apologies if this is already been reported (I thought I read about it somewhere, but cannot seem to find it anymore)
I noticed some ships recently have been absorbing HUGE amounts of punishment without dying recently. The most specific example I have is on the first mission against the Empire (forget what its called ) I discovered I could be extraordinarily cheesy with 150 pilots and throw out 9 squads of fast fighters and blow the hell out of the opposing fleet. In a matter of 2 minutes the entire upper battle formation of the empire was destroyed, except the āBellatorā ā which continued to absorb damageā¦ and keep taking it. Parts of its armor were flashing red as if the fighter laserās were hitting it, yet no damage seemed permanent. In the other post I thought I read some suggested it was the armor repair module acting instantaneously instead of over time, as it is supposed to. The thing is I stuck the game in 4x speed and just waited. The ship never so much as blinked while everything else around it died. I couldnāt let it run long, as I had to move, but each time I test it for as long as Iām willing to let it go, the Bellator never dies.
on a related note I noticed this with the rebel ship ā'Talentā in one of the missions (Iāll go back and find out which one if need be) where it seemed to be invincible until my fleet brought all weapons to bear on it, at which point Iām pretty sure it vaporized in a record 5 seconds, but until overwhelming fire power was brought to bear, it continued to resist.
The Bellator was never destroyed until I re-did the mission with 6 missile boats supporting my 9 fighter squadrons (an extraordinarily cheap combo that won all 3 levels of this mission without dropping below 90% anytime)
While i agree that armour is a bit overpowered at the moment, i do think that very heavy armour should still provide absolute and everlasting defence against fast fighters armed with peashooters (slow fighters armed with heavier weapons should be a different matter, of course).
even if its approx 144 said pea shooters are blasting it at the same time? Something has to give there (thats how many fighters were blasting the bellator)
And if weāre gonna go there, give us an AI behavior that says if no visible damage is being done, switch targets.
but now weāve gone from bug to suggestion, so Iāll stop this train now.
As far as iām concerned yes even āts approx 144 said pea shooters.ā Think about a real world example in a tank. If you shoot at a tank with a low caliber bullet odds are that it wonāt even dent the armor. All thatās likely to happens is maybe a steak being left behind, caused by some of the bullet being stripped off as the rest gets deflected. Now it doesnāt matter if you have one person shoot at the tank with this type of gun or 200. All thats likely to happen if you have 200 people shooting in this instance is one of the 200 getting hit by a deflected bullet.
That makes total sense logically, but Game balance and real-world logic donāt necessary have anything to do with each other.
For game balance, I think that a number of fighters with a point cost equal to a super-armored cruiser should be able to destroy it, eventually. In fact, the way the mechanics of the game work, if the cruisers average armor outstrips the penetration values of your heavy guns, the only thing you have going for you is rate of fire, in which case squadrons of pulse laser fighters is probably the best bet.
And yet tanks can be threatened by fighters that donāt have missiles because they still have weak points in their armor and while they are overall immune to weapons of .50 BMG or less something like 30mm can still kill a tank with a lot of it, and another tank armed with a 30mm cannon would be no threat but an A-10 with itās nose mounted gatling is able to shoot fast enough and at a part of the tank that isnāt immune that you normally canāt hit. Also GSB is more like naval combat, and WWII era naval combat to boot. Then something as weak as a fighters gun could still deal damage to to even a ship as massive as a Yamato or Iowa with itās peashooters. Despite having an immune zone to 16 in guns a storm of half inch bullets could still strip away radar and other fire controls, destroy anti-aircraft mounts, set off secondary explosions and if itās unlikely that simple strafing runs could have killed one of the behemoths it still could savage it. Thats not ever taking into account how strafing runs would have actually been more effective on all or nothing armor schemes that gave the best protection against high caliber rounds.
) I discovered I could be extraordinarily cheesy with 150 pilots and throw out 9 squads of fast fighters and blow the hell out of the opposing fleet. In a matter of 2 minutes the entire upper battle formation of the empire was destroyed, except the āBellatorā ā which continued to absorb damageā¦ and keep taking it. Parts of its armor were flashing red as if the fighter laserās were hitting it, yet no damage seemed permanent. In the other post I thought I read some suggested it was the armor repair module acting instantaneously instead of over time, as it is supposed to. The thing is I stuck the game in 4x speed and just waited. The ship never so much as blinked while everything else around it died. I couldnāt let it run long, as I had to move, but each time I test it for as long as Iām willing to let it go, the Bellator never dies.