We're on the same team, Verain, but probably not the same page. That is 100% my bad, and you have every right to say what you did. As stated, I was trying to bring attention to a problem that the community can fix, not incite personal drama. I was very unclear about my goal and was attempting to use the context of the conversation at the time as an example in a very foggy way. For that, I am sorry. I will do my best to be more clear in my meanings and motives from now on.

(Shh, don't ruin the magic. It was an effort to actually get drak to post in this thread. It worked.) Edit for clarification: The entire post I made was a joke, excluding me thinking that mika is overall a better pilot than drak. That opinion comes from me seeing mika solo queue far more often than drak, and carry teams of newbs against teams of aces and win. I've rarely seen drak soloqueue, as thus I've rarely seen drak show what he is truly capable of - and since I'm on a craptop, I cannot into twitch so that's out. I've not had the opportunity to see drak do the same things as I've seen mika do. So my opinion on that comes from lack of data. Not only was my post a joke, this whole thread became a joke, really. Backwards claims made by people who refuse to listen. After the 1,000,000th time trying to explain bombers to someone, and offering to teach someone, eventually you just need to have some fun and get people riled. So yes, I made the post for attention (It worked), more to say, to bring attention to this issue that is illustrated in this thread. That issue being that new pilots who don't know **** generally do not read guides nor will they listen to what people say on the forums when they come here to complain. As thus, we as a community need to take further steps to train new pilots in game rather than just capslock at them as I've seen so many people do on so many servers so many times. (Yes I play more than Bastion, but under different names)

Half boosts strike a balance here. Hammering down until your power pool is ~half gone, then letting it quick regen back to full is inefficient, but can help you conserve engine power for when you really need it. It's something worth playing around with as an idea, and testing on your own. I say give that a go, see how it works for you. It may feel *right* to some people, and very wrong to others. Remember, although the math doesn't lie, it doesn't tell the whole story either.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I use the T3 scout rather than ion-rail gunships because I dislike gunships, and use of the repair drone at nodes that are under constant fire really helps while i tensor about and disable turrets/clear minefeilds. That being said, you're entirely right.

We kinda agree, and don't at the same time. This may seem off topic and like I'm bragging, but it's not, I'm not, and I'll bring it back around. Drak and Mika may or may not like me saying this, but I've fought them both and beaten them bomber - to - bomber. I would say that Mikaboshi is a far superior bomber pilot to Drakolich, and I would say that, strictly in bombers, I am as good as and sometimes better than both of them (We all have good days and bad.) I can't touch them when in scouts or gunships against their scouts/gunships, but I've managed to hold a sat against both of them at the same time while I was solo with the 3 of us in bombers. Mind you that in GSF circumstance is everything, and in the example I used I had the advantage of already being on node before they arrived. I also often roll niche and/or off builds though which give me some advantage over other bombers. Not to mention that I'm a specialist, not a generalist. I use arguably one of the worst weapons in the game competitively -> that part, however is off topic. With what was stated, you are entirely right about having a hard time being able to compare pilot skill across different classes. Apples, Oranges, and Banana's are indeed one way of comparing it. However, I would say a good metric to measure how skilled a pilot is vs how skilled other pilots are cross class is to determine how well they do against their hard counter in solo queue. IE how well a bomber ace does against a gunship ace, how well a gunship ace does against a scout ace, how well a scout ace does against a bomber ace, when none of these aces can depend on their team. Such a metric may be difficult, but I feel it would be valid. Now, in these almost off-topic examples. One can see that I might actually know what I'm talking about. (@OP.) In the balance of the meta, every ship can be considered unfair or overpowered. None of them really are (Excluding, arguably, the t2 scout that can 2-3 hit everything without damage overcharge.) Bombers can't and don't ride the non-existent AI, the ones who say they do are useless and don't know what they are talking about. Further, bombers have long cooldowns on their only useful abilities. Bombers really aren't unfair or unbalanced.

Decorations, most guild masters kill for GSF decorations for their hangars, especially guilds that don't have any pilots. There is also a lockbox that drops level 50 materials (expensive hard to farm ones too) in exchange for fleet comms.

We never really left topic, just kinda hit a tangent directly related to topic and gave a mid-ranged pilot some advice while we were at it. The type of sillyness that is being spoken of isn't the fun kind, it's the abuse kind. No one likes abuse, that's why its called abuse.

