One of the most impressive things I see in these shots is in the quarrel screenshot where Siraka takes on you, Doochi, Mikboshi and Verain by himself and netting 17 kills without a death! EDIT: Realized I sound kind of conceited just saying that about my own friend, so came back to say those games are also very impressive, especially in the strikes! I usually dissuade new players from flying strikes because I feel that they teach the wrong lessons, but that knowledgeable aces can handle a strike quite well after already knowing how the other ships work and mastering them first. You are a shining example of what a strike can do in capable hands!

Hey folks, the discord is loaded with lots of guides and people to fly with and help you learn. There is no better time to give GSF a shot than now!

Shadowlands definitely is SRW sided, but it isn't due to SRW making concerted efforts to group there the way that has been done on other servers. Shadowlands has become in more recent memory a place where mostly solo players or new pilots have flown, mostly without premade or ace interference. This has lowered the overall skill level of the games there and has made it a good training ground for new pilots. That being said, when even one ace-tier SRW branded pilot takes to the skies, their presence alone (often solo) is enough to seriously impact most matches there, regardless of faction. The unique issue I see with harbinger that doesn't seem to happen as often on other servers isn't so much the supergroups, but rather the presence of some form of intelligence network, where the "aces" know who's on both sides at any given time, and only seem to que when they are reasonably certain they will be going into the winning team. If they aren't sure, they either stop flying or switch to whatever side is the strongest. I am not sure how this happens but it is what I have experienced, and why an SRW group often goes wholly unopposed when 2 or 3 are together, but individual pilots are swarmed when alone. This has been conveyed to us before, how often groups of pilots will "give up" when they see us. It happened the other night with only two of us online together (Yallia and I), and our response has been to more or less withdraw from the server and make more efforts on servers which are welcoming of competition such as TRE is lately.

This is a dark day for GSF. Sad to see you go! Feel free to take a look at our website as time goes on to keep up to date with whats going on! Take care!

I personally think this could be a good thing for the time being, and an additional disincentive against the rampant faction hopping that has become the elephant in the room, especially on the Harbinger.

I am usually flying solo as well there lately, what is your character's name there? Feel free to look me up! I also may start canvassing the Genchat, Ops group style to wrangle some new folks into the GSF world and get the idea into people's heads that YES, we are here and YES gsf is a lot of fun! With each match rewarding an incredible amount of command points, we may have a powerful incentive at our disposal to recruit some more dedicated players into the que.

I do sometimes, and will a lot more to try out this command thing, let's fly!

I'm going on right now, Pub side. The SRW bat signal has been activated as well.

I would like to get in on this next time since I missed the bus in October

What time are you usually flying and on which faction? I may be able to gather up a few of my guys and we can get the que to pop that way. I wonder if there is anyone else on the ebon hawk community who are having the same problem as you are, and if so, hopefully they can also be available to take advantage of this opportunity. There are certainly a lot of native TEH pilots which may come back to que there if given the opportunity, but have resigned themselves to playing on Harbinger or JC for convenience. I flew just over a week ago on TEH and ended up getting a pop, but the game ended prematurely due to someone dropping out, resulting in a loss for both sides unfortunately. Also, keep in mind that being in a group tends to increase your chances of popping, try typing /cjoin gsf and asking the chat channel if any groups are going on or if anybody would like to fly with you.

Xcal and I were able to make it out for a game! In the one we were in it was all 8 of our side in T3's, however, the imps we played against were mostly new players. It was a pretty fast paced game, with everyone using tensor on one another constantly. We wondered what the new players on the other side were thinking, spearpoint is OP? We just did the one game (right after you left zuck) because we went to watch Got after, sorry we couldn't stay longer, but we wanted to show support. We don't need to be put in the raffle

This is a great idea! Hopefully designated GSF nights will bring out some more players to get some competitive matches going regularly again.

This is going to be a tough blow on the GSF community, which rests heavily on a lot of cross-server players making regular rounds.

This sounds good, let's do it. I also still vouch for giving the strike fighters much better strafing capabilities to help keep them on target during high level play as well.

That's the spirit!

This would be a splendid thing to implement. The addition of this to the game would also bring in a whole not to new players, as well and bringing older players that left back into the fold. The community of gsf is ready and able to try to nurture and retain these players, if only the devs provide some incentive for them to give it a shot by offering something new. Even receiving some sort of response to this thread at all would work wonders for participation.

Like an open world pvp instance but GSF instead of the ground game? I absolutely love this idea! You could fly around in there to practice, there could be some missions to complete inside of it, sort of like the Ilum pvp area during the gree event....but in space! You could even que up and get pops for matches while flying there. Love it

I reserve a special place in my heart for the GSF guild leader who decided to show up in a GSF themed suggestion thread that the devs look at to actively argue against new content. It warms my heart to see community members feeling the need to express their close-minded attitudes to attempt to derail any discussion of further GSF development in order to maintain the status-quo.

