I should add that railgun charge eats weapon power during the charge-up and while the charge is being held, so an aimbot that either waits until a target is in LOS, in range, and in the open to charge up would be as problematic as one that charges up when a target gets in range regardless of LOS. The only kind of aim assistance I can think of that might be viable is one that is a "snap to target" type, and does only that - snap your reticle to the center of a selected target, leaving the charging, firing, and maneuvering to you (however, if your game's "sweet spot" is something other than center mass, this "snap to center" function will be more of a hassle than a utility). This of course would not be able to account for how many of us gunship veterans like to shoot at targets that we don't have targeted (for a variety of reasons, most of them tactical), and our accuracy thereof.

1) I would like to remind everyone that this is a thread about improving strikes, not nerfing any other class or taking personal potshots at other pilots. Posters, especially newer pilots (in my mind "new" pilots have fewer than 250 matches across their legacy and/or fewer than 100 matches on any single toon; "newer" pilots have fewer than 1000 matches across their legacy and/or fewer than 250 matches on any single toon; for reference, as of this posting, I have 5557 matches across my legacy on every single one of my 24 toons, and my most-played toon, Tae-gun, has 1200 of those matches), should be aware that their experience relative to other veteran pilots is quite limited; numerically-speaking, their data set and therefore the statistical power of their analysis is far weaker than those of veteran pilots and therefore less statistically valid. As a result, making sweeping generalizations ("gunships are OP; battlescouts shouldn't be a thing; etc. etc.") on these weaker data sets is not recommended and will likely be dismissed by those with far greater experience and more intimate knowledge of how GSF actually works. Everyone is entitled to their opinion; but until that opinion can be backed up with statistical strength, it remains just an unfounded opinion. 2) Other posters have already discussed in other threads why gunships and T2 scouts are not OP, and their role in the meta. This sort of thing should not have to be regularly repeated, but in short, gunships are your long-range artillery and your scouts, especially the T2s, are spearheads/shock ships. While they are strong ships in their own right (gunships even more so because of their short-range defenses, which can be very effective in the hands of a skilled pilot), their real role is in support of each other and their bombers/nodes, as well as countering the opposing team's bombers and intercepting opposing bomber support. Both the T1 gunship and the T2 scout, with the right builds, are superior choices for these roles, but a good pilot can still do well in these roles with other gunships/scouts and non-meta builds (and many do so, for the sake of fun and variety, on a frequent basis - the Condor/Jurgoran being the most notable and frequently-used off-meta gunship). Regardless of how effective these ships are at these roles, they can still be countered effectively, but doing so will often require skill/experience and team support, especially if these ships are piloted by skilled pilots. 3) Speaking of the meta, the major reason why strikes just aren't viable now (doesn't mean there aren't good strike pilots out there having a lot of success - but I am certain that their success is a result of their experience/skill and not from any advantage of the strike fighter; timing and knowing your target's power/shield/engine status is more important for strike pilots because those things will affect a strike fighter's efficacy against a target) except in the hands of good pilots is because of the way the numbers work out, and because their main tactical role - bomber escort and defensive combat flight - are better-handled by gunships and scouts at the present (to some extent because of the small size of GSF maps). More committed pilots than I have worked out that evading damage some of the time is superior to mitigating damage all of the time, and that in GSF it's the high burst damage that tends to kill pilots; thus you're more likely to survive by evading that burst damage than by trying to mitigate it. Scouts in general have high evasion and therefore are much harder to hit before they get into range to unload their payload of weaponry - even then, a T2 scout has to unload basically everything it has in one head-on fly-by (retros can be used very effectively to extend the duration of this fly-by, though stronger pilots are able to achieve success using other methods such as flanking or hitting targets from behind, where the scout's maneuverability can be fully employed to its advantage) to notch a kill on a resistant target. Strikes, on the other hand, aren't as maneuverable, are slower, have lower evasion, and are therefore much easier to hit - while the range of strike fighter weapons and the toughness of strike fighters are superior to those of any scout, the fact that the strike fighter's weaker flight characteristics (compared to scouts) means it has to try to mitigate damage most of the time also means it is actually less likely than a well-equipped T2 scout with a good pilot to survive an encounter successfully. The reason why many pilots have suggested just beefing up the strike fighter is to increase the amount of damage a strike can take (and therefore extend the period of time a strike has to fire/launch its weapons) such that at its lower DPS, the overall damage done by a strike can at least be comparable to that done by a T2 scout, which can also be achieved by faster secondary lock and reload times. 4) Strikes and scouts should not be a one-for-one equivalent; tactically they have very different roles. As I mentioned in the previous point, scouts are supposed to be solo operators, advance parties, and movement spearheads. They don't have staying power (compared to the other ship classes), but they hit hard, fast, and are meant to pierce opposition defenses and cause shock and confusion in opposing formations. They are in-and-out ships, and must deliver their damage in a short amount of time to avoid getting destroyed in the process. To achieve these objectives they need to be hard to hit, have respectable offensive capability, and have high speed/maneuverability. Both the T1 and T2 scout are actually well-suited to this tactical role, though the T2 scout's strengths (slightly beefier, stronger close-range weapons) help it to outshine the T1 scout most of the time. Strikes, on the other hand, are escort and defensive fighters; they are meant to protect nodes, escort bombers, and intercept other ships attempting to pierce their defenses. Adjustments to strike fighters should reflect this role (e.g. longer range to weapons, less susceptibility to damage/interference effects, improved short-term maneuverability/engine power, and so on), not try to make the strike a T2 scout re-skin. With currently-available upgrades, strike fighters can be crafted to be better at this role than scouts; the only component I thought was truly missing was resistance to damage/interference effects. Some people say "just beef up the strike," which in light of its role is a reasonable suggestion; I lean more towards increasing the strike's resistance to interference, since in my opinion trying to beef up against burst damage is an exercise in diminishing returns.

