I thought the ANTI_FIGHTER tag was only used in conjunction with PD_ONLY weapons to allow guns that strictly shoot at missiles to also aim at fighters. Few weapons have the ANTI_FIGHTER tag, but most of them will still fire at them.
Base HMG (and LMG) are excellent SO support weapons and
lousy PD weapons, to the point where I wonder why they have the PD tag other than to pretend they're PD alternatives to vulcans and flak. They're good SO bait but they'd need some sort of tweak to be competent in a PD role, though doing so without making them even
nastier SO guns might be a bit of a trick (have a few ideas, but this isn't the thread for them)
2b is what I'd be interested in trying first. It's similar to the earlier renditions of the Thumper/Shredder, and I really want a multipurpose gun that can knock out fighters & missiles like the Thumper's fluff text suggests. That's the Thumper setup I'm testing next (My last test was a simple Thumper slightly reworked with clip mechanics and PD_ALSO mechanics. Funnily enough it was actually too effective in the PD role; turns out a cloud of 2k frag launched all at the same time tends to obliterate the missile, and the 5 behind that)
2a and 1 would also work in terms of making the Thumper useful, but I'm just irrationally wed to the idea of a PD-capable thumper...
Flaks can be effective against fighters, but their effectiveness against them is extremely sensitive to the fighter craft in question. Flak or Dual Flak will effortlessly wipe clouds of Wasps (10 armor/100 hull) and chew through Talons (25 armor/200 hull), but knocking down a Broadsword (100 armor/750 hull) or licking your way to the center of a Warthog (200 armor/750 hull) is bound to be a much longer slog.
w.r.t. this claim,
I agree 100% that the Thumper is too weak for its OP cost compared to all other guns. I'm not completely sure thats undesirable though, because imo there is some gameplay value in having a bad option or two. It gives new players something to identify as bad and then not use (system mastery progression) as well as lets them laugh maniacally when blowing up the poor pirate ships using them.
And then there is that special sense of embarrassment that happens when an enemy with thumpers manages to blow me up because I've been flying very badly...
eh. I don't agree. I've never felt any sense of accomplishment or achievement when discovering that something that's supposed to be useful in its role actually isn't and avoid it, nor does it provide me any joy blowing up dumb pirate builds that wield them in a medium mount (or worse: a
large mount). At best I don't notice such obsolete equipment, but often it somewhat detracts from whatever game I'm playing by taking up space, especially if it's a thing that I want to be good. And let's be honest, who truly want Star Sector's BRRRRRRRRT gun to suck?
I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea that any weapon should intentionally be worse than other weapons for a given OP cost. I've made a personal mod filled with slight tweaks of vanilla stuff I hardly used, because I want as many options afforded to the player (well, me) to be viable as possible.
