Yeah I agree with your analysis that the fighters and bombers are not useful the way they are configured currently. I can load up my ships with weapons and do plenty of damage or kill fleets before the bombers can do much against my fleets. I don't bother building bombers and rarely bother with fighters. Fighters should target the ships that are closest to them. Allowing them to start dishing out damage sooner. Even with that i dont know if i would build them. Its really a hard thing to get right.. to be fair though the first game did have it working pretty well and those bombers would take a whole phase to start doing their work too.
To be fair i can't recall really buillding the advanced bombers or fighters much so i can't fully speak how good they are. There have been many updates since then. 

-Mr. Tyco

A fun observation. As you are playing Vodyani, the Plague Ship quest that rewards you with Antimatter Bombers or Fighters is disabled for your Empire. As such, using Bombers as a Vodyani is generally suboptimal.

Now I will mostly be answering from experience, so I apologize for a lack of numbers. I am in the camp of "Bombers are in a fine spot currently" (Fighters not so much though...)

To defend Bombers, I will list what I think are the strong points of Bombers. First off, I really need to link you to this analysis of flight paths that I wrote, which talk a bit about bombers: On the Influence of Tactics on Cross-Flotilla firing (+some info on bombers).

1a. They consistently target the 1st lane, and then proceed to the lower ones once they are done.

1b. They are not restricted to targeting ships from opposing or adjacent lanes, and are unaffected by firing arcs.

Point 1a means Bombers allow you to reallocate more offensive power to the Lane 2 and Lane 3.

Point 2b means that even if your flotilla get flanked and unable to fire back due to firing arcs, which happens sometimes, with Bombers that flotilla will be able to dish out damage to the flanking flotilla, which is better than nothing. It could even potentially lead to your victory if your flanked flotilla is focused on survivability.

And more importantly, they enable fleet compositions focusing on a single lane, namely the 3rd lane.

It is possible thanks Bombers to create a fleet focused on the 3rd lane, as targeting upper lanes is much easier than targeting lower lanes. With Bombers, such a fleet could target Lanes 3 then 2 using weapons, and Lane 1 using Bombers. With smart tactic choice, it is even possible to easily prevent the Lane 2 from targeting your Lane 3, leading to a fleet that will destroy unprepared opponents. (this strategy is even more potent with the Hopeless tactic card)

2. Bombers keep dealing damage even after their carrier is gone.

That point is amazing in several situations. Desperate battles, or massive battles where losses are inevitable. When your carrier is destroyed, the Bombers will keep diligently eating at your opponent ships. Post-mortem glory at its finest!

That also means Bombers are pretty good on Tank Coordinators you know have a high chance of getting destroyed during a big battle. Even after their glorious sacrifice, the Bombers will keep doing their job.

3. Bombers are only countered by Flak and Fighters. Fighters.

Who use Fighters? Barely anyone, so that's one counter less. Flak though is widely spread, and can shred through unsupported Bombers. That is where the combo of Antimatter Bomber + Squadron Shifter shine. Antimatter Bombers have a base 50% evasion, and with several Squadron Shifters (+400HP if equiped on a Carrier, +200 on a Coordinator, and +10% evasion) they will reach 2000+HP and 90% evasion. That makes them unkillable by flak.

Even then, the fact that your enemy had to build flak means some long range offensive power was lost in the process. And if they don't, even better, as it means you will be able to focus on offensive damage rather than survivability for your Bombers.

5. People underestimate Bombers.

The damage Bombers can deal to Carriers is not to be underestimated (150%). Not only do Bombers have very high penetration values (Kinetics: 50%/90% Energy: 90%/50%), ttheir critical hits deal double damage instead of ignoring defenses. It means that compared to a normal weapon, they are very effective against heavily armored targets, which get more and more numerous as the game goes on.

6. Bomber enhancing modules can be stacked, unlike Enhancers and Intensifiers.

The latest change to Enhancers and Intensifiers was an indirect buff to Bombers, as their modules can be stacked.

In short, to capitalize on Bombers a single Carrier is all that is needed. This single ship will exert a strong pressure on knowledgeable opponents, forcing them to adjust their fleets. And against those who don't know, this single ship will turn the tide of the battle around.

Now, an answer to the comparison of Bombers vs Beams. Beams are a weapon that deal a constant and stable dps, that starts very low due to shields, and eventually becomes devastating once shields are depleted. In a way, they are somewhat similar to Bombers, as they need some time before hitting peak efficiency. 