This is often the case, but not for the reasons you might think. A gunship wall is perceived as hard to counter (just as entrenched weapons emplacements with overlapping fields of fire are hard to counter) because countering requires some tactical adaptation and somewhat risky behavior. Newer pilots get frustrated by this because 1) they haven't actually gotten used to getting shot at/destroyed to the point of being able to shrug it off and retain target discipline, and 2) they haven't yet developed the thinking/experience needed to understand gunship weaknesses and exploiting these to their advantage. The primary weakness of all gunships is close-range combat. Some gunship pilots are better than others at managing this weakness, but the fact remains that within 4000m everything becomes a serious threat to gunships. Most gunship pilots will move when they take damage or are under threat of taking damage (e.g. another gunship pilot gets the drop on them, or when an opposing pilot is within 4000m and bearing down). This neutralizes them as a threat, but as soon as they're allowed to settle again they're dangerous again. The nice thing is that you don't have to be an OP scout pilot to rattle an entire team of gunships into moving, thereby neutralizing their ability to destroy your team. You just need to survive long enough to get them moving and therefore not overlapping their fire/covering each other (yes, it helps if there are at least 2 pilots doing this, but 1 good pilot can achieve this alone), which makes them easier targets for anyone on your team who chooses to support your formation scattering tactic (even if they don't, at least you've drastically reduced the threat the gunships posed while you survived). Good gunship pilots will have stronger target discipline, won't get rattled, and can still be a threat while moving (or snap in and resume becoming a threat again quicker), but that speaks more towards individual pilot ability/personality than any inherent advantage of the gunship. The real question, then, is how one goes about actually disrupting a formation of gunship pilots whose ships are more or less fully upgraded (and have the crew members most suited to their role). Scouts, in particular the T1 (Novadive/Blackbolt) and T2 (Flashfire/Sting), are ideally suited to this because 1) they can have high evasion, which increases their likelihood of actually surviving long enough to get in close range with gunships; 2) they have high speed, which helps them close distance gaps faster than many gunship pilots can adjust; and 3) with sensor dampening equipped, good scout pilots can avoid being seen while executing a wide flanking maneuver. Strikes have none of these advantages, which is why they are usually not good at intercepting gunships unless those gunships get within 7500m (either because they moved close to get a better shot at a target, or the strike pilot was able to take advantage of a distracted gunship pilot to get that close). Bombers, like strikes, can only really take advantage of gunship close-range weaknesses if the gunship pilots themselves get close, or if a distracted gunship pilot fails to see a bomber closing the gap (hyperspace beacons play a huge role in helping bombers and strikes close gaps on gunships in this regard). But again, all of these things have everything to do with pilot ability/experience and little or nothing to do with ship class advantages/disadvantages.

