The mkI dreadnoughts now do 3200 damage per shot, whereas mkI bombards do 8000. However, the recharge for the bombards is 7.5x the time of the bombards, which mainly just means that dreadnoughts do 24,000 damage in the same timespan and don't overkill smaller ships, instead spreading it around.
I do like the idea of them doing more engine damage. I've upped it from 50 across all three tiers to 150, 250, and 350 respectively. Should be interesting.
Well thats also true
But bombards have much higher range - ie they stay outside of all threats and thus rarely overkill when a fleet is with them (the last shot is usually always 1 or 2 shots from a bombard)
I am not really asking for change or something, just thinking loudly that even now, dreadnoughts are not a viable research path because... you get MKIV bombards in the normal unit tiers which are ass-kicking redefined. And not only do you get these but you get a lot of these bombards vs only few very expensive and slow to build dreadnoughts. Especially MK3 dreadnoughts, i wonder if theres even a single person who ever build them?
The only reason i am sticking to this line of thought is that i have bombards in my current game and i don't see me researching dreadnoughts ever. Engine damage is more of a problem than a bonus - because disabled ships can still shoot and still exist = makes clearing a sector much more time intensive when SF Post traffic gets stuck mid-sector but your ships move from guard post to guard post wiping them clean. Especially because dreadnoughts have such a long range, that they tend to shoot a lot of things only once so you have slowed down but still dangerous traffic... thats even worse than traffic on full speed (at least it moves ! ,p)
Atm dreadnoughts are not overpowered or underpowered, they just have no clear role. And because of that people go for raid ships, leech ships or the entire flag/spire/zenith line - why go for dreadnoughts if you can get damage boosters that stack AND do multiple shots ^^?
