Also Pods have a relatively small firing arc, and obviously can only hit inside of it. Took me some time to get used to stop firing when the indicator left the smaller firing arc.

I bought a new Laptop in April and a WIndows 7 Professional key for around 13€ on amazon (just checked, price is on the same level currently). The key was "refurbished", so I had to activate it via phone. Windows 10 upgrade wasn't a problem. Personally I'm ok with 7 and 10, never used 8.

It's a good time to get a new OS now. Windows 7 costs only a few bucks and if your machine is compatible, you might even be able to upgrade to Windows 10. On the other hand, never change a running system. Give it some thought before you change your OS. Changing your OS to fix a single bug, might cause other bugs to appear.

The only sound bug I encountered had to do wtih my USB headphones. I don't know if it helps, but I'll post this anyway. When I plugged them in during the loading screen, there was a chance I won't hear any game related sound during that match. The chance of that happening was higher, if I minimized the game before. If that bug occured I minimized the game after the GSF match was loaded, unplugged the USB headphones and plugged them in again, then tabbed back into the game. That usually helped.

Sorry, I've never experienced those keybind problems with GSF.

Strafing isn't very effective in GSF. On most ships it's barely noticeable. There is a good chance you ahve bound those buttons correctly, but you just don't notice their effect. I suggest leaving A and D bound to roll, so you can get into a position to pitch instead of yaw more easily. Personally I only strafe upwards sometimes - strafing up/down has a more noticeable effect than strafing left/right.

I should have elaborated more, what I meant with "gunships are easier to fly than scouts". It's not only on novice level. Even on average level gunships outperform scouts. A lot of practice is required to be effective in a scout. I noticed that after I came back from a break. Picking up on my gunship was fairly easy, but I needed some games to get used to my scout again. Aside from that, forming a gunship wall needs close to zero coordination - just pick gunships, fire on whatever comes into sensor range, and evade the occasional surprise attack.

I assure you, this isn't a gunship specific problem. It's a problem with the difference in power of the two teams in a match. If one team consists of mostly experienced pilots and the other of mostly inexperienced, the outcome of the match is somewhat predetermined. It doesn't matter what ships the experienced pilots use. You are correct, that 5 gunships can easily kill you right when you spawn, however, 5 bombers or 5 scouts can do the same. I've been in a lot of matches where a premade group of 3-4 scouts killed anything that spawned within seconds. It rarely happens with bombers, but it is possible to use the area-denial of bombers to make a spawn virtually un-usable. The reason it happens moreoften with gunships is, that gunships are easier to fly than scouts, and gunships are more effective against inexperienced players. Less experienced players often don't know how to effectively counter gunships, and also new players tend to spawn at the same spawn over and over, making it even easier for gunships to focus them. Also, if you get killed by 2 gunships which each shoot you once, it's literally not an one-shot by definition. You may die fast, and those two shots may hit you at almost the same time, but it's not an one-shot.

The point I tried to make with that post was, that it's possible to do something, even with only few upgrades. Obviously things are more difficult without having fully upgraded and perfectly tuned ships, however in almost any situation it's possible to meaningfully contribute to a game and help ones team, just by using low-upgrade starter ships. It's not necessary to solo-kill someone in an 1v1 situation to contribute to a game. Often it's enough to just keep them busy long enough for the situation to not be an 1v1 anymore. (btw, CP doesn't work with shields, you can use primaries against shields anytime)

