[Droid803]

Well it depends what your definition of bomber is. It can do surgical strikes.

So can a Perseus.

Point?

[Snail]

"bomber" is a horribly defined class anyway.

[Alex Heartnet]

Ships I like:

Hercules MKI: 6 gun banks, lots of missiles, good armor.  Very well suited for an aggressive flying style.
Perseus: Good speed and agility, an excellent general-purpose fighter.
Ursa: It can carry easy-to-use tempests instead of difficult-to-aim hornets or low-capacity rockeyes.  This can make all the difference against enemy fighters during a bombing mission.

Ships I hate:
Myrmidon: Gun placement is troublesome, second missile bank is horrid for firing tempests out of.
Vasudan craft in general (combination of the above and the below)
Anything with ridiculously high turning ability, because it then becomes hard to aim with my joystick, and I can't even turn at maximum angle for fear of overturning, thus wasting the craft's potential.

[Droid803]

"bomber" is a horribly defined class anyway.

I define a bomber as anything that can carry bombs. Seems obvious.
Tsunamis, Harbingers, Cyclops, Helios.

The Myrm is a bomber. The Athena is not.

[Snail]

Well then your definition of bomber is different to FreeSpace's.

[Alex Heartnet]

The myrmidon carrying torpedos is quite possibly a  bug, according to the Freespace wiki.  Note that it carries the ultra-heavy Helios torpedo but not the lighter, more common/cheaper Cyclops.  Also note that the Heilos and Myrmidon don't appear together on any of the retail freespace missons, so Myrmidon bombing runs aren't very common.

EDIT:  The Athena was probably made to saturate cruisers and transports with fury missles, as it was made before torpedos proper.  That makes it a bomber (albeit one that becomes horribly outdated when torpedos are introduced.)

[Droid803]

I feel my definition is more consistent with the roles the craft can actually perform, thus it is more correct.

The fact that it doesn't line up with FreeSpace's definition I attribute to mistakes on 's part. Such as the myrmidon w/ helios being a potential table mistake, the beam-less Mentus, blatant lying about ships having more turrets than they really do, etc.

In my mind, the Athena should really carry Tsunamis, and the Myrm no helios.
Then it all lines up.

[Alex Heartnet]

I feel my definition is more consistent with the roles the craft can actually perform, thus it is more correct.

The fact that it doesn't line up with FreeSpace's definition I attribute to mistakes on 's part. Such as the myrmidon w/ helios being a potential table mistake, the beam-less Mentus, blatant lying about ships having more turrets than they really do, etc.

In my mind, the Athena should really carry Tsunamis, and the Myrm no helios.
Then it all lines up.

Hense my comment about the Athena being made obsolete by the Tsunami.  It probably wasn't made to fire anything as big as a Tsunami.

Although, how difficult can it be to retrofit an Athena with missile banks that CAN fire Tsunamis?  It's probably a matter of balance more then anything else, an Athena with Tsunamis has enough agility to take on fighters (or at least defend itself), as well as being able to take out large warships.

[QuantumDelta]

Correct.
The Athena was a bomber in a game that made sense
It bombed in the way Alex suggested.
It's not a strike/assault fighter because it has terrible weapon loadouts.

[NGTM-1R]

The Athena's perfectly zeroed guns for engaging small targets make me suspicious of anything that says it was meant solely as a bomber. They allow near-perfect precision without effort, which makes engaging small targets like turrets, fighters at range, or bombs simple. Its compatibility with Phoenix V and Interceptor missiles is also very suspicious. In a lot of ways, I think the Athena would be a better interceptor than anything cast in the role.

The assertion the the Helios thing is a bug has always seemed thin to me, as most people immediately follow up with "it should have been harpoon" and there are missions where both are available and would even be useful together, during your time with the Raptors.

[Qent]

The myrmidon carrying torpedos is quite possibly a  bug, according to the Freespace wiki.

Veteran comments are merely the opinions of the members you see here. There is nothing concrete to indicate that "Helios" was intended to be "Harpoon" although it would make sense.

Also note that the Heilos and Myrmidon don't appear together on any of the retail freespace missons, so Myrmidon bombing runs aren't very common.

They do in retail multi missions, but that doesn't make it much more common.

