Drak - I was hoping you'd bring up the DO factor. I was thinking about that as well, but I honestly couldn't remember if it was based off "original" base damage or if the 10% bump to base would then get DO boosted. Now I know.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was a case of 2 people were "offered" the match that either timed-out on the pop-up box or chose "no/cancel" and there wasn't anyone else in the Q. In the case of the wargame(s), I'd speculate the team assignments were made at the time the offer box popped up.

Hey Zuck, hey Drak - I have actually debated the Mangler/Quarrel {crit chance to more base damage} change myself for a while, and finally made the switch several days ago to try it out. Sadly my matches since then have only had me in a gunship once or twice so not a lot of "field testing" yet. Regardless, looking at the theory on paper, I'll take a stab at this one. I'm gonna keep the math very basic & assume "perfect" probability & random number generator behavior to make it easier on myself. Slug Railgun w/ 16% Crit Bonus Standard Base Damage = 1,600 50% Crit damage bonus 84 normal shots X 1,600 damage = 134,400 16 crit shots X 2,400 damage = 38,400 total damage dealt = 172,800 Slug Railgun w/ 10% bonus to standard damage adjusted standard base damage = 1,760 100 shots X 1,760 = 176,000 The difference in total damage dealt isn't huge but the 10% bonus wins a bit on paper. In real matches, the gap could actually be much larger. Because probability/RNG is involved, you never know when a crit hit might be "wasted" on a miss, in which case you "lost" 2,400 damage instead of 1,760. Likewise, even if your accuracy for a match was 100%, there is still no guarantee you will have even 1 critical hit. Another thing to consider is the shield piercing. In comparing non-crit hits you get about 40-50 points more past the shields with every slug shot using the 10% bonus option, in theory speeding up every enemy death.

I hadn't thought about using the drone in the mix - good idea. I'm assuming they stack? Is it concussion missile slow that doesn't stack with ion railgun? I don't recall offhand which slows do & don't stack. Yes, I'm aware you get focused. I've flown with and against you on JC.

Drak - an idea for testing the slow % You'll need someone helping on other faction, obviously, and need to be left alone. Coordinate everything in voice of course, and stream/record everything. Pick a fixed targetable item - turret, parked gunship helping you, whatever. Start at 20km 15km whatever distance from it go from dead stop, accelerate to full, & travel the full distance - no afterburners. Then do all the same but with your gunship partner keeping ion slow on you constantly. Review the video time stamps to see the difference in time needed to cover the distance, and calculate the % slow. Something along those lines should work well enough to tell if it is 40% or 55%. You might start at 20km giving you 5km to get up to speed & start watching the time when you are 15km away from target, that would also work well for when the gunship starts holding ion slow on you.

I use both T5 options, depending on which toon I'm flying. I've never bothered to count the seconds after hitting a ship with ion, so no clue if it is 6 or 12 seconds on slow. Most targets die less than 6 seconds after that ion hit anyway. Just "eyeballing" it though, the slow seems more like 55% to me than 40%, but given the lack of a speed indicator, the testing needed to sort that out is far more trouble than it's worth to me. I just know that a scout on afterburners suddenly seems like a bomber

This is easily explained. The Ion Railgun T5 tooltip popup itself covers it.... 55% slow for 12 seconds. ( were you counting the seconds the other night waiting for my slug follow-up to land? ) ---

Nice wording there Nem, well played sir, well played; and on a related note - aww crap.

I assume Nemarus was being sociable & discovered an interesting image that I too came across the other day.

Here's one that would shake things up a bit.... Evasion stat no longer functions... at all. or possibly... All missile breaks (DF or engine ability) no longer function. hmm... toss in an "Ion Railgun T5 upgrades non-functional" as well & we can have a "welcome to the meta" party for strikes.

I had an almost opposite bug happen a couple days ago on Denon sat A. I was on my Legion & a SF coming from lower pub spawn managed to protorp lock, fire, & hit me although I used the sat to LoS us. Only the 1 ship was in range of A, so I knew where the lock was coming from, I moved to a blocked LoS, but the tone never stopped & he fired just as if I'd been out in the open the whole time - was not fun to watch the almost-slow-motion approach of the torp. The protorp didn't kill me but it sure was a WTH ??!!! moment. ---

Let me know when Zuck and I'll come keep the gnats off ya ----

Heh heh, I too recognize some of those toons.

^ what Zuck said

I, and I'm sure many of the frequent posters here, would suggest you avail yourself of the information already in these forums and refine your question as much as possible, as it is simply too broad. The "Stasipedia" (stickied 2nd from the top of the GSF forums) is a great place to start. Simply put, there is no "best fighter" in GSF, just as there is no "best class" in the ground PvP or PvE areas of SWTOR, everything is situational. The most accurate answer that can be given to your question in its current form would be "it depends".

OK people this looks amazing and everyone needs to bounce over to KickStarter and contribute. There has been a good uptick in pledges in the last few days, but it still needs around $55k to hit the mark, and the deadline is 11:59pm eastern tonight. If you have a credit/debit card, please get over there & pledge at least the $5 minimum. I pledged quite a bit more than that a long while back. This really looks impressive, let's make it a reality. Thanks.

