I'm not from Harbinger, however there is something I'd like to call arms-race matches. I'll use a deathmatch as example. It usually happens when my side has 2-3 good pilots and 5-6 new pilots while the other team is mostly consisting of average pilots with 6-7 of them having 4-5 ships to choose from. At first the other team thinks it's going to win easily, because they only see 2-3 people with 5 ships on our team (my wingman and I have lots of alts and usually aren't recognized by others) while themselves having a lot of 5-shippers. They choose their ships relatively random from what I can tell but soon realize they get killed by the same 2-3 people again and again and they can't keep up with the kill count. Over the course of the match their team is stacking more and more gunships to counter our good pilots - and even with passive evasion it's hard to not get hit when having 4-5 people shooting at you. They stack more and more gunships because they'll try to farm our beginners faster than our good pilots can kill them, making it virtually impossible to effectively kill them with scouts - we're not aces, just above average. That's when we switch to gunships and it becomes a 3v7 railgun standoff, with us trying to kill their gunships faster than their gunships can kill our beginners. (On a side note, I dislke new players who keep flying into gunship walls even when told multiple times to stay in cover or at least manage their boost so they're actually a distraction to the enemies instead of just cannon fodder.) The other team does the right thing in that situation, they adapt to the match and change their ships to turn the game in their favor. Can't blame them. Similar things happen with bombers in domination. The game starts "normal" but at some point we drown in enemy bombers trying to take a node. (On a side note, I dislike new players who don't stay close to a green satellite so it stays green in case the "main defender" dies.) However, those games are also the reason for me to fly with my/a wingman whenever possible. When I'm the only good pilot and the other team starts stacking whatever ship against my team I usually can't do much, but flying with a wingman helps to keep the situation under control most of the time.

I don't see much difference. ... while Gunships and especially Bombers require almost no skill or effort when fielded en masse against new pilots. If mediocre pilots were able to farm beginners as well in Scouts as they do in Gunships/Bombers, there wouldn't be so many games where Gunships or Bombers or both are spammed against beginners.

In my opinion the problem with Bombers and Gunships isn't that they're too strong, but they are extremely effective against new players, without having to put much effort in and even when used by mediocre pilots. While a Scout is equally dangerous as the other two when flown by an ace, it's effectivenes plummets when flown by an average pilot. In a game with equal and high average skill on both sides, the three meta classes work just fine, but everyone here knows that most games aren't that way. If one team consists of mostly new players the easiest way to farm them are Gunships for DM and Bombers for DOM. A Bomber in DOM doesn't have to do anything but getting to a satellite, drop everything and sit still for the rest of the game; a Gunship in DM never gets attacked because new ships usually lack evasion and are easily killed by railgun spam - and sadly, that's what a lot of people do. A well piloted Scout is as deadly as the other two, but the Scout lacks AE and it has to watch out for it's hitpoints because it's effective range is small enough that even new pilots have a chance to target it.

I said it elswhere and I say it again. Removing T2 Scouts will not magically make Strikes better. They'd still get torn apart by almost every other ship.

I play T1 Bomber with Interdiction Mines and slowing Seismic Mines. It's hilarious to see an attacker coming to a full stop, trying to boost away but realizing he can't, then panicking and using the engine ability only to crash into an obstacle.

As far as I know, all of those effects just slow but don't reduce turning rate. Pure slows just stack with "true interdiction effects" (effects which reduce speed and turning rate).

In most matches I don't really care about who flies what and I also like the possibility to switch ships during a fight to adapt to the situation. However in those matches where the rest of my team is severely underequipped, I'd ban whatever it needs to make the opponents advantage smaller.

Afaik only the "most-mastered" ship on the bar is affecting queues, with one component of every slot at max as the highest value. Additional components and ships don't count. It tries to match people with roughly the same numbers of games played. As most active pilots have a mastered ship and a high number of games played, they sometimes get skipped because the matchmaker can't find anyone else with that much games played. But the matchmaker also prioritizes groups (imho completely ignoring any other factors - never was skipped while grouped), which makes grouping up the only way for some veterans to get a queue. The presence of 2 veterans is enough to determine the outcome of most games against groups with no veterans, which makes games seem a lot more unbalanced than they actually are.

I always have the feeling that there are less pops on mondays, especially after a GSF-heavy conquest week. Maybe it had something to do with it.

I don't think a "best of server" category is a good idea. For example, there are only 4 (or so) different people, who submitted records from T3-M4. Most of the T3-M4 records are by me - not because I'm the best pilot there, but because the others don't submit records. A server specific list would be pretty empty for almost all servers. A lot of the records are accomplished by T1 Gunships and T2 Scouts simply because almost all statistics we get from the scoreboard are kill-related and those two ships are the best killers. Some records here are pretty old and that's because a new list only gets made when there's a patch that makes a big change to balance in GSF. The last patch that made changes to GSF was 2.8 as it says in the title.

