I did include it, at the very end of my post. Ya, it is likely that I got hit by more than one player's debuffs. I'm just not 100% sure and I was wondering if anybody had looked into the subject in more detail. All I know is that there is one or more combination of effects that give that result, but I don't know exactly how it is done. I was just hoping to generate some interest in the subject and learn more about it.

Currently, at least some interdiction effects stack additively rather than multiplicatively. Certain combinations of interdiction effects decrease the opponent's movement speed and turn rate to 0 and keep them suspended in space, perfectly immobile, with no way to do anything about it. Is this a bug or is it intended? And which effects produce this outcome? I have run into this issue mostly on my minelayer, because I like to use it offensively as a minesweeper when attempting to retake satellites defended by entrenched enemy bombers. Minelayers are the best ship for this job: they can detonate every enemy mine around the satellite, as well as any replacement mine that gets released by the defending bomber(s) in response to the attack. This opens up a window of opportunity for other ships on my team to come in and kill the bombers without getting blown to bits by mines. In the last week, I have had several instances of finding myself totally unable to move or turn after attacking a satellite defended by enemy bombers. My ship doesn't even keep moving slowly from inertia in the direction it was going. Instead it comes to a complete stop and becomes totally unresponsive (can't move, can't turn). Boosting does absolutely nothing, even though I still have engine power available. I haven't figured out whether all interdiction effects stack that way or only some of them, and whether it can be achieved with a single bomber or requires 2 separate ships. Do identical interdiction effects from a single bomber stack with each other (such as 2 interdiction mines, or 2 interdiction drones from the same ship)? Or does it require different interdiction effects from the same ship (interdiction mine or drone + interdiction drive active ability from the same ship)? Or do only effects from different ships stack, such as one interdiction mine and one interdiction drone? What about identical effects from different ships (2 interdiction mines or 2 interdiction drones coming from 2 different bombers, or 2 bombers using interdiction drive simultaneouly)? If anybody has tested this, I would love to have more information about it. Here are some of the interdiction, slowing, and turn-reducing effects in the game that may or may not stack with each other: Interdiction mine (minelayer): 50% base reduction in speed and turn rate, with an additional 10% possible as a T5 upgrade. A T4 upgrade allows up to 2 of those mines to be up simultaneously. Duration of the effect is 15 seconds (base) with an additional 5 seconds as a T3 upgrade. Interdiction sentry drone (dronecarrier): 40% base reduction in speed and turn rate, with an additional 10% possible as a T4 upgrade. A T5 upgrade allows up to 2 of those drones to be up simultaneously. Duration of the effect: no limit, as long as the target stays within 3000m of an interdiction sentry drone. If the drone isn't shot down and the dronecarrier keeps replacing it before it expires, this effect can last indefinitely. Interdiction drive (both bombers and both gunships): 20% base reduction in speed and turn rate, with an additional 10% possible as a T3 upgrade. Duration of the effect is 6 seconds. The other T3 choice increases the duration of the effect by 3 seconds. Interdiction drive stacking with any other single interdiction effect would not achieve 100% speed reduction, but it would be good to know whether it stacks with other interdiction effects from the same ship, and whether interdiction drives used simultaneously by 2 different ships stack with each other. Seismic mine (minelayer): a T4 upgrade reduces enemy ship speed by 50% for 3 seconds after detonation. The tooltip does not mention any effect on turn rate. Concussion missile (both strike fighters, also dronecarrier): a T5 upgrade reduces enemy speed by 30% for 15 sec. No effect on turn rate. I was not getting any missile locked on me in the scenario described above, but it would be interesting to know if this slow stacks with the others slows and interdiction effects. Ion missile (type 2 strike fighter): a T5 upgrade applies a 40% slow on the target for 12 seconds. This type of missile is not commonly used, I don't think I've ever been hit by one. Ion railgun: a T5 upgrade applies a 40% slow on the target for 6 seconds. I don't know if this applies to secondary targets or only to the primary target. Most gunships prefer the other T5 option, which stops energy regeneration for 6 seconds. Sabotage probe: disables maneuvering thrusters and other ship systems. A T5 upgrade reduces the target's engine speed 35% while sabotage probe is active. Duration of the effect is not mentioned on the tooltip, T3 upgrade increases the duration by 1 second. Servo-jammer (crew ability, available to all ships): enemy target's maneuvering decreased by 20% for 20 seconds. I assume this means a 20% reduction in the target's turn rate.

