Patrician's comment in the GSF aces thread echoes comments I've seen elsewhere and inspired me to write this up. Separate thread because I didn't want it lost in the current discussion in the other thread. Gunships are not unkillable, and a dangerous gunship is dangerous because YOU are actively letting it alone. Don't do that! Make the gunship as miserable as it has made you! 1) Spot it. Either you see it before it shoots at you (in which case skip ahead), or after; if after, either it hit or it missed. If it missed, don't ignore the random beam of radiant death, note the angle and you know where it's firing from. If it hit, dodge behind an obstacle for a few seconds while finding it in targets and regenning hull / shield / engine power. 2) You'll want your engine power at 50% or more before you make your run, to have the maneuverability to NOT stop dead in space right where it can shoot you. F3 power to engines, hide behind an obstacle and wait for engine power to regen if you need to. 3) Lean on boost and zoom in its general direction. NEVER a head-on approach; you want to be moving fast laterally across his field of view - maybe 30-40 degrees' deviation from a head-on approach. Curve your path as you go, never maintain a straight line. 4) You should be moving fast enough that by the time you're within primary weapon range (5-6k or so) you've flanked it - you're moving around it faster than it can turn to keep you in sight. Make sure you don't zoom past it and get behind; that gives it a head start on escape. Slow down drastically, get it in sights, and start blasting and locking missiles (or spamming rockets if you're a scout). It'll either sit there and die (noob), kick off into escape mode (skip ahead) or finish turning toward you and fight back. 5) If it fights back, it'll either start charging another shot or try blasting you with burst. If burst, watch the range, when you're within 3.5k or so jink up/down or side to side and hit your boost to zoom past it, then turn and start blasting or chasing. If rail, shoot while watching it charge up for a bit, then zoom past before it lets the shot off. (This might take some practice in judging how long it's safe to wait, and depends on the gunship pilot also.) It may try to turn toward you repeatedly to continue the fight; if you control range properly you should wear it down. Otherwise - 6) At this point it's probably either boosting off or maybe even doing a barrel roll. Turn, chase, follow. DON'T try to stay right on its tail - spend your engine power somewhat sparingly. It's ok to let it get up to 10k or so away when in full flight mode. Watch where it goes, cut across the inside of any curving course, keep him moving. Keep missile locking every chance you get, especially immediately after he does a lock break. If he tries to start setting up another rail shot, zoom in fast and start blasting again. 7) While a gunship is running for its life, it is not shooting you and your teammates. Mission accomplished. "But Rhodo!" you say. "You said this would be about KILLING a gunship!" Yeah, and it is; you'll be able to keep tagging it repeatedly in the chase, and if you do it right the gunship will run out of engine power before you do. So you'll get the kill. However the point isn't first and foremost to get the kill, but to stop it from getting kills on your dogfighting teammates who didn't even realize they were being sniped. You may well get shot down instead, especially if you're not practiced at this sort of thing, but that's not a problem; it got one kill when if you'd left it alone it would be getting 5 or 6 or more. If you get tagged with ion in approach or chase, dodge behind an obstacle fast as you can and resume chase when you can, or stop boosting and hit barrel roll the very instant you have the engine power for it - if you do it right, you'll escape just before he fires the second shot. Ion is not a guaranteed win by the gunship by any means, but the target needs to react properly instead of just sitting there wondering what happened. Scout booster recharge or shield->engine converter helps with this. This works with any gunship. Even Aimbot. The one thing you need to watch for is the gunship's team members getting on your case about how you're bullying their headshotting friend. For that, you need YOUR team members to cover you and keep the other guys busy - or, you need to be doing the covering for your teammate who is gunship-hunting. GSF is a team game, don't forget it. Rhodogast / Kelril