Basically this. When I have the chance, I try to tell new pilots at the start of a match to focus on 3 things that I consider fundamental to competent GSF play: 1) accuracy (unlike ground PvP, in GSF you actually have to place your own shots and your success/failure will depend largely on your own marksmanship skills) 2) situational awareness (good gunship pilots in particular are constantly cycling through targets and through use of the HUD are generally aware of opposing player positions, orientation, and movement while remaining cognizant of their own situation/shield/power levels, but this is something from which all pilots can benefit) 3) power modulation (which has been mentioned before, i.e. frequent use of F1, 2, and 3 depending on the needs of the situation, including mid-flight). All three of these things are improved through practice and experience (i.e. GSF "trial by fire" - note that GSF's tutorial does nothing to help a pilot work on these three things), hence the steep learning curve. Beyond that, doing well in GSF is tactical, e.g. defending sats, denying/delaying capture of satellites, not chasing opposing pilots into gunship/bomber traps, covering teammates, etc. Don't worry though; eventually you'll hit the plateau where all the other good pilots are

Done and done!

I actually posted an idea similar to this suggestion in that thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=8889450&postcount=1006 That being said, some good counters to that particular idea were raised, and I think my current suggestion is perhaps more reasonable and addresses some of the objections to my original idea. Maybe the component wouldn't just be restricted to T1/T2 strikes but could be extended to the Comet Breaker/Dustmaker and the Spearpoint/Bloodmark.

Shadowlands - Mangler: Itania, Mangler: Itania (Tae-gun) - Mangler - <Malachor Remnant> - Shadowlands - 15 solo kills* Itania (Tae-gun) - Mangler - <Malachor Remnant> - Shadowlands - 45 kills+assists* (During the match in which I reached the above achievements, I believe my 1 death was a self-destruct, after which I respawned in the same ship, i.e. the Mangler.) Grindmistress, Mangler: Grindmistress (Tae-gun) - Mangler - unguilded - Shadowlands - 154,402 damage (It should be noted that Grindmistress is my newest toon as of this posting and with fewer than 50 total matches on that toon, none of that toon's ships were mastered at the time this screenshot was taken.) Shadowlands - Jurgoran: Tal'narus, Jurgoran: Tal'narus (Tae-gun) - Jurgoran - <Malachor Remnant> - Shadowlands - 28 kills+assists Tal'narus (Tae-gun) - Jurgoran - <Malachor Remnant> - Shadowlands - 50,380 damage *These items may be lacking the necessary requirements for ship-specific records.

Originally this post was a list of my non-main Republic toon GSF records on the Shadowlands, but that has since been merged into my first post per Despon's suggestions.

Server: Jedi Covenant, Republic faction Jedi Covenant, Quarrel: Tae-gun (Jedi Covenant), Quarrel: Tae-gun - Quarrel - unguilded - Jedi Covenant - 41 kills+assists Tae-gun - Quarrel - unguilded - Jedi Covenant - 171,118 damage (Shadowlands was probably down and I may have been taking out my frustrations in Jedi Covenant's GSF.)

I was going through my many (folder says 1543 items, of which 72 are screenshots of anything other than GSF leaderboards) GSF leaderboard screenshots, and I found some things that are of interest, but the list is fairly long so I'll break it up into a few posts, organized by server, faction, and ship. Server: Shadowlands, Republic faction Shadowlands - Comet Breaker (TDM): Tae-gun, Comet Breaker (TDM): Tae-gun - Comet Breaker - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 76,539 damage Shadowlands - Condor (TDM): Tae-gun, Condor: Tae-gun - Condor - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 59,594 damage Shadowlands - Condor (DOM): Dal-ben, Condor: Dal-ben (Tae-gun) - Condor - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 17 solo kills Dal-ben (Tae-gun) - Condor - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 65,022 damage Shadowlands - Flashfire: Tae-gun, Flashfire: Tae-gun - Flashfire - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 8 solo kills Shadowlands - Quarrel: Tae-gun, Quarrel: Tae-gun - Quarrel - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 386 objective points Tae-gun - Quarrel - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 147,828 damage Jun-tae, Quarrel: Jun-tae (Tae-gun) - Quarrel - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 38 kills+assists Shadowlands - Sledgehammer: Jiinara (Shadowlands), Sledgehammer: Jiinara (Tae-gun) - Sledgehammer - <Order of Legends> - Shadowlands - 597 objective points

I know this is probably a topic on which most pilots have given up (mostly because the devs aren't touching GSF, and I think mostly for good reason, if the latest problems with bugs/patching are any indication), but I thought I'd put this up here for some community input/ideas. I feel like I may have mentioned something like this in a reply to a thread months ago, but it seems like getting more strike fighter appreciation (largely out of pity for those new pilots who start with access only to the base T1 strike and scout) might be a good way for people, especially newer pilots, to think about how GSF mechanics actually work. Basically I don't think a complete strike fighter overhaul is necessary to make them viable in combat (and the Clarion/Imperium have a build or builds that already do so, so my suggestions here don't apply to those ships). Specifically I'm proposing a single shield component with 3 tiers of upgrades: I call it Interference Hardening, applicable to the Star Guard/Rycer and the Pike/Quell. Duration would be 6s, cooldown anywhere between 30s and 60s (60s if devs feel that it's too strong), and upgrades would be as follows: (as it is a shield, all of these abilities must be activated) Base - increase base shields by 25% and reduce all AoE and direct mine damage by 25% for 6 seconds. T1: - "Ion Hardening" - reduce all AoE ion damage by an additional 10% and direct ion damage by 10% for 6 seconds. T2: - "Anti-Interdiction" - reduce effect of all interdiction (drones and fields) effects by 50% for 6 seconds. T3: option 1 - "Anti-Interdiction Field" - extend "Anti-Interdiction" effects to 2 allies within 5000m for 6 seconds; option 2 - "Ion Hardening Field" - extend "Ion Hardening" effects to 2 allies within 5000m for 6 seconds.

