Getting used to the new starships

[LordSloth]

I've been playing quite a few games against starfleet commander and mad bomber AI's ever since the starships were redone, and I'm working on getting a good feel for them; when I'm not busy losing the game in another fashion. What are some of your thoughts and observations on the current implementation of Starships? You can comment on balance, but that isn't really the focus of this thread, it's more - how have they changed the way you play?

For instance, I find myself using Heavy Bomber Starships a lot, they're almost the perfect counter to Zenith Bombards now. On the other hand, other than actually playing attention, I'm not certain how to counter some of the heavy bomber starships when I'm inevitably aggroing a high mark system early on. A full cap of Mk1 Missile Turrets would take ~30 seconds, Laser ~35 for a mk2 heavy bomber, iirc.

I haven't actually had many situations calling for the Plasma Siege Starship, which I used to unlock a lot, so I'm curious how those look nowadays under appropriate circumstances.

[Radiant Phoenix]

A cap of fighters (96) will lose about 76 of their number to a pair of bomber starships of the same mark by my calculations.

The numbers don't follow entirely intuitively when the population changes from cap-vs-cap, though, because of overkill and probably some other things.

For example, 93 fighters will all die and kill only one bomber, and 75 fighters will all just die and kill nothing, and over half a cap (53) of fighters won't kill a single bomber alone.

[LordSloth]

Is there a reason for Plasma Siege Starships to have only 3,000 engine health, and Heavy Bomber Starships 300,000 while Zenith, Spire, Flagship lines have 100,000 each?

[orzelek]

Is there a reason for Plasma Siege Starships to have only 3,000 engine health, and Heavy Bomber Starships 300,000 while Zenith, Spire, Flagship lines have 100,000 each?

Plasma Sieges were naughty when engine health was given out?

(And it's silly. One shot from Plasma stops others... )

[chemical_art]

The reason for plasma seige starships having so little health and the guards with engine is because they I meant to be guns with engines attached to them.