Right now the Shadowlands is experiencing a significant bump in activity, and during prime time (around 8-11 EST) there will be nearly constant pops, with sometimes even multiple games going at a time. Efforts are being made by our guild right now to engineer balanced matches and reach out to newer players to build up activity on the Shadowlands through a project we call the "Shadowlands balancing act". Of all times to start flying on Shadowlands, this is the best you could have hoped for. Additionally, I notice you are from POT5. You may recognize a lot of pilots when you start flying here, as a lot of former POT5 pilots transferred here and have become regulars in the community. Be sure to type /cjoin gsf to join the chat channel on either faction to join groups, ask any questions, and just chat with the shadowlands gsf community.

While this is true, and there are certainly a lot of ill-equipped five-ship players out there, I would like to point out that having five ships shows that the player has played AT LEAST enough matches to buy those ships, and has a basic understanding of the game if they were able to figure out how to purchase them (and not blow their fleet req on RFL). Too often I hear people in this community lament about how "being a five shipper means nothing", when in fact it is a much better indicator of general competence than I think we give credit for. Players with a full compliment of ships on their bars can be a wide range of skill levels, true, but are, on average, going to be much better than those without 5. The chances are that someone who has LESS than five ships on their bar, is HIGHLY LIKELY to be either very new, very bad, very under-equipped and/or very inefficient, barring a few specific cases of people deliberately deceiving the opposition with less ships, aces starting new toons (which would still be under-equipped), and the power rangers among us who throw one ship on their bars to show how dank they are. Keeping this in mind, it is actually quite accurate to say that the more non-five shippers on a team, the more likely that team is to be severely handicapped. I realize this isn't really the point of this thread, but It is something that has been on my mind awhile. I saw my opening and I took it.

The key to a domination match is having situational awareness. Knowing the status of the satellites (the number of turrets is a great indicator), flashing turrets, teammates communications, as well as keeping an eye on where the enemy team must be going (ex. there's only 1 on a & b, therefore the rest must be moving on c) are all ways that you can judge the overall "health" of your situation in a DOM match. Holding nodes and killing opponents are both important parts of a successful DOM strategy, but it is important to have a good balance, and too much of one or the other will usually result in defeat. Killing the enemy team is absolutely very important, as never killing the opponents means that an opportunity is never presented to actually take a satellite. Some of the most frustrating and hopeless DOM matches happen when there are too many people trying to hold and cap satellites, but nobody is actually doing any killing of the enemy team, resulting in a lack of results on the scoreboard. Some of these matches it seems to be puzzling as to why sats are never flipping for you, as it seems like your teammates are in the right places. However, the ending scoreboard tells the tale, as it becomes clear that the enemy team had very, very few deaths (if any at all). On the flip side of this, and which appears to be a more common occurrence (in fact, I was in a game like this yesterday), is that the team over commits to kills, and thus nobody puts a priority on staying on the satellite to prevent it from flipping. The best DOM players know when capping/holding is an appropriate strategy and know when to switch into "kill mode" to clear off attackers or to take a heavily fortified satellite. Unfortunately, in games like that, often one player with the knowledge and experience to hold the satellites is unable to be two places at once. I have seen players go full-on kill mode in DOM matches and avoid any attempt to cap or hold, even when doing so, even by just delaying the enemy, would have resulted in a much more favorable outcome. I have seen players fly past a blue satellite in a tightly contested match to go find their next kill. It is important to understand in DOM that it is usually easier to hold a sat once you have it, than to have to wrench your opponents off of it. In essence, realize that awareness and understanding of the situation are important in dom, and knowing when to kill and when to hold are what separates the good players from the great ones.

I second this! Some of us folks love being able to design a true "starfighter's lounge" especially in our hangars and the guild flagship! Adding some fleet comm deco's would really help boost GSF activity and would really give us pilots something to chew on between the pops! Great post, and good to see you Derrad! Come visit me!

This is a great idea, but unfortunately Despon is right. With that being said, welcome to GSF! Be sure to join the gsf chat channel by typing /cjoin gsf to find some groups, which can help even the odds during those tough times.

Hey singapore, it is interesting that you bring this up, as the decision has recently been made for SRW to engage in a more active micromanagement role on the shadowlands server in order to grow the population there, as I briefly discussed with you when we flew last night. Actively balancing factions, individual encouragement, advice, as well as some small, server specific events are how we plan on approaching this. Lately, with the disappearance of sumo, we have seen a noticeable uptick in the amount of competitive imperial players fielding teams, as well as an increase in the amount of newer players trying out gsf across the board. We have made the decision to try to nurture this activity as best we can, and be careful not to break it, as has been done before. It is a bit of a departure from standard GSF behavior, but we feel it is the right direction to be taking at this time to try to help a server that has been suffering from AFK abuse for so long. I will be eagerly reading the responses to this thread to see everyone's thoughts on implementation.

This is an emotional moment