In his defense online PvP games usually have tiers, with low level tiers comprise of new players, who as they climb the ladder to higher tiers, become better and better while fighting people at their skill level. GSf though? The pros and the newbs face each other from day one and the vets and newbs have the same ships, just that vets have the fully mastered more powerful versions. If GSF was a standalone game it would have gone under long ago.

Have they increased the drop rate of Cartel Certificates? Because if twi'lek strippers will require a certificate "each" I may go broke...

15% damage reduction mounts, Flyby attacks and possibly other bonus for the guild that controls the planet. So basically the first ones to buy a guild ship will also be the 1st one to control planets and get bonus in said planet, which will in turn allow then to keep said control over the planet. Well that at least seal the deal, small guilds shouldn't even try to get a capital ship, you'll never see the boni since those who got their capital ships early will have an unbreakable hold over key planets. When it was possible that a guild ship would just give boni if hovering over a planet (without "owning" it) having a guild ship was a good and worthwhile goal for even a small guild, now though? We'll just stick to a guild stronghold, not bitter by the way, this actually saves us a lot of grief/grinding

We play together but a few times a month, schedules are random for us, it would literally mean wasting our few times we can all play together on credit farming... We play mostly in duos and more often then not by ourselves.

Okay a "filthy casual" here in, of course, a "filthy casual" guild We are a five men guild, all IRL friends who meet up and that have at most around 20 million credits, this is if we burn the credits we stockpiled for gear changes when the new lvl cap hits (hint = we're not). I know what you're thinking: he's gonna ask for a credit disccount or something! nope, just a CC option. We have few hours to play, do mainly story mode OPs and Hm FPs with tacitcals once in a while, heck a few still have alts to lvl for the storyline. Getting the 50 millions would be too much like work, since it would mean replacing the few hours we can play fun stuff with grinding. Which is why we were ready to spend money on our Guild Ship, as in CC not credits. All we ask is what SWTOR has already provided in many QoL items (like legacy unlocks) a way for people with money but little time to have access to what people with a lot of time can grind. Yes we may be "filthy casuals" but we spend money on the game and keep it going, we're just asking if we can give them more, because right now they only alternative is gold farmers... And we would rather un-install then go there!

The thing is, a strike's primary weapon and the biggest source of damage is it's Heavy Lasers Canons, gimp those in anyway and you end up with a paper weight with strong shield and nothing else.

I agree, I have a decent kill ratio of 6.70 per match, I fly only a Star Guard. Remove or weaken shield pierce and I doubt the Star Guard would be even viable (he barely is as it stands), it will still be a battle of attrition for the strikes the only difference is that the fights will last a bit longer but their weapons will make it so they don't have a chance of outliving most other ships anymore. Shield pierce is not the issue, armor pierce perhaps, burst damage on T2 scouts certainly but not shield pierce.

I think GSs are one of the reason GSF will never take off and new players quit in a hurry. Nothing says: "FU newb!" more then getting killed by something you never saw, at least with T2 scouts you know who and how he got you but GS? When you start the game, you try to learn to fly, aim lasers, lock-n missiles and evade fire, oh and keep and eye out for the snipers wayyyy out of your range that will one-shoot you while you try to dogfight. GS are the snipers of GSF, as in that one class everyone falls back on in Counter Strike like online games when the enemy is a better player then you are. This a classic scenario on PoT5 and Harbringer as of late: "Oh noes, they have a 10 point lead in TDM, okay half the team grab a GS and just park yourself next to the bombers and slowly advance, once we get the lead we park ourselves near a wall and kill them as they try to close in to fight back! Since we are already in position even if they grab GSs of their own we'll still win!" And nine out of 10 times, the team that does that wins... GSF has nothing to do with WWII dog-fighting unlike what the devs will tell you, it has much more to do with Team Fortress and Counter Strike then a real WWII plane game like War Thunder. GS are a dumb idea, it like someone looked at GSF as said to himself: "You know how Strikes/Scouts/Bombers basically fight in melee range with knives/swords/lances and traps? Lets add a class that uses a scoped sniper rifle that is easier to aim then the melee weapons and can score kills from several times the other effective rnage!"

I don't think things are that bad, but the whole amalgam packs they are releasing every other day and the flash sells and what not do seem to point to "milk it before it goes dry". I think that if the next expansion is not a huge hit I may need to start looking at another game (because populations will take a fatal dive), in which case I understand the silence from the devs. If it a crucial expansion to the game releasing info before there is anything concrete could potentially harm it. Then again, as long as this is the only MMO with the name "Star Wars" attached to it there should be a large enough dedicated group of fans to keep it going, even if we go down to like 3 servers...

"Words are wind!"

Oh yeah, one last thing there is no such thing as "tiers" when it comes to ships in GSF, the "T" stands for Type. For example the type 1 Gunship is superior to the type 2 and the type 3 is a hybrid ship. The type 1 scout when used with EMP Pulse gains a 3rd missile break (only ship with 3) and can cripple an enemy ace. The type 2 scout *is*, however, very powerful and at the moment the only ship that is considered "OP" by pretty much everyone. Though jumping into one won't make you an ace by virtue of piloting it, all ships require skill to fly. GSF has 2 modes: dominion and team death match. For dominion having a T1 bomber (aka boy bomber or minelayer) is never a bad thing, if you have 5K reqs laying around getting one and a T1 GS if you don't have one won't be wasted and will give you a taste for all ship types, just my 2 creds.