I was going to post this as a reply to an existing thread, but I was worried it would get buried and I think this issue deserves its own thread. I have been flying two EMP scouts and two EMP strikes (one of each per faction) extensively against bombers and eventually came to the conclusion that neither ship was as good in dealing with bombers as simply bringing a minelayer. The scout and strike also have to sacrifice a lot of effectiveness against non-bombers in order to be somewhat effective against bombers, and the sacrifice probably isn't worth it. I am currently in the process of earning more reqs on those ships so I can switch to a dogfighting loadout and forget about trying to use them against bombers. If I want to kill bombers, I'll just bring my own bomber. Gunships work too: unlike the EMP scout and strike, they don't have to sacrifice anything or change their loadout in any way in order to counter bombers. I noticed that, oftentimes, the EMP field on my scout doesn't seem to do anything, even though I wait till I am really close to the minefield to use it. So I decided to test it. I approached a satellite that was being guarded by a minelayer. I targeted a concussion mine, and watched how far I was from it as I slowly approached it. When the distance to my target got to about 2500m, I used EMP field (which is supposed to have a radius of 3000m). The ability went off but didn't seem to do anything to the mine. I approached a bit more, to see if it the mine had been somehow disabled without being destroyed, but it just blew up on my ship once I got within its detonation radius. The mine was in direct line of sight of my ship when I used EMP, not behind an obstacle, yet EMP did absolutely nothing to it. This seems to occur quite often, although sometimes it does work. I have not been able to figure out under what circumstances it works and under what circumstances it does not. It is extremely inconsistent. EMP missile on the strike fighter is both buggy and difficult to use. In the vast majority of cases, when attacking a defended satellite in Domination or approaching an area defended by bomber(s) + gunship(s) in TDM, it is not possible for me to spend 3 seconds flying straight while trying to get an EMP lock, without getting shot down. The lock-on time for that missile is way too long. It should be reduced to 1.5 second, maximum, possibly with an increase in CD to compensate. I'm not saying I should be able to single-handedly capture a sat or clear an area defended by multiple players, but I should at least be able to get off one EMP missile before being killed. The missile lock is also buggy: oftentimes, the game will not allow me to even start a lock on a mine or drone that is in LOS, so I end up just shooting it with heavy lasers. This happens most often with mines, but sometimes also with drones. Drones take multiple hits with heavy lasers to kill, and sometimes I am trying to start a lock on the drone the entire time I am shooting it, and the lock never starts. It is obviously not a LOS or range issue, since I am actually hitting the drone the whole time with heavy lasers, and I also have plenty of ammo, and the target is at the center of my firing arc. For some reason, the game will not let me start a lock.

This, so much. When the other team has a lot of bombers, I fly a Pike with EMP/Proton torpedoes/Heavy laser. My build is very effective against bombers but very vulnerable to scouts, particularly T2 scouts. They get behind me and shoot me down while I am trying to get a missile/torpedo lock, which requires me to fly in a straight line for several seconds. Strike fighters and gunships can also be a nuisance. For some reason, everybody obsesses about the bombers and nobody goes after the enemy scouts. I had an 8 v 8 domination game a week or two ago where the enemy started with 7 bombers and a scout. The scout was a lot more trouble to me than all 7 bombers combined. He killed me 3 times and prevented me from getting a single missile lock, until someone finally got him off my back. Same thing last night, in a bomber-heavy game (I think the enemy had 4 or 5, out of 8), I had to ask in chat for help with a scout so I would be able to lock my EMP missile without getting shot down. We ended up winning both of those games, btw, so lots of bombers is no guarantee of a win. My advice would be, if you like playing a scout and find yourself in a game against a lot of bombers, check to see if anybody on your team is playing a Pike/Quell, and fly escort for them to keep the enemy scouts (or strike-fighters, or gunships) off their back. You will get to do some dogfighting, the Pike/Quell will take care of the mines/drones/bombers, and your team will be better off for it.

A lot of things would have to be changed if armor penetration was nerfed. Currently, damage-reduction loadouts can be extremely powerful situationally (for instance, they can be used to detonate an enemy minefield without taking damage), but they are very rarely used because of the counters. If the counters were weakened, these builds would become more common and weapons with no armor pen, such as quads, would become too weak. Which means that damage reduction would need to be nerfed and/or every weapon would need to be given some amount of armor pen. At this point, the only weapon that I would like to see lose its armor penetration (or part of it) would be the slug railgun. The plasma railgun should keep it. That way, gunships would have to make a more meaningful choice between the 3 types of railguns: ion for the aoe and energy drain, slug for sheer damage/burst against lightly armored targets, and plasma for high damage against heavily armored targets.

