To balance ground combat ships can barely do any damage with regular weapons (save for explosive ones) as it is, which is a sub optimal approach, that leads to the general disappointment of the player base.
A better approach, that makes sense lore wise, would be to have settlements protected by powerful shields, they would protect anything inside the settlement, including the anti air turrets, making it much harder for a ship to shred ground defenses.
With this system a task unit should infiltrate the right building and disable the shields, ofc enough ships properly fitted would be able to eventually brute force their way through the shields, but this should be difficult for any single ship.
This would balance air to ground combat enough that normal weapons would not need to be nerfed against ground units anymore, allowing "warthog" kinds of builds (all overcharged mcs) to be deadly in this role, as they absolutely should be, again: A10 warthog is a real life proof of this.
Ps: It makes sense, when it comes to lore, that any important settlement is protected by dome of shield, else any pirate would do short work of any of them, this is elite dangerous after all, if they are not shielded against even small rocks flying through space, we should not see so many settlements at all.
A better approach, that makes sense lore wise, would be to have settlements protected by powerful shields, they would protect anything inside the settlement, including the anti air turrets, making it much harder for a ship to shred ground defenses.
With this system a task unit should infiltrate the right building and disable the shields, ofc enough ships properly fitted would be able to eventually brute force their way through the shields, but this should be difficult for any single ship.
This would balance air to ground combat enough that normal weapons would not need to be nerfed against ground units anymore, allowing "warthog" kinds of builds (all overcharged mcs) to be deadly in this role, as they absolutely should be, again: A10 warthog is a real life proof of this.
Ps: It makes sense, when it comes to lore, that any important settlement is protected by dome of shield, else any pirate would do short work of any of them, this is elite dangerous after all, if they are not shielded against even small rocks flying through space, we should not see so many settlements at all.