I don't have a problem with some of the buffs affecting non strikes, especially less effective ones. especially if the cluster of buffs brings the strike up higher

Does the fact the T1 strike does not feature an armor component figure into this?

(somebody else already said this)

I'm starting to hear 'strike's need a shield system jammer' but other then the magical 5 button or a co-pilot ability I don't see how that would get implented

and possibly the T2 gunship, which is the 'strike hybrid' gunship (although if it effects it's rail gun, then snafu it's back to pre-evasion days) the only other 'strike hybrid' is the T2 scout, which has replaced the strike in it's original role.

You're right, this was off topic, Never is right, we need to make strikes meta. What they lack, mostly is what scouts have already, and giving strikes the ability to turn inside a scout dishonors the time and effort scout pilots have put into the game. Good pilots have suggested the strike needs to be the mid-range shooter... something between 10k and 4k being it's ideal range for it's weapons to fire. they need to hit things they shoot at, after all the scouts have better speed, turning, and evasion.... and removing evasion would be a gift to the gunships. What would make strikes really work.... range increase of it's primary weapons to 10k... among other things.

but EMP field isn't a shield, it's a special system... sure you could give strikes a 5th button and the clarion two special systems.... strikes with TT, emp, or booster re-charge (or ink cloud, cloaking burst)? T1 scouts and T3 scouts each have EMP weapon/special system options already. I've seen T1 scouts buzz the satellite and emp it, and they could still have distortion field too. gunships with an emp field? they already have some of the best weapons for fighting bombers: range 15 guns, sometimes including range 15 ion cannons that AOE mines drones and ships

imagine instead a limited use cloaking device that causes you to disappear visually and from radar for a few seconds, just a burst of invisibility then you re-appear.... that would have alot of uses. you can't (usually) hit what you can't see. The makers? The 'Deffel' ? a species of black shadowy animal people in star wars that disappear against darkness. Or both.... the ink cloud defiantly has possibilities in tight places

why am I picturing the gunnery chair in last star fighter? it could shoot in any direction it could look.... too much? Right now the scouts have the advantage (in the T2) in having the ability to turn, and thus aim as well as a weapon that works well with those capabilities. Enhanced side-slip/slew/strafe can help a bit, it certainly gives them better tools for satellite raiding... they could glide around the corners as far out as they are willing to and shoot from their ideal ranges. They might benefit in a drop in penalties for using their weapons in deflection shots and wider targeting circles.... being less maneuverable they might need them even if they can't out turn, they could at least be able to shoot at things as they pass in front of them.

If the strike's problem isn't firepower (not sure how it couldn't be since nobody I know says the strike does as much burst damage as a gunship or a T2 scout or a bomber with a well placed rail gun sentry drone or cluster of mines) then the problem is defenses... if you beef them up too much the strike can survive almost anything, and gsf would slow to a crawl, perhaps strikes would be the order of the day or it would become strike/gunship/t2 scout instead of bomber/gunship/T2 scout. Or the problem could be regenerative systems/self heal... the only strike people say works well is the only one with a major self heal system cluster, the T3, what if all strikes had the extra room, given their larger frames from scouts, for self repair systems that operated automatically, that means if a strike wasn't killed in the first pass, it would already be healing (unless there is a regeneration delay like with shields) R2 showed this sort of ability in the X-wing where the little droid repaired stabalizers and other damage in flight. Sure you could say that's just the hydrospanner.... but our fighters are so much LARGER then the X-wing.... ever look at the ones in the launch bay? and realize there's room for a 5 man crew in that sucker and a bomb bay full of mines, a rail gun.... well the strike doesn't have mines, or a rail gun or sensors, but it could have some little self-repair droids bustling about the interior, or exterior (ep1, R2 fixing the princess ship during combat anyone?) patching holes in the hull and repairing damaged systems.... perhaps diminishing the duration of debuffs like the ones causd by ion rail guns.

