Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This. Literally every completely **** change you guys are just like "well the beauty of our new deployment cycle is we can change it super soon if it's bad." But on this you wuss out? Really?

Bombers existed and were hugely successful before they were given the low-effort way of bombing they currently have now.

But no. Don't make people actually have to coordinate in order to bomb. And just let the meta stagnate still with just boring comps because you refuse to actually think like you did when you were still a player that actually had experience with this crap.

Oh and to top it off, go ahead and buff bombers without introducing any downsides. Hell you still can't even mjd out of a bomb run with that flight time which is effectively the ONLY change that could even conceivably be pointed to here as attempting to bring them to balance.

Make it so any bomb can only tank one other bomb.

-reduces load on hamsters having to calculate so much AOE per tick
-gives the defender an opportunity to react in the face of an onslaught of bombing
-solves the isboxer concerns as you won't have more than two bombers/volley
-puts some actual challenge on bomber fc's to co-ordinate volleys
-PROMOTES the use of BATTLESHIPS and other ship classes that are currently avoided due to bomb threat.

So in other words make bombs completyl useless.

Any properly fitted BS typically already needs two waves, with only 2 bombers per wave you would never hurt a BS. You can't really apply damage to cruisers, so what would bombs be for?

Lets face it, you don't want bomber balance. You want them out of the game.

You want to encourage BS. Then give them more tank than a t3 or a HAC. Right now with the warp changes, its hard to really want to use a BS over a HAC or t3, and that has *nothing* to do with bombers.

A steady barrage of damage is what torps currently do. So why bother with bombs? BTW bombers with just torps and a BLOPS is pretty effective. But the changes with jump bridges will shift that around, don't have a feel for how. (ps big fan of the jump changes).

Yea I really feel both BC and BS are overshadowed by t3s and HACs. T3s matter less since you lose SP when you die. Now they [BC and BS] are much slower I feel more tank in comparison to HACs is really needed. Of course some of that is a HAC that shall rename nameless that has a very high DPS weapon system that consumes neither cap, cpu or pg.

i do think combat bc's having double the sig of a cruiser doesn't help them out much either along with the slower warp speed

Love the stealth bomber! Used it for lots of things, and works quite well pve/pvp. I used one to matadore belt rat BS's in null in the early days. Funny thing about the cloaking changes, I am so old, I thought that cloaked ships still decloaked each other. All this time I thought I had just been lucky! Bit nervous about the sig changes.
The only 'coordinated' bombing run I had ever been in, failed miserably. Warping in wrong distances, not paying attention, bombed gate by accident. Only one bomb got off, and our targets killed us all, there was much laughter in local....before we were podded of course.
The changes won't get me out of a bomber....one day I will be in a bombing run that actually blows something up.

Changes to cloaks and balancing bombers are two different things. The original proposals would have a negative effect on all ships that use a cloak and i believe this is why CCP decided to postpone the change.

Instead of complaining about CCP not adding a bad mechanic, you should be asking them to improve the counter to bomber fleets (which they are doing) if that is your real issue.

I do really wish they would put out changes for player feedback earlier. They need to throw feedback up when the previous release happens or even a couple weeks before.




Their code already needs reworked, though.
Defenders already need to be made so that you can activate them and have them launch automatically when missiles are incoming rather than you trying to rush to activate them every time a volley is actually incoming on you, and they would be much more useful if they could function better as an area defense weapon rather than point defense, so a couple of ships can be run for fleet defense.

Adding bombs to the target selection isn't that much in comparison, and would be better defense than hoping you can escape the blast radius and blap the bombers before they recloak.

As far as increasing bombing risk, cloak delays might be effective. Require a second or two after decloaking before firing a bomb and/or don't allow a bomber to cloak for a bit after firing so bombers can't just vanish again while setting up the next pass.

The big problem with balancing bombing runs is the fact bombers have a bit of a dual role in that they are also designed to fit torpedoes in a compact platform, so some changes to reduce the effectiveness to bombs could adversely affect torpedo bomber effectiveness since torpedo bombers have to spend an extended period on grid, decloaked. That's why the sig radius penalty is better on the bomb launcher than the hull.


I would again like to bring up balance between the Manticore and Nemesis. Again, with both having the same Grid but one having more CPU and being faster, there isn't much reason to ever fly a Nemesis. A PG boost on the nemesis might be a good idea, that way the Manticore and Namesis are complementary like the Purifier and Hound where one has more CPU and the other has more grid. It still leaves one a bit more useful than the other, generally, but there's much more reason for the Nemesis to exist when there isn't another ship that can run every single fit it can and more. A bit more speed and maneuverability might also be nice.



On a side note, how would it change things if Bombers could use any of the BS sized missiles rather than just torps?

This was in fact true a while back IIRC (was before my time). They could use Cruise missiles as well. There were many stories of bombers on shot kills. In fact i heard stories of people really using defender missiles to prevent bomber one shot deaths.

So yea bombers are not how they started in this game. But then what is?

On My view. Stealth bombers bombs should be made weaker. Make them be more easily poped so at most 3 are fired in a volley. Also bombers effective rof for bombs should be nerfed. SB shoudl be surprise factor and less about sustained barrages.


On other hand introduce a new class of ship. A new t2 BC sized hull in a field howitzer role, that could have a bonus to bombs HP, bomb velocity (for more range) and bomb launcher fire rate. But a ship WITHOUT cloak ( more EHP and would need to be kept alive as a field ship).

Sustained barrages should be form a dedicated ship class.