That isn't a bug.

Just to make a side-note here: Progressive champion is actually a cesspool where puffed up mods think it's cute to give rule breakers public spankings by editing their posts and there are, for lack of a better term, politically correct opinions that aren't allowed to be challenged. To the topic at hand: You'll completely alienate your best pilots who have spent time, effort, and in some cases cartel coins if you remove the gear delta. Note, I said remove. If you shorten the gap - say by a cadet req bonus for flying a ship with few upgrades, or by reducing the cost of certain upgrade tiers (you'd have to refund req with this option imo) - I don't think it'd be that bad. Bolster was implemented in its current form in 2.0, which was invalidating your work by raising the level cap, which always makes gear obsolete even if they hadn't implemented bolster. Bringing up bolster is a complete non sequitur.

We're all very impressed that you enjoy chess and seem to think anecdotal evidence can be extrapolated to make vast generalizations, but can't spell millennial or use the edit button instead of double posting. Sorry if that came off hostile, but that was a phenomenally condescending post.

Eh, that sounds even more disgusting and stupid that battle scouts have two ridiculous burst DPS increases to choose from. I knew TT was good, I singled out BO because it was the most obvious one.

Let me rephrase then. I want GSF to be more popular among people who regularly play video games than chess. Progression is, for whatever reason, a popular mechanic. It keeps people playing who otherwise wouldn't have as much motivation, which is good for the player pool.

Reasonably certain both Mario Kart and SSB since their gamecube iterations have had unlocks. And I'd like GSF to be more popular than chess.

That's not that cut and dry.

It's a situation you called a three-shot, which is, as I mentioned, disingenuous. Of course it doesn't happen that often. I don't run evasion. If he pokes his head out at me on my approach and takes 5.5 seconds to do anything, I kill engines and face tank him without taking mine damage. Without node hugging he eats an ion missile, which annihilates 54% of his shield strength (1580 out of 2925 if he's like me and takes every available shield capacity upgrade/companion) and quad lasers. If he takes even .1 seconds longer he also eats a concussion with 100% arpen. If any bomber eats an ion and concussion missile they are dead meat. I have shield power converter just like he should be running, but my engine power isn't drained by ions while his are. There's no winning this fight for the bomber if he's stupid enough to try and face check my Quell. His best bet is to node hug. Edit: was looking at the wrong bomber re: shield strength, doesn't change my argument. Edited the values, removed an error re: debuffed engine speeds.

Empire. Yeah, it was pretty stupid. It made it so only gunships and other battle scouts can kill them - because when gunships and battle scouts hit something they hit for much more damage than other ships. So, really, evasion only exacerbated the problem with burst that already existed, and made them even more so the only viable choice for anyone who wanted to be competitive. Turning rate is very related to dogfighting, so when you combine the best turning with the best short range burst damage you have an OP combination. Grats, I lose games with crappy teams too. With pilots of equal skill, battle scouts would completely trash TDM without bombers - they're by far the best dogfighters and their raw speed ensures they get the most powerups, which partially negates the threat of gunships who are nowhere near as able to hunt for them. They're minor from my perspective in that they turned what was by far the very best dogfighting ship into just the best dogfighting ship. The only thing to address their burst damage was the tone down of shield pen, which hit other ships too and (in my opinion) is nowhere near as important as outright lowering BLC damage and nerfing armor pen across the board. Both of these changes effected all ships, battle scouts are still in the same relative position after these changes. I'll acknowledge that their TTK was lengthened, which is objectively good, but it's still too short compared to other ships. I don't care that they don't use them. Battle scout problems are not limited to BLCs, blaster overcharge is also part of it. I do agree that BLCs happen to be objectively the best primary weapon component on any ship that can use them, but it's the combination of everything they have that is an increase to their damage output that is the problem, as compared to strike fighters who have sidegrade system abilities (or now with the command variant, utility system abilities).

I didn't say the +1 upgrade, I always take the range upgrade on every mine. Concussion mines by default have a cap of 2, interdiction is only 1. I've not met a single bomber on Pot5 who is as good at holding a point solo as I am (I had a lot of practice flying a Quell as a proto-bomber in the bad old days), and I use concussion + seismic. They sync up well enough in my opinion. This is combined with the fact that the two concussions by default equate to a much larger area of denial. Completely disagree with your three reasons. Evasion was nowhere near the reason battle scouts were (are) the best dogfighters. The actual reason is their burst damage blows every other ship (at that range) out of the water - which is a problem because their turning rate is matched only by speed scouts, who have nowhere near the damage output. Domination being the only game mode actually was worse for battle scouts - unless you're honestly going to sit here and tell me battle scouts don't dominate TDMs that have few to no bombers, in which case lol at the sheer delusion. If you reduce the effectiveness of bombers you'll only encourage the rise of (more) battle scouts. They may not get to be as bad as they were thanks to the (minor) nerfs they got in 2.6 combined with the missile lock break nerfs, but they're still objectively the best dogfighters. Something needs to be able to seriously threaten them at close range and force them to fly more carefully or else they win every battle on paper except against a gunship who gets the drop on them. Using the example of my quell, a fully upgraded seismic mine with the upgrades I use on it removes ~37% of my hull. After hydro spanner it's 23%. Seismic mines have a 15 (20 if unupgraded) cooldown. Calling something a three-shot when it takes at minimum 15 seconds to perform the three actions (assuming first mine is already out and cooldown is ready) is extremely disingenuous. And if any bomber is stupid enough to poke his head out at my Quell and try to fight me I'll laugh and face check him - sure, his shields are strong but he's much better off trying to hide from me than eat my quads and missiles. My quell is built for survivability, a build like mine isn't afraid of dinky HLCs from a ship that can't even get a capacitor upgrade.

I've read his posts and other than a penchant for hyperbole that I can identify with, I don't agree with your assessment. Battle scout era was objectively far, far worse to play in for anyone who didn't want to fly a battle scout. Why? Because battle scouts (and gunships) were the only ships worth flying. Why? Because battle scouts are the kings of sudden burst damage and had defenses that were too good. Their defenses got nerfed, which is good, but that did nothing to their completely ludicrous damage output. What's keeping them from running roughshod over the meta? Bombers. Specifically, minelayers. There's a far, far greater variety of ships being flown (by pilots who know what they're doing) in the current meta than before, and it's because the threat of mines keeps battle scouts more under control. To your question re: mines working to deny areas to other ship types - I've not felt nearly as threatened by mines on a strike fighter as on a (speed) scout. Their damage output is not significant enough to genuinely threaten a build like my Quell's before I can kill them. So I don't accept your premise that the very presence of a seismic mine - by itself - is enough to discourage a decent strike pilot from approaching a node. Here's how I feel about the mines available: Seismic and concussion mines are fine. Seekers and ions are trash and should be buffed if they're to be competitive with alternate choices (main reason I consider the drone carrier to be an inferior bomber is how ineffectual seeker mines are to anything but scouts, and even scouts aren't hurt too badly by the mine alone). I could be persuaded that interdiction mines provide too much damage for the CC they also provide - I don't run them myself, prefer concussion for the +1 default cap.

In addition, under this scenario, literally everybody would fly a battle scout if they wanted to be competitive at all just like the bad old days. Verain's right.

I don't think you understand the problem. If they take your suggestion, GSF will occur very infrequently and for most of the day won't occur at all. That is worse than the current situation. As seen with how much more popular ranked PvP is since the reveal of the season 1 rewards, one of the best ways to get people to play something in an MMO is to offer a tangible reward for it. GSF rewards are only seen in GSF, which frankly isn't enticing enough to a lot of players.

There is no solution for this that doesn't involve getting more people to queue in general. Matchmaking works but it relaxes its restrictions in favor of allowing matches to happen at all if there's not enough people in the queue.

Magnanimous as that is, it doesn't seem to change the outcome all that often. Maybe if you all flew comet breakers.

I flew my strike fighter more before 2.6, but in the few occasions I have flown it since that patch I've used ions and concussions in the same loadout on my quell. The combo is enough to severely maim or outright kill an enemy vessel - bombers especially given the debuffs the ion missile brings and how much shield damage it does.

With the GCD limiting your effective APM I can't take ground pvp mechanics seriously. Decision making sure, but ground PVP is definitely no harder to play than space, they require entirely different skillsets.

Yeah, occasionally you can get lucky. Most of the time it's not the case. It has nothing to do with the matchmaking system, which would work fine if more people in general played GSF. Since they don't, the matchmaking is forced to allow mismatches or else no games would ever happen.

Strawman, and you're not the arbiter of what is acceptable discourse. Any attempt at addressing bombers must also address battle scouts (and speed to a lesser extent) or else they'll run as rampant as they did in 2.5 because they're, comparatively, just as OP as they used to be in 2.5 but they have a very hard counter in bombers (minelayers more so than drones). That evasion nerf does literally nothing when they're still kings of short range burst damage - strikes, which I used to fly, still can't compete, which is something you admit. In a meta without bombers, strikes have no place other than to hug a node in domination and try not to die. And yeah, gunships are arguably OP too.

lol, I'm not moving to an inferior server, and your idea to split up premades will result in no games happening ever. The problem is the 90% of the people who enjoy GSF on the server seem to only play on republic.

It really isn't. The only thing keeping semi decent battle scouts from going where they want and killing whoever they want is the fear they may hit a mine or the consequences of them hitting a mine. It sure isn't drones, because drones tickle by comparison. It's that, and gunships.

The only thing keeping battle scouts from being the FOTM is mines. Leave them alone or nerf battle scouts at the same time. Related: Ion railgun shouldn't do anything to mines. It's complete nonsense that the AOE does any hull damage at all.

It only works if you bring your own group or if you happened to get lucky enough to pug with other people who know what they're doing. In games like I've had today, where I'm the only guy with 5 ships on my team and there's only one other person on the team with more than two ships? I don't bother. Pubs are "better" because there happen to be per capita more people who enjoy GSF on that faction and they get far fewer complete noobs in their games. No other reason, and it's nothing I can change.

Nah I understood the point. You guys won because you brought your stack. Nobody is disputing the power of coordination, but I don't see a lot of potential in trying to herd two ship players on the imperial side.

While I appreciate the insinuation that I don't know what I'm talking about, stacks are not hard to identify, especially when you see the same four names in a squadron over multiple games.