Reduced engine maneuver cool downs are a big help when it comes to dealing with missiles, the best burst weapons of strike fighters, and not entirely everyone else. Retro thrusters don't usually save me from TT super charged burst lasers and/or rocket pods. Barrel roll hasn't protected me from every rail gun shot right at me, power dive hasn't even saved me from rail shots.... especially from sentry drones. Reducing strikes engine maneuver cool downs by 5 seconds might bring them closer to having 2 missile breaks, but strikes need more then the ability to lose control of their flight stick for 3+ seconds and get a modest evasion buff... Truth be told, I get almost as many kills(assists) in my T1 strike from making others use engine maneuvers and crash as I do from actually planting that last shot. as for the PVE gsf mode? that might save gsf, especially on servers where the pvp pops are falling away

if a gunship is busy using engine breaks, it is disrupted.... if say T3 strikes can distrupt gunships at 15k then maybe the generalist fighters have a role.... the problem with being a jack of all trades, master of none, is it generally takes two of you to get the job of one specialist.... but they can team up on gunships, bombers, scouts.... so they have a role to apply to multiple targets but it does take more of them to get the job done. Currently.... to disrupt one gunship I have to get close to it and chase it all over creation.... at-least my not-so-meta strike is neutralizing one 1600 damage per shot artillery piece untill I kill it, or it's friends kill me (depending on the other teams organization) a bit more missile range makes it easier for a strike to 'peal' a gunship from it's intended role... killing it would be nice too but I'm a strike pilot and I am used to trying to think outside of strict kills. Besides, if I'm burning the gunship's missile breaks, those kill doctors in the scouts can pounce it or the other gunships trying to target me to take pressure off their friend. Gunships confused about missile breaks: you see the blue prot coming right at you, try to time your evasive manuver to get your rail gun shot off, and someone else has locked a conc, or cluster on you from another angle you don't see.... the missile lock warning _does not_ tell you how many missiles are locked on you, only that any of them are in flight. Imagine a T2 strike (or gunship) with thermite and proton torps ranged 15, you missile break one only to face another lock, over and over again...

if you can make a gunship use an engine break, your torp has served it's purpose. if there are enough strikes with torps targeting gunships to make them move, then the gunships cannot dominate the match because they aren't shooting. A range of 15k on torps might confuse the gunship about which missile to use a missile break on... the torp's lock masks any other missile lock-ons... so you might be timing for a torp and be hit from behind by clusters/concs.... another torp fired closer

No lock on time for missiles (and torps?) would mean people would be using those missile breaks alot more often, or a strike in CQC could get a missile in against an opponent who had no opportunity to use a missile break after the fact. They would have to use the missile breaks prophylacticly, and in the case of non-engine ones, that means burning them through and becoming vulnerable to missiles again after 3ish seconds of furball. That would give all those non-cluster missiles the same opertunity as clusters, longer ranged weapon launches would still be vulnerable to missile breaks, and bombers would live on their heal-self buttons they couldn't los break them anymore. For non bombers there would be plenty of potential to break the lock of flying missiles.... perhaps longer cool downs on the missiles themselves would compensate. add the current missile lock times to the CD? as a lark I thought of giving torps 15k range.... or an upgrade at the top (lvl 5?) that lets them get 15 k instead of 11.5k.... see gunships squirm as (under the current rules) they had to use missile breaks, los, or just plain destroy the torp launchers.... since with 15k range on their own weapons that is still an option. I just don't see anyone agree to that idea.