Cross server queueing would mean I could queue as a group with my guild on a regular basis and not feel guilty about it because we wouldn't be beating up on noobs all the time. Cross server queueing would mean the noobs would have a chance in hell of being put up against other noobs instead of veteran pilots who can't help but treat them (as a guildie put it last night) like flying ham sandwiches. Cross server queueing would mean I would WANT to play a lot more because there would be so much more scope for interesting things to happen. In a MMO, players are content. Cross server queueing instantaneously multiplies the content for all servers all at the same time. The dollar value added to your product is larger by this single action than any other you could take. Any 2-faction PVP system (especially as opposed to a 3-faction one) is inherently unstable as one side will always be stronger than the other, which encourages those who don't like losing to play more on the stronger side or less on the weaker side or both, thus tending to reinforce and aggravate the imbalance. Cross server queueing instantaneously remedies this, as individual server imbalances average out over the aggregate whole, and actual differences in overall strength across all servers between the 2 factions will have effects well within the margin of uncertainty and randomness of matchups. Namespace problems? Add server tags to each name being put into the warzone. Guarantees uniqueness. Synchronizing between geographically distant servers, and dealing with the consequent differential in lag between different participants? As a technical problem this certainly is something to worry about and will cost resources to address. It is hardly insoluble. Cross server queueing is needed. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

Draec was never mentioned here. He should have been. He was the second strike pilot (after Siddain) that I ran into that made me think - for a while - "I can't take this guy". Also, "This must be what it's like for other people trying to fight me." Ar-Phanad was pretty good in a variety of ships. It was always fun fighting him, or fighting alongside him. Empanada was a rather spirited imp pilot I ran into more than a few times, always game to try to win. But I haven't seen the character online for a long time. Snickers / Knickers - I don't remember which was imp and which was pub, but either way seeing the name you knew that team was going to be competitive. Klank. "Big Bird to B." First really good Republic gunship pilot I saw. I think I've seen him once or twice in the past couple months, so he's not totally gone, but not nearly the constant presence he used to be. Jon-ik and Nailin were two pilots that taught me to fear and loathe the Flashfire. That was in pre-evasion-nerf days, and my admiration of them is tempered with a certain level of disdain for anybody who depended on that gimmick so much as to quit entirely when the ridiculous advantage was removed, but even so fighting them taught me a lot. I haven't seen Daphnii around for weeks and weeks. I kinda miss being hunted with proton torps all the time. Itkovian isn't in enough of my matches to make up the difference. And, yeah, Rainous and Delphi. Definitely. I have the feeling they got tired of being hunted in every single match, and I can totally understand that, and if that's what happened I regret having contributed to it. Rainous in particular put a good bit of effort into trying to get imps to fly as a team. Guys, we do like you, honestly. And Delphi can have her Queen of Space crown back ... just come back and play with us. We'll be good. Rhodogast / Kelril [edited to replace "buff" with "nerf", which is what I meant, and I blame trying to think after midnight]

less=more?

Absolutely. That would be awesome. I'd play the hell out of that. I am completely in favor of kicking Aimbot and Swansea over to your side, and not just because I want to blow them up.

Well, there certainly was a period when all of a sudden (about or shortly after 10 PM Eastern) experienced pubs would just stop trying to queue because everybody knew Eclipse was about to come on and curbstomp everybody for the next 2 hours. I know this because I experienced it multiple evenings (both the sudden and complete disappearance of any pub vets, and the curbstomping). Earlier in the evening it would be exactly the other way around: experienced pubs curbstomping imp noobs, no sign of Ecilpse or really any other imp aces. So you'd get imps saying things like "why bother trying? pubs always win" and then later pubs'd be all "yep, time to log off". Partly this is an inherent instability in 2-faction PVP; people gravitate towards the winning side by nature. You need a 3rd side to the triangle to be able to balance things out (one of the reasons DAOC actually worked). My experience more recently has been that it has evened out a lot, but a good chunk of it is due to pub pilots queueing impside (several key Sabers are regularly on imp characters). Certainly a lot of the old regulars have disappeared, and it's a shame. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

See the TEH space-shout-out thread. Am I a bad bomber pilot? I seriously doubt that, but if you think I make it easy for T1 strikes and scouts to kill me, I'm all ears as to what I'm doing wrong. If it wasn't for the fact that half my team was backing me up while the nodes were contested, they'd have cleared me off and kept me off. Using T1 strike and T1 scout. I really think your raw numbers, while accurate, do not reflect the full complexity of what actually happens in these fights. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