No ship is worthless, okay there is a case to be made about the T2 Gunships but even those can be deadly with the right build and pilot. Have you checked Stasie's guide? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=729222 It's pretty much required reading for new pilots, the T1 Scouts are great burst damage. It does come with the Rapide Fire Laser trap, those are the worse lasers in the game, chnage them for Light Lasers and you'll see a huge improvement.

Harbringer is pretty good, quickish queue times and many good pilots on both sides.

That may be the implication, but in reality? Head-on and peeling for a team mates are the best occasions for minimizing accuracy penalty. You can keep a bead on an enemy trying to pass you after their "burst" with Retros long enough to make him regret the head-on. It is much weaker then Direction in that scenario, the 40% less capacity and the double forward shields make boosting in a zig zag fairly safe until you get within Heavies range, with Quick Charge it a coin toss. The added mobility I have found is much more of an issue in Dominion matches, in TDM switching between the "Fs" will keep you flying well enough. I'm not saying Directionals are always superior to Quick Charge, there are 2 schools when it comes to Strikes: build to their strength and palliate their weaknesses. I much prefer the 1st while you favor the second, saying that Quick Charge is superior is stating an opinion as fact. You claim the active is of marginal value, I claim that if used right it's a huge asset.

I disagree, Strike Fighters have very narrow arc for their main source of damage: Heavy Lasers. What does that mean? It means that 90% of the time you'll be making your kills on someone flying straight forward at you, since most other ships can out maneuver or outrun you. in these joust scenarios the 40% extra shields (+10% at tier II) does make a difference so does having double shields. 5040 total shields with Directionals, 3600 with Quick Charge. The active of Directional is invaluable to a Strike, be it in the above scenario of a head-on or when fleeing a scene or after a fight. T2 Scout drops it's target and goes after me and is quickly on my 6 I click Directional once and I now have enough shields to fly back into my squadron for a peel. After a fight I just cycle through directional until I have shields on all sides with F2 on, one of the things I hate with Quick Charge is finding myself with no shields on one side after a skirmish forcing me to find a safe spot and leave the fight. Finally with Quick Charge you have much harder time with GSs, any amount of damage taken before hand can lead to a one shot and approaching one with inferior shields will be the death of you if he spots you. With Directionals I often kills GS too confident that their Slugs can punch through the double shields. Back on topic, I believe that the kill time in an arcade space fight game, with no model damage, shields, no friendly fire or collision between ships is pretty much spot on. With T2 Scout killing a bit too quick, but that's about it.

Not like extra Evasion or Turning rate and Speed has any use in combat

So much this, Start on a Clarion/Bloodmark and have your boy bomber and it's back up (if it's B point) at the node before the enemy and they are stuck fighting up hill against a camped bomber under a capped point.

On my Star Guard I use 2 strategies: If I see them going for the node I switch to Ion and melt their shields and then poke to death with HLCs and Concussions or if they are already on node I fly under the node go to full stop and fire up with HLCs at which point they either go above the node and are a prime target for any GS or allies ships or die.

Way to ignore the part where I agree that changing RFL for LLCs was a good idea, I was just using the example of distortion field as a way to "boost" Strikes by nerfing other ships, calm down. Also on my T1 scouts I use EMP Field so it would jusy cost me my third missile break...

Actually remove the Missile break on Distortion Field and suddenly all missile ships not using Clusters are gonna have a huge boost in competitiveness.

I see no real problem on the Strikes on their own, they are almost perfectly balanced the problem is that they are not faced with balanced ships *cough*T2 scout*cough*. Light Lasers instead of RFL, seriously this is a no brainner RFL makes sense on a ship like a scout that can keep a solid bead on a ship at close range even after investing everything into trying to get the turning rate of a scout a Striker can never make good use of RFL... Remove the shield penalty from Quick Charge Shieds, this would solve the mobility issues on the Strikes. Right now we can trade 50% shield strengh to have decent boosting but with most kills happening in face to face *jousts* Directional Shield is too far superior to Quick Charge.

For my part this happened on the Harbringer server. I believe the issue may be server latency, I have played on PoT5 with no issues but on Harbringer It takes a while once you click "battle" for the the queue to start blinking and if you click more then once before this happens you end up in a weird match. Once you accept to join the match it also takes half a minute before you get sent into the match. Last one was rather funny, I spawned naked in the capital ship falling down for a 20 or so seconds then kicked back into where I was before entering the match.

Me and my whole squadron spawned inside the B point in Denon and I do mean inside, as in selfdestruct on entry to the match... No way to finish and no way to re-queue since it's never finished so you re-queue into it.

Yeah miss-matches are not rare, the match making program is one of the best trolls I know I have seeing 8 v 6 matches, then someone jump in the middle of the loosing match saying: "No wonder people left", then once he found out we had been under manned from the get go he points out how he had been in queue for half an hour... Yup, somehow the match making program decided it was better for game balance to have us 2 men short then include this particularity pilot. War games faction versus faction, all newbs with 2 ships in one side and all vets with full hangars in the other, not one in a premade. Matchmaking is, "random" to put it mildly. A balanced match is pretty rare actually, just as rare as a total massacre like you have seeing. 95% of the time by the 5 minute mark the winner is decided. The key to having fun, I have found, is approaching GSF as a series of small goals in the beginning: I wont crash, I will do 10k damage, I will land 3 missiles, etc. Basically slowly improve your skills one step at a time, winning the match? Focus on hitting with those lasers and keep an eye on how the vets dodge you. Losing a match? Check out how they get you and focus on your defensive flying.

73. Puting fingers on E, S, D, F and crashing on launch.