Working as intended... Look at the map in the corner of the screenshot. The entire enemy team is using a different spawn point. You have one spawn point mined/camped, but not a single enemy ship is there for you to fight, which makes the whole thing rather pointless. The main issue on your screenshot is poor match-making, not spawn-camping. Turrets wouldn't change the outcome, they would just allow the game to drag on. Prolonged spawn-camping is not possible, unless one of the teams refuses to leave their own spawn, but I find it dishonest for that team to complain about spawn-camping in such a case. When a weaker team gets pushed back to a spawn point by a stronger team, one of 2 things will happens: either the weaker team will switch spawns (as seen in the screenshot), or they will keep spawning there intentionally and eventually overwhelm the other team with fresh ships. Those ships can re-join the fight almost instantly after getting killed, with full power and all their CDs up, while the other team runs out of power and CDs and eventually loses to attrition, even if its pilots are better players. As for one team trying to cover all 3 enemy spawn points, it is ridiculous to think that it might even work. If you split your team into 3 groups, to cover all 3 spawn points, one of those groups will most likely run into the entire enemy team and get wiped, then the enemy team will go look for the 2nd group and wipe them, then they will wipe the 3d group. Congrats, you just gave the enemy team 12 (or 8) free kills. Some teams deliberately choose to fight at or near their own spawn point from the start, setting up shop there with a bunch of gunships and possibly bombers. This gives them time to get their little camp set up before the other team gets there. They also have the advantage of getting instant reinforcement from any teammate who dies, and being able to get instantly back into the fight themselves if they get killed, instead of having to cross half the map. This is a valid tactic. But it is dishonest to come and cry on the forum about spawn-camping if you use this tactic and the enemy team comes to your spawn and wipes you out. If you refuse to leave your spawn, the enemy will have to go there to kill you. But it is not spawn-camping by the enemy, it is your own decision to camp your own spawn, and you should not get your capital-ship turrets back to make it easy-mode.

Yes, camping at capital ships is stupid and makes TDM boring and un-fun. But camping was being caused by the presence of turrets. Now that the turrets are gone, there is almost no camping going on anymore on my server. Before turret removal, about 80% of TDM games would turn into gunship-dominated standoffs at a capital ship. It was totally broken. Since the patch, I have played 27 games over the course of 2 nights and prolonged spawn-camping only happened in the very first game, on the first night, because the enemy players likely didn't know about the change and didn't know how to react to it. Last night, the action did move to one of the enemy capital ships in one of the games, and someone on my team suggested spawn-camping them, but within a minute or so, the enemy team just switched to a different spawn and that was the end of it. Spawn-camping happens in less than 10% of the games now, so it's a huge improvement. Re-adding turrets would bring TDM back to a state where every game ends up as a standoff at a capital ship, which was extremely boring and prevented scouts and strike fighters from participating. I am all in favor of giving freshly-spawned players a short-term buff protecting them from damage (in another thread, I suggested a 10-second immunity buff that goes away if the player interacts with his weapons). But re-activating the turrets would be the worst possible thing to do. In TDM, enemy players are the objective, and players should not be able to deny the objective to the opposing team by doing nothing (hiding within a safe zone where the opposing team can't get to them without being 1-shot by turrets). Safe zones can't exist in TDM or every game gets dragged out into a stalemate.

Turrets should not be re-added, as they encouraged spawn-camping, and every TDM game turned into a boring standoff where only gunships were getting kills. Now that turrets are gone, spawn-camping has almost disappeared on my server and the ship balance is getting better. However, giving players some type of protection directly after respawn is reasonable. I see two fairly simple ways to do this. One has been suggested by various people before: add an exhaustion zone around the capital ships, or move the capital ships back into the exhaustion zone and give freshly spawned players a short-term buff to protect them from the effects of exhaustion. Moving the capital ships back could be an issue for bombers, though. Capital ships are usually located in the middle of a wide open area with no cover, and bombers tend to get destroyed easily when they are in the open. Moving the ships further away would increase the distance that bombers have to cross before getting to any kind of cover. I think there is an even simpler way to protect players at respawn: give every player a 10-second immunity to damage after respawn or until they interact with their primary or secondary weapons. There is already a system like that in game. I remember during the holiday event, if I tried to throw a snowball at someone whose toon had just finished loading on fleet, I couldn't hit them (I would get an error message saying they were immune) and they would have a buff icon on them saying something about immunity. As soon as they started moving or interacting with their toon, the buff would disappear and I could throw a snowball at them. It would be a similar concept, so hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to implement. The immunity should be removed before the 10 seconds are over if the player tries to interact with weapons (not just if they actually hit someone), so that gunships wouldn't be able to fully load their railgun while immune to damage.