Wow, no. I fly the Pike/Quell specifically to hunt scouts. Cluster missiles repeatedly until they missile break, then concussion to hurt, peppering them with heavy laser shots whenever I can. If I don't have another ace on my tail I can pretty reliably take down nearly any scout that way - and the few that I can't, I keep them very busy for several minutes during which they're not killing my teammates. I do fly with power to engines 90% of the time, and I'm careful about what I use barrel roll for. Often I'll let a scout "escape", but keep him in sight, and close in again a bit later. You just have to keep harassing them nonstop, and don't let them set up straight-line attacks on you. I think the first part of this is the direct cause of the second. People are constantly breaking off from fighting me. Part of it is that the T2 scout types really want to pad their kill count and they get frustrated when they've been either chasing someone for a minute with no measurable progress, or are tired of constantly getting peppered with clusters. (Especially if you have the DOT upgrade on them to suppress their shields.) Part of it is that they realize that I'm winning a battle of attrition on hull points. I don't rack up scout-level kills but I do get them. Good situational awareness and evasive tactics are key. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

Shout out to Waefi and Olosh, who are getting quite good at the minelayer-killing business - with a Star Guard and Novadive no less. Olosh so far has not QUITE had the DPS to reliably kill me before the sabotage probe wears off, but it's certainly in the ballpark. Rhodogast / Kelril

OP, this is the thread you are looking for: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=735568

Do you mean another group in addition to Aimbot/Swansea/etc? If so, yeah, imperial definitely needs the support. There's plenty of native Ebon Hawk pub pilots who can let loose if there's actual competition to be had, a lot of us have been holding back a bit or playing imp from time to time to try to even things out, but that only goes so far. On a slightly more positive note, I think some of our imports are already impside. Vrix and Tavawl - I really look forward to facing off against you more, and flying with you when I'm impside. Imps need more excellent gunship pilots and you clearly have that down. Also, everybody on both sides who hasn't done it yet, /cjoin gsf Rhodogast / Kelril

Nem, I don't think you fly strikes much. In a strike I get most of my kills with heavy lasers. Sometimes a concussion missile is the finishing blow, but most of the damage is heavies - even when I was trying to make rapid-fire lasers work, most of the time I just wasn't close enough for them to do anything. This GS is notably weak on damage at medium range (edit: and I should add that when a strike is chasing a gunship, railguns are essentially irrelevant; the strike may get tagged a few times by luck or exceptional skill but it won't be the rails that kill it). I would never pick this over either the SG or Pike - it would be like flying a clunky scout without any of the maneuverability. You could set up with burst/cluster/EMP, flying it like a strike that has to get close. Or burst/EMP/interdiction ... These are kinda scary if the GS gets the drop on the strike. A retro-thruster strike seems perfect for taking this on; approach at speed, knock down the shields, retro to break the interdiction or EMP lock, heavies for the kill. I can imagine a really good pilot boosting just the right amount when they see the opponent retro, and then let loose with burst, but I can also imagine that ending up with the GS and strike flying right past each other, at which point the strike has the advantage. Honestly I'd be more confident taking on this gunship than a T2 with directionals, heavies, and readied protorps (which is how I fly the Comet when someone's coming after me, and it works pretty well). It's easier to wear this one down from a distance, or to get close so as to outmaneuver it. It's scary when it gets the drop on you. Otherwise, not really. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

I fly a strike. I hunt gunships. I don't necessarily kill them, but I certainly keep them busy. (SammyGStatus might have some comments on this; I always make a point of keeping an eye on him when we're on opposite teams) Any time a gunship is getting those sorts of exorbitant kills, it's because your team is actively letting them do it - whether by not going after the gunship, or by not keeping the opposing team from going after whoever on your team is going after the gunship. In other words, it's not the ship, it's that your team is dropping the ball. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

I knew there was a reason I liked you. (I've been using ESDF ever since playing Drakan 1 had it as the default key setting, 15 years ago, and it blew my mind how it just made SENSE.) e: For me, WASD uses pinky, ring, and middle finger; ESDF uses ring, middle, and index fingers, leaving pinky free to hit Ctrl and Shift. So it is far more effective in terms of dedicated finger movements and not getting confused as to what you're reaching for with what finger - each one has its own default action. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

It's the whole point, yes. Which is why I maybe derailed Sid's intended discussion a bit - because getting rank-and-file imperial pilots to employ effective tactics must necessarily come after getting those same imperial pilots to believe they can win.

