Losses count x2. Thanks for reading

The OP objectively has a strong point. Trusting the bot blindly will often contribute to your team’s loss. Especially in deathmatch, don’t just trust the bot. It’s an algorithm and algorithms are inherently flawed. The folks that think nothing is wrong with the kick system have a play style that the kick system encourages and apparently make little effort to understand that there might be a problem with how the same system discourages others from playing the game while they are also making a valuable contribution. Bombers are a great example, but they are not the only one. Our friends that have seen real battle can tell you that by the time you open fire in any battle, more often than not you have already won or lost that fight based on prior decisions, training, and planning. That means that damage/kills is a bad metric for any sort of automatic reaction. Two more examples: 1). You fly a scout, and 2 or 3 of the enemy decide to gang up on you. You evade and fly 40k away from the battle because they dog your every move. You aren’t good enough to get an angle on them but 2 minutes later they have shot you down. You look up at the score to see that your team has gone up 10 kills while the enemy’s scouts were out of the fight. You have done no damage but have contributed in your fleet’s success. 2). You fly a missile boat, and maybe you just started flying or otherwise still getting used to the game. You are constantly using your EMPs to force the enemy to use up their missile breaks or got locked down for other pilots to take out. You get unlucky and target a few of their better pilots that know to evade for long enough for their breaks to come back up. You have done no damage but are contributing in your team’s success. The original bomber problem is real. It doesn’t matter how close to the battle are if your team doesn’t use your nest. Sometimes that means your team needs more spacial awareness, and you only need to kick one good bomber to be wrong. Let’s face it, if you have played GSF for at least a few months and blindly press the vote button, you have kicked at least one bomber that would have meant you won the battle. Conversely, a scout that burns straight at the enemy, gets one hit in and dies might as well be on the other team, but is considered contributing and you will never be able to vote to kick them. What’s funnier is in the decade plus I have played this game, I have never once seen someone complain about a scout with 1 kill and 20 deaths because they’re “trying”, but the bomber with no kills gets kicked out of hand. Right. In short, trusting the bot blindly will often contribute to your team’s loss. Especially in deathmatch, don’t just trust the bot. It’s an algorithm and algorithms are inherently flawed. First use your own awareness, try using or supporting those resources. If you see them flying straight in space THEN kick them. On the other hand, if you want to actively discourage new players, creative or experimental play styles, and good players having a bad day, by all means click that button like it’s a morphine drip.

I thought this was a pretty good idea, but after I read so many people saying "no", I am totally against it. Are you kidding me? You're playing Star Wars, and you don't want to see the Force in space? Someone said it's not Gundam. That's right, It's Star Wars. I don't understand how the lack of the Force in GSF isn't a regular part of the discussions here. Even if you had only heard pieces of the story in passing you would most likely assume that using the Force in space is a part of the deal. I suppose it was a rhetorical non-moment when Obi-Wan overcame the usual restrictions of death to advise Luke to "Use the Force" instead of a targetting computer on that final run at the Death Star to save the entire galaxy from the merciless oppression of a corrupt Empire. It is bewildering to think people would intentionally and so emphatically deny even discussing an idea that would make the game more fun in an interesting and obviously thematic way. Bewildering I tell you.

In addition to easily giving you the best damage, Bursts allow you to deal that damage in quick shots, which compliments the Flashfire nicely. You generally don't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary flying in straight lines to get kills. More often that not, that's when another Scout with Bursts will kill you. Personally, I feel like quads are a crippling downgrade from bursts, but obviously your mileage may vary.

Yeah! People that want to nerf Scouts are stupid. Nevermind the dozens of legit arguments that Sharee has never addressed, you're all stupid.

Why do you suppose Magic the Gathering had pictures on the cards? Why does flavor text exist? Why is every single game we play themed? Flavor text isn't "just" flavor text, ever. It's part of a theme that makes the fantasy more fun. When the theme falls apart, so does the player base and your theory about realism. Your seemingly random example misses the point. The name "Undying Rage" doesn't have any flavor text and it doesn't imply anything aside from the idea that it's a defensive ability that will prevent you from dying, while presumably being angry about something. If "Undying Rage" said it increases your defense but instead was a ranged CC that made another player fall madly in love with you and follow you around with flowers for 6 seconds, that would be a more relevant comparison. Oh, and we would all be wondering what the hell the devs were thinking about that too. Realism, whether you acknowledge it or not, contributes significantly to what makes roleplaying games fun. The "ism" part means that they try their best to remove things that are similar to reality but aren't fun, like pooping in public bathrooms and people that talk in the theater. Oddly enough, human beings actually seek out things that are both fun and realistic, and we tend to gravitate away from games that emulate paying your bills. The "real" part means that they attempt to keep elements of reality that create challenges that we can reason through and act accordingly to overcome. No, realism is not necessary for a game to be fun, but when an ability is both overpowered and it doesn't realistically make sense within the theme and presents identically to a glitch or latency, you shouldn't be as surprised as you appear to be that so many players take notice.

I accept that challenge What's the counter for my Flashfire build? =) It's not exactly easy to arrange a fight between the two of us, but I'm willing to try if you are.

By Jove, it's in print! Legit.

You're gonna need to source that there statistic buddy, I'm not sure it's believable.

Oh, is this another thread where we all post our opinions and then complain that we don't agree with each other? I wanna play! Ahem. I think Evasion shouldn't work if you aren't moving, and if you don't agree then you may very well have a different opinion.

The missile lock protection does not last for 3 seconds, it only breaks the progress of a lock or a fired missile, they can initiate another lock immediate after you pop DF.

That is all.

OMG STATS Roughly 97% of players that think Scouts are balanced increase their chance of being considered "cool" by 10.3% of their US peers, 11.2% in the EU, and 12.5% in African and Asian countries. 85% of scouts do almost no damage when you think they're cute. Scouts can do 200 damage to satellites if they concentrate hard and Earth's moon is waxing. Strike Fighters are 60.4% better than Scouts when the Democrats have a majority in Congress. If you put 30% of a Gunship in 70% of a Strike Fighter, you can cook a tasty falafel. If you do exactly 42 damage to a Scout with a Quad laser while it has less than 40% shields, rainbows will shoot out of a random posters' butt. 64% of the time you kill a Scout a Nazi gets away from justice and a kitten dies in a fire. 1.263% of statistics are true.

Oh yeah, anyone can kill a Scout, they're completely vulnerable to like everything omg. Here, lemme list like 10 reasons why scouts are balanced so that you'll believe me. 1) I think scouts are balanced, that's really important to remember. 2) Scouts are easy to hit 3) Scouts are cute 4) Scouts don't have any defenses worth mentioning 5) Scouts have low dps. Check your tooltips. Trust your tooltips, they wouldn't ever mislead you. Tooltips are your friend. 6) Scouts are cute 7) Scouts do nice things for people 8) Scouts sell cookies 9) Scouts are recyclable. 10) Scouts are cute So yeah, I think we can put all of this behind us. You can trust me. Scout's honor

I just figured out how to one shot other scouts with my Flashfire today. It's not particularly fun or challenging, but what the hell let's keep it that way til I get enough fleet reqs for whatever the next flavor is =) I'm glad people are still having fun playing strikes. There will always be easy kills out there for you, but for any decent Flashfire pilot, you're one of those easy kills.