Pilgrim_Grey Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 (edited) So, a scout has a counter to bombers (emp field), a strike fighter has a counter to bombers (emp/proton torpedos) & gunships have counters to bombers (railguns). In fact, the only ships that don't have some form of counter are the Skybolt & Flashfire (and Imp counter-parts, obviously), is that not a significant enough amount of ships? 2 of 13 ships. Even all of the bombers can mount protons & out range all mines & any non-railgun drone. You're highlighting all the positives to the two EMP attacks and not regarding the drawbacks enough. Drones are never operating alone. Even if the bomber's by their lonesome, as you note, they'll outrange any of their extras and will light you up during the long 2.7 seconds you lock on with an EMP rocket, all while you fly closer and closer to their drones and mines (you'd be an idiot to come to a standstill only 7k meters from a bomber). And if they've been there for awhile or have another bomber buddy, they have targets that are probably out of range of the EMP rocket's explosion. And the EMP blast on the novadive has similar issues with its radius. You have to fly in close to use that, risking all of the above hazards for a blast that won't take out the primary goal of using that EMP blast. Oh, and that blast takes 45 seconds to recharge, so if you have a long duke out with just one bomber (not unlikely), they'll be popping out even more, meaning you have to run out of there or eat the mines they're throwing out, etc. All of this is extremely exacerbated by premades or smart PUGgers (and there are plenty of them) who will camp out on a bomber's stuff and take advantage of it. A bomber and a gunship in one spot is a huge nut to crack, and there are other permutations that can make that as bad or worse. I'm not saying bombers shouldn't be tough, I'm just saying the tools to bug them are not good enough at what they should do. A bomber can survive a straight on duel with any other ship and probably kill it or really hurt it on its own... and that's without counting their mines or drones. The adjustments to deal with the situation should be careful so bombers still have their place, but the presence of even one bomber in their current setup makes far more difference than any one scout, strike, or gunship does. Edited February 16, 2014 by Pilgrim_Grey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armonddd Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Well, it outranges the interdiction drone & has the same range as the missile drone, so it's not as bad as you're implying. Plus if you take the range upgrade, it'll out range missile drones too. But still, it totally only outranges 1 drone... Yup, that 2.6 second lock on time (with the first upgrade) & 11 second coooldown/reload is a killer compared to a 60 s cooldown on drones & 15s cooldown on mines. These two are related, so I'll reply to them together. Matching the range of a drone or even slightly outranging it is not enough. In order to get your lock and launch the missile, you need to fly in a relatively straight line for two and a half seconds and release. Do you realize how awful that is? A tanky strike fighter will die in nine eighths of a second to a scout with burst lasers, blaster overcharge, and rocket pods -- and that's assuming he doesn't crit at all, meaning there's a 32% chance you'll instead die in three fifths of a second. Two and a half seconds of holding a lock and moving slowly means two and a half seconds of fire on you. At the very least, you should expect to take fire from the bomber. It's not unreasonable to assume someone else will swoop in on you. It's certainly worse to also take hits from the drones on the way in. Meanwhile, assuming you do get off the missile, the bomber's just going drop more mines and drones (possibly on your face) because they're off cooldown and he doesn't have to worry about another missile for at least 13.6 seconds. They didn't need to, the counters already existed. I assume you mean lasers? They're useful, sure, some of the time. Again, you have to distract yourself from firing at other priority targets, and if you're running burst lasers because they're good in domination, hitting anything at range is a crapshoot. So, a scout has a counter to bombers (emp field), a strike fighter has a counter to bombers (emp/proton torpedos) & gunships have counters to bombers (railguns). In fact, the only ships that don't have some form of counter are the Skybolt & Flashfire (and Imp counter-parts, obviously), is that not a significant enough amount of ships? 2 of 13 ships. Even all of the bombers can mount protons & out range all mines & any non-railgun drone. The Enforcer and Starguard also get no counter to mines and drones. Further, the counters available to the other scouts and strikes (the ships that actually take skill to use) are largely ineffective, for reasons stated above by myself and others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilgrim_Grey Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 The Enforcer and Starguard also get no counter to mines and drones. Further, the counters available to the other scouts and strikes (the ships that actually take skill to use) are largely ineffective, for reasons stated above by myself and others. I think that's the other thing that bugs me, is that I feel like I have to fly a certain kind of ship if I'm going to be fighting bombers. Maybe that will lessen as more people get experienced with the situation and unlock the necessary abilities, but feeling like I am locked into flying my Pike or Nova is no fun if I'm wanting to fly my flashfire or star. I'm glad that the Pike and Nova have an added role now, but I think letting every ship have some kind of counter would be nice. If you think about it, before bombers came in every ship technically was able to do decently against other ships with the equipment options it had. People all flying Flashfires was more because of other stat issues than just the equipment choices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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