Fighter-Bombers.

[Andon]

Exactly. That could somewhat balance out the fact that you'd have to buy missiles for each run rather than having them free. That and the fact that the typical FB is lost after a run anyway

[HSharp]

Would be annoying like PT Bombers of old when before PT's were free but ab missiles were not. If the missiles are as weak as it was for PT bombers then it might work but then it would really suck for smaller games.

[Adept]

QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jun 3 2009, 10:35 PM) Personally I think figbees are an epically cool addition to the game (what's better than launching against multiple targets and trying to down as many as possible in a giant furball before they blow your base? or more exciting than guiding your figbee in range while trying to avoid a hail of minigun fire?) but if they work every time without fail, they are a lot less cool (what's the point of even launching to defend if that's the case?)

Along the lines of a special missile for figbees, it might be neat to have one but make it really short range (500? 300?) that way the figbees have to travel farther. This would have the added benefit of not allowing figbees to leverage the ubar power of AB2/3 upgrades. Along these lines, making figbees more manuverable would increase the fun factor for the figbee pilots, while still giving defenders a fair chance of shooting them down, given the limitations of the special missile.

TA mostly nails if for me.

It could be nifty if the figbee would mount something like half strength ABs, with reduced range (or maybe the 2/3 scaling of mini AC). Boosting towards the base is fun, and looks cool, but maybe the fuel load could be much bigger but the top speed brought down... so instead of 6 sec bursts / bottle one could boost along madly all the way, but with the same average speed on the regular TP2 attack range or 3 - 4 km. If several bottles of fuel would help the figbee maintain the 120 or so speed for longer, it would make it more feasible to hit next sector bases through an aleph... but with the half impact ABs you'd only get the equivalent 1 - 1.5 ABs / figbee.

If the turret is to ever see use, it should be a full size AC. Even then the pitiful hitpoints of the figbee may make it a bad idea, though 6 turreted figbees with full size ACs sounds strangely fun for a bigger game.

/edit

Same caveat as previously. I think figbees are fun, and fine as they are. Just brainstorming away above.

[RoboTel]

The idea of expensive missiles that are very heavy is interesting. It definitely would be a worthwhile feature to test, though testing itself can be a pain. If you made them single missiles per rack, they could still have a use in small games as a single ship would be more likely to get multiple shots off at the base because defenses are generally less complete. The weapon even now is better with large games so I don't see this as a massive change in that regard.

[Makida]

Unless there was a way to add a station warning for fighters carrying the special fig AB missile, I think this is not a great idea. When you see fighters in a sector, you would have no way of knowing if they're coming to hunt miners, camp a base for a following bomber, or actually blow up your base... I'm not sure how you could balance that out. Unless you gave the fig-specific AB missiles ridiculously low damage, a couple of figs could near-instantly take out a teleport receiver, and a couple of figs in an otherwise empty sector would not normally be considered a threat... And I doubt making *every* fighter a potential anti-base threat that the whole team has to scramble to defend against would be very fun. >_>

This is probably one of the reasons why a separate FB ship was introduced to begin with, rather than just special missiles. 6_6

[Death3D]

QUOTE (girlyboy @ Jun 3 2009, 06:07 PM) When you see fighters in a sector, you would have no way of knowing if they're coming to hunt miners, camp a base for a following bomber, or actually blow up your base...

Hence the 'galving down the shields' part.

[Andon]

Having an AB missile that doesn't damage shields would be... interesting.

In order to make FBs work, you would have to make galvs damage major base shields. This would be interesting, especially from the point of view of a Sup/Exp team, because it could allow an easier time using regular TTs....

[Psychosis]

instead of trying to make fighters into antibase weapons, keep the figbee, just make it more Fig-ish

i would suggest making it slightly larger than a fighter but with more hull, keep the turret, up the agility, but keep the acceleration and top speed lower, so its a slow fighter, you should still be able to dogfight on a basic level, and it gives the defenders more time to stop a run

[zombywoof]

QUOTE (Psychosis @ Jun 3 2009, 05:01 PM) instead of trying to make fighters into antibase weapons, keep the figbee, just make it more Fig-ish

i would suggest making it slightly larger than a fighter but with more hull, keep the turret, up the agility, but keep the acceleration and top speed lower, so its a slow fighter, you should still be able to dogfight on a basic level, and it gives the defenders more time to stop a run

I see no problems with this, nor do I see a problem with also making ABs weigh enough to bother a figbee's dodging to the point where with ABs, they're not worthy of dogfighting, but after they're off they're at least serviceable. You know, to prevent people from having to dock and relaunch to defend against a bomb run. After all, they are fighters.

Of course, I also see no problem with them as they are, they're a really good end-game tech.

[Makida]

@Death, Andon: Ah, you mean like a missile that has a 0% damage modifier against base shields, but 100% against base hull, or however these numbers work? That might indeed be interesting. Though then you'd definitely have to be careful with the mass of the missiles, since if they need to galv first and then launch missiles, the fighters would have to be able to survive for a fairly long while...