I can only speak to my personal experience, but if you have decent natural (or learned) marksmanship, can anticipate your targets, and you can find what I like to call your game's "sweet spot" - which I'll explain shortly - gunship accuracy of over 65% is routine, and accuracy of 80% or more can be achieved with some regularity. With regards to the "sweet spot" - after I'd played about 1000 matches across my legacy (I now have roughly 5500), I started noticing more consistent hits when aiming at targets that were in a specific area of my targeting reticle. In short, for more consistent results I now line up my reticle slightly (but noticeably) below the center of my targets (including those that aren't currently selected). I've found that this works with not just my gunships, but also my scouts and strikes (though with scouts and strikes I don't have as many observations because of the nature of scout/strike combat and because I don't fly them as often as gunships). I've spoken with a handful of other pilots who report similar results, though their "sweet spot" is different from mine; one pilot remarked that he has to aim slightly to the side (he didn't specify which side) of center for the results I speak of. It would appear that everyone's game will be a little different so it is on the individual pilot to try to find his/her game's "sweet spot," and work with the results accordingly. Another ability that not nearly enough pilots seem to use is strafing (by default this is hotkeyed as [shift]+directional key; you can strafe in any direction in GSF since it's 3D space, and it works best if you hold down [shift] before using the directional key). The reason why I say marksmanship is important is because in GSF you may have noticed that in order to hit moving targets you must lead them (i.e. keep your reticle ahead of their current motion). When you track (move your reticle in concert with) a moving target while stationary, much of the time the target will move outside of your firing arc, which causes you to incur a tracking penalty that reduces your accuracy. When you strafe, it's much easier to keep your target within your firing arc to avoid the tracking penalty, while at the same time increasing the chance that you will have caused anyone who is targeting you to incur the tracking penalty. EDIT: I've never used hacks/aimbots, but with some careful observation and disciplined flying (as well as the use of things like the Wingman crew ability and the plasma railgun's evasion reduction upgrade on the Comet Breaker) I've been able to achieve pretty decent results - and though my main toons' overall accuracy is low due to my early matches and my continued use of some weapons not known for their accuracy (e.g. burst laser cannons), some of my toons' gunship-specific accuracies now edge or exceed 60%. I can imagine matches like the one you mentioned occurring if you have multiple pilots who are as accurate as I am (or more so) on the same team who are covering each other, but with no effective countering pilots on the opposing team.

Yup - server select screen has Shadowlands ghosted, and mouse-over says it's offline.

This is a good primer for new GSF pilots (especially because the game has largely stayed in the same configuration since launch, e.g. strike fighters still haven't been improved, fortress shield is still the most limited shield option, scouts still tend to counter gunships which tend to counter bombers which tend to counter scouts, and so on). Minus the peanut gallery bickering about the utility (or lack thereof) of Fortress Shield, this thread includes practically everything I sometimes mention at the start of matches and covers what I like to call the "fundamentals" (i.e. accuracy/marksmanship, situational awareness, and power modulation/F keys). Well, situational awareness isn't discussed directly, but it can be aided by cycling through targets (which was discussed). I have noticed something in my experience that might be of use, but might be too specific for a beginner's guide: when you take aim at a target, but multiple targets are within your small reticle, for instance when a bomber puts out multiple mines/drones that happen to overlap even a little in your field of view, every shot you take will miss. It's as if the game doesn't know what you're shooting at because there are too many possible targets within your firing reticle, and thus it registers your shots as misses (before any shot effect can take place, it has to land on a target, and the game can't seem to make up its mind as to which one you fired at, even if some are actually LOS'd behind an obstacle). I have observed this effect occur with all railguns, including ion (even with the AoE upgrade enabled). I suspect the same will be true for other weapons, so if you're wondering why all of a sudden the drones/mines seem to be impossibly dodging your shots, that might be why. If you're aiming for something and the targets overlap somewhat, instead of wasting your time on shots that will miss, take the extra few seconds to move around until they spread out a little more in your field of view, or aim at something further out with AoE ion railgun.

I'd say this is a pretty big deal, especially for everyone who's been considering migrating away from the increasingly invasive and bloated Windows operating systems (like me) but were hesitant because of the two major bugs indicated in the OP. Any updates/details would be most appreciated, and I'm sure not just by me.

As of ch. 13, I can confirm that this paint job is STILL missing from characters that had it. It displays correctly as long as you don't choose another paint job (because then you can't go back to it, seeing as it appears to have completely vanished). Specifically, the Si-02 scout paint job (the faction emblem paint job) is the one that's affected. it is NOT accessible, unlike what the patch notes claim.

