[Sarafan]

Its exactly that, in the future should the GTVA focus on the production of an all around fighter? I mean, one that can handle other fighters and have some firepower enough to be threat to larger ships, the obvious example being the Myrmidon. Taking into consideration that the shivans strike with an incredible advantage in numbers (both small and larger craft), a fighter that could handle multiple roles like that would be the best option (in most cases, at least), in the same mission it could engage fighters and larger ships avoiding the necessity to field heavier bombers (or even assist them in their job), wich are easy prey for fighters.

Another idea, should the GTVA do something in the same way of the current F-35? Building three ships with common systems would be a good advantage to have both in logistics and weapons compability. Of course in the case of the GTVA, it could be a interceptor, a all around fighter and a bomber, all of them sharing the same basic components and, to a lesser extent, even the same structure.

[Polpolion]

Space superiority and heavy bombers are the way to go. If you increase the missle capacity in the myrmidons two top banks and add more speed (say, top speed 78 - 80 m/s) then all they would need to do is add capabilities for mounting more advance weaponry. They then would have a formidable craft. Then they have the Bonagredes bomber, which has AMAZING missle capacity, and they could possibly either add more armor, a turret or two, or increase the speed.

These two craft with these improvements provide almost all forms of fighters/bombers. The only one not covered is Strike bomber, unless you count the Easter Eggs.

[S-99]

It's called...fly an erinyes equipped with kaysers for fighters, maxim for capships, and the loadout being trebuchets which are great for disarming capships and killing bombers/slow fighters(or even that lucky hit with the trebuchet and a dragon).
Fighters work really good in numbers against capships, and i don't think you're going to be able to destroy anything larger than a cruiser with one fighter.

[NGTM-1R]

The GTVA in a sense already has fighterbombers; they're called Bakhas. They dogfight decently and can carry the Helios. I think though you're going to see a superheavy bomber category appear, to deal more adequately with juggernauts.

[Sarafan]

The Erynies is a good dogfighter but that's it and its speed isnt that good. A Myrmidon armed with 2 Helios can seriously be a threat to capital ships and just a wing of four can be deadly, all you have to do is increase the speed to 80 and make it compatible with the Harpoon. As for a bomber the best they have is the Sekhmet by far. The Bakha is a light bomber but no that good a fighter.

[Prophet]

Normally I'd say GTVA would continiue to improve within their current design philosophies. But now that the have seen the wastness of Shivan juggernauts and their capabilities... Quite frankly, a wing of heavy fighters is more than capable of overcoming a corvette (at least disarm and disable = kill), thus rendering current bombers more or less obsolete because they are not able to significantly harm Supercaps, and are not required to have against corvettes and smaller.

They would have to come up with a new class of "superbomber" and a new warhead effective against supercaps (something like a tactical meson bomb ). Or abandon heavy warheads alltogether and move on to a gunships armed with energy weaponry that are fast and agile enought for tactical strikes.

So what they need is:
Space superiority - Something fast and agile to kill things fast and agile
Heavy fighter - Good weaponry and lots of missiles and it will peel weapons off from big stuff = "neutralizing"
Heavy attack - Something with enought power against juggernauts (oh, and can handle destroyers as well). Possibly a tactical beam platform or other heavy energy weapon(s) mounted on a fast gunship.

Not that these theories are based on the opinion that bombers are becoming obsolete. Because of heavier warships even Helios is unable to notably dent. And because newer weaponry is rendering the slow moving warheads ineffective (flak, beams). And when you don't have to have thousands of warheads available aboard the destroyer, you can fill that space with a nighclub. And I can't understand why GTVA and shivans insist on relying on expensive, limited, ordanance such as missiles and bombs, when resources could be directed towards developing more powerful energy based weaponry wich would require considerably less industrial base.

[Sarafan]

On Into the depths of Hell campaign there is this shivan bomber, the Vindhyachal, its the mostly deadly bomber I've seen and it would be the best thing to field against capital ships, it has a single beam cannon and it is fairly manouverable, I agree that the GTVA should focus on doing something similar, better energy weapons, but missiles are still effective specially to disable/disarm warships (Trebuchets and Stilletos II) and even better against small craft (Harpoon). Against warships (corvette class and above, cruisers are easy to kill, except the Lilith), torpedoes arent that good, they dont have much punch, the main campaign makes that clear.

[TrashMan]

ITDOH was a nice campaign, I remeber that bomber


I made one like that for the GTVA - the Lightbringer.
But then again, I also made one that is so large and has so much armor and shielding, turrets and missile firepower that you could classify it as a mini-cruiser.

[Sarafan]

Lightbringer? Do you have a screen of it?