The difference is that for Beams this "time" is much shorter, but "resets" upon selecting a new target. For Bombers, this time is longer, but is only dependent on starting positions and reset only once the targeted flotilla has been destroyed.

And while they both have similar displayed DPS, Bombers are actually more burst oriented than Beams.

What I mean with this? Nothing really, both have advantages and disadvantages, and I don't believe one is overall better than the other. What will make the difference though, is how a player incorporate these advantages and disadvantages into its fleet according to situation, preferences, etc...

...

A small comment in the end aimed at devs. 

Vodyani don't have access to the Plague Ship quest, and as such don't have access to Antimatter Squadrons. That is especially saddening knowing they have an awesome Coordinator and Carrier. Could something be done to have them be able to use them?

Hey YertyL, thanks for reading the cross-flotilla thing! Allow me to answer your comments:

By "reallocating offensive power", do you mean carriers or non-carriers? As you wrote yourself in the linked thread, carriers are most effective on lane 1. I guess being able to put all ships in lane 3 is indeed a unique advantage, but to me that falls more in the category of bug/AI cheesing than legitimate combat role.

I play a lot of multiplayer, and this cheesy tactic has won me several wars against actual players. Against a conventional evenly spread fleet, a Lane 3 focus will deny at least a third of their offensive power, as their Lane 1 will be unable to target anything. As for their Lane 2, a clever tactic choice can prevent them from targeting the Lane 3. 

As for reallocating offensive power, it means you can focus more offensive ships on the Lane 2 and Lane 3, as the Bombers will take care of the Lane 1. The combat role of a bomber-carrying Carrier is to take out the 1st Lane by itself, while you can have other weapons take out the other lanes.

This to me is also way too situational. Yes, in very specific circumstances you can use some sacrificial carrier tactics, but you can mostly also just use beams and win instead.

You can use beams and win without loss only if your fleet is technologically superior or/and vastly outnumber the enemy. But when two fleets of matching numbers and power face, losses are bound to happen whatever everyone use. And every ship lost will lead to a decrease of global firepower.

That power decrease is lessened for bomber-carrying ships, which will keep dishing out damage until the battle is over.

How do you get "only"? Bombers are the only weapon module with two counter weapons. Missiles have one (flak), and that's already enough that most people do not use them. And stacking all the evasion in the world is pointless if a bomber does less damage than a beam module in the first place. Uncountered bombers need to do heavy damage to make up for the fact that there are so many counters -- and to make the investment in the tech, and potentially the counter (fighters) worth it. IMO bombers need to be like a reverse blast effect battery, absolutely deadly to medium size and above.

Weapons synergy is much more complicated than that to me. At first glance, Bombers have the apparent counters as Fighters and Flak. But the same could be said about other weapons.

Beam is countered by Missile and Shields. Missile is countered by Flak and Hull. Flak is countered by Beam and Hull.

The fact that Bombers have clearly defined counters mean that the enemy response will be very predictable and easy to build against. 

What if they build flak? Well that means they are more vulnerable to beams and lasers.

What if they build fighters? Then they decided to give up valuable weapon modules, and as such offensive power. (fighters have 0 worth as a weapon)

Uncountered bombers will do heavy damage to Medium and Large Hulls, but the problem in your battles is that your Bombers got countered each time.

Well yes, but as my example battles above show rightfully so. They just don't deal damage even when uncountered. The +50% more vs carriers is way too situational to make a difference, my examples were as close to a perfect situtation for bombers as you'll normally get in a game.

There is a big problem with your example battles: they showcase a perfect situation for beam weapons and a bad situation for bombers. Beam shine even more when a fleet is superior technologically and by numbers, which was the case in your battle. Furthermore, we can clearly see your opponent is using Flak and Fighters, which means your barely supported Bombers had barely any chance to survive. (a single survivability module won't amount to much by itself)

In both battles, your bombers had 1720 HP and 15% evasion, which is around 2000 effective HP.

In battle 1, you had 18 Bombers at the start, and lost 15. That means it took 30000 total damage to take out your 15 Bombers.

In battle 2, you had 18 Bombers and lost 12. That means it took 24000 total damage to take out your 15 Bombers. There weren't even fighters present, which mean they dropped like flies and couldn't deal damage effectively at all.

The enemy had flak, but your defenses were to high for its icon to appear on the battle report (unlike Railguns which pierce hull and Lasers which have high hull penetration).

Furthermore you had Bombers on the Lane 2, which mean they took nearly 1 phase to get to Lane 1, only to be unable to deal damage as the Lane 1 was already gone. They then had to fly all the way to Lane 3, thus leading to more wasted time.