What you're overlooking is that when people actually do try playing the match, and have it in their head that it's a crushing loss no matter what they do, that is when they start losing matches that they could have won - not because of the other team's roster, but because of what's going on in their own head. It's that defeatist attitude that has to be dealt with, and part of what creates it is just being used to unequal match after unequal match with no visible progress, on and on and on. I don't agree that there's even a 1% chance of a win in the situation I described - I've seen it often enough, done what I could to mitigate it, and often it is simply a matter of the other pilots just not having the knowledge they need yet in order to make a victory happen (whether by supporting each other, taking proper evasive action, multiple ships locking down hostile aces, or what have you) - and when you try and try and try and for all the effort you just don't get anywhere, that predisposes you to give up a lot more easily as a matter of course, and you DON'T learn anything or improve at all when you've gotten into that mindset. The mindset persists into winnable matches, and that's when you're throwing away potential victories for no good reason. Morale is not an infinite resource. It should be spent with some care. I'm not against losing. Last time I checked Kelril has a ~40% win rate. I'm against needlessly submitting oneself to the psychological side effects of losing excessively. Rhodogast / Kelril

I think a lot of the people who tend to give up also tend to be the ones who might not read forums much, or participate in discussions in the channels, or what have you. The ones at the margins, who sorta kinda want to try it, but are used to seeing imps flail about helplessly and aren't expecting any better. They're often the ones who don't care to be herded either, and also the ones who will respawn and rush to the sat being contested without waiting for anyone else, so on the map you can see this nice strung-out line of ships feeding themselves into the kiill machine one at a time like candy, and it's really hard to get them to slow down and wait so as to mob it all at once. That just makes it more important to get everyone who IS willing to work as a team to do it. Even defending one sat can earn a lot of req. I remember one match against an imp noob team where they did exactly that, they had 2 bombers and a lot of 2-shippers, and turned that sat into a bristling fortress of death and did basically nothing else. It was real fun attacking it, and they had real fun shooting us down. Setting that up takes some leadership from the more experienced pilots on the weaker team though. Yesterday I saw one guy quit out of the match while it was in lobby, requeue and rejoin the same match, and quit out again. We (imps) won that match handily. I can understand being on a team of 80% noobs, seeing an opposing team of Swansea and Aimbot and several other aces backed up by 4-ship and 5-ship vets, and saying "screw this". I completely understand that. What I can't understand is giving up when your team has a fair shot. Rhodogast / Kelril

I can understand how people can have flown bombers and still think a slightly different build isn't a problem. Dronecarriers in particular are right exactly where they need to be. I know for me it was hard to really believe minelayers could be that big an issue until I saw it in action, first by Callem flying one while I was supporting him, then by flying it myself and watching far too many people flail uselessly against it - up till then I was figuring I just didn't understand how to fight them yet. Nem's math can't be argued with. I think in practice the situation is rarely so simple as he makes out (he gives the example of a 50-second lifespan for one plated bomber against 2 others; in 50 seconds, an awful lot of other things can happen) so the consequences aren't necessarily as severe as he suggests, but the math is right. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

The first couple times I (as Kelril) saw Rhint in a strike, he outflew and outfought me. I learned some tricks from him. I've also seen him repeatedly dogfight successfully in his Quarrel, with light lasers. I kinda wish he'd go back to the strike, I want to try that match-up again. But don't say he's not a good pilot. Rhodogast / Kelril

You're right, they're not. On Ebon Hawk at least some of us do go out of our way to mitigate these situations, whether by queueing for the opposite faction when we know it's often weak, or just taking it easy when up against a team of noobs. In Domination for example it is quite common for a veteran team to allow a noob team to take and hold a sat without ever seriously trying to dislodge them - there might be some turret shooting going on, or dogfighting near the sat, but not actually taking it. In TDM most vets will, when they see they've pushed the opposing team back to the spawn points, back off a bit. Every now and then there's somebody who pops up thinking mining enemy spawn points is a good idea; that isn't received well by the established pilots. The basic problem is the matchmaking. It shouldn't be on us to restrain ourselves, but right now we do, because it makes for a healthier GSF population. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

I know you've touched on this in in-game conversations, but making seismics and interdiction mines be limited ammo, comparable to protorp quantities (or even fewer), would seem to be an obvious solution. It also makes ammo refill suddenly much more interesting. Rhodogast / Kelril

