Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 8:00 pm
Fighters and Bombers are balanced so always make the same raw damage (e.g. 3x4dam vs 2x6dam). For good species i decided to prefer for 1 point of damage difference to having 3x1dam vs 2x1.5dam. (So the "correct" progression for bombers would be 0/1.5/3/6 )
So we get:
Good Pilots
Fighters: +0.5 tech levels.
Bombers: +0.67 tech levels.
Great Pilots
Fighters: +1.0 tech levels.
Bombers: +1.0 tech levels.
Ultimate Pilots
Fighters: +2.0 tech levels.
Bombers: +2.0 tech levels.
The raw increase of damage per tech level stays the same between fighters and bombers, which might be good for balancing purposes.
But this means that Ultimate Pilots increase is equal to 2xGreat pilots increase and 4xGood pilots increase, a great difference when compared to how other weapons apply pilots trait (where ultimate is 1.5xGreat and 3xGood):
"Normal" weapons:
Good Pilots: +1.0 tech levels.
Great Pilots: +2.0 tech levels.
Ultimate Pilots: +3.0 tech levels.
The new non-linearity for the fighters can have a bad effect for balancing purposes, it really bugs me. I would very much prefer something like:
Good Pilots: +0.5 tech levels.
Great Pilots: +1.0 tech levels.
Ultimate Pilots: +1.5 tech levels.
That cannot be achieved with current base damage values if we won't to have the same raw increase of damage per skill level for both fighters and bombers. So I say let's drop that requirement:
Fighters per shot and skill bonus: +1 (+0.5 tech levels, +3 raw damage per level)
Bombers per shot and skill bonus: +2 (+0.67 tech levels, +4 raw damage per level)
Per shot and skill bonus
Good Pilots: Fighter +1 (+0.5 tech levels), Bomber +2 (+0.67 tech levels)
Great Pilots: Fighter +2 (+1.0 tech levels), Bomber +4 (+1.33 tech levels)
Ultimate Pilots: Fighter +3 (+1.5 tech levels), Bomber +6 (+2.0 tech levels)
The differences in damage/cost ratio are small enough to be acceptable:
- The most strong difference is between Ultimate-MD-Bombers and Ultimate-MD-Fighters, with 14.2% more damage per PP.
- Differences are less significative with greater tech levels: Ultimate-DR-Bombers do 7.7% more damage per PP than Ultimate-DR-Fighters.
Also, I like that fighters require 50% more PD power to be fully down on a single bout. It's true that they can also be "distracted" to kill interceptors, but enemy must invest on those (which are useless against ships, so it has it's drawback for the enemy: less damage output, greater survivability for you), and killing enemy bombers is more often than not a good idea for your own ship's survivability, so having some fighters "distracted" killing bomber might be actually better than focusing on enemy ships (it really depends on enemy fleet composition).
So, all in all, I think there is no problem at all by allowing that species trait makes the bombers slightly better than fighters at shooting down ships.