Free Allegiance Forums

On further thought - I would be happier with this if XRm was perked to be a bit more useful again.


Then the sup team would have the option of Trying the long range option or the close in option.

IF this was done with XRM being useless still, it would mean the defending team has a lot easier job probing for attacks as they know it will be in short range....

notjarvis wrote:QUOTE (notjarvis @ Jun 2 2009, 02:16 AM) Please don't nerf another game ending tech as longer will become the norm, and not everyone has the time for 2-3 hour games every night.....

Then maybe the community at large should learn how to win a game, instead of relying on a high success rate tech that's surprisingly easy to get with the "average" high money settings games are played with. Crutches should be given for legitimate handicaps, not for incompetency.

FigBombers suffer from the same problem as galvs - they scale poorly.

If the community stopped playing ridiculous 30 vs 30 PUGs I doubt FBs would be quite so dominant.

NightRychune wrote:QUOTE (NightRychune @ Jun 2 2009, 02:15 AM) SBs can be countered by diligent scout positioning/pulse probes. HTTs can be countered obviously by the same, and ramming the @#(! out of them when they make their runs.

You can also hunt down tp2 scouts, camp alephs, have people spread out ready to boost to kill a tp2.

Pretty much the only faction which is nigh unstoppable endgame is Bios because of thier low sig + heavy cloaks but as everyone knows the key to beating bios is not stopping thier end-game but getting your endgame first.

I still think the problem is not the figbee (who isn't used much except in conjunction with TP2) but the TP2.

Change TP2 to have an energy limit so you have to drop multiple TP2 to rip in enough figbees (or whatever).

Frooster wrote:QUOTE (Frooster @ Jun 2 2009, 01:05 PM) Change TP2 to have an energy limit so you have to drop multiple TP2 to rip in enough figbees (or whatever).

Let me guess... People demand this balance change for 9+ years.

I was kinda surprised to see how FB's are used, if only because of the name. They are not really used as fighter bombers at all, so much as fast bombers, with people commonly stripping off even the guns. TF FB's don't even need to carry missiles, so they can have nothing in cargo but fuel. They are really more like a kind of manned rocket.

I kinda thought, when I first used one, that they would be used to break a camp, actually fighting through and going on to deliver the kill against a defended base, and I was much surprised to discover the hard way that they were far inferior in dogfighting to regular figs and ints.

So, although this is again a more radical suggesiton, FB's could conceivably actually be granted better combat stats, as one would expect from a purchased fighter, but denied the ability to rip, like ints, if it were felt that the TP2 drop needed to be changed. Then their use would be as above, to fight their way in from a neighbouring aleph.

I agree they are not unstoppable, but my impression is that the TP drop is currently the default game-winning strategy, if early bomber runs fail. Even SB's seem less favoured, because although they are undeniably powerful, you need to keep several people lurking undetected in an enemy sector for a while, while a TP drop can be carried out by only one, and the FB squad is highly mobile and can easily and quickly fall back to defend, or to rearm to hit another sector.

Weaker ABs, longer reload, good dogfighting. So they may fight the defenders while their ABs reload.

I think sup & figbees are one of the most well balanced parts of Allegiance.

In my experience figbee runs fail about 50% of the time as well. More if you count the times when the TP2 scout is killed early, or the probe killed before people have time to rip.

What I don't like is caps being able to rip to the TP probes. That just feels wrong.

***

Early on I was disapointed that figbees aren't true fighter bombers (think of F/A 18 or some other modern jet), and of course the turret on them is totally useless, but as endgame tech they are fun and quite well balanced... for both sides. They are fun to shoot down, and it's exciting trying to live long enough to get ABs off.

I dunno about the balance - I've seen FB runs fail - but I'm kind of annoyed that, as others've mentioned, they're called "fighter-bombers," while in reality they're just a speedy AB-delivery system. I wish they'd get a new name, a new model, and a new default loadout to reflect their true nature. Take away their ability to mount guns or a turret, give them a new model (or at least a re-skinned fighter model), keep everything else the same, and even without changing the balance at all you'd make them feel less "wrong." It would also keep newer players from thinking they can dogfight with them, and we wouldn't have to take time to un-mount everything before launching (not a big deal, but... if it's pretty much *always* a good idea to do that, might as well make the change official). Also, it'd add a bit of diversity in terms of the visuals. It might be a mostly aesthetic change, but I think it'd be a good one.

Unless, of course, they're changed so that they actually can dogfight, which is an interesting idea if their base-killing ability is slightly nerfed to compensate. But if that doesn't happen, it'd be nice to stop tricking people into thinking they're fighters.