How are Flashfires/Stings not Overwhelmingly OP?

[Helig]

They aren't "overwhelmingly" OP because they're useless in the hands of a bad pilot. They are very strong in the hands of an ace, though, but such pilots can be counted by the fingers of one hand per server.

Overall, they're just an overly dominant ship type with no real weaknesses.

Upgraded Ion railgun (debuff)=>slug. Or just full-power Slug with Bypass on. Or, hell, even without Bypass.

 

Despite having access to reactors, they're still just Scouts with very weak shields and hulls.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Helig

[archifikoss]

Sounds like an l2p issue (I automatically assume that when I'm taken down - and that's a lot of times - it's an l2p issue on my behalf so no, I'm not trying to turn this into an e-peen thing as I'm an average player at best) - but with some good points nevertheless.

 

The only thing that could be considered OP about scout type 2's is the evasion stat, which should be removed from the game period. I say this as a person who loves the Sting and whose play would suffer from this. The reason it's OP is because it kills the point of the ship - it's supposed to combine the nimbleness of a scout and firepower of a striker, with survivability being entirely up to the pilot's skill... Having evasion takes away from that as it really adds a second layer of shielding, in an off-hand way.

 

I disagree about the cluster missiles. Take that away and you're left with nothing but a watered down striker without a clear role (which is close combat interceptor in this case). Cluster missiles are powerful due to their short lock-on time but they are more of an annoyance given their relatively low damage and short range. Any base ship can survive a number of cluster missiles to the face. The only thing that could maybe be slightly nerfed would be the targeting arc, which I feel is a bit excessive for the small lock-on time.

 

The Sting's strengths are:

- Good firepower

- Good agility

It's weaknesses should be:

- Poor damage absorption

- Short range

 

Removing the evasion and crit stats from the game - and lowering the cluster missile targeting arc a bit - would be enough IMO. Firepower would still be good but the skill cap for the ship would go up.

[Svarthrafn]

Evasion is not a straight miss percentage. If I fly a straight line, 41% of shots do not miss.

 

As i said, I think it actually amplifies the off-center targetting penalty by that percentage.

[Flinthoof]

You guys seem to forget that a gunship (when specced and with right co-pilot) can one shot any scout from 15000 yards away. Note that i'm not complaining about that. That kind of firepower needs to come at a disadvantage imo.

 

If you say: "but my gunship isn't specced like that", then please don't assume all flashfire's are specced into blaster overcharge. I'm not, as I'm specced into booster recharge to be able to get to endangered nodes faster.

 

I just think in general that the better players who favor dogfighting favor the scout as that is THE dogfighter ingame atm. That's probably why you see them topping damage / kill / assists charts.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Flinthoof

[Hyrune]

Yes please, buff my poor FT-6.

Gunship and scout are so much better, I'm a Sad Panda

 

Evasion is probably efficient but I find myself hitting a lot (maybe it's only due to the hit chance of the heavy blaster + 6% but not sure)

[willfarlow]

I just started flying a Sting, and it isn't all tricked out yet, but it really doesn't seem OPed at all to me. I immediately went from a fairly respectable kill count (in my Blackbolt) to zero or one kills per game.

Here's the interesting thing...I had the same number of assists.

I was playing less aggressively because I knew I was in a "not yet upgraded" ship, and yet, defending and backing other players more, I was still helping out just as much.

Also, my accuracy rating (does anybody else check that?) was the same.

Honestly I think it's play style, more than the ship, that affects the boards, but whatever, teamwork still wins the match. Two brand new Scouts or Strikes working well together will still kill my butt, no matter what kind of components I have installed.

[Helig]

Yes please, buff my poor FT-6.

Gunship and scout are so much better, I'm a Sad Panda

 

Evasion is probably efficient but I find myself hitting a lot (maybe it's only due to the hit chance of the heavy blaster + 6% but not sure)

I do agree that Strikers need more survivability. No complaints about the offense, though.

[ObiWanJabroni]

There's actually 5 ship types.

 

2 strike fighters which are fine (there's a 3rd type but it is identical to the default just faster ship req), 2 scout types, one which is fine, and the one I'm talking about in this thread that combines the strengths of both scouts AND strike fighters, without having any real weaknesses, and 1 type of gunship, which some people find OP, but I think they have obvious weaknesses that are easily exploited. Though I will agree that maxed out ion railgun needs some changes (depleting weapon energy/engine energy/snaring/disabling recharge should be scaled based on charge level of the shot, just tapping a shot for a split second should not result in a 6 second disable/40% snare, and the loss of all that weapon and engine energy)

 

I think you missed the dripping sarcasm.

