These are heavy craft, they have more firepower than they do engines. To make them more fair, they should have no thrusters so they can't fly away quickly, and no evasive abilities to break missile lock. The idea of these craft should be to provide support but not be in the thick of fighting. In exchange, give them armor and shields to compensate so that they're harder to kill by the sheer damage they can take.

 

Some of you will say this is just another rant but it's not. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of every single game where one side has the majority of bombers and gunships wins virtually every time. Scouts and strike fighters simply cannot withstand the firepower these things put out. They hit too hard, too fast and in the case of gunships, from too far away. Something has to give. There needs to be a tradeoff for that firepower. The fact that they have such big guns should indicate that it taxes their engines so that they can't fly fast or turn easily.

curious, to me this sounds pretty much exactly like a rant.

 

i can assure you, as someone exclusively flying strike fighter, that everything can be killed. if you or your teammates can't you need to do something different. i can't tell you what exactly, since i don't know you, but trying to sneak up on gunships using cover would be a start. taking out a bomber, how about you talk to someone and you 2man the bomber for a start. if that fails, try something different...

I'm ok with them having boosts, engine abilities, and lock breakers. Their power drains pretty quickly anyways, but they do need to remove barrel roll from these craft or greatly increase it's cost and cooldown for them. A ship that large should not be able to cover that large of a distance in that short of a time with almost no engine cost. Barrel roll (as it currently works) should be exclusively a scout and strike engine, any others are ok though.

These are heavy craft, they have more firepower than they do engines. To make them more fair, they should have no thrusters so they can't fly away quickly, and no evasive abilities to break missile lock. The idea of these craft should be to provide support but not be in the thick of fighting. In exchange, give them armor and shields to compensate so that they're harder to kill by the sheer damage they can take.

 

Some of you will say this is just another rant but it's not. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of every single game where one side has the majority of bombers and gunships wins virtually every time. Scouts and strike fighters simply cannot withstand the firepower these things put out. They hit too hard, too fast and in the case of gunships, from too far away. Something has to give. There needs to be a tradeoff for that firepower. The fact that they have such big guns should indicate that it taxes their engines so that they can't fly fast or turn easily.

 

no thrusters is a terrible idea. They would pretty much have to crawl to the battlefield, I don't know if you have even tried to pilot a bomber before, it takes longer than any other ship to go anywhere, it takes a while just to get from a spawn to a node already, and it has no missile lock breaks already. Also, adding armor to supposedly balance it, no, without thrusters they move very slowly, any scout or strike would easily take them out before they even got close to a node to do anything. Your idea of a tradeoff pretty much makes the gunships and bombers sitting ducks, especially bad for gunships since they are definitely not built for close quarters combat. Please, this idea of a nerf makes these ships almost completely useless. Ship BALANCE, not nerf it so now the other ships are more powerful. If you think its a good idea to make a ship only about to go 100 meters per second to nodes usually a minimum of 30,000-50,000 meters away (the closest ones anyway, the side ones are a lot further, the number is an educated guess based off my gunship scope it may be further than that) while the other ships would easily be able to take it out before it even did anything, no just no. If you use the excuse of "ship balance" that is just trying to turning the tables toward the opposite end. Lastly, the current afk system would mark the ships as afk or not contributing if they had to spend most of the whole match traveling to nodes, that would effectively kill gunships/bombers, I get it, you want balance, but that is a horrible direction to go in.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Sangrar

FYI many of the abilities of bombers use their engine power as a resource. Also, their boost is not very fast. These two things effectively reduce the effectiveness of boost as a combat tool for bombers. Rarely do bombers have the boost available to do anything of consequence in battle. And since they have no access to maneuvers it really is their only, albeit crappy, escape tool.

So first, gunships don't have thruster components. They have (sensor/reactor/capacitor/magazine) for the Type 2, and (sensor/reactor/armor/magazine) for the type 1.

 

 

Second, the OP actually wants gunships to not have engines.

 

 

That's fantastic.

 

 

 

Also, you know how almost every scout or strike takes barrel roll, and the few that don't have a choice between several other missile breaks? Gunships do not. Their engine components are barrel roll, interdiction, weapon power, and rotational. Even if barrel roll wasn't the best component in the game, you'd still have to take it because the others are only useful if the opponents are playing with apple mice and can't right click.

