People who are just sitting at spawn point the entire match, they may die once by flying into an asteroid or mesa at the beginning to avoid being afk'ed out but that's it.. I've tried reporting a few to CSR and still see them frequently in matches, they're proud to leech and boast that reporting them does nothing. I think if they don't want to play, the CSR's should ban them to oblige in their unwillingness to play.

and not breaking lock on missiles. I'm a bit disappointed with distortion field's lock on break. Doesn't seem to work against missiles in flight and since you don't move when breaking lock on if you break during the lock on process they start locking on again right away.

It'll be impossible to do after the bypass nerf. Currently a full charged slug with bypass (65% shield penetration) does 1560 hull damage on a crit (20% chance), that's enough to one shot anything. After bypass is nerfed to 16% shield penetration, that same hit will do 1104 hull damage, only able to one shot scouts. Again that's a 20% chance occurance and most of the shots, even with bypass, will do 736 hull damage, not even enough to one shot a scout (currently a non crit with bypass can 1 shot scouts, bypass is just way overpowered)

It happens, and it's not just your ping that is factored in, it's their ping as well. There are some games where I'll fire 6-7 times in a row against a single target and miss every one and I end up having to kind of guess if they're behind where I"m aiming or ahead, sometimes I've aimed a full 2 degrees ahead of where their ship was (with a rail gun) and hit, other times I've aimed a degree behind where their ship was on my screen and hit.. They aren't visibly lagging and my ping is under 100 for that game (about 80 usually) and I'll have some enemy targets that I have to aim ahead of some behind, and some dead center. Then I go to another target and hit them every single time I aim dead center (unless they're a scout, then I hit half the time)

Either that or they have took prior hull damage and assume their shields will be enough to keep them alive. Only way I ever one shot anyone is Scouts when I have bypass. A hit from a fully charged slug railshot (not counting the 10% bonus damage it can potentially have since I think most go for crit chance) with bypass does 1040 damage. That one shots a scout, and takes a gunship or strike fighter down to 1/3 health. Without bypass, the same rail shot will do 480 damage, half health on a scout, about 1/3 of a gunship (depending on armor) or strike fighter With nerfed bypass it'll be 736 damage, 3/4 health on a scout, 1/2 health on a strike fighter or gunship with +health armor, 60% on a gunship with a different armor. A crit slug railgun with current bypass will do 1560 damage (enough to one shot anyone, 20% chance, which I hear is getting nerfed), with nerfed bypass will do 1104 damage, enough to one shot scouts, and with no bypass 720, which won't one shot anyone. Bypass and crit chance are being nerfed so, there will probably not be many more one shots, the only one shots will be crits with bypass, on scouts.

You mean get hit by every cluster missile pointed your direction?

Quitting a match and requeueing while it's still going on might get you in a more evenly matched game. There's nothing fun about trying to fight a well coordinated team with a PuG. they just farm you. You can't even improve your skills because they virtually spawn camp you just outside of range of your capital ship

People aren't playing as much because there's only 2 maps and 1 gameplay mode.

No in a dogfight between the scout and the gunship, the gunship is dead, as the scout can fly literal circles around them and a gunship does not have lock on missiles to supplement damage, and would have to go completely still to use their railguns, putting them at an even greater disadvantage. You can only fight scouts in close range with your burst lasers when they're already almost dead.

It isn't about the 1 shot, it's also about just the amount of time to kill. That ship you're flaunting in your avatar, that you probably think is perfectly balanced, can kill just as fast as a fully charged rail shot, due to bypass. Slug railgun won't oneshot anyone when bypass is nerfed., burst lasers and rocket pods with blaster overcharge and even the nerfed bypass will end up killing faster than a railgun when bypass is nerfed.

again that's not a gunship thing that's a bypass thing. A tier 2 scout can take out a gunship in less time than it takes to fully charge a rail shot by stacking blaster overcharge with bypass.

You must not play a lot of first person shooters, because snipers are in most of them and they have long range hitscan weapons. You had to deal with them in HAWKEN as well

It's actually not quite the same thing. It's not a simple EHP thing because there are on hit effects of weapons If I'm targetting a strike fighter with Ion Railgun, or Plasma Railgun, they're going to get debuffed someway when I hit, they may take more direct hits to destroy than if I hit every single shot against a scout, but I can lock down another gunship or strike fighter to where they have no engine, shield, or weapon power, right? Scout that is much harder to do, because they evade a lot of shots, so those on hit affects do not apply. I'd rather fight a more armored opponent with higher HP, than one that avoids 41% of my attacks through RNG.