Your battles are good examples of things not to do with Bombers. They need support, and for that a single dedicated Carrier-ship is all that is needed. And if using several bomber-carrying ships, you really shouldn't spread them out, as sometimes Bombers can try to wait for other Bombers before initiating assault.

I have yet to find a single battle in which beams (or any other weapon) did not outperform equivalent bomber damage, normally to a ridiculous degree. Bombers are not more burst if they take the time to reach a ship that it takes the beam weapon to blow it up. I've experimented with reloading and replacing bombers with beams, turning a loss into a decisive victory. Bombers are also far easier to counter. I'm pretty sure that makes beams the objectively better choice. I'm not sure what level of "strong pressure" using a worse weapon will exert... not putting all your ships in first lane?

I never once said Bombers are supposed to outperform other weapons. Fundamentally, they are Squadrons, not main Weapon modules. This is a confusion about the role of Bombers, they are not main damage dealers. Their fundamental role is to destroy Large Ships, or bring cross-flotilla support. The latter has a high tactical value, but I already said a lot about it. So if you are ever wondering whether to take Beams or Bombers for your fleet main damage source, then by all means go Beams. Bombers are not designed to work as a main damage source.

One should never create a pure Bomber fleet. Because of Bombers flight time and targeting, even 6 Carriers with pure Bombers will end up losing to a far weaker fleet because of this. They are a support weapon, with a clear role in mind. Take out Lane 1 in several short burst.

And yes, Bombers do inflict a burst damage as they deal a high amount of damage over a short period of time. From the public files, the most basic bomber's salvo deals more damage than the best Beam weapon's. They are a delayed burst, unlike Blast Effect Battery which is an instant burst.

Also, keep in mind what I said about Antimatter Bombers. Fully supported Antimatter Bombers as so disgustingly tanky that they are uncountered by Flak and Fighters. (2590 HP and 90% Evasion means about 25900 effective health per bomber, which can only be whitled down with pure Flak ships. In your battles, you would have lost only 1 of these supported Bombers instead of whole squadrons...)

I think attacking lane 1 first could be a way to emphasize tactical aspect of bombers but it is very counterintuitive and strange way to do so. Strategic/Tactical value of carrier planes would be expansive radius of operation. Yes, putting carriers on lane 3 and sending them to lane 1 is possible way of doing this. But, after all, it's really hard to understand the reason or intention behind it.

IMO, in order to emphasize the expansive radius of operation of bombers, these planes should be also allowed to participate in the battle when its carriers are not currently in part of the battle. Now, if there is anything that makes difference between typical weapon modules and bombers, it is freedom from firing arc and lane constriction. But that wasn't explained well and doesn't seem intuitive. Nonetheless, if we remove those features then bombers will become useless or just anti-carrier weapon. I hope bombers to have more strategic value than that. So, I think giving some abilities like helping planet siege/raid or aiding battle just like reinforcement in EL did would be possible ways to make up for losing tatical value of attacking lane 1 first policy. I know it has some values but it should be removed or revamped.

Hey again YertyL! Sorry if I seemed aggressive in my statements, in hindsight I think I did.

Bombers are not as straightforward as weapon modules, due to their unusual behavior combined with the numerous hidden mechanics of this game's battle system. This is a problem in that the battle system is already not intuitive (cross-flotilla combat, firing arcs...), and Bombers behavior only adds another layer of user-unfriendliness to it. For newcomers, this is a terrible headache. 

Furthermore, unlike conventional weapon systems, Bombers require support to switch from useless to effective. That's another at first unintuitive aspect of Bombers, as players are used to weapons working fine by themselves. After as showcased in your example battles, without full support Bombers are easily countered by a small investment into their counters.

Now personally, while this behavior has flaws in term of game-design, I really love it because once you understand it, the battle system becomes deeper and more complex. Specifically, they add another layer to fleet creation by impacting weapons and lanes synergy.

In their current state, whether people perceive it as broken or not, Bombers would be what I call a lane control tool. I did say they are not a main damaging source. They are not a main damaging source for a fleet, but a side damaging source for the fleet, with the specific aim of taking out Lane 1 and/or Carriers and Tanks. The former being enabled by their behavior, the latter by their high penetration values.

Here is an example I hope will shed light on my thought process:

Fleet A composition is: 1 Bomber-Carrier, 2 Conventional-Carriers and several escort ships.

Fleet B composition is: 3 Conventional-Carriers and several escort ships.

Fleet A lane placement:

Lane 1: B-Carrier

Lane 2: Some escort ships

Lane 3: 2 C-Carriers and escort ships

If Fleet B mirror the placement, three cases can happen:

1) B-Carrier wins against C-Carrier. That means Fleet A wins the whole battle as we can assume the Lane 2 and Lane 3 are equally matched.

2) B-Carrier loses against C-Carrier. Due to firing arcs shenanigans, there is a high chance C-Carrier1 will be unable to support Lane 2. 

>2a) If FleetB cannot destroy the FleetA quickly enough, the support from Bombers will tip the scales into FleetA's favor

>2b) If FleetB can destroy FleetA before Bombers can support another lane, FleetB wins.

If Fleet B doesn't mirror the placement, and chooses to avoid placing valuable ships in Lane1. Two cases can happen:

1) FleetB Lane 3 has superior firepower compared to FleetA Lane3, FleetB will destroy FleetA  Lane 2 and 3, but Lane 3 will be unable to target Lane 1. The Lane1 Bombers will then slowly destroy FleetB Lane 2 and Lane 3, leading to Fleet A victory.

2) Lane 3 Flotillas are equally matched, Fleet B Lane 2 Flotilla overpower Fleet A Lane 2. It is the same case as the above 2), if the Lane 2 can't destroy Lane 1 easily through cross-flotilla firing, the Bombers will tip the scales and lead to a Fleet A win.

Finally, there is a point I want to stress out once more. I spoke about Weapon Synergy in my posts, and that is to me a crucial aspect of combat. If we take weapon systems alone and create pure fleets with them, then naturally counters are easy to see. But once a fleet starts to mix these systems to adapt to an opponent, counters become much harder to see.

Let's take Pure Beam for example, it is naturally "countered" by Pure Missiles at long range. But Beam+Flak "counters" Pure Missiles, and Pure Beam "counters" Beam+Flak. 

Finally, a great point about Bombers over Missiles is that Missiles have no way of increasing their defenses against Flak. Bombers can, and with proper support can only be countered by pure and dedicated Flak defenses.

I'm with Plutar in that I think fighters on the defensive could be a counter to missiles/boarding pods. This is exactly how combat works in Freespace 1 & 2 where interceptors can shoot down enemy torpedoes.

In terms of current bomber behavior, it is very odd to attack a specific lane first regardless of your starting lane. A more intelligent behavior would be to attack the largest enemy in the closest lane. i.e. If the bomber is in lane 2 and the enemy has a carrier in lane 3 and a hunter in lane 2, move to attack the carrier where they do more damage. If the enemy has a medium hull in each lane and nothing larger, attack the closest lane which is the same lane that the bomber is in.

The one squadron module I have found to perform decently stat-wise(in the area I would like all to perform) is the "light bomber", I believe, the quest reward for " a swarm of locust". Its damage values, however, are somewhere in the area of 2x of that of a normal bomber. 

The main problem of bombers really is simply the fact that they take about one full phase to start doing damage due to their low speed, at which point some battles are over, or their original target is destroyed and they have to fly over to another flotilla again. I would strongly recommend buffing their speed by about 100% and starting balance from there.

Also yes, IMO fighters should counter boarding pods, while boarding pods should be close range and counter flak instead of the other way around. But the latter is another discussion :-)

So I took a closer look at two battles involving the following carrier design:

Notice that in theory, the beam weapon damage should be almost identical to that of one energy bomber module vs medium ships, meaning the carrier should output roughly 3 times as much bomber damage as beam, with the same range profile (100 100 100).

Practice looks a little different:

While output values are affected by some modifiers, e.g. bigger is better only affecting the beam weapons, 3 bomber modules being consistently outperformed by one beam in an almost ideal situation still seems simply unbalanced. There is still very little reason to build bombers, and consequently practically no reason to build fighters.

Aside from numerical buffs, two changes are IMO desperately needed:

1. Increase in squadron speed: One reason the bombers did so little damage in the second battle is that it lasted for little more than one phase. That is not uncommon, however, and if bombers need one whole phase to even start doing damage, that seriously limits their use.
2. Target preference switched from first lane to opposing lane: Currently bombers give prioriy to targets in the first (top) lane no matter which lane they start in. Aside from exasperating problem nr.1, carrier ships effectively being far less useleful in the third lane than the first seems like a really arbitrary and opaque mechanic.

1a. They consistently target the 1st lane, and then proceed to the lower ones once they are done.