Gunships and Bombers can't take a fire-fight on with 1 strike or scout. Gunships can at least break missile lock with barrel roll. Bombers currently have no way of doing so I have to eat a missile everytime. Shield regens are under performing at zero or 1 rank vs a master scout/strike gun level.

 

The thing I have hated about bombers is how long it takes me to get to battle space, then get singled out, perish, respawn. The PUGS I fly with know not how to protect bombers. Farting mines only does so much now that people know how to target them within a second or two of launch.

 

Having zero thrusters is a bad idea which makes the lack of maneuverability even more so. When the battle space is in open territory, I'm toast.

Edited February 22, 2014 by CaliJoe
thrust thoughts

It sounds like you are more frustrated with the power scaling from multiple bombers than their ability to use boost. Actually I like it when they boost away because they usually boost away from their mines and drones which are the only things that can give them an advantage in a dogfight.

 

Also if as a strike or scout you are running out of engine power running after a bomber (w/o engine power-up) you need to work on your power management.

I do agree that gunships with their barrel roll seem too fast for their design. They should have to rely on getting the kill or another player covering them for them to easily escape.

 

Usually if you are a scout or striker you have to use most of your engines getting to them since they are already far away (15000m) and then they just barrel roll again.

These are heavy craft, they have more firepower than they do engines. To make them more fair, they should have no thrusters so they can't fly away quickly, and no evasive abilities to break missile lock. The idea of these craft should be to provide support but not be in the thick of fighting. In exchange, give them armor and shields to compensate so that they're harder to kill by the sheer damage they can take.

 

Some of you will say this is just another rant but it's not. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of every single game where one side has the majority of bombers and gunships wins virtually every time. Scouts and strike fighters simply cannot withstand the firepower these things put out. They hit too hard, too fast and in the case of gunships, from too far away. Something has to give. There needs to be a tradeoff for that firepower. The fact that they have such big guns should indicate that it taxes their engines so that they can't fly fast or turn easily.

Nah, removing their afterburners would just be stupid. A better option would be to lower the hp and shields of bombers and gunships. They should be between strike fighters and scouts in hp and shields in my opinion.

Isn't it generally a load-out choice?

 

I'm not really a GS player - but from what I've seen the most useful engine ability on a gunship is the rotational thruster (I am prepared to be very wrong about this - but it was the first thing I put on mine!), which offers no real speed boost at all, other than an option for an upgrade to the rotation within the action itself.

Nah, removing their afterburners would just be stupid. A better option would be to lower the hp and shields of bombers and gunships. They should be between strike fighters and scouts in hp and shields in my opinion.

 

Then you'd need to give them a speed boost to somewhere in between strike fighters & scouts as well, otherwise they'd just be sitting ducks. Bombers especially since they don't have the range that gunships do.

tl;dr OP: "I am bad at this game and can't even keep up with a freaking bomber"

Changes to fundamental mechanics like this are just not going to happen, and people need to focus on:

 

1. Learning tactics to counter ships they think are too OP. (Because they are not that OP.)
   
2. Understand that GSF is a tactical space combat game, not just a dogfighter, and they need to get used to it.
   
3. Work on coming up with minor tweak suggestions to specific skills or components that will improve balance instead of "suggesting" large scale nerfs designed to effectively remove entire ships classes from the game. (Because it's not going to happen.)
   

Changes to fundamental mechanics like this are just not going to happen, and people need to focus on:

 

1. Learning tactics to counter ships they think are too OP. (Because they are not that OP.)
   
2. Understand that GSF is a tactical space combat game, not just a dogfighter, and they need to get used to it.
   
3. Work on coming up with minor tweak suggestions to specific skills or components that will improve balance instead of "suggesting" large scale nerfs designed to effectively remove entire ships classes from the game. (Because it's not going to happen.)
   

 

the voice of reason, at last has come!

The Rockwell (now part of Boeing) B-1 Lancer[N 1] is a four-engine supersonic variable-sweep wing, jet-powered strategic bomber used by the United States Air Force (USAF). It was first envisioned in the 1960s as a supersonic bomber with Mach 2 speed, and sufficient range and payload to replace the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. It was developed into the B-1B, primarily a low-level penetrator with long-range and Mach 1.25 speed capability at high altitude.

 

Who says bombers can't have thrusters.