I play on the Harbinger, both on Pub and Imp sides. I played 11 games last night, most of them TDM, and only the first one had any kind of spawn camping going on, simply because the enemy team insisted on staying at their spawn or running back to it, so my team had to go there in order to get kills. It didn't make any sense for them to behave that way since there is a lot more cover away from the capital ships than around them, but maybe they hadn't read the patch notes and thought the turrets would still protect them... As I said before, spawn camping is caused by the team staying at their spawn (or running back to their spawn to avoid being killed), not by the other team. Except for that one game where players were acting irrationally, the removal of turrets caused players from both teams to leave their capital ship after spawning, since there was no advantage in staying there. As a result, spawn camping did not happen. The fight naturally spread out all over the map and it was a lot of fun, with more dogfighting than I'd ever seen in TDM before. The capital ship turrets providing a refuge were causing the spawn camping. Without turrets, there is almost no spawn camping going on because there is no reason for a team to stay at their spawn, and there is no reason for the other team to go to their enemy's spawn when the fighting is going on all over the map. Also, there are 3 different spawns and when an enemy dies, you can't predict which of the 3 spawns he is going to use, so fighting near the center of the map is more optimal than waiting near one of the spawn points.

Ever since 2.6 came out, I've hated TDM games. They always devolved into one side sitting at their spawn on gunships, protected by their capital ship turrets, out of reach of enemy scouts and strike fighters. The only people on the opposing team who could do anything were other gunships. You would see games where one team had 7 out of 8 people flying gunships, never leaving their capital ship, and the players on the opposing team were forced to switch to gunships also as a result. I hate playing gunships, and these games were excruciatingly boring and frustrating while playing a strike fighter or scout. I had to keep track of when I hit another ship, and when the timer got close to one minute, make a suicide run on one of the ships sitting at the capital ship, to try and hit it and barrel-roll away before getting blown to bits by turrets and/or enemy gunships. Otherwise I would get marked as inactive, for lack of a reachable target, and lose the few reqs I earned for the game. Most of the time, I would get killed as a result, respawning at the opposite end of the map, taking forever to get back to the action, only to have nothing to do for the next minute as all the enemy ships were sitting out of reach. Having a safe zone in a TDM game just flat out does not work. It would be like having artillery in ground pvp arenas, so that the team who is losing can go sit next to it, out of reach of the other team who would risk getting blown up if they go anywhere close. It just breaks that type of game mode. Last night, everything changed. As a result of the loss of turrets, the enemy team was not able to hide at their capital ship on gunships anymore. The action spread out all over the map. There was finally dog-fighting! All types of ships had a role to play, not just gunships. A previously mind-numbingly boring game mode turned into a wonderfully dynamic mix of wild dog-fighting and high-speed chases through deep canyons (I really love that map now), stalking bombers through narrow passages while trying to disarm their traps, using terrain to ambush gunships or risk getting ambushed by them, etc... It was so much fun! The good gunship pilots were still at the top of the scoreboard, but the bad ones were getting slaughtered with no safe zone to run to. I must admit I greatly enjoyed blowing those "deer-in-the-headlight" gunships out of the sky in my strike fighter. Playing a gunship now requires some skill, imagine that! By the end of the night, the balance in ship composition was much better, with a lot of dogfighters and maybe 2-3 gunships and 1-2 bombers per side, in a 12 v 12 game, instead of having more than half of each team in gunships like before the patch. This was the most fun I'd had since 2.6 came out. This is what TDM should be. Camping was always dictated by the people huddling at their cap ship, not by their opponents, who were forced to go where their targets were, since the whole point of TDM is to kill enemy players. The addition of a middle spawn point improved things in various ways, making the situation more unpredictable and also allowing players who got killed to return to the fight faster by using the middle spawn point, instead of being exiled to a far corner of the map at respawn. So I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to the dev team for removing capital ship turrets from TDM and adding the middle spawn point. And I also want to express my appreciation for whoever designed the Kuat Mesa TDM map. It is absolutely awesome for dogfighting, now that the fight is actually occurring in those canyons instead of at a cap ship.