I just wondered if the devs are planning to change this? Right now it rather sours me on the whole fighter/bomber mechanics.

I know fighters still need some help and bombers are near the meta with defensive cards like prudent prodentials. Hopefully we will get some kind of targeting change and updates to the combat system.  I know a lot including myself have been advocating for it, just I'd imagine its probably a LOT of work to change and balance the system in place (beings how complex/many weapons ect).  

Very weak is an understatement. It's more efficient to build a ship with empty weapon slots than to fill those slots with bombers. Bombers do essentially nothing in combat, an empty weapon slot at least makes the ship cheaper to build. If you are going to build garbage ships that lose every battle, at least make them cheaper to mass produce.

I think developers should think about rebalancing fighters and bombers. They are not only ineffective in combat, but also look ridiculous. Why are there only 2-4 ships in the link and why do they have such a bad animation? In ES 1, the fighters were larger and more realistic.

Maxwell92 wrote:

I think developers should think about rebalancing fighters and bombers. They are not only ineffective in combat, but also look ridiculous. Why are there only 2-4 ships in the link and why do they have such a bad animation? In ES 1, the fighters were larger and more realistic.

From what I remember the limit on the number of fighters / bombers was imposed because of performance problems.

But I agree that a squadron should be something like 8-12 fighters / bombers (and their stats adjusted accordingly).

samsonazs wrote:

From what I remember the limit on the number of fighters / bombers was imposed because of performance problems.

But I agree that a squadron should be something like 8-12 fighters / bombers (and their stats adjusted accordingly).

You're right. Dev said "It is possible to have more fighter-bombers but we reduced their number because of performance issues".

Plus, I'm also one who support increasing the number of squadron members. But if that is not possible, I think there would be other ways to buff squadrons like

• Give a 'Catapult' trait or module to carrier class, which gives a massive moving speed bonus to squadrons for a very short time
• Add a new phase before the first one and give a free attack opportunity for squadrons before the main weapons fire each other
• Give some bonuses to squadrons like interruption which increases cooldown and decreases accuracy of weapon modules of the opponent ships being attacked
• Add another roles to squadrons as they did in ES1. Sortie system might be able to replace management of the number of squadrons

Dragar wrote:

Fighters and bombers are changed for the better: they fixed 1a listed above.

Right now, the default fighters and bombers are still very weak. One big improvement would be to increase their flight speed - they need to reach their targets much faster. 

In what patch did they change that? Are there patch notes on it? I'm pretty sure I played yesterday and my bombers/fighters were not targetting their adjacent lane but flying to lane 1 still.

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

• Add a new phase before the first one and give a free attack opportunity for squadrons before the main weapons fire each other

This is one I can get behind. Have a either a half phase or full phase for fighters/bombers to get a head start on dealing damage.

jaypad07 wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Fighters and bombers are changed for the better: they fixed 1a listed above.

Right now, the default fighters and bombers are still very weak. One big improvement would be to increase their flight speed - they need to reach their targets much faster. 

In what patch did they change that? Are there patch notes on it? I'm pretty sure I played yesterday and my bombers/fighters were not targetting their adjacent lane but flying to lane 1 still.

Seriously? Eugh, I could have sworn this was fixed.

Nope, it's not. Sorry ;(

Maybe they could make them more like Stellaris squadrons, where you really need to be worried about the bombers for your medium / large hull ships and gear up accordingly.

I mean something like remove them from the flak, and make it so that only other fighters can engage enemy bombers and protect your own bombers. 1 Squadron should have 4 fighters / bombers, so that if you dedicate a carrier for fighters / bombers you can put out quite some numbers.

I know devs said about performance but IMHO, either try to make it work in a more realistic way, or just remove it. Having 1 bomber coming out of a huge carrier is more of an escape pod cinematic than an terrifying enemy :)

I agree. I think at the very least flak should do much less damage to them. I'm sure there are ways to fix the performance issues in huge drone battles.

Can we maybe make them like "smart" missiles that don't actually hit the target with an impact but just float around it and shoot it up? I haven't seen any performance hits even with max CP fleets filled with missiles (even swarm missiles). GTX 1060 6gb, I7 4770 3.4ghz 16gb ram, max details etc (FPS capped to 60 because I use v-sync), 1920x1200.

Anyway looking forward to see what the devs can come up with!

Okay, how does fighter craft targeting work now? It certainly doesn't work as described above (immediately targeting lane 1), but nor do they target the opposite lane either.