1) What's wrong with the Bomber being the point of the triangle that "points up" to all the juicy stationary/big stuff? Sure, you could largely capture their purpose by calling them the anti-bomber and the anti-anti-bomber, but what is actually wrong with that?
I'm perfectly fine with the bomber being designed to handle the bigger, more heavily armored stuff.
What's wrong with the other two points being largely (though not entirely) defined by their relationship to the first point?
Well there are several problems with the "Bomber" being the focus of the Triangle.
1. Fighters lack defensive capability. While they are cheap and quick to produce, they are also fragile and it takes awhile for them to do their job of destroying bombers.
2. Frigates are much more suited for the "defensive" role. In other words, I think Frigates should be the counter to the "primary" Triangle ship, as their inherent attributes seem much more suited to that.
3. Making Bombers the "focus" of the Triangle means they are good at too much. In addition to high-priority targets like Force Field, Fortresses, Raid Engines and Golems, they are also good against Frigates, Guardians, Guard Posts, and a whole slew of other ships and targets as well. They are disproportionately powerful.
Making the Fighter the "focus" means that Bombers can keep their specialized role (importance for taking out Force Fields, Fortresses, Raid Engines, Golems, etc.), but that in a general combat sense, the player will rely on Fighters to do most of their damage. Where Fighters take out Bombers in a rather lengthy amount of time now, if they become the focus of the triangle, they can kill them much more quickly, while Bombers, with their low ship cap and long reload time will be practically useless against fighters. Frigates however, with their long range, heavy armor, and salvo shots, will have a much more defined role of taking out the new dangerous Fighters quickly.
In my vision, the Triangle will become much more unique and specialized. Where battles between the old ship caps before may have lasted upwards of a 5 minutes, the new mechanics mean that "blobbing" your triangle ships together is a recipe for disaster. Fighters are extremely strong with high DPS, but a few salvos from a full cap of Frigates can wipe out an entire squad. This means that to use a Fighter correctly, you must micro them carefully, out of range of AoE and salvo-type threats, or send in Bombers to take them out first. On the contrary, placing your own Frigates carefully to combat the new "teethed" Fighter will be of utmost importance.
In the new Triangle, sending your fleet into a planet and pressing "FRD" won't work anymore. The Triangles (and Triangle Counterparts in the form of Guardians, Bonus Ships, or whatever) have become much better at their job of destroying what they are intended to counter. The new Fighters may have become extremely powerful at close range, but a full cap of Frigates can take them out indefinitely, even if they are being constantly rebuilt.
- They have plenty of DPS to justify building them. They're not as much of a priority as the bomber, but that's fine.
Their DPS is fine, but not enough to use them in their own "interception", "raiding", or "assassination" squads. They really only serve as a force multiplier (similar for Frigates), and I think that's rather boring. It could be a lot more interesting.
- There's less reason to justify spending K on upgrading them but honestly the bonus types should be the ones more interesting for upgrades unless you don't have a bonus type that fulfills one of the core roles. Space Tanks and (iirc) Zenith Chameleons can be upgraded instead of bombers unless you need multiple bomber types, and there a variety of anti-polycrystal and anti-light bonus types out there too. If you lack those, then upgrading the triangle type is the fallback.
Even the Fighter counterparts such a Laser Gatlings or Tachyon MicroFighters probably aren't worth upgrading when compared to many other bonus ship types. My point was that even if you NEVER achieved an ARS unlock in your game, you still probably wouldn't upgrade Fighters (and maybe not Frigates either), unless you were against Mad Bomber or something.
note: Some Fighter-like ships are worth upgrading such as Raptors and Space Planes, but that's only because they have special attributes that make them useful (such as Cloaking, Radar Dampening, massive speed, and auto-kite), not because they belong to the Fighter category or have Fighter bonuses.2) Similarly, what's wrong with most of the juicy stationary/big stuff being Heavy, UltraHeavy, or (almost exclusively forcefields) Structural? Why would fighters/frigates need to have bonuses against some of those?
The problem is not that Fighters/Frigates have no bonuses to Heavy or Structural targets, the problem is that the most important targets in the game have those hull types, which makes the current Fighters/Frigates somewhat lackluster in comparison to Bombers.
I think we should keep the Bomber's utility against the Heavy/UltraHeavy and Structural types, I just think we should do it by giving those types a crap load of armor and making Bombers counter them by design. It's more intuitive to the player and it makes sense that the bigger something is, the more armor it will have.