I actually seldom ever use ions on my strike, typically I get a few shots in before my targets get booking, and I do not hit them well if they are flying with any effort at evading my shots. Landing a few ion hits might strip the shields a bit, if I can get my HLC's on target after that sure... but hits with HLC with shield and armor piercing do some hull damage for my first 'surprise' shots and I am forced to follow up with a missile on most targets, then re-aquire after they missile break and finish the job. Sometimes that first hit with HLC is all I get on a target before playing the missile chase game, currently ions are so close ranged, I would have to hope they wouldn't notice me a good 2k more distance before leading in with them and then if it's the only laser hit I missed an opertunity to deal some permanent (hull) damage. longer range on the ions might change that dynamic for me.... range 8k would definitely put them in a place where I would use them at long range, to follow up with a missile and damage lasers. Also as a weapon that does laughable hull damage, it couldn't be too OP to have them with a greater range.... too bad they couldn't be range 10k.... .... 15k would be bad right? I mean how OP would it be to be able to hit gunships with weak ion blasters at ion rail gun range, without another weapon to follow up with at that range (ofcourse that is what friends are for.... one hits with the ion and another with slug rails or a torp) Alot of you are pilots who can get sustained laser hits on evading targets, I on the other hand seldom do, either because of the graphics lag my system experiences or because somehow I just suck. Improving strikes, the non-gunship I fly best, will help me be a better team mate in gsf. I have to think it will help a lot of other pilots out there too. Some of us just can't fly a scout for one reason or another.

I usually land concs on people who are otherwise busy, charging up their rail guns, dog-fighting someone else, or jousting me. Concs aren't useless, and people allow a surprising number of them to hit them. With a cool down close to the time period it takes to do an engine maneuver, if left to my own devices I can usually land one on anyone who uses an engine maneuver to break my lock, before or after I fire the first one. Fighters using engine maneuvers aren't dealing damage either so it has a temporary CC effect, so as a pilot used to being shot down, I try to lock my missiles on the biggest threats to my team and make them burn their missile breaks while better pilots on my team (or gunships) can do their jobs. This is even better if it's the only defender on an enemy satellite, since if they engine maneuver out, I can stay close to the sat and even turn and lock another missile on them, I don't need to kill that target to help my team win a domination match, I just have to keep them from staying close to the satellite. Improving strikes doesn't just have to be about giving them the ability to make more kills, it must be about making them a better team player, perhaps only strike pilots and bomber pilots think about how to contribute to the team without making kills, because neither is ideal for racking up kills alone, and strikes too often have their chosen quarry escape their non existent surprise burst dps.

BLC on strikes would likely be for targeting the fighter's natural prey in history: Bombers. A CQC weapon with armor piercing fits the bill of a weapon for digging out entrenched armored bunkers as well, and strikes can survive a few mines, even CP might be of some use if the strikes are under satalite chasing down a bomber, although I still favor directional shields for that job.... still seismic mines are nothing to sneeze at and CP could diminish the damage from them. the T2 strike? perhaps ion missile should have a blast radius option, and be available to the T2 strike. Imagine hitting a turret with ion missile, destroying all the mines around a sat, pealing the shields of ships caught in the blast. Then with HLC or QLC going after bombers under the sat with their dogfight missile option (clusters or concs). Ion missile really under-performs as is, it needs a followup with some damage, like the ion-anything option on the T1 strike. And the ion missile needs to disable _something_ engine maneuvers? shield abilities? either/both. I still like the idea of allowing T1 strikes to select from any laser in the game, and T2 strikes to select from any missile and/or pods.... the players will find builds that work on their own, and more people will play gsf just to try out new builds.

Yet thermites, a scout weapon (amongst others) can

that begs the question, what new components the T1 and T2 should get (I personally fly the T1 alot, and favor the T2 but current missile break environment makes it rough)

if it flies in gsf, it's probably an offensive ship, at the very least any ship can and should be able to deal damage to another. The T2 scout was not supposed to be a better strike fighter then the T1 strike fighter.... Imagine if it was the way it was supposed to be.

because the 100% damaeg reduction skipping protorps don't do enough damage themselves... I see have you tried heavy lasers and prots?

why would that affect a protorp?

As much as I want to keep the conversation going. I just simply agree with everything tunewalker and Gavin have said

Currently concs tend to be barely fast enough reloading to get the second one off to hit a target that engine breaks the first.... usually. and their cool down roughly matches how long it takes my targets to complete their missile break manuvers and stabalize again

Well you could always give torps a range of 15k.... it's not just hitting a target with one that matters but also making them stop firing those rail guns.... or approaching the satalite