Railguns are superior to missiles for sniping yes, but if you're in an active dogfight you can't really make a dead stop to go into railgun mode to get off a shot. Locking on with cluster missiles is so easy you could do it sleeping, it's 1.3s. The only reason you should ever lose a cluster missile lock on on a gunship is if they use a defensive cooldown to break the lock or they're humping the satellite running in circles. When I play strikes, it's easier for me to get locks than it is for me to hit with blasters. Using blasters, I'll at most hit 1/3 to 1/2 of my shots, while I'm able to lock on over and over and if they're 3k or less away from me, they'll get hit faster than they can use barrel roll if they wait for the lock on to finish. When you get into 5000m range, railgun shouldn't even be in consideration unless you're almost dead and the pilot thinks 1 partially charged slug shot can finish you off before you kill him. If you're full shields and full health at 5000m range, trying to use a railgun is a death sentence for that gunship, especially if you're a T2 scout and can pop distortion field when you see him charge and literally cut engines in front of them using burst lasers with bypass and blaster overcharge. He'll get through about 1/3 of a charge before he's blown up if he's committed to try and use a railgun in close combat. Hell, rocket pods will actually have a good chance of hitting a stationary gunship trying to use a railgun at close range. What have you never played a gunship and just assumed they were all lazy when they sat still charging their shots? You thought we just held right mouse button down then released to shoot like any other secondary weapon?

It's balanced by the fact that if you get within 5000m range of a gunship their best option is to make a run for it, in the slowest ship in the game, because their turning is even worse, and they don't have any secondary missiles they can fire on the run much less lock on fire and forget. You can get from 15000 to 5000m in one barrel roll in under 3s.

Some component upgrades are kind of hard to replace with just manual skill. An unupgraded gunship is going to struggle with lock on missiles with the longer barrel roll cooldown and higher cost. That 5s is a missile locked onto you and impacting your hull.

If you're in an organized group, that's a more sound strat, in a PuG, your allies are less likely to protect you. I usually try to go for allies and allied satellites first, if that doesn't break pursuit or get them killed and I'm still hearing lock on noises every 3 seconds, have to go to capital ship.

For one flying stock ships this late in is going to get you wrecked, you're flying against mastered ships at this point. For another, flying a gunship requires a completely different mindset, snipe and move, snipe and move, keep between 12-14k range on your targets if you can. If a scout or strike engages you, realize you have very little chance of beating them in close combat, unless they're already severely weakened, like, they're on fire, and you have burst lasers. Unupgraded, you're toast, that's all there is to it, upgrade barrel roll and distortion field first, so that you can have a shot at getting away. Run to allies, run to allied satellites, run out of line of sight, and yes, run to spawn. If they're dumb enough to run after you all the way to spawn, they deserve to get frustrated over getting destroyed by turrets.

You go ahead and tell that to me when I or another gunship slug rails you for 1056 hull damage. You take 2 shots now like a scout instead of 3. Then you'll blame it on GS's being OP, rather than realizing it was your own choice of components that screwed you more than anything. Really though, armor penetration is so widespread an way too potent. I'd run damage reduction armoring if it wasn't for the fact that every ship has easy sources of armor pen. Gunships with slug rail, flashfires/stings with burst lasers and rocket pods, novadrives/blackbolts with rocket pods, and strike fighters with heavy lasers. Are you really going to risk that you'll have matches with no flashfires/stings, no gunships, and no scouts except those running sabotage droids and sensor beacons (lol?), and all the strike fighters are running quad/ion/rapid and cluster missiles?

Good point on the gun automatically firing when you run out of energy. Bring that up on the PTS forums maybe? actually though I'm a little bit worried on how they chose to address the love tap issue. If I'm NOT on ion gun I use love taps to finish off a severely weakened opponent, it's the only way to get off a shot at a barrel rolling scout coming straight at me, I might not be able to full charge a shot at them, but I can get off a partially charge shot to damage them before they're on me. I'd preferred just to debuffs have a minimum charge or be scaled on charge level.

Still seems like a waste of requisition to buy 20% shield pen on yourself with so many people running armor ignoring weapons Slug rails, burst lasers, rocket pods, concussion missiles, heavy lasers.. just.. why would you do that to yourself?

Improvement I guess, I won't be able to ONE SHOT a scout, but very close (well a crit will still one shot) Though I still think that's a bit strong for burst lasers on T2 scouts. 25% penetration + blaster overcharge is extremely strong still and I still think T2 scouts are offensively too strong, not to mention 230 hull damage per cluster missile while it's up. I think I'd rather just remove it from the game.

Please tell me it's going down to 10% shield pen.

That's only from bypass, which I think we can all agree, needs to be removed.

against a strike fighter that might be a valid point, but against a gunship where each shot is really going to make or break you, missing a shot against an oncoming scout is not going to matter, evasion is a BIG deal then.