10 seconds is a long time in GSF, 1 min is even longer. What are the cooldowns on mines again? I forget. What are the cooldowns on drones? Can't seem to remember. I'll have to guess. Lets see. So... Railgun drones, ID Drones, and rocket drones have a cooldown of ~60 seconds. Right? Repair drones over 1min I think. Most mines are, like, ~13 seconds or so, yea, that sounds right. Now, it seems to me that the incredibly long cooldown times on drones and mines might be a problem for bombers. As if a bomber lays a drone, and you kill it as they lay it, they have to wait a full minute to lay another. Now, if they have an old drone up, they may be able to quickly lay another - which you coud kill and make them wait a full min before laying another. What is that bomber going to do for that min, which again, is a long time in GSF. Think maybe they are just going to give up, run away super slowly? Lol. No. They have to keep fighting, and fight without their drones. Mine bombers have things a bit more easy, but their cooldowns are still exceedingly long. So they have to manage their resources and they still have to fight when their cooldowns are blown Fighting on a bomber is exceedingly difficult. You have the slowest ship, with weak sheilds, and a low blaster pool, going up against qualified dogfighters and space superiority craft. Bombers are the second most disadvantaged class behind strikers. The only thing that makes them playable is their drones and mines which have exceedingly long cooldowns You simply don't understand the game, and refuse to listen while we explain it. Bombers aren't OP. We have explained why countless different ways. I am willing to teach you in game and show you how and why they aren't OP. Just make a republic character on bastion and /who Defiant and ask someone for an invite. If we are both online at the same time, I will group with you and teach you how to use - and how to kill - bombers.

Hydrospanner also has its niche uses, but is also generally useless. That being said, we can give advice but we can't tell you - or anyone - how to play. Everyone has their own affinities, and everyone likes their own builds. The advice we offer is simply that, advice. You are free to run off builds all you like, to become a buildmaster like myself. (A title someone else made up and gave me) The main thing is, although we want you to do well, we also want you to have fun. If you have more fun rolling what many people would consider "bad" builds, then most pilots will still have your back. Some just may not want to group with you, and we may advise you to roll "better" builds. In the end, all we can say is good luck, have fun, and good hunting ^.^

I've found that the sheild repair drone/probe, useless as it is overall, does have a niche of helping a very specific build of a T1 gunship in GS duels. So it isnt entirely useless. It can also help to soak up just a tiny bit of damage while defending under a sat in doms. But other than that, unless you are running niche premades, it is utterly useless. I still roll sheild repair time to time, especially when rolling off-build premades or in insanely easy matches to provide just that tiny extra boost when rolling engine-to-sheild dogfight bomber, but I wouldn't touch well over 96% of the time. It's just overall a really, really, poorly balanced component.

Could be a matter of a few problems: Sync issues, which happen A LOT in GSF (IE someone locking onto you and fireing a rocket when they already passed you) Server lag Personal lag Processing issues RAM issues Hardware problems on your end (mouse) Hardware problems on their end (See Sync/processing issues) Wrong Crew Setup for lock dependant ships (Cookie cutter builds aren't always the best) Theoretical "Evade" (I developed a theory that sometimes high-evade ships can actually break a lock while sitting still, without using a lock break. As it seems to happen to me most when fighting t2 scouts) Beyond that, I would actually need to see what happened before being able to tell you what's happening.

showing healing done and naming drones for allies only would both really help promote pilot love.

That's the goal of both guilds in my sig. v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v

I didn't forget strikers, I overlooked them intentionally. Strikers are considered non-meta and underpowered for a reason. Encouraging people to kill bombers with strikers will only get them trapped in a minefeild. Don't misunderstand, I *love* strikers. The Pike and it's counter part are my favorite ship behind the warcarrier. I've used them often, even in competitive matches. I broke 30 kills in a pike once (not a match i was proud of, was nothing but me and 15 first-timers.)

You're thinking something along the lines of repair probes for clarion, but with offensive power? It's an odd idea, but i like it. It would be a development challenge, and require quite a bit of balance play-testing, but it could really give strikers a place in competitive matches. However, then you would get even more people complaining about "auto targeting features" and in this case, rightfully so.

