Zenith Bombardment Ships Overpowered?

[TechSY730]

I chose these awesome ships as my unlock, but then I noticed that a single shot from one of these is enough to one shot any triangle ship of the same Mk. Given their range, that seems a quite overpowered, even if you consider their cost and lowish ship cap.

Anyone else agree?

[Fleet]

Well, they can only really reach their potential if supported by other ships. With a reload speed of 30s, sure, you can kill that one fighter. And now you have 30 seconds before you can take another shot, all the while the AI is chasing your bombard. It is strong, but I think thats the perk of this ship type is all.

[Lee]

I've had limited success using them as a player. But I hate it when the AI has these unlocked. They're spire mini-ram level of annoying against your capital ships.

[Hearteater]

Speaking of the AI using them, I've had two waves of them in my current game for which I have posted an after action report.  They have notable vulnerabilities players can exploit, and I imagine equally exploitable possibilities in the player's hands.  And I'm using exploitable in the good way, not the overpowered/broken way.

[chemical_art]

Do not forget ship caps and resource either. You can one shot one ship. But they can make at least 3 (maybe 4) for every one ship you can make. And they aren't that durable, either.

[Coppermantis]

They absolutely eat up my fleets in the early game. I once got a wave of 100 some Bombards, and as soon as they emerged from the wormhole, that's 100 some of my ships destroyed. They waste Spirecraft and Capital ships as well.

That said, I do think they're balanced enough. There are enough tactics to dealing with them that they're a challenging foe, but beatable. The only reason I lost to them so badly in my example is because I made the mistake of positioning my fleet within their range as they came into the system. On either human or AI side, the enemy ships in their initial range are almost a guaranteed loss, but farther away ships can take advantage of the reload time.

(Also, they can't attack forcefields. Put some tractors and/or grav turrets under one, and the fleet of bombards is helpless against snipers and sentinel frigates.)

[chemical_art]

The best counter is to put them in knife fights, not outrange them. So if you got a wave of them coming camp the wormhole right when they pop up. Yes, they'll launch their initial volley which will hurt. But most fleets will then tear them to shreds.

[Hearteater]

If you check out the after action report I linked earlier in this thread, you can read what happened to two different bombard waves.  One I did well, and the other not so much.  You'll find they can indeed hurt force fields; they took 11% of my home force field.

[Coppermantis]

Really? I thought they had the same ammo type as the Antimatter Starship. Hm.

[Lee]

I don't find them to be a huge problem when they come in waves, grav/tractor turrets and the home field speed advantage is huge. They seem most annoying when attacking an AI world where you don't have the 2x (or more) speed advantage. Bombards are reasonably fast and a bunch of them kiting can cause your larger ships a lot of problems.

[Kittens]

They are fine imo, even though their immunity to sniper shots is very annoying and I wouldn't mind seeing that go.

A spire fleet with railguns will clear out any stragglers from an annihalated system really quick EXCEPT THESE GUYS. Waste of time, to be honest.

[Hearteater]

I'm finding Teleport Battle Stations to be very useful.

[PokerChen]

On enemy attack, bombards aren't too effective. At worst, I'd consider speed-building a mark I shield over the nearest defences to eat the first volley (iirc they target shields). Then kill the shield - if it's not already dead, - and I've effectively got a 30sec headstart. They definitely work a lot better on evasive formations.

I think these ships are about the same level as spire blade-s'pwn'ers in terms of strategy-changing goodness: fly them in with your blob and *intentionally* kite around the system, diverting short-ranged ships as appropriate to intercept incoming ships. Against AI versions I explicitly assign raid starships/Ion blasters (anything with speed 130+) to go after these critters. If you don't have any fast ships, IIRC kiting behaviour only works against the current target of the bombard.... :P:P

[SNAFU]

I find Zenith Bombards very annoying when the AI has about 100+ of them on one of its worlds, which is often once they are unlocked. Very *very* frustrating to try to remove them. High hp, powerful shots,  tendency to kite, incredible effectiveness against 'hard' targets like golems or spirecraft and they effectively block use of transports without the use of a sacrificial lamb. I swear the AI unlocks them just to spite me.

On attack, they're usually less annoying though I don't like they can out-range missile turrets AND are immune to sniper shots; oftentimes I have to divert several bombers to deal with a single bombard that got translocated by a military command station and is now sitting pretty plinking away from the far side of the system at my turrets :\

When I unlock Bombards on the other hand, they're pretty handy sometimes, but the prohibitive cost, low shipcap, and the prevalence of radar dampening or immunity to antimatter on just about everything the AI has that I'd like to snipe...

I play with Simple shiptypes alot and Zenith Bombards are my vote for 'Most Frustrating Shiptype' in that class. -.-

[zoutzakje]

haven't found bombards too annoying to be honest. enemy planet has a lot of them? spire attritioner in and out, wait for all ships to arrive at wormhole, martyr in and bye bye bombards (and pretty much anything else, only spirecraft and guardians may survive). If you don't have spirecraft enabled, then you'd need a cursed golem to deal with them effectively.. blade spawners are very usefull too. But yeah, you'll lose some ships to them if you don't use spirecraft. You've got plenty of time to deal with them after they fired their first salvo though.