:44 PM) I think simply increasing the size would balance things a bit better. Right now they are difficult for a pickup game team to shoot down, increasing the size would make things easier for those voobs who can't hit anything smaller than a bbr.

While this sorta makes sense if you just consider Figbee runs as something that should have a reasonable chance of failure, if you consider the whole game I think

Figbombers are a game ending tech that will not appear in a game until at least the half hour markMost games should end within an hour or soReducing the chance of figbee success will extend games too long - which is a bad thing

Basically - game ending tech should end games. If you get a big Figbee run going - after researching all that tech, you should have a good chance to win without multiple failed attempts which can drag on and get quite boring.

[Makida]

While games dragging on can be boring, it can also be incredibly exciting to successfully defend against a big run and feel like your team just barely won a chance to recover and make a comeback. While I don't disagree that "game ending tech should end games," I for one am not convinced by the logic "the team spent a lot of money on the tech, so it should win." That's part of it, obviously, the reward for defending miners and bases and running a good economy while hurting the enemies', but... I mean, I don't think that's an argument in itself that figbees can't stand to be a little tiny bit easier to defend against. Simply collecting enough money to win is what economic victory games are for, after all, and how popular are those?

[Koln]

Girly, i don't think you'd find D so exiting if it was easy as hell, would you?

However, I find it more exiting trying to chase that tp2 scout that got into my sector .

[Weylin]

QUOTE (Shizoku @ Jun 15 2009, 07:03 AM) Encouraging the idea that garr tech is a viable tech path is bad mmk?

I never said it was a viable tech path, not on it's own at least.

But if you got Adv tech, and money to spare, gunships are a good defense against fig bombers.
Having a pilot and two turrets tied up in one ship isn't really a good thing, so once they are done defending, they should probably dock and get in normal ships.

Ints and figs are probably better defense if you're a good pilot, or camping an aleph, otherwise the 2K range and 33*4 damage output does rather well on quickly launching and immediately dealing damage on surprise bomb runs.

If people probe properly, they should never have to be used though.

[DasSmiter]

Currently I think an increase in F/B size is enough. Maybe we should look at, in the future, making the F/B the Galv Game ending techpath (that makes bombers not necessary for sup?) and the Hvy Bomber the XRM Game ending techpath (while keeping both as options for sup).

That way sup keeps it's 2 options for game enders. We'd also have to make a SRM Torp or something like a weak AB for the F/B and look at removing bombers from the requirements for it or replacing it with some other tech in Sup, but that combined with the size nerf should make F/Bs able to be defended against and make them sufficiently different from the XRM end game to make them 2 unique paths.

[Raveen]

QUOTE (Shizoku @ Jun 15 2009, 05:47 AM) It has always been and always should be a supplementary tech path. The idiocy of people rushing hvy scouts, gunships and dumbass tech like that should not be rewarded by giving them a good end game tech as well.

QUOTE (Shizoku @ Jun 11 2009, 12:56 AM) Shudder to think someone tries something new and innovative.

[Death3D]

Yeah, Sup needs to have something against IC.

[Dorjan]

QUOTE (spideycw @ Jun 8 2009, 07:41 PM) Well they are a bit slow and fuel is low for miner hunting (unless you catch it at the optimum time) but we used ours for whoring/con pushing and it was less like an ungainly fighter bomber and more like a machine of death.

At least 4 people fell to minepack, 2 too AB 3, the rest to my Gatt 3's and Broods AC3 and I don't think we even had hull damage. We were just as agile as a regular fighter really and I really agree with what others have posted that fighter bombers should not handle so well.

Also I should mention we only died because we were completely out of ammo.

Is a fighter bomber a fighter than bombers I ask you? Or gunship Lite?

Well, a fighter bomber is only bad when they have their ABs loaded, they can't mount galvs and they have removed most of their fuel for a turret. You have to pay extra so why shouldn't it be good? Takes two pilots too.

What is their ammo stock? Same as an Adv.Fig?

[takingarms1]

QUOTE (Raveen @ Jun 14 2009, 12:46 PM) Hell, you could move Heavy Bombers and XRMs to Starbase if you like and make FBs the official endgame tech of Sup.

It's a crazy but half-way decent idea. Definitely it would change the game, as it would make garr a tech path with end-game capability, and it would give XRM capability to any tech path (XRM int bombing ftw?)

But it would definitely shake things up. Definitely would require some serious beta testing before a release, though.

[DasSmiter]

Alright here's my thoughts on making F/B different from XRM

SRM AB 1 has a dmg of 400 while SRM AB 2/3 have a dmg of 500. They're in DM08 which gives them a 10x damage modifier against Bases. An Adv Expansion (without modifiers) has a total hull + shield of 30k. So normally for the sup endgame you boost in about 12 F/Bs and you only need 6 AB3 to pop it. This is basically the same thing as popping in a bunch of XRM bombers, except that they don't need to be close to the base to be killing it.

How to change that: Give F/B an advanced version of Galv. This version of galv would basically just hit large bases, a group of 12-15 F/B would be able to take down a base in close to 30 seconds. To this end, I would give Adv Galv a dmg of 25, a shot interval of .25, a range of 700m, and put it in DM09. DM09 has a 1x dmg modifier across the board (except to asteroids). This would create a weapon that can fire off 100 dmg a second to a large base which means that a group of 10 F/B kills an adv base in about 30 seconds of full tilt firing. It's been a while since I've seen enough F/Bs survive that kind of tp2 drop, so the intended use would be to pop through alephs and nail a base. Of course we'd also have to allow F/Bs to use regular booster1/2/3 so that they make it to the base without getting shredded. This gives defenders that exhilarating "I'm defending a base yo!" feel like you get from Galv runs. But it allows a defending team to do just like they would against a galv run on a light base, except you actually have a change of defending because of the longer time to kill.

Also you'd be able to kill IC hvy bases with it, effectively making Sup useful against IC again

Also, in comparison with the ttk of Galv versus a light base the Adv galv versus a large base would take about double the time for a 10 man team with no defense to kill the adv base than the light base

~edit~
Wrong numbers.