That is beyond untrue. Bombers need to worry about placement - if they **** up placement, they die. Bombers need to worry about environment - If they **** up their positioning, they die. Bombers need to actually dogfight - If they can't handle a ship getting up on them, they die. Bombers need to worry about gunships - If they let a gunship free fire at them, they die. Bombers have to use their primary weapons - If they never use their primary weapons, they die. Bomber Pilots are human, they are subject to human error just the same as everyone else, that's why bombers die. For less skilled pilots, the game equates to rock paper scissors. If you hate bombers, roll gunship. (Rock is beaten by paper) If you hate gunships, roll scouts (Paper is beaten by scissors) If you hate scouts, roll bombers (Scissors is beaten by rock.) For more skilled pilots, it goes like this: You're a gunship ace in a t1 gunship? You beat everything in TDM and Dom. You're a Scout ace in a t2 Scout? You beat everything in TDM and Dom. You're a bomber ace in a mine bomber? You win Dom matches and struggle in TDM You're a bomber ace in a drone bomber? You get to support your team in both TDM and dom, but your drones rarely get you kills, and if theres a half decent ("Par," "sub Ace," or Mid-Ranged) scout or gunship in the match you struggle. You're a striker ace in any striker? You struggle in everything. Bombers aren't overpowered. Their auto-target feature isn't overpowered either. They are balanced in a game where Scouts and Gunships can kill anything, but have to be wary of the area-denial specialist actually doing its job. Bombers can be avoided, gunships and scouts can't. You usually can out run bombers, you usually can't outrun a railgun or a power - to - engines scout. Bombers do one job well in TDM -> Tactical Support. They can prevent you from flanking, and support their team by healing and rearming their scouts, or laying a minefeild around their gunships. In dom matches, it only takes 2 ships to destroy any bomber and all of its support. One ion railgun gunship, and one <Put any Ship here> Bombers are neither overpowered nor unfair. If you believe they are, you really need to fly them in competitive matches and see just how useless they can be.

So much yes to this. I always roll support, and although I can rank on the scorebored for damage and kills, that isn't my focus - i just happen to be good at multitasking. It would indeed be nice if it showed how much love I gave to my felow pilots.

The idea would be that you couldn't equip, say, two clusters. But rather a cluster and a conc. Or ion and heavies instead of double heavies. double fire means double the burnout, but higher DPS overall. making strikers joustmasters without giving them perma DO, and range/tracking would still be an issue for both weapon sets. IE you could fire your heavies at 6k and have them be near useless at shorter ranges, and fire your RFL when heavies aren't as well. Or fire heavies and quads for a short period of time at the same target, depleting your pool but out-jousting everything. The idea of including it for rockets would be so that people who like to troll about in rocket builds could quicklock something while long-locking something else, the sound would need no tinkering but i think maybe the UI might. Even if it's just a double overlay.

I would go as far as to say that bombers are the easiest ship class to learn, and the hardest to ace with.

We are talking about the t1 here. So i would say this: Give the T1 a system ability rather than weapon swap Allow its primary and secondary weapons to equip all weapons availible to the ship itself (two rockets no lasers, two lasers no rockets) Left click fires weapon slot 1, right click fires weapon slot 2, double its blaster pool. Each weapon fires costing it's normal amount of pool per shot Each rocket uses its standard lock on time and standard cooldown period Result: Not too strong, as the striker would be cooldown restricted with double rockets, still can't chase, lack manuverability, and get rekt by gunships. Not to weak, as it can finally possibly out-joust t2 scouts with double fire lasers, but could still drain its power pool super rapidly. Suddenly it can be the joustmaster, gunship spooker, or bomber killer depending on what weapons you are attempting to use. (Locking two rockets at once, or firing two lasers at once? 10/10 would buy cartel ship and keep both on my bars) This would only help the t1 though, and would grumpy people who like to use ion/heavy/conc.

Let's face it, pods need to be added to everything. The only two ships i couldn't see them help balancing are the quarrel and the mine bomber.

Actually fly all the different bombers and say that again. They are the easiest class to learn, but by far the most difficult class to ace in.

any two ships can handle any one bomber and it's support* if approached properly.

Gunships are their hard counter, especially with ion AoE, especially when the bomber is defending a satilite Lol no. Lack of engine power pool and lock times are weaknesses of the t2 strike Add in the strengths of the t2 scout being evasion, Distortion Feild (which adds another lock break PLUS evasion) quick turning, a larger engine power pool, and their teeth. The t2 strike gets rekt by a t2 scout - even if the striker is somewhat more skilled than the scout.

Well, GSF is a team based game. Even in playing with pugs, type in chat, try to coordinate them. if they fail at that, that's your problem as much as it is theirs, as you are meant to work as a team. As in it's a team based game. As in teamwork is required to win unless you are an unglodly skilled pilot like mikaboshi, who still has to work in a team, and he does, because it's a team based game. Moral of the story is, it's a team based game.