does anyone have a workable bomber design?
so far my best bomber is atlanta hull with 2 powerplants, 2 lasers and an engine
it s used against cruisers in relatively clear sky (space?) for better DPS and longer strafe run than conventional 1 laser fighters
wonder if anyone has another good bomber…
gunny
Aren’t bombers normally the ones with rockets and torpedos?
Once this is out for mac’s on steam (HATE BEING PATIENT) i’ll give that a try, it actually sounds pretty good
ya… those are more akin to dive bombers and torp bombers
as in guys that throws precision explosives to take down smaller vessels
I’m talking about something like level bombers
that kinda fly over large ships and watch the large waves of explosions in their wake…
IMHO “fighter” = pewpewpewpewpewpewpew
“bomber” = PEW PEW PEW
And I’ve never had success with a “bomber” type fighter. Torps and required equipment slow the fighter down so much that they get mowed down in an eyeblink, as opposed to several eyeblinks.
And best rocket fighter I build goes 4.0+, but they sure don’t knock down ANY shield. . . .
RC
for ‘any’ I should have said ‘every’ fighters can knock down cruiser shields, but there are builds out there that will laugh 'em off.
Generally I build (laser-armed) multi-role fighters that work well in a dogfight, and then if i have enough left, easily swarm over cruisers and frigates which aren’t specific AA.
I’ve experimented with bombers too with mixed success. Most scenarios I dont bother, as my MR fighters either win it, or get taken out by AA fire (in which case most bombers would too).
That said, I’ve experimented with a federation rocket-armed fighter, which is faster than my interceptors. I guess it qualifies as a fighter, but i set it with frigates and cruisers as priority. (Longer range on frigates, V. close on cruisers). They aren’t effective vs. fighters, because the rockets would miss. Its speed (about 2.5) means it can endure slightly more AA than my fighters, and it gives me better anti-frigate ability).
Heavier bombers than that, armed with torpedoes etc tend to be too slow. They reach a point where armour is just a waste - they’re going to get hit repeatedly. In a decent group, they can take out a couple of frigates or a cruiser. Usually this costs an amount which I’d rather spend on something else. They need fighter superiority to survive, and if i have fighter superiority, I can swarm them (with a few exceptions).
NB: I’ve formed this opinion using Tribe (except the rocket armed stuff, ive only done that for federation and might work better with tribe). The extra hull strength might make a difference. Im also experimenting with swarm now, to see if the speed bonus changes things.
The best anti-fighter fighter that I have found is dual rocket fighters and painters.
The big question is really between going with 2 engine 1, for the extra hit points, or engine 2 and ablative armor. The problem is that with no armor at all, any damage at all is likely to slow the fighter, which makes it an easy kill.
For killing enemy cruisers, a pulse laser fighter is the best option, because the lucky shots it gets under the shield do 6 points of damage instead of 4, although I suppose a dual laser would rip up cruisers pretty good.
Of course, a pulse laser fighter is very inefficient against frigates with any armor. Go with rockets or lasers for them.
Fighters can’t fire within the frigates shields. But they can help finish off frigates once the rocket fighters knock down the shields.
Pulse fighters and dual laser fighters are arguably the best versus cruisers. Laser fighters are acceptable vs fighters, and good against the less armored frigates, such as the empire’s weapon platforms. There are a number of frigates with lots of hard points, and they are typically designed with minimal defenses. Often there isn’t enough power for shields, so their only defense is some armor.
I have seen some cruiser fleets where the main strikers had insufficent armor to withstand rocket fighters once their shields were knocked out. But other than that you have to have a balance of rocket and laser fighters because rocket fighters are normally useless against cruisers.
Unless it’s some kind of frigate only challenge, nobody should be using empire or their frigates unless they want to play a handicap game.
Might be interesting to try empire in an anomaly that reduces ship speed. That reduces the hazard of fighters, the empire’s greatest vulnerability. That would, I think, favor long ranged weapons builds. And closing vs lots of weapon platforms firing plasma torps against a tank line backed up by shield regenerators and little weapons plats with anti-missile point defense could be challenging.
Frigate long range totally sucks! especially with weapon platform (Empire). Anyone who cant see that is a fool.
Also frigates simply CANNOT survive while being stationary. Even without fighters, the weapon platform with plasmas will never survive against a Tribe MWM, Order MWM, or Nomad Missile spam. They can never crack the armor of an alliance plasma spam, and will even lose to Tribe plasma spam without beam laser. Torpedo is even worst since every long range fleet comes with scramblers. Being both slow and without decoy it will never land a hit.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Try it against 4617281 or 4614426.
I’ve finally got my act sorted with the rocket fighters, you’re right, they are much better for frigates. However, depending on your fighters’ speed, numbers and ability to evade defense fire, sometimes you can ignore frigates, hit the cruisers and leave the frigates to your main ships. Depends if the other fleet is well balanced or not.
Laser fighters won’t dent a cruiser’s shields, but they will fire inside - set engage range to 100 and watch the fireworks.
Still working on the original question about bombers, so far no real luck. Torpedo bombers are too slow really, and only work in numbers. I prefer to rocket and strafe…
NOT TRUE
Set the engagement range to 100. You WILL fire under the frigate shields. Otherwise how could you do a full campaign run with basically just FT
And pulse lasers are NOT better for anti-cruiser. I run dual fighter lasers on a rebel frame. The pulse laser’s increased energy draw makes it MUCH harder to double up (technically impossible with stock components?)
This is why I don’t like the campaign, the game has gone from “how to beat X fleets with Y resources” to “how to beat all fleets with credit/pilot advantage”. It really takes the diversity out of the game.
laser fighters are obviously nowhere near as good against frigates as rockets/painter fighters. But campaign is all about being general so this fact doesn’t even matter.
It’s all about orders. My fighters are BRUTAL agianst frigates, just set the engagement range to the minimum
I think most of us here already know how to set engage range.
The two reasons why they are doing so well in the campaign is because
They are literally just sitting ducks that isn’t equipped to hit back, so it doesn’t matter if they takes twice as long to finish the same job.
If the campaign actually attacks with a Tribe Anti fighter fleet, where they can literally slaughter fighters 2x their credit counts, fighter spam would be much less attractive.
I’ve been playing around with some bomber designs and I’ve found it’s possible to make a bomber with >8 armor and 2.27 speed using the Rebel Atlantis Bomber Hull. Why is 8 armor important? Fighter laser cannons only have an armor penetration of 8 so if you can get your bombers over that, they become effectively immune to fighters. They’ll still die to a painter/rocket launcher combination but otherwise you’re effectively immune to enemy fighters. You only need to be concerned with frigates and your rockets should be able to slice right through them. One downside though is that the additional armor make these guys really expensive, easily twice the cost of the rest of your fighters.
Rebel Atlantis Bomber Hull
3x Fighter Armor III
1x Fighter Rocket Launcher
1x Fighter Engine II
I am not really impressed with dual laser fighters. They generally can’t afford much for engines, have no armor, and are very slow.
My rebel build hits 1.46. The Dual Laser fighter isn’t about speed or health, it’s about pure, high damage kickassery.