[BirdofPrey]

Personally, I think the Athena is more of a Strike fighter.  The ability to carry stilettos allows it to disable capital ships, the tight grouping on the guns makes it ideal for shooting out small turrets and it has enough secondary capacity to wade through medium sized targets like freighters and bombers, and even cruisers if you have enough Athenas.  Think of the first mission you fly the Athena on, your job is to disable a cruiser so it can be captured.

Personally, I don't buy the idea that the Athena has no ability to carry bombs because they were developed after the Athena.  The Terrans and Vasudans were supposedly at war for 14 years, surely they would have something for anti-capital ship work.  I justify it that by the time you are authorized to use Tsunamis and Medusas, they have replaced an older bomber carrying older bombs.

[QuantumDelta]

Please
Stop
Making
****
Up

To recap;
Before the Medusa and the Tsunami there were no bomber deployable bombs which were used in the fashion that's seen more or less exclusively in FS2.
The Athena carried 'Stiletto Bombs', and ships were disarmed, and disabled, and pounded to death with raw primary and secondary fire, or friendly capship support - the second game broke this.
The URSA and the Harbinger were developed together in order to allow the only previously existing "bomb", which was previously reserved for orbital bombardment (assumably, from capital ships).

If you weren't around for FS1s multi days, and played FS1 rather a /lot/ before FS2 came out, and let the FS1 universe soak in before FS2 came and turned it all on it's head, you should probably NOT make assumptions based on how FS2 works when you talk about FS1, because, they're not the same.

[Marcov]

You're ruining the creativity of debate.

[Jadehawk]

GTF Ares is my preferred mount with Trebs as secondary and Kaisers as Primary. Altho I do like the GTF Persus and it's interceptor role but feel it's somewhat limited in what i can do. Kinda of being restricted in it's load out. What really bugs me the most is the size of the missiles versus the ship it's self. But that's another story. But playing FS1. I happened to like the Ol Herk best.   

[Grizzly]

Herc 2's and Ares. And the Artemis .

The Serapis is... interesting. You've got a lot of manouvrability, but you absolutely have to use it as well. It can become a tool of death, but it is absolutely unforgiving.

[TrashMan]

Please
Stop
Making
****
Up

To recap;
Before the Medusa and the Tsunami there were no bomber deployable bombs which were used in the fashion that's seen more or less exclusively in FS2.
The Athena carried 'Stiletto Bombs', and ships were disarmed, and disabled, and pounded to death with raw primary and secondary fire, or friendly capship support - the second game broke this.
The URSA and the Harbinger were developed together in order to allow the only previously existing "bomb", which was previously reserved for orbital bombardment (assumably, from capital ships).

If you weren't around for FS1s multi days, and played FS1 rather a /lot/ before FS2 came out, and let the FS1 universe soak in before FS2 came and turned it all on it's head, you should probably NOT make assumptions based on how FS2 works when you talk about FS1, because, they're not the same.

I've yet to see any real evidece of what you mention.
There are quite a few things mentioned, but never seen in FS.
There is little sense in calling someting a bomber when it doesn't carry bomb. And that very link you provided shows that Stilleto was a NEW weapon, so there must have been something for the Athena to use prior to that.
that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

[Marcov]

You know, I kind of find it funny how the Freespaceverse develops so rapidly over the course of a few years.

You have an Orion, the undisputed giant of the navy now, Harbingers to take down an uber-warship the enemy has, then the next thing...you have gigantic Meson bombs capable of bringing down a node, beam cannons, flak, Colossus (though admittedly a quite impractical project if we weed out the propaganda factor), stealth fighter, etc.

This feel is further enlarged when I played the Unification Mod (the one before T-V War), I mean...the GTVA has managed to colonize dozens of systems in...a few dozen years?

[NGTM-1R]

Making **** up while asking people not to.

We have no idea of the state of weapons development or otherwise before FS1 opens. One does not materialize a weapon and a role for it full-formed. These things must be grown into. Yet the GTA had not only a weapon and a platform to deploy it from in development, twice, in the bomber role, but they appear to have materialized a doctrine for its employ that wasn't half-bad considering the limitations. We also know that the Vasudans had dedicated heavy and medium bombers with weapons powerful enough to destroy Orions, and a counterforce would be a logical reaction.

The assertion that there are no destructive bombs before the Tsunami is, at best, slightly less likely than the alternative. Both arguments can be made, but do not pretend yours is better.

[Snail]

Well the Ulysses couldn't have been in development for longer than the space of time of FS1.