T3 Gunship Deathmatch Evanaya (Danalon) - GSS-4Y Jurgoran - T3-M4 - 101,927 Damage In case a ship-specific kill streak category gets added: Evanaya (Danalon) - GSS-4Y Jurgoran - T3-M4 - 27 Kill Streak Thanks for editing my previous records.

SWtoR doesn't support addons like WoW. For the ground game you can parse combat logs, but GSF doesn't have a log. I don't think it's possible to get logs for GSF.

Isn't rapid reload standard for Gunships anyway?

The human brain goes through a lot of effort to make itself look better. One of the most common ways it does this is the self-serving bias. I'm aware this bias exists, yet sometimes I catch myself doing it.

Let's consider every component having roughly the same strength and enough synergies with other components to work well. There would be more different ships around, and beginners could build what they like without making mistakes. That's about it. It wouldn't magically make beginners stronger. Without a rating system, which requires a bigger participation to work, or at least a better tutorial, which has to be played and not just skipped, there won't be much change in veteran vs beginner fights. Game mechanics versus real-life usually doesn't lead anywhere. Games have to be designed for playability and in many cases there are differences to "real life". The reason why there are no Gunships in the movies is basically the same as with the game mechanics. Movies are made for watching - they're not documentaries about weapons. Weapons have to be cool to watch. Besides that, in almost any movie there are discrepancies bewteen the power a character (or his equipment) should have and the power he uses. Sometimes it's explained, moreoften it's not. Maybe inside the game there is no mechanic to support playing with a wingman, but what keeps you from using any VoIP to coordinate. I usually fly with a wingman and we have developed some standard moves for the beginning of matches and coordinate changes in tactics. I wouldn't call us aces but we manage to lead our team to victory most of the time. And again, while 2v1 may work, what happens if the opponent also brings a wingman?

Auf T3-M4 hat man nachmittags und abends kaum Wartezeit und es sind zwischen ein und drei Spiele gleichzeitig offen. Unter der Woche geht das letzte Spiel meistens um 00:30 auf und an Wochenenden um 01:30 - es gibt natürlich immer wieder Ausreißer, wo manchmal etwas früher oder später Schluss is. An Wochenenden geht vormittags auch was und an Montagen is etwas weniger los. Während Clash in Hyperspace ist natürlich noch mehr los als üblich.

Oh, that one. I was confused because of the "being in two locations at the same time" thing. Of all the laggy people I've seen I reported one, because he seemingly was switching between normal and laggy depending on situation. Most people really just lag. Didn't see anyone lagging on my main server for over a year, but when I play on Harbinger it's more common - I think it's just a side effect of AsPac/EU players flying there with high latency.

The amount of mines/drones deployed at the same time is limited. Upgrades can get you an additional mine/drone for some of them. The reduced cooldown is helpful when there's a lot of action and your mines trigger (or get destroyed) all the time.

Adding new categories is ok as long as they make sense. I don't want to see things as "damage repaired", "accuracy" or "damage done with blasters only".

If possible I try to center my target. My current loadout has 3 ships with BLC and 2 with HLC. With BLC (Scout, Gunships) in dogfights or CQC I shoot whenever I can, even if the enemy is at the edge of the firing arc. With HLC (Bombers) I usually ignore tracking penalty, because the firing arc is so small. Can't tell you what percentage of shots have high penalty, I really don't pay attention to that.

Is that exploit new? Never seen it. How do you know it's an exploit and not just weird lag?

I was using Hydrospanner for the first year of my GSF career on my T2 Scouts because "it repairs like 25% ot the hull". Forgetting the copilot ability sometimes won't stop you from getting better over time. I see your sarcasm there but flying a Bomber is not just "flying in circles", I see a lot of people do that on satellites. They just keep flying below the disk part with no active evasion whatsoever. As a Bomber you'll need to learn where to place your deployables and how and when to place them. Also it's crucial to learn how to fly to avoid getting hit, which includes getting a feeling for the behavior of other players.

Just some weeks ago we played Rep first and switched to Imp after we finished our daily quests. First game was a wargame and our team was starting on the Rep side. I got startled by the sound of my own BLC, because I forgot we switched factions.

You might see less activity by some pilots, who will be flying on Shadowlands instead of their normal server. But you probably will also see a lot of usually inactive pilots playing GSF for their conquest points. Overall I'd expect a rise in GSF participation on most servers during Clash in Hyperspace conquest events.

To update your graphics drivers, check what graphics card you have and download the drivers from the manufactureres website. To change your SWtoR launcher from streaming to normal, follow these instructions: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7826333 You will have to redownload the whole game. I found it's worth it, because future patches will need less time and the non-streamed version of the game is more bug resistant. To use the repair function of the launcher, log in and click on your name on the upper right side, then go to settings and there it is. A download may be required if the repair function finds errors.