It's a bad attempted solution because it's introducing excessive non-obvious exceptions to other rules, for a case that isn't very important. Ammo refill is supposed to be useful for something, anyway. (I know I have it on my Clarion, because I keep running out of protorps.) Nem's original proposal of unassisted s/d not granting points is a good one. Rhodogast / Kelril

That's just not true. It would be true if it was repeated iterations. Instead it's just one: shield to plating. After that, adding more plated minelayers doesn't help (plated minelayers are no good against other plated minelayers), and the same pair of strikes and/or gunships can take each one down with no additional trouble - just time. Stacking plated minelayers doesn't improve defense effectiveness at all, because the attackers can easily take them down from outside mine range. No, it's not. I specifically mentioned using TWO ships to kill the minelayer. There is no line of sight problem at all in that case. Rhint and Itkovian, for example - there's just not much the minelayer can do if it doesn't have any support. Killing a minelayer solo is hard - sure; killing a sat-hugging scout solo is hard too when that scout knows to keep the sat between you and him. You shouldn't be trying to do it solo. You can't make fully informed judgements about difficulty or balance based on solo attacks on a sat. If you CAN take a sat solo, that's good piloting on your part and probably a mistake or two on the defender's part, but whether you can or can't isn't dispositive as to the effectiveness of the defending ship overall, because it's a very particular situation. I also don't know why you describe the plated minelayer as being a "moderate" counter to the shield one. It takes the shielder down as fast as the shielder takes down everything else. Leaving aside the newbie issue, that's what minelayers are supposed to do. That, and having no LOS problems when attacking a sat, are what minelayers can do that no other ship can. I don't see these things as problems. Whether the high-end game should be balanced to not allow newbie-ineffectiveness situations is an entirely different discussion. Terrible idea. The very first situations where I really took note of seismics was seeing them clear a whole swath of sentry drones in one boom. You're putting the responsibility of killing the minelayer on a ship that can't possibly catch it - it would have to set up drones some distance off the sat, which takes time, and they can be shot down really easily by the minelayer. The command scout in practice will have a giant hassle to hunt the shielder down and do enough damage fast enough to kill it. Either of those is worse than the current situation. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

I've been trying to ignore this thread, as it's about trying to slice and dice definitions to exclude people a poster doesn't like, but this post takes the cake for accumulated nonsense. Both of these are absolutely false and clearly born of inexperience. I've taken a stock T1 scout on a new character and effectively suppressed excellent gunship pilots, occasionally getting a kill on them with rocket pod spam and dying sometimes too. The point isn't the kills or deaths, the point is keeping the gunship from sniping in peace. Any new character can do this with an un-upgraded scout if they know how to not approach the GS head-on, lean on the afterburners, keep power to engines, and hit booster recharge occasionally. As for bomber killboxes, that's written like the worst stereotype of bomber pilots - I go hunting bombers on general principles, just because it's so easy to land missiles on them and because so many bomber pilots AREN'T good pilots and have that false sense of security. You try that in a game with me or anyone like me, you'll get a lot of deaths and not much else. This right here is the thread's weakness: trying to redefine the terms by which people can earn respect. You, individually, are not allowed to do that, because you don't control who everybody else respects. Bullcrap. Grind does not make an ace. Skill does. Bullcrap. Grind does not make an ace. Skill does. Bullcrap. I've regularly gotten 15-20 kills defending a sat in a bomber or gunship, and 10-15 kills doing the same in a strike. Sometimes they just keep coming and you have to just keep stopping them. Bullcrap. The point of TDM is kills. Damage overcharge and powerups in general is the best way to get kills. You're trying to win the match, not dance a hippie dance. Bullcrap. This is the craziest thing I have seen in a crazy thread. I'd have to actively try to die, a lot, to make this happen. The other points I can almost sorta see why someone could think them justified; this is written by someone who hardly plays the game. Bullcrap. This amounts to giving the enemy spare chances to get away. There's been a multitude of times when I've been in red hull and yet somehow managed escape / outmaneuver my pursuers and continue fighting for another couple of minutes, sometimes regenning my hull back to full or nearly so. If someone is nearly dead, finish them. It's your responsibility to your team. You finally say something I agree with. Stopped clock and all that. And it's back to crazytown. There is no such thing as kill-stealing in GSF. It is a team game. Whoever gets the kill helps their team. Anyone forgoing a kill is voluntarily handicapping their team. That's what you should not be doing, because it's wrong of you. First, I haven't seen any evidence of actual aimbots in this game; I've gone up against scarily accurate gunships and managed to dodge their shots. Second, I have no idea what you mean by aimbots on bombers. The rail drones? That's again voluntarily handicapping yourself for no good reason. Those things are NECESSARY for the bomber to be able to oppose T2 scouts, and they're not hard to shoot down. I have trouble believing you are seriously suggesting that an entire class of weapon should simply not be used - that smacks, again, of someone who just doesn't have much experience playing the game and doesn't know how to handle certain situations. And these last three are vague and non-objectionable enough that there's nothing to say about them. Who you want to fly with and who you respect does not control who everybody else is afraid of and who, when present on a team, can turn the tide of the battle. Friends and aces are not the same thing, and you should not be mangling the English language in this manner. Just come right out and say it: some aces are mean and nasty people. Yes. They are. So what? You may even, with time, discover that some of those mean and nasty people aren't quite as mean and nasty as you thought. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk

This is pretty much spot on. That said, I think it's more in people's heads for not using it, and not because the game itself is lacking something critical. I've been running a charged plating / hyper beacon minelayer pretty consistently this week on both republic and imperial sides and I am totally in love with it. I consider it distinctly superior to Nem's shield-tank build given the current loadouts people are running, and I'm ready to start experimenting with charged plating on my T2 and command strikes also. With deflection armor, M1-4X or Xalek on defense, and the base 5% damage reduction, you get up to 39% base damage reduction. Charged plating boosts that to 99% for 19 seconds out of every 30. A single charged plating seismic/interdiction minelayer can take out 2 or 3 shield-tank seismic/interdiction minelayers - I know this because I've done it several times. There actually is some skill to it - you need to track when they're dropping their mines to know when best to hit your charged plating and when and how to deliberately trigger theirs so as to best get them with your own. If you're flying it right, you take negligible damage from them and either kill them or chase them off - especially with heavy lasers, you can finish them in a head-to-head without much risk to yourself because you'll have taken so much less hull damage. You're also essentially immune to non-rocket/burst scouts, or strikes trying to use ions or rapid-fire, which is are typical ways to try to chase a sat-hugging bomber. (Before anyone hisses, I happen to like rapid-fire and find it a completely understandable and valid weapon choice. It does give hilariously bad results in this case. You haven't lived until you've sat there with your hull already in the red and watched a guy you know is an ace blast away at you for 5 or 6 seconds with absolutely no effect. Could practically see the question marks orbiting his head) Meanwhile, you're tremendously at risk from heavy laser / protorp strikes and slug rail gunships, which punch right through the damage reduction. It takes just one or two of those to really hurt you. In fact, a T2 strike with the exact same charged plating defense build is basically perfect for clearing sats - it only needs to fear railgun drones and starting off head-to-head with the bomber, but the strike's greater maneuverability should let it easily avoid that. Two gunships, or a gunship and a strike, if operating without any opposition from the minelayer's friends can pretty easily nail the minelayer and kill it quickly - entirely because the charged plating minelayer can't regenerate its defenses quickly the same way the shield-tank one can. This mostly solves Nem's challenge about facing a team composed entirely of seismic/interdiction minelayers. If they're pure shield, just a few charged plating ships will totally disrupt them. If they're split between shield and plating, the game gets interesting; the opposing team has to figure out which to target with what attacks, but it's entirely doable. It DOES take a certain level of skill on the opposing team which the minelayer team doesn't need. So the scissors-paper-rock game is still on. Shield tank minelayer kills most things in close quarters. Charged plating minelayer kills shield tank minelayer, and anything else without armor penetration; strike and/or gunship kills charged plating minelayer. Remaining problems: you need to know what to do, and you need to have someone on your team with a ship configured correctly to be able to take down the shield-tank minelayers. Neither is guaranteed. The shield-tank minelayers still provide a huge advantage against inexperienced pilots, and the charged-plating minelayer can be a really nasty surprise for a team that isn't prepared for it. But, I'm not convinced there's a large qualitative difference between these sorts of things and 2-ship noobs trying to approach a sat and getting 2-shotted by starter gunships. Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk