New patch notes: "Capital Ships in Galactic Starfighter’s Team Deathmatch mode will no longer fire at opposing players" Cap ships were indeed a problem, but removing their turrets will lead to spawn point camping. What needed to happen instead is moving the spawn points much further back so that respawning players would actually have some time to go evasive and avoid some of the blockade. Without guns you will need to give respawned players a short invulnerability (and no firing back) window, otherwise it will be 2 rows of gunships killing everything or minelayers saturating the spawn point. Yes, you can always use the other spawn point if one is being camped, but this will inevitably lead to one side separated into two groups and easy to kill, or getting strung out and killed one by one. Something had to be done, but this is just taking one problem and replacing it with a potentially worse problem.

Do players get a loss and their kills/deaths/etc counted if they leave? I see players leave near the end of losing games and it just seems odd to bail at that point.

Either will work. If your problem is more often scouts, then mines are better. if your problem is more often the long-range Strikes firing missiles, then Protorps are your friend. I like the mines more though since my problem tends to be more often the scouts and strikes getting up close and trying to kill me as we circle the sat, and they would have a big advantage otherwise.

There is an alternate strategy though: if you are good and can survive for a while, attacking an enemy sat solo can draw off enemy fighters to come and deal with your threat. If you can pull at least 2 enemies to fight you, then you've given your team an edge on the rest of the battlefield. I find this useful if one sat has become a stalemate. This doesn't work so well when one is a bomber, of course, since going evasive against enemy ships just means mines and drones will kill you.

I don't really keep track much of individual aces, but of course I have noticed the "Rogues". IMO their quality varies quite a bit. A couple i saw were quite good, some were good, but a lot were what I would only consider average. I had no issues blowing them up quite a bit. I consider myself a good player, not an ace, and on average I am in the top third of total scoreboards.

The first month was horrible on Shadowlands because of the dominance of a couple of Republic premades that were on ALL THE TIME. Since January I don't think I've seen them anymore, which is why I thought they transferred. A lot of the damage had been done though, and Imp players that should have been the vets quit or left. So there is still an imbalance, but it's a lot better now. I've even had a couple of Imp vs Imp wargames, and Imps can beat Repubs a reasoanble (if still less than 50%) amout of the time.

I don't think the outrage over gunships faded. I think a lot of the dissatisfied people quit playing. I fly everything, and am happy flying anything. If it helps win, I'll fly it. i am ship type neutral. That being said, Gunships are still way too powerful the way things are now, and so are bombers. Perhaps they can add different game modes or wrinkles to existing ones where mobility is more important that would help mitigate the power of these ships, but until then it's an issue. My biggest worry with bombers is that right now most bombers have minimal upgrades and are more than holding their own against fully upgraded ships. How impregnable will these ships be with full upgrades?

I fly everything. If I want to win or help mitigate a blowout loss I usually end up flying Bombers or Gunships in Domination, and Gunships in TDM (the optimal number of gunships in TDM is as many as you can get). If the game looks like a sure win for us then I'll use my scouts and strikes more. In the hands of roughly evenly-skilled pilots, it's a Bomber and Gunship world.

From what I've seen, most of the dogfighting in strikes and scouts is by players is by players with 2-3 ships, or guys working on Req points for newer ships. People with bombers and gunships are predominantly flying bombers and gunships. YMMV, of course.

They need to rethink their level/zone designs. Even open areas feel like (or actually are) narrow corridors filled with too many mobs (like Makeb) or large open areas that seem pointless and still have too many mobs (like Hoth or Tatooine). It's a frustrating slog to get through. Flatten out the terrain a bit, and thin out the mobs but have them respawn a bit faster, and at least add some more interesting variations. Level/Zone design is one area where a game like WoW is so much better.

I also often use my bomber (usually dronecarrier) in Domination since it's bombers are so much more powerful. Any strike fighter coming after my sat and I'm solo? I go out to meet him. If he's lining up to destroy defenses I can get a lot of hits on him and drop drones/mines to cause him big trouble. When he goes to dogfight me I can I can simply go evasive and regen my shields long enough for the drones/mines to do their work, for turrets to respawn, and defenders to come and help if they are needed. Help can get there in 10-15 secs, or 30 seconds if they are really slow and inattentive. But if I can't destroy the attacker outright then most of the time attackers just realize that it's a stalemate and give up, and I go back to the sat to repair back to full. My typical stats in a Domination match using my bomber if I'm defending a capped sat: 3 kills, 6 assists, 0 deaths, 380ish objective points. People hardly bother to even try to attack because they know the outcome. Just wait until I have the bomber upgraded.

Yeah, you can't really use a kill-to-death ratio because matches are often so uneven. And often so consistently uneven because of server faction domination. I mean if a TDM ends up 50-8 and you got all 8 kills for your side and 4 deaths, chances are you're pretty darned good. And yet you'll have a worse Kill-to-Death ratio than an average level player on the other side. There's also a difference between playing for kill-to-death ratio and playing to win (especially in Domination). I've seen guys with 20+ kills in Domination and their side lost because he was not battling for sats and instead just picking people off when they got too close to his sitting place within running distance of his cap ship.

No, the average GSF team is not nearly bad enough for that. You'd need something like half the team trying to cap 1 sat against a lone defender and failing for minutes, and not going to help their own satellites under attack either. Won't happen. Or 4+ players on your team chasing down 1 enemy for most of the game. Won't happen.

Yup. This sums it up perfectly. It's not impossible, but you'd have to rely on the one team being incredibly incompetent or irresponsible (and likely both).

Playing on Shadowlands and the only GSF lag I see is the rare player jumping around.

Definitely enjoy it less. TDM is Gunship battles, where the winning side is usually the side that has more players who have figured that out. Dominion is all about who gets 2 sats first and then sits a bomber on each one.

It's still true. First team with 2 sats and bombers on them wins unless they are incompetent. It's just too easy to support a sat under attack because it takes too long to clear a bomber, it's mines/drones, the guns, and then actually cap. Support can come from across the map, or respawns can get there easily. It's only if a bomber has been left alone and 3+ enemies decide to hit him at once where it might flip. Even strong teams vs weak...whatever sats you cap to start you almost always keep til the end of the game. Strong teams don't bother the third because they know they have the game won and it's too hard to cap that third sat. And no, bombers and GS are different issues. GS gets kills but generally cannot hold sats. Bombers make it too hard to take sats. GS dominate the death matches.

The problem is that any semi-competent team will chase off anyone attacking a bomber, and even if you manage to beat them by the time you do the bomber has squirted out their full complement of mines/drones. And before you can kill those? The bombers' cover is back and you're back to square one. Most Dom games I see are over with the initial caps.

Novadive and Blackbolts have to be played differently. I use them in Deathmatch to deny enemies some of the powerups and to try to lure enemies into range of our gunships. They can also be used to harass and break up the gunship lines. In Domination I find them less useful since EMP is not strong enough, but they are still good for initial caps while waiting for your Bombers to get there, and can distract enemy recon units into attacking you and setting themselves up for the Gunships moving in.

Most of the best GSF players from Shadowlands seem to have disappeared. Not sure if they left for another server or just got bored. Anyway, I did see one of the true aces again the other day: Xi'ao, Imperial side. You can see him a few times in the "GSF Records" thread. He seems to casually get 20 kills/match.

Well, decent balance does not seem to be likely since it would require some fairly big redesigns of the ship functionality and roles.

Default is the X button. Just tap it, don't hold it down.

It has always been easy to stop a circling Scout. Just stop chasing and open a short distance. Next time they circle around, boom.

Here's an alternate idea: do not allow bombers/gunships to respawn. If they get blown up, you personally cannot respawn using that same ship again in the game. This not only makes killing a Gunship/Bomber more significant, it both limits how many there can be in a game, and also makes the alternate varieties much more valuable because you may need them. Of course, in a 12v12 you could still have up to 24 total on a side which is lots, but realistically there would be less since not everyone would have or choose to fly them.

The issue with fighting bombers is that while you're lining up to try to hit their mines/drones, you're a much easier target for any Strike or Scout. So you take out a couple of mines or drones, and then if you're not already dead then you're stuck in a dogfight against at least one defender. Even if you manage to kill or drive off your attacker, now the bomber has simply laid the mines/drones again and you're starting from square 1...except with more hull damage and lower on missiles. It's frustrating. Even in Gunships picking off the mines/drones you simply get targeted quickly by a Strike/Scout unless the other team is brain dead, and by the time you can attack again the mines/drones are back.