I think it is a really good change. TDM should never have had any turrets. It's all about killing and being killed, not huddling at the capital ship, out of reach of your enemies, and letting some 1-shot turrets do the work for you. Also, the term farming usually applies to killing players over and over in circumstances where doing so is not the main objective, such as players who are farming kills in a warzone instead of playing objectives in ground PVP. In TDM, the main objective is to kill as many enemy players as possible (while avoiding being killed too much), thereby ending the game, so I don't think it can be called "farming". Typically, capital ships were being used in 2 situations: 1) Occasionally (rarely on my server but I saw it happen once or twice), a gunship-heavy team would set up camp at their own cap ship from the start of the game, and just wait there for the enemy to come to them. They never even tried to come out. This obviously had to be stopped. 2) One team was a lot stronger than the other and the score would get to something like 25-1 in the first 2-3 minutes of the game, then the losing team would just huddle at their capital ship and drag things on for another 10 minutes or more. This type of game was extremely boring and needed to be allowed to end, rather than being artificially stalled by the cap ship turrets. Would you really rather be camped for 10 minutes at your spawn point instead of having the game end fast and getting into a new game, hopefully with more evenly matched teams? In both cases, there was a really negative interaction with ship class balance and with the inactivity timer. Gunships dominated because they are the only ships that can outrange cap ship turrets, and scouts/strike fighters were either getting marked as inactive for lack of available targets to do damage to, or were forced to make suicide assaults on the turret-protected enemies once a minute to get rid of the timer. This was very poor design. I have been flying mostly strike fighters lately and I am overjoyed by this change. This should restore some balance to the various ship roles in TDM. As for those who are worried about bombers mining the spawn point, I think this issue will be self-regulating. A few people may try it, but they will be doing themselves a disservice. Sure, they may get a kill or two out of it, then all the enemies will switch to a different spawn point at the other end of the map. The scouts, strike fighters and gunships with barrel roll will be able to relocate there fast enough, but the slow bombers will end up all by themselves away from the new location of the action, and may even get marked as inactive before they manage to get back in range of the fight to contribute. Also, if I ever end up in a game against bombers who do that, I will make sure to tell my team to switch spawns immediately, then I will get in my Pike and go hunt down those bombers and blow them up to bits while they are all on their own in the middle of nowhere.

There are 2 different things going on: the non-contributor message and the afk message. The afk message does not seem to have any impact on your reqs. The game seems to think that your toon is afk on fleet (or wherever you were when you got the queue pop) while you are in a GSF game, and it gives you the afk message. This does not have any effect on your reqs. On the other hand, if you get the message that you are not contributing, you WILL lose reqs. By the time you see the message it is already too late to prevent this (it seems like the base amount you lose just for getting the message is about 20-25%), but the longer you stay "inactive", the more reqs you lose. The inactivity system is currently broken, as it marks players as inactive even when they are not. You will be marked as inactive if you fail to HIT someone (not just shoot, but actually hit) for more than 1 minute, or interact with a satellite in the same period of time (but it only works if it's a friendly sat, or a neutral/enemy sat with nobody in range to prevent you from capping it). This issue happens to most types of ships, not just bombers. Gunships are probably the least likely to get it because of their longer range, which makes it easier for them to find something to hit. I have been marked as inactive and lost 25-30% of my reqs in the following situations, while flying either a scout or strike fighter: 1) In a deathmatch, I was in the middle of a dogfight against a player who was extremely difficult to hit. He was flying evasively, zooming around asteroids, using his distorsion field active ability every time it was off CD, etc... I just couldn't hit him. I was marked as inactive while I was shooting my blasters at him! 2) In a deathmatch, flying a scout or strike fighter, with several skilled players on my team flying gunships. They kept killing my target with their rail guns before I could get in range to hit it with blasters, or complete a missile lock on it. Eventually, I was marked as inactive, as every target I went after died before I could actually hit it. 3) In a deathmatch, when the entire enemy team is sitting at their capital ships on gunships. This usually happens when they get pushed back by a superior team, but sometimes it is deliberately planned from the start. In one particular game, 7/8 of the enemy team were flying gunships and never left their capital ship, even at the start of the game. They just waited there for my team to come to them. As a scout/strike fighter pilot, my only option is to suicide once a minute to reset the timer, because I have no way to get in range to hit any of the enemy ships without getting killed by the capital ship turrets. This is extremely poor design. 4) In a game where my team was getting farmed, I wanted to type some advice in chat after I got killed, before hitting the "ready button", but I got marked as inactive just for wanting to communicate with my team. Another time, I got marked as inactive after getting killed because I spent a few seconds looking at the map and enemy ship list to decide whether I should use another spawn point or another type of ship. There really should be a 15-20 seconds grace period after dying, before you have to hit the ready button. Other situations that can cause you to be marked as inactive (this hasn't actually happened to me but happened to other players): 5) In domination, when preventing multiple enemies from capturing a neutral satellite. This requires flying defensively, just trying not to get hit, rather than trying to get into a good position to hit someone. It is absurd that tying up 4-5 enemies and preventing a cap is considered non-contributing, while going afk at a friendly sat for most of the game is considered contributing (I did this once, in a horribly lop-sided match: I parked my ship under a sat when the score was 400-1, with the enemy being spawn-camped, and I went to get a drink. When I got back to my computer a couple of minutes later, the score was 800-1 and I was still considered "contributing"). 6) In any game mode, while being chased by multiple players and trying not to die. The saddest thing about this, is that players who afk at the cap ship because they just want to complete the daily can still do it and complete their daily. The players who are the most affected by the penalty are players who are already done with their daily/weekly and see their reward greatly reduced while they are in fact trying to contribute to the game. I think that, instead of taking reqs away, the penalty for going inactive should be to not get credit for completion of the daily and weekly. That way, players who play a lot and get accidentally caught by the system would not really get penalized, while players who afk to do the daily would not be able to do so anymore. Also, players who are sitting within their capital ship's turret range to prevent enemy players from getting at them in deathmatch should be automatically marked as inactive after 20 seconds or so. Another solution would be to remove capital ship turrets in deathmatch.

