I’m not an expert in balancing but it sounds good. I only thought there was already a disruptor bomb for gunships, isn’t it? If the disruptor bomb exists, I will try it this evening… I have no time now 
I like this idea, but I think it needs a bit more development, maybe some gunship anti-dread weapons that are still or only good after the shield is down. Cyk0 was knocking around some interesting ideas about some kind of localised emp that would disable specific weapons; I think that’s the kind of direction we should be going down. Also, there should be a dreadnought hyper-reflective shield, that very few weapons can penetrate, just in order to make this new role work.
I heartily agree. I threw together a fighter shield disruptor for my Antares Expanse mod on GSB1 and found that it can be scarily effective (particularly since it is generally deployed in groups of 16).
Again, strongly agreed. And again, based on my modding experience in GSB1 (the Matmos Rift this time), an unexpected fighter weapon that can damage the highest-resistance cruiser shield can be a nasty surprise if your attitude has been “Oh, fighters, whatever, I’m a big heavily-shielded cruiser” as many tend to be. I would recommend that the fighter weapon be moderately damaging and the gunship model be downright scary (but then, maybe that’s just me).
I actually really like the thought of this and I think it creates a critical spot for fighters/gunships to fill. I stopped using them already in the beta because they just weren’t worth it. Which is a shame because I love watching them mid-battle. On the flip side of the coin though, after 1.16 I still feel like Dreadnoughts are just super cruisers. I would like to see further shifts to “more expensive, super heavy weapon capabilities with limitations on mobility and fire rate” which leaves cruisers to fill the general front line brawler role.
The trouble with a weapon like that is that fighters that barley survive an engagement will still have a significant impact on it (its hard to kill them quickly enough to stop them from at least delivering the payload)
I prefer a small EMP rocket, capable of only disabling a single module per hit, and since its only single modules you coul have it last longer and having the effects och temporarily turning of the module hit. Such a weapon (as long as its not to expensive) can then be used to cripple and bring down the giants as long as you have a combined arms approach and establish a local "air superiority "
correct me if im wrong but is the goal were going for with dreadnoughts to have them be ginat death platforms that can 1 on 1-4 anything but does not do well if spammed (gets overwhelmed or something)
if so i think we need to build som weaknes into the dredonusgh hulls themselves
what weakness we would put their I have not thought of yet
The somewhat obvious type of weakness in terms of the stated combined-arms goal would be twofold:
- Take away a dreadnought’s ability to defend effectively against fighters/gunships. No close-in weapons, no weapons with very high tracking, no tractors/flak/etc.
- Instill some fashion in which fighters/gunships can really shred a dreadnought if left to their own devices.
I think it’s the second part that’s proving the difficult one. In GSB1, cruisers had a common weakness against fighters - the fighters could get under the shields. Even with heavy armor, a cruiser mobbed by fighters would eventually have its skin cracked by lucky shots, and once that happens it’s seconds before the swarm strips it to the bone like starving piranhas.
I would be 100% behind something of this nature for dreadnoughts in GSB2.
Hey, so 1.17 is now rel;eased, and with it comes better anti-shield weapons for fighters and gunships, so you are now much more vulnerable in a lone dreadnought. I think this has nudged in the right direction, but obviously I want to know what everyone else thinks!
I think the fighters/gunships being able to take down shields is a good step toward checking the power of dreads. Only problem is that it has made cruisers a bit squishier too, but not so much so as to make them useless(still more cost effective in terms of weapons per credit.). I think now is a great time to give Frigates some good armor wrecking weapons, So that they can support Fighters in an assault role and smash a lone dreadnought.
If you would be so kind as to give my dreadnought hunting frigates a birthday present, then a 8-10 damage weapon with like 500-600 fire interval, range of 500, 1.0 tracking and 12-15 armor penetration would be neat, downsides would be low shield penetration of like 7 and only 50% damage to Hull and Shield (small neat holes make armor useless but are easily patched up in the hull) This weapon would be good against classes larger than a frigate, but have issues attacking fast frigates and fighters, so it’s a trade off for the frigate between attacking enemy dreadnoughts/cruisers versus defending against fast enemy frigates versus hunting enemy support destroyers. Call it the Technobabble Howitzer!
EDIT: Another thought popped into my head, Dreadnought weapons aren’t useful. Masses of cruiser weapons or anything else is more effective. I think, a good dreadnought weapon is something that can change the battlefield drastically in a short period of time or do something strange and weird that no other class can do, while having a long interval or severely limited range. For example a super multipoint attractor beam that drags a few ships in closer, or a long range anti fighter sniper that can blast a fighter instantly at long range but has a minimum range too long to effectively defend the dreadnought itself. A “Nuke Flak” that can effectively swat masses of frigates with a steady stream of larger shockwaves that fighters can avoid and cruisers can brush off. Multipoint Beams that can damage several ships at once. These would create emergent tactics that the other ship classes can exploit.
what about a weapon that picks a spot, takes 30 seconds to charge up, then does a gratuitous explosive effect at the target (think titan from eve online); naturally anything in the blast radius will try to bug-out, and anything with a speed of > 1 can get out of the way.
This encourages dispersal of formation, counteracting the bonus you receive at the moment by packing your ships closer together, to be better for picking off the enemies one-by-one as they come in close.
at the moment there isn’t any way to affect an enemies formation, so this might be a feature which gives the DN a role on the field.