 

There are three kinds if ships. Scouts, gunships, and strikers. Different variants yes, but still only three types.

Regardless, that wasn't the point if the post.

 

You guys have fun. Quite frankly I hope Bioware caves in to this stupidity and throws out nerfs that are not needed so I can stop wasting time on this mini game. My guild is allready hating on me for playing it too much.

 

Funny thing is, half the people calling for nerfs will be the same people screaming the devs don't know what they're doing after they give them horrible advice.

[Sarlegant]

The L2P trick that I learned, is get within 3K range, closer to center, and the burn em down...

 

every gun in the game is lethal at 3K.... it's max range is just an illusion tied to the spray and pray method.

 

IF you nerf the scouts, then you give the skys to the gunships...

 

if you make a head on pass, you're traveling 800, he's traveling 800, and that split second where you're 3K apart is just the reticle providing poor target leading at 1600 speeds...

on someone's tail, at relatively the same speeds, that reticle is much more accurate, and time on target is seconds, not split seconds...

 

IF anything, Strikes need a buff, to make up for the loss of a systems upgrade... sorry, chosing which gun to fire, still leaves me one unboosted gun to fire...

 

seriously, as I've practiced, and upgraded, I've been dumping evasion on my scouts... it's over-rated, and not the reason alot of you still have hit rates in the teens...

 

as far as Strikes, yes I'll dogfight a scout, but we're gonna do it inside one of the square satelites, making it so much harder for gunships to snipe, and scouts to use their speed... at 3K range... just more of my own L2P experience.

[Tenacity]

Give my flashfire snap turn and another secondary weapon option to make up for the cluster missiles and I'd be fine with losing them.

[RiVaN_]

I'm sure this has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, but the ships are not over powered. It is all about user skill. I am a pilot of moderate skill and I fly my NovaDive and FlashFire pretty well, averaging 6-8 kills per match with an equal amount of assists.

There are scout pilots out there that do 10-15 kills per match and an equal # of assist. Those players have a higher skill level than the average player and will make any ship seem over powered to the below average player. I have had the opportunity to Play GSF just a little bit more than most players and I can tell you that although the ship stats do matter for damage dealt and damage mitigated via shields and armor. A pilots skill with the mouse and aiming reticle mean a whole lot more.

I have played all the ships Imp and Republic, a good strike fighter pilot or an average gunship gunner can tear-up a FlashFire/Sting in seconds. Jedi Covenant Server has some amazing Imp Gunners and although my FlashFire is nearly maxed out at this point there are a couple Imp Gunships that I just don't even try to fight.

 

Don't change a thing BioWare, we as players just need to improve our own skill in the cockpit.

[MalakaiCaine]

no one class or model is 'better' than another. it's all about skill and playstyle.

 

if you suck, no ship, or upg's are gonna stop you from being VAPE bait killfeeder

[Vanarion]

My two cents:

Evasion:

An evasion build has 41% accuracy reduction, but as others mentioned that is not 41% chance that a weapon will miss. As a tradeoff it has -30% shield capacity resulting in a measly 910 capacity per arc. A strike ship with upgraded directional shields has 1980.

A straight shot with a Quad Laser at a range of about 2500 will have an accuracy of about 115 to 120% given an accuracy bonus of 6% from a crew member. So the chance to miss in this case will be 21 to 26%. Given that this game doesn't seem to have different hit boxes for different types of ships, this represents the slippery nature of a ship of this type and equipment. Missles aren't influenced by accuracy and a few hits of those will easily blow an evasion scout. So will a gunships rail guns.

 

Using the same Quad Lasers in close combat is a different story. Base accuracy will be about 110% + 6% from a crew member, but the -1.5% tracking accuracy have a large impact here. For the target being 20° of the center that accounts for -30% accuracy, leaving you with a chance of about 45% to hit. But (!) the tracking accuracy applies against every ship type. A strike fighter may have 11% evasion, wich will lead to a chance of about 75% to hit it under the same circumstances.

 

Shouldn't the conclusion be that weapons like Quad Lasers are not meant for close combat?