Even with no upgrades, EMP field/missile disables system abilities. The scout's EMP field also reduces the accuracy of other ships' weapons by 10% and affects sensors. When fully upgraded to T5, EMP also disables either engine or shield abilities, depending on what you choose (most people choose engine). So, if your opponent uses a non-upgraded EMP field, you will not be able to switch missiles on your Pike, but you will be able to barrel roll away. If his EMP field was fully upgraded, you would not be able to do either of those things.

The EMP missile on the Pike appears to be bugged. According to the tooltip, it should do 362 hull damage to the primary target (the one you lock the missile onto), but it always does 180 damage instead. I have been paying very close attention to make sure the number wasn't from secondary targets but actually from my primary target. This happens 100% of the time. In fact, I have never actually seen any damage numbers on secondary targets but that may be because there just weren't any secondary targets within the radius of the blast. What is the radius supposed to be anyway? I couldn't find this info in the tooltip. Giving up cluster or concussion missiles to get the EMP (I use EMP/Proton on my Pike) means a big sacrifice in terms of effectiveness against any ship other than a bomber. I would be fine with this if the EMP missile actually did the 362 hull damage it's supposed to be doing, as alternating proton torpedoes and EMP missiles would be an effective way to fight any ship that actually lets me lock-on to them. But with just 180 damage per hit, it is extremely underwhelming, and the Pike/Quell feels a bit lackluster as a result. I also think that the lock-on time for the EMP missile should be slightly reduced, as I often get killed while having to fly straight for 3 seconds to lock it on a target when I'm trying to clear a minefield.