This is precisely the sort of match behavior that drives away new pilots. While I'm not always successful, I make a personal point of trying to limit the number of times I defeat someone to 2-3 times per match unless a) they're a known ace and/or are a credible threat to my team, or b) they're actively coming after me and won't back off, even after I have. Despite this, I still usually have respectable kill counts/damage/accuracy/etc. As I fly quarrel/condor almost exclusively, I am okay with other teammates finishing off kills and getting credit and am generally not aggressively selfish about nabbing kills myself unless, again, either of the two conditions I mentioned earlier are valid. To me it sounds like this one guy is engaging in what could be considered bullying and picking on a single, relatively hapless target. If he had done this to a known ace, no one should shed a tear, but as this has apparently driven away the person I'm quoting from GSF, it's an example of the sort of thing that veteran pilots must take great care to avoid.

I put this in the suggestion box and GSF forums already, but I figure more people could look at this here, as this is the official "let's improve strike fighters" thread. Before I start, I should identify myself. I fly primarily on the Shadowlands as Tae-gun, Jiinara, Dal-ben, and Nyo-jin on the Republic and as Itania, Vydan, Tal'narus, and Marevia for the Empire. As many Galactic Starfighter (GSF) regulars know, in the GSF meta the class balance more or less resembles rock-paper-scissors in that scouts eat up gunships which eat up bombers which eat up scouts. The strike fighter (with the exception of the Clarion/Imperium) generally has no stable place in this meta, since everything it does can be done better by one of the other classes. So I've come up with a little something that I think might be useful to make strike fighters (in particular the Star Guard/Rycer) have a place in the GSF ship meta. It would be a shield called Ion Hardening: base cooldown 30s base energy use 25 base duration 10s activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%. Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s). Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10). Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s). These cooldowns and energy costs can of course be tweaked; my basic line of thought regarding the Tier 3 upgrades in particular were to give the T1 strike fighter in particular a unique resistance to ion effects, which as many pilots know are used frequently in the form of AoE ion railgun. Option A would permit strike fighters to effectively LOS AoE ion gunships but would still render them susceptible to direct attacks from another pilot supporting that gunship, and Option B would permit strike fighters to, while still feeling the effects of ion attacks, resist supporting attacks more effectively. I envision this shield generator being available specifically for the StarGuard and Pike and their equivalents on the Imperial side; the Clarion/Imperium have a number of their own abilities that would disqualify them from being able to use this ability for reasons of balance.

GSF, in my mind, is kind of like the aerial battles of WWI, when air combat was still in its infancy. I can't find any concrete sources on this, but from what I have read in the past, one of the ways in which air combat was pseudo-regulated (to avoid dishonor and war crimes) were through rules of air combat (i.e. the Dicta Boelcke) but also by something of an informal/unspoken "honor code." It might be helpful to develop something like this in order to limit the amount of overkill that can be seen when a very strong team is matched up against a weaker team.

The biggest problem with the ranking idea (because it's something many of us have considered at some point) has to do with the way GSF is currently set up. For a variety of reasons, GSF statistics/information is character-specific, i.e. does not aggregate legacy-wide stats. Therefore, ace pilots can (and have) started up brand-new toons with stock ships (or queued with relatively-unknown toons) and still wiped the floor with them. A ranking system that isn't legacy-wide would be unable to identify alts of pilots who are in fact aces. On top of this, the relatively small queued population restricts what can be done about match balance; if each match had a range of character lifetime requisition earned, the already-small queued population would get pops even less frequently due to the additional division of the queued population. In my opinion, aside from following self-imposed "rules of warfare," there isn't a whole lot that can be done about match balance.