It is correct that some upgrades make a huge difference, however, most of those upgrades can be reached by a new character within less than a month. Experienced players, or new players who ask a veteran for help, will build their new ships in a certain way, to make them as strong as possible with the least requisition required. You have described some situations and I'd like to give some examples how I'd try to respond to them with relatively new ships. 1) Against a CP bomber. While it's near impossible to kill a CP bomber in a completely new ship, it doesn't need much to be able to do so. The first upgrade of rocket pods (1k req) gives them AP, so after one game it's at least possible to kill a CP bomber. The second option against CP bombers is a T1 bomber, obviously a fresh T1 bomber is weaker than an upgraded one, but with good flying even a fresh bomber can delay whatever another bomber is doing for until reinforcements arrive.If you want to arrive your reinforcements faster, you should get the beacon. The third option is to use the T1 gunship, however AP for slugs costs 8500 (including previous upgrades), so it might take 10 games to reach it. It is still possible to land a surprise hit with a stock slug while CP is down and Ion will still drain energy from the bomber. 2) Attacking a satellite. Turrets can easily be killed with Rocket Pods T1 upgrade. Assuming the satellite is undefend, that's the best choice. The Scout will get there fast and it can kill the turrets relatively easy as soon as it has AP pods. Assuming the satellite is defended, it get's a bit more difficult, depending on how many defenders, what ships they have and how good they are. It is suprisingly easy to survive a while in a Scout as long as there is no bomber, so it's possible to kill the turrets and then just fly defensively and hope the enemy team tries to reinforce the satellite, maybe having to stop their attack on one of your own satellites. 3) Killing an evasion Scout. This is probably the hardest to describe because the strength of a scout is mostly depending on it's pilot. It's a bit easier for Imperial pilots because they start with Wingman. In any way it's not a good idea to directly confront a Scout - it will end badly if you're willingly submit to an 1v1 situation with a better geared scout. In DOM games, a T1 bomber should do the trick - you'll be forced to stay near cover for the whole time, but as long as your mines are up, you don't have to fear a single scout much. The T1 bomber doesn't need much upgrades to be effective at a satellite. In TDM if you "just want to kill that Scout" you should wait until it's at least somewhat distracted and then attack. Personally, and assuming I play on a new character, I use the T1 gunship for most TDM games. While it is difficult to hit an evasion scout, it is still possible if it slows down to attack and makes the mistake of not using DF. A surprise attack with a well charged railgun (if it hits) puts the scout in a uncomfortable position. You should be prepared to run away as soon as the scout notices you and hope one of your teammates will finish him, as well as you need to look out for enemy scouts and help your team to get rid of them. As mentioned above, wingman (or something with a similar effect) is very helpful against evasion Scouts. imperial pilots can use Salana at any time, however a pilot of the Republic may need to unlock a crew member first. At a price of 1250, this should take less than a week. 4) Surviving a T1 Gunship When being hit by a fully charged Ion Rail, it's over. For the most time anyway. However, just surviving a T1 is possible in the stock T1 scout because it has booster recharge and can run away before the second railgun hits. Countering a T1 gunship is also possible with a relatively new character, but an 1v1 situation should be avoided. If the enemy only has 1-2 gunships and/or they don't pay much attention to one another, a stock scout is enough to heavily interrupt those gunships. The combination of Pods and Lasers (even RFL) is very effective in a surprise attack on a gunship. If the enemy team builds a gunship wall and it's not possible to attack them with a scout, you should switch to your own T1 gunship. It will be at a disadvantage in an 1v1, and it's not at it's full effectiveness because of some missing upgrades (Ion t4/5, DF), but with good positioning and/or teamplay even a stock T1 gunship is a threat to the enemy team.

When starting GSF (assuming the character is level 10 or higher) the GSF intro quest gives 5k fleet requisition, which should be used to buy the T1 Bomber and T1 Gunship. Those two are the best ships of their class. The T1 Scout, which is available from the beginning for everyone is also a good ship. It is possible to upgrade those three ships to around 70-90% of their power, within roughly 2 weeks by playing 1-2 games per day to do the daily and weekly quests, while also using up a part of the daily bonus requisiton. Assuming a hypothetical new player literally loses every match, we're speaking of around 30 matches to upgrade 3 (very) good ships to a power level that is easily comparable to the bolster the ground game provides. 30 matches isn't much, considering a new character ends up with a hangar which can respond to almost any tactical situation in GSF. This is where knowledge and experience come in. A veteran with hundreds or even thousands of games played knows what components and upgrades to choose. He knows what ship to use and when and how to use it to get the best results. GSF hard to get into, but "gear" difference is, if at all, only a very small part of the problem. I observed the development of some new pilots, and most of them needed around 2-3 months to acquire the necessary experience to get to an average level of performance. Usually, when I'm up against players which I assume to be new because they only have starter ships, I don't play serious. For example I shoot them once with my laser and then wait some seconds to give them time to react; in almost all cases, they don't. If I decided to play serious against those players, I could easily obliterate an entire team and they'd be lucky if they manage to scratch my hull. In conclusion, a hull or shield bonus for newer players wouldn't help because they don't know how to fly evasive, and a damage bolster wouldn't help because any good player knows how to prevent getting damaged.

For requisiton I simply quote this: Just to point out again: If you're doing the daily quest 7 times a week and the weekly quest once then you'll get 7*625+3125=7500 requisition for each ship you have unlocked. If you have all 12 ships unlocked that is 90k ship requisition in total. That's why it's helpful to not use requisition tokens immediately, if you don't have to do any important upgrades. On most characters, all my ships are mastered, even if I have never used them in battle. Also noteworthy: You get the same amount of requisition for a kill as for an assist. There is bonus requisition for "class specific weapon" kills/assists. That are railguns for gunships and mines for bombers if I remember correctly. To check what exactly gave you requisition, open the requisition tab in the scorescreen. Personally, I've found it more difficult to get some achievements than to gather requisition. The reason was, that I've almost exclusively used the T2 scout (Flashfire/Sting) on all characters for almost the entire first year after GSF was released. It's impossible to get the required "4k repair"-medal (not sure how it's called) in a T2 scout. Also I didn't get many assists, because I usually got the killing blow - therefore I had to dedicate some matches to get the required assist MVP medals. Another problem for me were the "kill 8 turrets" medals (also forgot the name), because those medals are easier to get if you're on the losing side of a DOM match. For the achievements that require matches played/won with a specific class, it's enough to use that class only once per game. You should have one ship of each class on your bar. Personally, for doing achievements, I would organize my 5 ships this way: T2 scout (Flashfire/Sting). The most versatily and arguably strongest ship in the game, with the disadvantage of requiring a very good pilot to be played effective. However, a T2 scout with Burst Lasers is effective in killing satellite turrets and attacking satellites in general. T1 gunship (Mangler/Quarrel). Ion railgun is extremely effective for getting assist achievements. It's also the best gunship because of Ion Rail. T2 bomber (Legion/Warcarrier). Usually the T1 bomber (Razorwire/Rampart) is considered stronger, however the T2 bomber has the advantage of having a repair drone, which easily repairs 4k damage in a match if you're supporting a node. Any strike fighter, although I'd prefer the T3 (Clarion/Imperium) because of the available components. Strikes don't have much use for the most time, but you want one on your bar for strike fighter achievemets. The 5th slot can be reserved for a ship which needs additional requisition. You can switch to it whenever you think the situation is appropriate and gain some req for it.

Ship mastery achievements only require time, they're not hard to get. I don't know how far you have progressed into mastering all ships, so I'll just recommend unlocking all ships before you use any of the ship requisition tokens you get for the quests. Each ship you already purchased will get requisition from a token, resulting in over 10k requisition for a daily token, if you have unlocked all ships.

Sadly, that's a problem in ground PvP too, as well as it's a problem nearly every other game with PvP content has.

I didn't play the T3 scout much, but I tried Interdiction drive in combination with Tensor Field. It's possible to use both cooldowns, capture a satellite before an enemy arrives, wait for reinforcements and then suicide - instead of pulling Tensor Field and suiciding instantly. I didn't test it often and I can't tell how it performs against an enemy team with Tensor boost, but I'm certain it works against groups without a Tensor T3.

Impressive. Please link a screenshot so we have something to refer to when telling newer players aces have more games lost than they have played. Keep it going, maybe you'll discover the secret "Anti Fleet Admiral" for losing 1000 games.

Just now reading this and I had a thought occuring. Does the game even regard the firing arc as a spherical sector with the ship in the center or does it just check wether or not a target is inside the circle? Similar question: is the firing arc determined by ships position or by cameras position? Another one: Is tracking penalty determined by position of the ships or by the position of the mouse? My current hypothesis is: The game checks if the target (actually it's lead indicator) is inside the circle and then determines distance, angle and LoS by the position ad facing of the attacker compared tot he position of the target. I think a year ago or so I tested if LoS is determined by ship position or camera position and if I remember correctly it was ship position. However I neither made screenshots/videos nor notes, so my memory can be false. (Edited)

While from time to time someone comes to this forum and asks for it, joystick support wouldn't help much in terms of gameplay as probably the only thing it would do is replacing your mouse. It would play like Rogue Squadron 64, which is almost exactly the same as it plays now. While joystick support would be nice, it probably won't get done because there are too few players who actually use joysticks. Most ships only need to get around 35k requisition (or something) to be almost as effective as if they were fully upgraded. Doing 1-2 games per day to get daily and weekly quest rewards, plus the requisition earned while playing, easily let you upgrade a ship to 80-90% effectiveness in less than 3 weeks. Also, upgrades don't get devalueated like gear in ground game when a new patch comes out - get it once, have it forever. It sure would be nice to be able to upgrade faster but it's not really necessary - people who read guides on (or ask) what to upgrade first and stick to the game for at least a month won't have any gearing problem. The underlying problem is the skill difference - even if every player had all ships and components available from the start, the veterans would easily dominate newer players. A new player has to learn basics in a PvP environment, which isn't easy, while simultaneously upgrading his ships to be more useful. Most new players need at least a month to get to a point where they understand how things work in GSF. In this forum, we try to offer as much help as we can to players who want it. Why delete gunships? Why not bombers and scouts too? Or even better, delete all ships except one, so everyone has the same ship and no one has to learn anything on how to counter other ship classes. I all for PvE missions for GSF but sadly it's unlikely to happen. Making an AI for it would be very expensive. Another option is to make it like in Rogue Squadron 64 where the enemies are on rails - however by now, the distance fog is further away so it would be noticeable when enemies spawn in and start flying the same route everytime.

Let's get some help from wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_sector#/media/File:Kugel-sektor.png M is the position of your ship (facing upwards in the picture). The blue shape is your firing arc. The blue circle with radius a is the circle you see in game. r is the range of your weapon. The angle between the thick blue lines at M (in the picture it's 90°) is the angle of your firing arc. For tracking penalty it doesn't matter how close your target is - as you said 10° are 10°, no matter how close. The distance to your target directly affects accuracy - the closer, the higher the chance to hit. It's really not that important. The only thing you need to know: keep the lead indicator of your target as close to the center of your screen as possible. Or, in other words, the closer the lead indicator is to the edge of the circle on your screen, the less likely you are to hit it.

You misinterpreted it. Imagine a sphere around your ship, and the firing arc is a cone-like cutout of X degrees. I've never cared much about the numbers, because it's impossible to take influence on the tracking penalty other than trying to center a target as good as possible.

Don't listen to this troll.

I see you started trolling again.

A lot of new players expect strikes to be more sturdy than they are. You should know that it's always useful to be able to switch ships if the situation demands it. Sometimes you just can't counter the enemy team with only one ship. For example, bombers aren't as useful in TDM as in DOM, because without the satellite, there is no area the enemy is forced to go to and they have an easier time avoiding the mines. Getting killed a lot and in a fast time is what keeps a lot of players away from GSF. In fact, an ace-quality pilot in a fully upgraded ship can easily tear apart a whole team of inexperienced pilots - even if the ace pilot made a new character and started with stock ships, he easily will be devastating to the enemy team, if they're inexperienced. Harbinger is the most active server in terms of GSF, there should be at least one pilot there to help you. Have you joined the GSF-chat?

For new players I always recommend to do the GSF intro quest and use te 5k fleet requisition reward to buy the Mangler and Razorwire (Imp) or Quarrel and Rampart (Rep). These ships are cheaper than the others and they're considered to be "the best" in their class. The best scout is the Type 2 Scout, Flashfire (Rep), Sting (Imp), Ocula (cartel market option) - however flying a scout needs a lot of practice and in my opinion it's not a good ship for beginners - you should try it though if you stick to GSF, because the T2 Scout is arguably the best ship for almost any 1v1 situation. GSF is a shooter, and, as usual in shooters, you die faster than in classic RPG PvP. You won't find a ship that is really "tanky". Some ships have more hitpoints/shields than others but in any case it's better to avoid damage than taking it. In other words, if you get shot at, evade and seek cover. The Rampart/Razorwire, also called Type 1 Bombers, are probably the most sturdy ships, as long as you manage to deploy a minefield and force enemies to fight in it - for example in a dogfight at a satellite. However, bombers are easy targets in open space. The Quarrel/Mangler, also called Type 1 Gunships, are similar to snipers in other shooters. Do not use Strike fighters, they seem to be more sturdy than scouts but for most of the time strike fighters are just clay pigeons. GSF is very hard for new players, because the game doesn't offer much help and nearly all information must be acquired elsewhere. New players usually don't see what exactly is happening around them and it's hard to learn even basics because there is no practice area. If you tell us on what server you're flying, maybe we can find someone to help you. Meanwhile I link Greezt's profile, you can find some guides in his forum signature. In that signature there is also a link to Drakolich's "ask me anything" thread, feel free to ask anything there.

Back in the days before most of the good players on my server stopped playing, and we regularly had scout swarms, we never had a problem with ticks - they didn't even reach a satellite.