The non-contributor system is totally broken right now. Last night, I was flagged as non-contributor WHILE I WAS DOGFIGHTING! The enemy pilot I was fighting against was very skilled at avoiding being hit, but he wasn't managing to hit me either. We were both chasing each other, trying to get on each other's tail to line up a shot, flying evasively around asteroids, etc... I was constantly alternating between engine and blaster power settings, sometimes boosting, speeding up, slowing down, making sharp turns, shooting at the guy every time he was within my firing arc, etc... But I just couldn't hit him. And he couldn't hit me. While this was going on, I suddenly got the non-contributor message telling me to hit someone or interact with an objective to be contributing again (but there are no objectives to interact with in Deathmatch). Ironically, the message appeared while I was shooting my blasters, at a target who was both in range and within my firing arc. It took me another 10 seconds or so after I got the message to finally hit him, at which point I got the message that I was contributing again. At no other point in the game did I get flagged again. For this short interval during which I was unfairly flagged as non-contributor, I lost 28% of my requisitions. The final scoreboard gave me only 72% contribution for the fight. This is totally absurd and the system needs to be scrapped until they can fix it. What I learned from this is that I should never go after a skilled pilot in a deathmatch. I should avoid dogfighting against people who can fly evasively, and just go after newbies who fly in a straight line, because they are easy to hit, so I won't get flagged as non-contributor. Also, I was lucky that I actually hit the guy when I did. Soon after, he was sniped by a gunship and killed, at which point there was no other target near by, for me to go after. If I had missed that one shot, I would have been without any way to hit anybody for a much longer time. This is an issue I often run into in deathmatches, when flying a scout or striker: as soon as I get within blaster range of someone (but before I can actually score a hit), or right as one of my torpedoes is about to hit someone, a gunship kills the target and I don't even get an assist. I also don't get credit for a hit, which means that if this goes on for a while (I.e., each target I go after gets killed before I can hit them), I run the risk of getting flagged as non-contributor, simply because ships with longer-ranged weapons are beating me to the kill. Respawning gets rid of the non-contributor flag, which means that in most cases, the fastest way to get rid of the flag is to ram into the closest asteroid. But this can be detrimental to your team in a close game (precisely the kind of game where both sides have skilled pilots who know how to fly to avoid getting hit).

I'm not sure whether to post this here or in the Suggestions forum. I played GSF for a few hours last night, and most games had one or two players on each side flying bombers. However, over the entire course of the evening, I was able to find a friendly repair drone only once, even though I looked for them every time my ship was low on health, which was several times per game (I was mostly flying a Pike or a Flashfire). Ironically, it is a lot easier to find an enemy repair drone (just keep hitting tab) than a friendly one. I shot down way more enemy repair drones than I benefitted from friendly ones. In fact, finding a friendly drone on a cluttered Deathmatch map (where the action can be anywhere and can shift locations really fast and unpredictably) is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, without even knowing if there is actually any needle present in that haystack at all. My suggestion would be that every time a bomber drops a repair drone, the following message would appear on the screen of all the players on his team (not enemy players): "Playername just dropped a repair drone," or something similar. Also, friendly repair drones should appear on the map and mini-map as a blinking green dot (again, only for allied players; it is already easy enough for enemies to find and destroy them). Currently, it seems that friendly drones are not visible on the map at all. Showing the location of friendly mines and offensive drones would probably clutter the map too much but it would be really useful to show the location of repair drones. In the current implementation of repair drones, it seems that most of the team is completely unaware of their presence, even if they are looking for one, and the only people who can get any consistent benefit from them are pre-mades using voice chat (nothing wrong about that, I mostly fly in premades myself, though usually without voice chat). Having a broadcast visible to all friendly players when a friendly drone is dropped, and a blinking icon on the map, would help level the playing field between pugs and voice-chat premades. It would also encourage players to play a support role in their bombers. Currently, there is not much incentive to do so when pugging, since any repair drone is much more likely to be detected and destroyed by the enemy long before any ally is even aware it's there.

The funniest co-pilot by far, among those I have tried, is Guss Tuno. Unfortunately, his co-pilot ability is fairly useless (Lockdown, if I remember right). I once accidentally selected Guss as co-pilot by clicking on various companions between games to look at their abilities. One of the friends I queue with must have queued the group right after I clicked on Guss, which put him as co-pilot somehow. The queue popped immediately, I accepted it without checking my loadout, and didn't realize I had the wrong co-pilot. I am usually pretty good at maneuvering tightly around satellites but somehow, in that particular game, I stopped boosting too late and crashed right into the satellite I was heading for at the start of the game. As my ship exploded, I heard Guss' voice saying "You said we wouldn't die!" and I just burst out laughing. It was so unexpected, since I wasn't even aware that I had him as my co-pilot. For the rest of the game, I was constantly laughing out loud at his comments. It turned out to be one of my most fun games ever, even though his ability was pretty worthless, and I had never intended to pick him in the first place. I really wish there was a way to get different co-pilot abilities for any given companion. I would definitely slot Guss as co-pilot more often, just for entertainment value, if I could get Hydrospanner, Bypass, or Concentrated Fire as his co-pilot ability instead of Lockdown. Even so, I would advise anybody who has access to Guss (gunslingers and scoundrels) to try him out once, just for fun.