I put this in the suggestion box already, but I figure more people could look at this here and give their own tweaks/ideas for a more fully hashed-out concept. Before I start, I should identify myself. I fly primarily on the Shadowlands as Tae-gun, Jiinara, Dal-ben, and Nyo-jin on the Republic and as Itania, Vydan, Tal'narus, and Marevia for the Empire. As many Galactic Starfighter (GSF) regulars know, in the GSF meta the class balance more or less resembles rock-paper-scissors in that scouts eat up gunships which eat up bombers which eat up scouts. The strike fighter (with the exception of the Clarion/Imperium) generally has no stable place in this meta, since everything it does can be done better by one of the other classes. So I've come up with a little something that I think might be useful to make strike fighters (in particular the Star Guard/Rycer) have a place in the GSF ship meta. It would be a shield called Ion Hardening: base cooldown 30s base energy use 25 base duration 10s activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%. Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s). Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10). Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s). These cooldowns and energy costs can of course be tweaked; my basic line of thought regarding the Tier 3 upgrades in particular were to give the T1 strike fighter in particular a unique resistance to ion effects, which as many pilots know are used frequently in the form of AoE ion railgun. Option A would permit strike fighters to effectively LOS AoE ion gunships but would still render them susceptible to direct attacks from another pilot supporting that gunship, and Option B would permit strike fighters to, while still feeling the effects of ion attacks, resist supporting attacks more effectively. I envision this shield generator being available specifically for the StarGuard and Pike and their equivalents on the Imperial side; the Clarion/Imperium have a number of their own abilities that would disqualify them from being able to use this ability for reasons of balance.

Before I start, I should identify myself. I fly primarily on the Shadowlands as Tae-gun, Jiinara, Dal-ben, and Nyo-jin on the Republic and as Itania, Vydan, Tal'narus, and Marevia for the Empire. As many Galactic Starfighter (GSF) regulars know, in the GSF meta the class balance more or less resembles rock-paper-scissors in that scouts eat up gunships which eat up bombers which eat up scouts. The strike fighter (with the exception of the Clarion/Imperium) generally has no stable place in this meta, since everything it does can be done better by one of the other classes. So I've come up with a little something that I think might be useful to make strike fighters (in particular the Star Guard/Rycer) have a place in the GSF ship meta. It would be a shield called Ion Hardening: base cooldown 30s base energy use 25 base duration 10s activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%. Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s). Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10). Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s). These cooldowns and energy costs can of course be tweaked; my basic line of thought regarding the Tier 3 upgrades in particular were to give the T1 strike fighter in particular a unique resistance to ion effects, which as many pilots know are used frequently in the form of AoE ion railgun. Option A would permit strike fighters to effectively LOS AoE ion gunships but would still render them susceptible to direct attacks from another pilot supporting that gunship, and Option B would permit strike fighters to, while still feeling the effects of ion attacks, resist supporting attacks more effectively. I envision this shield generator being available specifically for the StarGuard and Pike and their equivalents on the Imperial side; the Clarion/Imperium have a number of their own abilities that would disqualify them from being able to use this ability for reasons of balance.

I absolutely support this idea. One of the biggest time-wasters for me relative to SW:tOR has been cycling through my characters, especially if I've been leveling lower-level (i.e. non-main) characters, such that my main 4-5 characters are on the first page. If I want all of my characters in a particular order, this process can take upwards of a half hour. A list locking function would save me so much time.

It may be as simple an issue as server synching and limiting exploitation of things that are being changed in updates. It could also be that the personnel running the server facilities outside of North America have other responsibilities and can't be expected to run a server update at a time when North American personnel are out of the office (i.e. outside of North American work hours). It's unfortunate sometimes, but because the game is a single entity operating across multiple time zones, the primary determinant of when things are done probably has much to do with whether or not the central office/developers can be contacted at that time.

Not a stupid question if you've never used it before. Legacy priority transport works anywhere quick travel does (and works just like the priority transport terminal in the hangar section of fleet), and takes you to the "landing point," as it were, of each priority area, i.e. your spawn point. Mostly the priority transports are to endgame/daily quest areas like the Black Hole and Oricon, and they are rather handy if you do a lot of dailies grinding/planning like I do (for instance, I can pre-do the Yavin IV dailies on Monday, turn them in with the weekly on Tuesday, and priority transit to Oricon or CZ-198 from the last daily turn-in, which for me is that Republic sargeant just outside of the Yavin Temple Grounds, instead of having to QT back to the main base and use the terminal there).