Bonaventura Variants discussion

[Dioxine]

An upcoming addition to the early game will be the ability to build one of 5 Bonaventura variants, each with a special weapon to boot. You will still only ever have a single craft of this type, but now you will be able to choose which one.
The discussion is open to suggest stat changes, map changes and special abilities. I will lay down the basics below:

- Bonaventura (green)
No changes. Special Weapon: Charger Laser. The highest troop capacity variant (others will have 12-14 troops).

- El Fuego (red)
Assault-oriented craft. Special Weapon: Magma Cannon. Will have a bonus to weapon accuracy and highest speed of all.

- Fortuna (blue)
Recon-oriented craft. Special Weapon: . Fast, some dodge, very good radar, intended to be ideal for the 'go after landed ships only' strategy. Loses some weapons and armor but it translates into a good mileage and extended flight time.

- Metallo (black)
Tanking-oriented craft. Very tough and with improved repair rate. On the ground, it will be a bunker as well. Special Weapon: Sniper Cannon (best ROF in Cautious mode)

- Dorado (golden)
The swaggiest of them all. Not that good but spawns gold bars on each touchdown! Special weapon: Bling Cannon (stong heavy weapon, but needs gold for ammo).

[new_civilian]

Metallo = Doors 
Maybe add gravlifts to one version.
The Fortuna should maybe have a cloaking device only, no weapon at all.

[legionof1]

Okay my thoughts one by one.

Bonny: Larger capacity means very little without knowing auxiliary unit capacity. 12-14 is usually more then sufficient for early play. Better for pogroms where you need the bodies. I like doing early pogroms for the gear boost if it rolls a manageable faction. Charger laser is cost efficient but lackluster gun as a single mount, lack damage potential to even kill smallest craft. 5/10

El fuego: High speed potentially opens up the target pool but not by alot if the cannon is short range. Alot of the lack of airpower on the current bonny is that is forced to tank so much on the way in severely risking the craft. IF the cannon is comparable to say naval gun it's a decent craft. ?/10 need to see the gun.

Fortuna: Better mileage, better endurance, and fast. Yes please a huge fraction of the neat stuff comes from following landings. This could have no guns and i would be fine with it. Also landings are the second best opportunity to bootstrap early play. 8/10

Metallo: A good long range gun on a hardy craft is ideal for getting into the mid game in the air. Early interceptors pack immense damage but are made of wet newspaper. Having something that can front line prior to the kraken(which suffers from poor gun slots) Could be a game changer. Corner case(imo) ground advantage. 7/10

Dorado:  abuse potential so very high. Unless you absolutely force use of the gun in some way. 1/10 or 10/10 depending on implementation.

[Arthanor]

Nice! They all sound interesting.

I'd give the sniper cannon to the Fortuna instead of the Metallo though. To me, hiding and ambushing go well with snipers. It being blue works: You hide in the sky, follow your target and take it out from afar if it doesn't land like you hoped.

Then for the Metallo, a HMG like gun, turning it into a flying pillbox. Would be cool to have semi-obstructed doors (ie doors where there's also a half-wall, making them windows) so you can open them and shoot out from various angles. Making it the perfect craft to land against strong opposition as you can sit in your fortress and shoot stuff.

[legionof1]

any walled structure that can take a few shots is a fortress if managed properly in this game. With the sentry turret in the game there is very little you can't land against.

[Arthanor]

Well, you also need to be able to shoot back. I haven't tried the sentry gun yet, but if it is tanky enough to handle the back hatch, that could make quite a difference. But still, you either have to jump down the hatch, which means you can't get back in, or pop your head out of the roof, which might work, but tends to get you headshot by reaction fire. That's why I was suggesting firing points.

[Eddie]

I would say it all depends on what other craft are available early on. Right now the bonny is your best troop transport in the early game so I would always go with the highest capacity there. Hunter-killers are available soon enough to do interceptions and they have decent radar. For tougher shippings you need multiple attack craft anyway so if one of them is a little bit better that won't make much difference. Patroling with the bonny for radar might not be the best idea because of expansive fuel. Depends on mileage though, but that would have to be really good to be feasible. But then again pigeons are cheap enough.
The metallo might be interesting because right now the bonny is your early game lead attack craft because it can take the most damage. If it's worth it depends on how much troop capacity you have to sacrifice.

As much of these things depends on air combat, it also depends on what air combat you need to do. If only attacking landed craft is the best early game strategy anyway, better interception power is a moot point. And better radar usefulness depends on how difficult it is to find landed ships. Right now I find it not that difficult.

I would rate troop capacity and battlescape layout as the most game changing aspects.

[legionof1]

In my estimation having an air tank early really would open up the target list immensely. The main point is the repair speed. The current bonny is actually a decent tank but with no repair bonus it takes a very long time to be ready for another go during which you may lose a rich target simply for not having the hp to fight. Having something with more up time would really step up the potential pace of a game.

[new_civilian]

Would be cool to have semi-obstructed doors (ie doors where there's also a half-wall, making them windows) so you can open them and shoot out from various angles. Making it the perfect craft to land against strong opposition as you can sit in your fortress and shoot stuff.

this^

Legionof1's writing about the sentry gun made me curious how they perform on a craft/tac mission. I have to admit until now i only kept them at the base in case of a crackdown...

[Arthanor]

Do they even spawn somewhere useful? I picture mine would spawn behind doors or something, and be totally useless unless some idiotic invader happened to stumble in.

[Dioxine]

Experiment god damn it! Not all crafts have doors.

[Arthanor]

haha yeah.. for a scientist, I am oddly reluctant to experiment...

But I meant for base defenses, not in tac missions. I just remember my vanilla HWP spawning in rooms with big doors, which meant they wouldn't be all that useful if they can't move. Base defense is the only place I really consider combat HWPs, as they don't take the place of soldiers.

I generally value soldiers over HWP for general tactical missions, especially in Piratez where gals have so much potential. The only exception being scouts (since they die a lot, and parrots are crazy good) and heavy tanks that can move up and soak enemy fire. The sentry is neither so I haven't tried it. I have a pretty set playstyle that works well for me.

I wish I could make a video so you can say which Legion I'd fit in

Back on the actual topic: Any chance of a Bonny-variant that can take missiles? That would be a fair difference as well. Maybe a high tech, low armor variant for the brainer oriented gameplay?

[new_civilian]

Oh no, believe it or not, for a moment I completely forgot that there are doors in bases, too. Oops 
I hope the sentries spawn in a good location... lol

Back to the topic: If goldbars can be spawned: Can (unrecoverable) sentry turrets also be spawned? Imagine a Bonny layout with a fixed turret in a tac mission!

[Arthanor]

That'd be cool! Would fit well for a missile Bonny

[Dioxine]

Definitely one of these variants will carry missiles, not sure which yet (El Fuego will likely have 3x heavy setup, Fortuna very little in the way of weapons, Bonaventura unchanged, other remain an unknown).

As for spawning the turrets... well I could do it by the way of a nasty hack only. As a weapon which looks like a turret when in battlescape, and can be picked up and fired. Extreme weight would disallow moving and firing. But it's not a very clean solution, to say the least.

As for using sentries in Hideout Defense, they were never intended as such