Actually, the bonus is not x2, it is x1.5. So, if you earn more than 1500 reqs (including bonus) in your first game of the day on that ship, you will have used up all 500 bonus reqs in that game. If your total req gain at the end of your first game is less than 1500, you will have some bonus reqs left. If you divide the number of reqs you got by 3, this gives you the number of bonus reqs earned for that game. If you substract that number from 500, you will see that it matches the number of bonus reqs remaining to be earned on that ship. For example, if you earn a total of 1200 reqs (including bonus) for your first game, it means that you earned 400 bonus reqs for that game (1200/3=400), and you will have 100 bonus reqs remaining for that ship ( 500-400=100). Without the bonus, you would have earned 800 reqs for that game. With the x1.5 bonus, you earned 1200.

One problem is that the scoreboard does not accurately reflect the actions of players during the game. The main issue is that delaying an enemy's capture of a neutral satellite, no matter for how long, or attempting (but failing) to capture a satellite held by the enemy, gives ZERO objective points. Even if you take a satellite from full red to almost-but-not-quite-full green, you get zero objective points for it. The only way to get attack points is to actually capture a satellite (and you only get ONE point for this). Defense points are obtained by orbiting a satellite that your team already owns (you get a lot of points for this, based on how long you stay in range, even if the satellite never comes under attack by anybody). As a result of these issues, I have been in games where I was the only person on my team playing objectives and I repeatedly attempted (but failed) to capture satellites and I got zero objective points even though I spent the entire game playing objectives. Because the enemy held all 3 satellites the entire game, I was not able to get any defense points, and because enemies always showed up at the last second to stop my cap, I never fully captured a satellite and got no attack points either. At the end of the game, which we lost miserably, all my derping team-mates had 5-10 kills and a number of assists, and a lot of damage done, while I had zero kills, zero assists, almost no damage done (I did kill a few turrets), a lot of deaths, since enemies always showed up in high numbers to kill me, and zero objective points. And my teammates blamed the loss on me for "doing nothing the entire game" even though I was the only person on the team attempting to capture satellites. I really think that delaying an enemy cap, or attempting a cap of a satellite held by the enemy should provide as many objective points as guarding a satellite that is already owned by your team. Also, next time you see someone on your team with nothing to show on the scoreboard, be aware that he may have been the only person on the team trying to capture objectives.

I don't play Imp-side that much anymore. I've been having fun PvPing Pub-side on my sage. Unfortunately, sage/sorc healers are not well-suited for arenas and it doesn't look like the Devs are planning on fixing that anytime soon. So I went and bought FFXIV last Friday after reading the Dev answers to the sorc questions. It was either that or reroll a scoundrel, but I am getting bored to death of leveling alts in this game. It's a lot more fun to level a toon in a brand new game. I guess I can "heal 2 full" in FF too, lol. I haven't cancelled my sub yet, waiting to see how well I like FF and what actually happens with my sage when 2.4 goes live. You can send me a PM if you want to get in touch so we don't derail this thread any further. Ysa

Twice in the last two nights, my team lost in Voidstar due to bugs. The first bug I encountered, two nights ago, was that the win was awarded to the wrong team in one of the games. The team I was on (Pubs) started on offense. We got past the first set of doors, then past the bridges, and were stopped at the second set of doors until the timer ran out. Then we were on defense. The Imps similarly were able to get past the first doors and the bridges, but it took them longer. We stopped them at the 2nd set of doors until the timer ran out and we got the message that the attackers did not reach the datacron, but then it awarded the win to the Imps instead of us. We also had fewer total deaths (more kills) than the Imps, so even if the time at which we captured the bridge had not been taken into account, we should still have won. The second bug I encountered was last night. We were on defense at the start of the game, but our spawn barrier did not open when the warzone started. The Imps were able to get to both our doors without facing any opposition, and capped both doors while our team was trapped in the spawn area. That was extremely frustrating. The spawn barrier eventually opened after going through a whole cycle.

I'll miss you, Ax. I've missed raiding with you ever since you left Hatred, but we still had those crazy LI runs, and then PvP. I never even enjoyed PvP until I queued for some warzones with you. I had to grind WH relics for all 3 of my healers, then do it all over again with EWH relics, and I resented having to PvP to get BIS gear for PvE. Then you came along and showed me how to have some fun in warzones with my sorcerer. Now I actually PvP for fun. You even got me into a couple of rated games. It won't be the same without you. I don't care what people say about you on the forums, you were always friendly and helpful in-game and in Mumble. You are the only one among the top pvpers on our server who I felt confortable asking questions about pvp without fear of being laughed at or called a noob. I'll even miss your bird! I wish you the best, and I hope we run into each other in some other game in the future. Ysa