Thats a good idea, but how will we stop fighters from buying superpowerful engines.

I think that the engines should have an extremely high drain, so only a cruiser battery can power it. How will they make it so that ships can only have certain batteries? I think that with each ship class, there should be a different engine/battery classes: Light, Medium, Heavy.

"Bombers, on the other hand, should require a team of fighters to take down; NOT a single fighter."

At which point, we'll all start flying bombers.

Not really, Celebrim. Let me put it this way. The bomber will have the higher top speed, right? Let's say a single fighter pilot realizes that an enemy bomber just entered the sector. So he starts boosting towards him. But he realizes that it's too late and that the bomber has gained enough distance to gain a higher speed than him. So the fighter pilot then contacts one of his teammates and asks him to intercept the bomber's course at another location. The bomber will have no choice but to dodge the incoming fire of the second fighter. At this point the bomber's speeds will be reduced dramatically and the fighters can now swoop in for the kill.

Most of the time fighters will be able to chase down a bomber and destroy it because the bomber won't have enough time to achieve that higher top speed. But if it's far enough and if the bomber pilot has planned a safe course, he'll successfully escape most of the time. As I said, it's not as easy as you think. And I still feel that the L-port weapons need to be made stronger so that they're more accurate or there's more of them (i.e. more swarms). I mean let's face it, they're way too easy to bring down right now. I'm not saying it should be an impossible one on one battle, but I think it should be a difficult one at that.

I highly doubt bombers will be chosen over fighters for this. The fighter's higher rate of acceleration and agility will always make 'em the choice of the majority. Not only that, your chances of staying alive are doubled because of those two characteristics. It's a safe ship to work with, if used properly, and it'll encourage more teamwork. Whereas in a bomber you're either planning out safe courses or you're fighting to the death if you get caught behind all alone. The two have completely different gameplay styles that'll appeal to different audiences.

I think the talk of "bombers" and "fighters" is misleading. Quite simply, abigger ship should equal more firepower plus more armor.

Think EV or the Star Wars situation alluded to earlier (how many times does a single [or 3] tie fighter own the Millennium Falcon?).

"And I still feel that the L-port weapons need to be made stronger so that they're more accurate or there's more of them (i.e. more swarms). I mean let's face it, they're way too easy to bring down right now."

On that we agree.

The only problem with beefing up the L-Port weapons is that damn warthog. Anything that makes an atlas or a rag bearable makes the hog uber.

Well the easy solution to that would be to lower its hull if it gets to that point. But I don't think it will. It's perfectly balanced as it is now. A single large port can't really do too much damage as long as the ship's medium agility remains. Because of rocket ramming their casualty rates are actually pretty high right now. So no, I don't think the Warthog would be too powerful. If any ship needs a large port though it would have to be the slowass Hornet.

Of course the only true way to find out would be to give it a try via testing. There's no other way of knowing besides endlessly speculating back and forth about it. I am however a little concerned about the Vulture. It's hard as hell to hit with regular energy weapons and I believe it got a hull boost a while back. Bleh. Hopefully a huge overhaul of all the models for nonspecials will put a stop to that (along with the wing bug).

The vult is another tough one to balance. It's hard to hit from any other ship, but making it any weaker only makes the Valk more dominant.

Hi! It's my first post, so don't be angry when I say something stupid :)

Take an example of a Centaur (returning from s15 thru s10) and a Valk. In that particular case centurion is almost without chances to even escape. It's slow, it has no efficent weapon against a valk.

In my opinion all transporters should have improved armor (about 50-70% more then current)

A shield generator (mounted in large port) should also been added. The shield could for example protects against certain type of weapon (ie. energy, kinetic) what excludes invincible crafts
A shield would take an energy from power cells of the craft, depleting the cells very fast. A really big crafts should be able to carry two or more power cells, so they could last a little longer.

I think if you add a shield generator only for big crafts (which could: a) provide enought power to supply shields b) provide a Large port to mount generator) poor traders will have a little better life ;)

I think you mean a Centaur, a Centurion is a small fighter.

Yes, of course.. sory, i'm noob :)

And then suddenly we will witness rags bearing a shield gen and a bunch of missles/rockets and ONE shield.

Eldrad, the thing is that with shields, tachs wouldn't be the best frig killer, and i still say that it is impossible to make a heavy better than a fighter unless it has more armor than a ship has ammo or is as fast and maneuvrable as a fighter. If either happened, then heavies would reign, plain and simple. A buff to Lport weapons(Specifically making them harder hitting, even if you make them slower, hard hitting) would make them frig busters, leaving fighters with their tach, which wouldn't mean much...