What to do with the Bomber Starship?

[Gallant Dragon]

Summing up the general impressions I'm getting:

Siege starships are generally used for long-range bombardment of guardians and other things that don't move quickly.  Health with them is generally a non-issue, since if you're letting something get close enough to damage one than you're doing something wrong.

Bomberstars are more useful for chasing down enemies and hit 'n run tactics.

Based on that, perhaps bomberstars could get a damage and HP boost, but a higher reload rate?

[snelg]

Quite new player here so I'm not sure exactly how things work. I guess this is mostly how things appear for me.
Anyway, I'm favoring the siege starship. Because I don't need to replace them very often, and there's always more crystal than metal for me (not using (loosing) missile frigates very much compared to bombers). And because they're so easy to use, just put them outside the wormhole and they'll start dishing out the damage (they can also retreat quickly in case of danger or be used as hit and run this way). The bombers you'll have to move around yourself, make sure they don't run into something nasty, have something to fire at. While controlling the rest of your fleet and possibly other groups of star ships. I've tried to bunch them with the fleet ships but they have a pretty low survivability rate it seems. Also, I usually go for the bomber fleet ships upgrades pretty early so I already have things blowing up defenses up close (and eating through the metal stockpile), and they're cheaper and can attack smaller ships as well.


I'm still using the bomber star ships, but mostly when I've got a surplus of resources so they have a pretty low priority.

[cukeaddict]

Just got done playing with both kinds of Starships; Siege is much more useful on offense because it's always last through the wormhole because it's so slow, giving the rest of your fleet time to clear the immediate threats.  Bombers definitely require micro, if you group-move the whole fleet they end up as cannon fodder since the Sieges kill all their targets.  The only advantage of Bomber Starships on offense I can clearly see is that they usually go through first with the Raider Startships, so they do have a role in clearing the wormhole area.  Or, you could ignore group-moving altogether in an all-out get in there as fast as possible and do as much damage as possible, who cares how many ships die because I have a million anyway kind of strategy.  I call it the NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM charge because of the way the ships seem to swallow the enemy whole.

[FrostyThePyro]

Here is an Idea, the bomber starship is for frontloaded damage, so let them front load salvos.  whenever its not shooting, it will be loading bombs up to its max (probly like 5 or something)  That way when it fires its first shot, it fires all those loaded bombs in a salvo, and then its back to one shot at a time.  Tweak its per shot damage some down some, but its first salvo will deal massive damage

[wyvern83]

That would be interesting to see, I wonder how easy it would be to code such a change.

How would you deal with overkill though? Would it shot multiple targets with the 'first' volley mechanic?

[Frozen Critical]

Stop being Ship-ist , it May seem as if the Bomber Starship is just a Weaker Version of the Siege if you Compare it , But if you Look at it on It's Own , It's Obviously Best for those Tasks that Seem Trivial to Your Main force , Which Includes Chasing Those Slippery Ships , Hunting Down a Certain Type of Ship and Doing Clean Up Operations

They are Also Vital for Speed Attacks , Where you don't Have time to Organize Your Ships(Stopping Every 30 Seconds to Organize up Makes it more of a Normal Attack , And it Provides Critical Seconds for the AI to counterattack)

[Lancefighter]

While I generally can agree that your capitalization is a horrible atrocity to the English language, I am not sure I can really agree with your points:

Lets say, look at a completely different ship. I pick the tachyon microfighter.  I will look at it completely on its own.
Its an amazing ship that combines the abilities of a fighter with a tachyon emitter. I cant imagine anyone NOT using this ship! ITS AWESOME.

Lets look at it comparatively.
Its generally just a fighter, which is always available, combined with a tachyon emitter/decloaker, which is always available. Unfortunately, this means its opportunity cost seems rather large - i could pick a more unique, arguably useful unit instead (ff bearer, armor booster, etc), because those provide considerable force multiplication abilities.

What I am saying is, if you look at a unit 'on its own', you wont understand what a unit actually IS.

As for speed attacks, combining your siege starships, with again, force multipliers (cloaker star, transport) is considerably more effective than combining bombers starships with the multipliers, because its easier to multiply the effectiveness of something that is already useful.

(and I dont understand what you are saying about organizing your ships - if you execute a group move, they all move at the same speed?)

[Frozen Critical]

(and I dont understand what you are saying about organizing your ships - if you execute a group move, they all move at the same speed?)

No , It's Placing your Ships Back into the Correct Lines(The back for Frigates and other Long ranges , Middle for Them Middle Ranges , And close for CQB attackers)

What I am saying is, if you look at a unit 'on its own', you wont understand what a unit actually IS.

You should Already know what a unit IS if you are Even going to Look a unit on it's own , Stop tossing out Arguments without anything to support them

[zebramatt]

Regardless, for v4.029:

Bomber starship rebalance

• Attack power 1/3x what it was.
• Reload time 1/9x what it was.
• Attack range from 5000 => 2500.
• Health to 2x what it was.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, that may turn out to be too much, but we'll see.

[Lancefighter]

units dont need to be in lines o.0 (besides, you could just use the sticky formation offsets, but I'm too lazy to figure out how that works)

And.. I see the rest of my argument was somehow missed. *sigh* no matter

[wyvern83]

Regardless, for v4.029:

Bomber starship rebalance

• Attack power 1/3x what it was.
• Reload time 1/9x what it was.
• Attack range from 5000 => 2500.
• Health to 2x what it was.

EDIT: (reason: temporary idiocy)
(in this post I originally misread the reload speed to be 9x in practice. Edited for correctness)


This change does make it more distinct, it should be interesting.

[Lancefighter]

uh?
reload time became 2 seconds.

[wyvern83]

ah, your right I read it wrong. Long day today.


The DPS for the Bomber starship is now 3x what it used to be if I'm reading this right.

[Lancefighter]

yeah
itll be a bit less due to armor, but I think this is a good change