I was trying to get a few quick games in this morning on Harbinger since I was going to be out of town for the next few days. So I solo queued Imp side and got matched against a very new-looking Pub team in a 8v8 Kuat Dom match. I wanted to take it easy on them so I decided to get some req for my Razorwire and just hold a node. The match started and I headed straight to B and capped it unopposed. I laid my mines and started surfing the forums on my other monitor. Out of the corner of my eye I see this slow-moving blue projectile moving across my screen headed to the middle of nowhere. I boost over to the sat and find a half-dead, motionless GS sitting right next to one of our turrets. As the turret and I finished him off I saw the message "Player has destroyed Trivers' Interdiction Mine" and then it finally dawned on me. This poor, brave pilot face tanked a turret so he could get a proton lock on my mine. As I basked in the glow of the protorp explosion, I pooped out another mine, chuckled, and went back to surfing the Internet. I have seen some strange things in GSF, but that might be the strangest. I have no idea what their name was and I don't mean to be mean, but it was just such a bizarre play.

Sigh. I will just leave this here then http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=8z3faq&s=8#.ViUsdWtvmUk 8 skilled players in stock ships destroy 8 players in better-equipped ships. If gear were the deciding factor that sort of outcome couldn't be possible. You said that you were there on stock night. That entire night serves as proof that skill > gear.

Fine. If I answer this one question, will you let this stupid topic die? Why do snipers (a 35m PvP class) have access to so many roots and snares? For the same reason that gunships do: they suck at close range and if a target gets to melee range the gunship is screwed. And you are just absolutely wrong about two equally skilled pilots always favoring the gunship. If it is 1v1, the scout wins 99% of the time. I am nowhere near the best scout pilot in the world, but if it is just me and a gunship, that gunship has a bad day. It doesn't matter if it is Verain, Mika, Tsukuyomi, Vexxial, Xi'ao, Despon, or whoever. I see the GS targetting me? Pop Disto and Running Interference and fly evasively towards the GS utilizing LoS. IF they manage to land a Ion rail I simply power dive towards them and am now on top of them. As long I am not dumb and don't try to face tank a rail shot (I am sometimes dumb) that GS is in big trouble now. If it is a T1, they need to rely on BLCs and getting distance from me. The problem with the BLCs is I can out-turn and out-maneuver the GS all day long so they won't be able to take many on-target shots on me. The problem with getting distance is that my scout is faster and has more sustained boost so it is almost impossible to outrun me. I can get LoSed for a long time and it can take me a while to whittle the GS down, but 1v1 I will come out on top in that situation 10/10 times. I have no doubt that this will do nothing to persuade you because your mind is completely made up, but this really, really, REALLY is a learn-to-play issue. Look through the countless other threads on this topics to get hints on how to engage and defeat a GS. This reminds me of an idea I had actually: I think we should get 8 of the best GS pilots on Harb and 8 of the best scout pilots and queue sync until we get a TDM. We can then post a video of the scouts dominating that encounter and finally have something to point to when these stupid threads emerge.

In your case, you need all the help you can get. ZING!

Sorry, I think I was unclear on what I actually believe is happening. I believe that after you take DAMAGE and cycle the shield both arcs begin regenning when the cycle completes. In the case you demonstrated your ship had not taken damage, you had merely switched power configurations and altered your max shield amounts. I will try to watch your streams for more instances of what I am talking about. Edit: OK, I was wrong. 10:06 of that same link illustrates the case I was talking about. You take damage on your front arc and cycle shields, but your rear arc begins regenning well in advance of the front arc.

The 29:20 time point it looks like you start regenning before you rebalance actually, so I don't think that is a good example and I am not sure I agree with the 1:02:00 either, but you are right that it will be easier to see with the typical 6s delay. I had actually been in queue to test it out myself but I was struggling to get a pop and remember that I had access to your VODs.

Just to clarify, in the event you take damage solely on the front arc and then rebalance three times you have the damage spread out across both arcs. In that case, doesn't the unassaulted (but yet still damaged arc) require the same regen delay that the assaulted arc does? My understanding was that it was a delay from when damage was inflicted and in this case redistributing damage is akin to damaging the arc. If it doesn't function that why, I am unclear how the game decides when the regen delay on the assaulted arc begins and ends when you are rebalancing. It always seemed to me that the delay was 1.2 seconds after I finished rebalancing and thus the turbo reactors were actually fairing better when taking rebalancing into consideration since their advantage was doubled. So to convince myself of this I watched a recording of your Twitch stream from October 16th (http://www.twitch.tv/drakolich/v/20898194). At the 8:03 mark you eat a cluster on your front arc, finish off an opponent, and then rebalance your shields. You will notice that BOTH arcs begin regenning at the same moment, 3 seconds after your last rebalance. This means that had you been using Turbo Reactors you actually would have had 3.6 seconds worth of extra regen (1.8s for each arc) by the time you began regenning with Large Reactors. I think that high skill usage of Directional Shields actually is more favorable towards Turbos than mid-skill play for the exact reasons you pointed out.

During the SRW conquest event last week we had a few matches that were strike only, and it was a lot of fun. I wouldn't mind seeing an entire night dedicated to the unloved ships in our hangars. I think Siraka made mention of a low tier night and that seems just as fun to me as Strike-only.

As it turns out, the math does not support this statement. Counter-intuitively, the delay reduction works best when used in conjunction with the delay reduction supplied by directional shields because it gives you a higher volume of regen windows in the course of an average fight. As it turns out, the difference between a 1.2s delay and a 3s delay is more important than the difference between a 2.4s delay and a 6s delay. Basically, if you are getting the opportunity to regen unmolested for over 3+ seconds, there is a good chance you are out of the fight already and in such cases your regen delay is relatively irrelavent. However, regenning for 1.2 - 3s is possible while still being actively engaged in a fight, which is where the difference between Turbo and Large reactors becomes interesting.

Congrats to Ozzmud and all of the winners and thank you for breathing some life into the SL queues.

Tensor field, TT and slug rail are the three that I see most often impacted, but I don't have the Clarion/Imperium on my bar most of the time.

I haven't seen teams being formed, but I presume this is not a solo-only affair. Is that right?

So I have been playing with Turbo vs Large reactors again and want to once again suggest that folks give turbos a try. In particular, I think that ships that feature Directionals and Power Dive (T3 strike, T3 bomber, T2 scout, T3 gunships) benefit more from Turbo reactors than they do from Large reactors since it is so easy to give yourself a damage-free window in the fight. If you are effective at cycling shields, the lesser overall capacity is hardly crippling.

It isn't so much a balance suggestion, but doubling req gains from all sources would go a long ways towards leveling the playing field between players. Obviously skill accounts for the largest percentage of a player's success, but at least req would eliminate a lot of the newer players excuses that their failures are a result of a perceived gear disparity. And yes I am necroing threads to bury useless ones.

What do you think the strongest stock ship is and why?

A lot of interesting thoughts: I am eager to test some of them out.

Bump!

Well good on you for seeing through the mountains of expert opinions that say otherwise. I am sure this isn't an experience issue and it has nothing to do with your personal inability to effectively deal with Ion rail. It MUST be the case that we are all lying in a desperate attempt to farm newbs.

I am tempted to necro 20-30 old threads just to bury this one.

The T1 scout is perfectly viable as well, though admittedly inferior to the T2.

Thank you guys for setting this up. It was nice to have mastered ships when flying against good pilots, for once. I had a lot of fun just solo queuing and seeing which group of amazing players I would get matched up with next. Based of your guild's conquest points I would categorize this past week as an undeniable success.

I don't want to belittle your concerns, but this has literally been brought up a hundred times and rebutted a hundred more times. I suggest you do a search for gunship and look at one of the many threads that makes suggestions on how a player like you can contribute positively towards hunting gunships.

Out of curiosity, have you tried the other "more standard" builds? If this is your favorite way to play the ship after checking out the typical builds then I don't see much wrong with it. You would likely do better in a more "optimal" build, but at the end of the day it is a game and thus what matters most is which build do you enjoy.

I am happy to offer my few cents worth. I am of the opinion that you should maximize your performance in the field rather than under the node since, ideally, you won't be responsible for much under-the-node fighting. Even in the event that you are under the node, more than likely your role is stay alive until helps arrive, not to clean up contacts. I feel strongly that this should be Repair Drone. The only way a T3 scout earns a spot on a team is by being a total team player/support ship. Taking a greedy talent like DF (that only benefits yourself) in place of something as rare and group-benefiting as Repair Drone would be big no-no, to me. Power Dive and Tensor largely eliminate the need for DF anyhow, particularly if you take the Evasion talent at T4 of Tensor. Power Dive is a 10s missile break and Tensor makes you super hard to get a bead on and really hard to hit for a GS unless you are flying straight (plus it is great for manually evading locks). Furthermore, if you DID eat a slug or a missile, you have repairs somewhere on the map to top yourself back up with. If you are going to be the T3 that doesn't suicide, this oughtta be Regen, in my opinion. A regen tensor benefits bombers more than Speed Tensor, in my opinion. It allows them to boost longer and will generally allow them to traverse long distances better. As an added benefit, Regen acts as a mini Booster Recharge and can save your butt if you DO get ioned by a T1 GS or just need a little more juice to run someone down. In addition, Regen synergizes really well with Power Dive: the entire 2-3 seconds you are Power Diving you are regenning a fair amount of engine power (often enough to last you until PDive is back off of cooldown) so you can go from A to C on Denon without laying off the thruster. As Siraka mentioned, I think you ought to pair Laser Cannons with Wingman. Without Wingman you really don't have any teeth in that ship. Wingman at least allows you to be quasi-dangerous 15s out of every minute. I think this really only works if you have a well-coordinated TDM with people in voice comms. I have done this with Siraka and Vexx so that we our team could steal the DO from the opponents side of the map. Doing that can be a big swing in your team's favor. But as much as I like the T3, after that initial boost you should probably suicide because a T3 scout just doesn't do the damage required to merit its spot in a TDM (and really, this probably works best with a Speed Tensor which is at odds with what you want in Dom). If you DO take one into a TDM it further reinforces the need to take Repair Drone over DF because it would be one of the only things you were bringing to the table. But a Repair Drone without a bomber nest to protect it is probably going to be a dead drone unless it is in a very inaccessible place on the map, but if it is in one of those spots it is unlikely to do too much good to your team.

That is actually a good point. Look at that, there is something to look forward to in the new expansion!