I’ve been playing heavily with fighters for the past few weeks, and come to the conclusion that the Rebel Atlantis Bomber is a problem. It may not threaten the entire game, but it certainly threatens every other fighter hull. Here’s why: you can strap a minimal generator, three tiny engines, and a laser cannon to the Atlantis hull. At ~100 cost per fighter, you get a fighter that flies at 3.25 and will murder any fleet not packing tons and tons of armored tractor beams (3.25 is too fast for almost anything to track these fighters - without tractor beams, I’ve used these fighters alone to kill many entire fleets with no losses). Now, tractor beams can counter these fighters in enough quantity (and if mounted on heavily armored platforms that don’t die quickly to the swarm), but this hull makes every other fighter type in the game look pathetic in comparison. I simply can’t see any reason to pay for any cheaper fighter considering the drop in effectiveness and the fact that deploying fighters is usually an issue of pilots, not credits.
A reduction in slots is the simplest solution. Having a fighter with additional slots makes it unique and interesting, but also far superior due to the degree to which speed matters for fighters. A more complex solution would mean tweaking how tracking works so that these little monsters aren’t nigh-invulnerable.
Tweaking tracking would affect all fighters though, I definitely agree that it needs one less slot or 2 or 3 less base power though. It’s unfair and annoying to have builds that no other fighter in the game can hit.
I can get a speed of 4.4 with 2 tiny engines, 1 engine II and rockets. Sure I am not packing all the firepower available but thats doesn’t matter if I am invulnerable… I agree something needs to be done about this.
You could have engines on fighters subject to diminishing returns like shields are. Say the frames of the sips aren’t big enough to handle the full thrust from multiple engines.
Would it work to substantially increase the hull’s mass? That would cut down its speed fairly drastically (if I understand mass correctly), and would match the general pattern that ships with more module spaces are more massive and slower.
This problem stems from the fact that all ship hulls weigh almost nothing.
The solution is to increase the weight on ship hulls, assigning different weights to different hulls. Up the thrust on engines slightly to compensate for the added weight. This will increase the variety of hulls used, and specifically balance the bomber with the fighters.
I would also argue that hulls should start with some amount of armor, and that would vary from hull to hull as well. This could be a different discussion though
Which makes me recall what I think is another problem: fighter rockets are horrible weapons that can’t even remotely compete with lasers. A combination of slow reload time and longer minimum range means that rocket fighters almost never score hits from inside their target’s shield bubble (and, of course, rockets will never catch up with current-generation blazing-fast fighters). Since one of the main points of fighters is to bypass shields, and the rockets themselves don’t seem to have enough damage or shield penetration to credibly threaten shield bubbles from the outside, fighter rockets seem terribly underpowered. Torpedo launchers may make for ridiculously slow fighters, but at least they make their target sit up and notice them!
I think rockets are a great anti-frigate weapon. I have a gunship design I use with rockets and pulsers. Three wings of those can destroy a frigate on the opening volley.
The Atlantis bomber has 3 standard and 2 hardpoint.
You can place 2 engines, one generator and 1 laser for maximum speed; which is 3.08
It’s possible though to load it with rocket launchers and get a 4.4 speed, but then it becomes useless in dog fights since the rockets can’t catch other fast fighters.