I completely agree with Nemarus's list of changes, as well as a bit I saw from tomm about strikes getting "double damage" rocket pods. A few other ideas popped into my head as well, some I've probably mentioned before & some that others probably did, but some of this might be "new". These changes would be chassis-specific, so the buffs for T1 would not apply to T2/T3 and vice versa. T1 since it is the only ship that has access to ion gun, make ion gun "free"/"unlimited" - no energy cost at all, thus saving the blaster power pool for the HLCs (or BLCs if those are added), access to ALL blaster types including BLCs T2 double capacity for ALL missile types, significant reduction in lock, cool down, & reload times (~50% sounds good) of all missle types, access to all missle types including pods T3 no new ideas here, but would really like access to HLCs maybe BLCs too, in addition to other general strike buffs

I completely agree with Nemarus's list of changes, as well as this bit from Tomm. A few other ideas popped into my head as well, some I've probably mentioned before & some that others probably did, but some of this might be "new". These changes would be chassis-specific, so the buffs for T1 would not apply to T2/T3 and vice versa. T1 since it is the only ship that has access to ion gun, make ion gun "free"/"unlimited" - no energy cost at all, thus saving the blaster power pool for the HLCs (or BLCs if those are added), access to ALL blaster types including BLCs T2 double capacity for ALL missile types, significant reduction in lock, cool down, & reload times (~50% sounds good) of all missle types, access to all missle types including pods T3 no new ideas here, but would really like access to HLCs maybe BLCs too, in addition to other general strike buffs

Some of these are similar to items I mentioned many pages back, and some are ideas I'd never considered. To all of these suggestions I say - YES, PLEASE!!! Hey Alex, how about y'all toss these changes onto the PTS in a week or 2 and let us all have a go with it and see what shakes out. I think we've all had our say at this point; enough words, let's get to some actions. Thanks.

All of these - yes, please.

Speaking as a very long-time Pike fan, I'll simply say - Yes, please. This sounds like a good "silver bullet" to try, but I would like to see at least a small tweak to improve mobility - all those big engines shouldn't just be cosmetic - perhaps an increase to the engine pool or it's regen rate, neither of which should be difficult in the least to implement.

Thanks for the apparent renewed developer interest in GSF - all of us "old timers" & "die hards" truly appreciate it. Since this is a "toss out ideas on how to 'fix' Strike Fighters" thread, and being a big fan & longtime pilot of the Pike (yes, I really like using missiles & torpedoes), I'll throw out some ideas. It seems to me that the "quickest" way to attempt to "fix" strikes would be through chassis bonuses that are strike-only. This would also seem to me to require the least amount of developer/programmer resources/time, and be the easiest to watch the evolution of & tweak/reverse if needed. Of course, as mentioned, blanket strike chassis bonuses run the risk of giving too much to the Clarion, but maybe it would be possible to in some way "prorate" or adjust the bonuses based on exactly which strike fighter. Also as others have mentioned, it makes more sense to risk giving too much to the strike class than to risk taking away from all other ship classes. All that said & based on my own experience & some posts in this thread and others, here are some ideas (these are suggested #s, devs would have to play around with these of course).... -- no change in weapon damage or relative accuracy or component choices (other than possibly adding in the other missile types) -- no change to hit points or shield power per arc -- 50% increase to ALL base weapon ranges (guns & missiles) -- 50% decrease to ALL missile/torpedo lock-on, cooldown, & reload times -- 50%-100% increase to blaster power pool -- 50%-100% increase to missile/torpedo capacities -- 50%-100% increase to shield regen rate -- 50% decrease to shield regen delay -- 50%-100% increase to engine power pool -- 50%-100% increase to engine regen rate Personally, if all of these bonuses were implemented to some degree, I think you might actually manage to address the issues of low burst damage, double missile breaks, ion railgun spam, survivability in general, maneuverability in general, etc. Yes I know these changes would seem to make it too easy for a strike to kill gunships & overpowered in general, but I personally don't really think so given how ridiculously underpowered they really are currently. Some thoughts on why these changes wouldn't, for instance, make a protorp strike too powerful... base proton range is 10km, add my range bonus you get to 15km which is equal to railgun, then you add in the T5 protorp upgrade & you can now lock & fire from 16.5km (this seems extreme but consider that missiles generally are expected to have longer ranges than artillery in the first place), the way GSF works though to fire at a gunship 16.5km away would require you to be able to target the gunship (which is likely equipping dampening sensors + crew bonus) which would mean needing longer sensor range or having an ally (or sensor beacon, or perhaps a drone) in comm range who has the gunship in sensor range & maintains that information-bridge (firing telemetry) to you until you have locked & launched, of course you can now lock in 1/2 the time but still --- as always though, all of these things assume the circumstances of the moment align in your favor, meaning you still must have & maintain line of sight, keep it in the reticule, & generally have no other ship - gunship, scout, strike (working on an extreme-range protorp lock on you perhaps), etc threatening YOU significantly --- and as we all know, most gunships are equipping 2x missile breaks, so they can still break the lock anytime before the missile gets there, and the longer range shot of course means a longer flight and therefore more time to hit the breaker-button Sorry for all the rambling. Hope my points didn't get lost in the midst of all that mess, heh heh.

Nem, I can't answer your question cleanly & precisely but FWIW, the following: Last night in a domination match in my battle scout I ended up in a joust with a strike. We were very perfectly head to head, same ship orientation, everything. I had him lined up dead center well before gun range. Right as I began to fire, I noticed the target indicator & his ship shifting very slightly to my right, out from under my aiming reticle. I realized he was strafing, adjusted, and killed him. At least from that encounter, it would seem to me the lead indicator adjusts to strafing, but of course this was with a ship under engine power, not a rail-charging gunship.

At the risk of taking this thread in an inappropriate direction.... huh? camera speed? 3rd party software? I've no clue what you mean by these, as I have never had any real issues or complaints about the controls in GSF.

Thanks for all your efforts Nem, they are greatly appreciated.