Same for the Strike fighter. It is not meant to excel in close combat. It has more shields, more hull, a magazine leading to more power for their guns or a larger munition pool than a scout and a bigger range. So maybe it's role is to fight targets at midrange, maybe for example fighters (and especially scouts) that are in close combat with team mates?

 

Scout firepower:

A scout with neutral energy distribution will be out of energy pretty fast. Redistributing energy to the weapons will lower the shield capacity even more. It's guns do the same damage as the same type used on a strike fighter.

Srike fighters have a magazine supporting their weapon energy or ammo cpacity. Scouts don't.

Being only effective at close range a scout consumes a lot of thruster power to get to and stay close to a target. So most of the time a scout that is actually fighting and not just evading will have energy redistributed either to weapons or thrusters and thus will be very fragile. Killing an opponent with energy redistributed to thrusters, wich is often is necessary to stay close to a target, requires good aiming, because otherwise the scout will find itself out of weapon energy before killing the opponent.

 

Cluster missles:

Here lies the true problem with Stings and Flashfires in my oppinion. The lock on time is really short and so is the reload time. A map with 5 or more ships using these missles can get pretty annoying. But those things aren't just working against other shiptypes than scouts. They also work against Stings and Flashfires. I find the mechanics to counter missles strange in GSF. Once launched they ignore collision objects, can not be outmaneuvred, don't seem to have a max range. Only using abilities helps. Actually it appears much easier to hit sb with thes things than with guns. I had a lot of games where with pilots flying pikes and flashfires who won't score near 20% hit rate with their guns but are still scoring 20k+ damage thanks to the blasted missles.

 

I'd personally trade 20% more weapon and engine power regeneration for the secondary weapon of the Scouts.

 

Tl;dr:

- Evasion is ok. It compensates for the game not distinguishing hit boxes and for the ships lower shield capacity and hull

- Firepower is actually lower than a strike fighters, because those have a magazine.

- Cluster Missles are a nuisance in general and on Flashfires and Stings in particular due to their strange mechanics. They are actually more effective than guns for the most but the skilled players, making skilled players appear overly deadly in Flashfires and Stings.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Vanarion

[DarthVindictus]

They aren't "overwhelmingly" OP because they're useless in the hands of a bad pilot. They are very strong in the hands of an ace, though, but such pilots can be counted by the fingers of one hand per server.

 

Upgraded Ion railgun (debuff)=>slug. Or just full-power Slug with Bypass on. Or, hell, even without Bypass.

 

Despite having access to reactors, they're still just Scouts with very weak shields and hulls.

 

and 41% chance to evade, and fast enough that you're never going to be able to fire fully charged shots directly in the center of your arc at them, so often you will aim spot on and completely miss because you're 5-10 degrees off your arc

 

5 degrees off center of your arc = 25% additional chance to miss, you have a 34% chance to hit then.

[DarthVindictus]

I'm sure this has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, but the ships are not over powered. It is all about user skill. I am a pilot of moderate skill and I fly my NovaDive and FlashFire pretty well, averaging 6-8 kills per match with an equal amount of assists.

There are scout pilots out there that do 10-15 kills per match and an equal # of assist. Those players have a higher skill level than the average player and will make any ship seem over powered to the below average player. I have had the opportunity to Play GSF just a little bit more than most players and I can tell you that although the ship stats do matter for damage dealt and damage mitigated via shields and armor. A pilots skill with the mouse and aiming reticle mean a whole lot more.

I have played all the ships Imp and Republic, a good strike fighter pilot or an average gunship gunner can tear-up a FlashFire/Sting in seconds. Jedi Covenant Server has some amazing Imp Gunners and although my FlashFire is nearly maxed out at this point there are a couple Imp Gunships that I just don't even try to fight.

 

Don't change a thing BioWare, we as players just need to improve our own skill in the cockpit.

 

No, Flashfires and Stings lack any real weakness. It's not simply a player problem, there is a ship imbalance. They're hands down better dogfighting ships than the strike fighters, which were supposed to be designed to be the superiority fighters.

[Soul_of_Flames]

As someone who plays primarily scout ships, I can honestly say that I do think that they are in fact pretty over powered vs both other classes.

 

I think Strike fighters are the most underpowered. As far as gunships go, they aren't overpowered per-say, but they do have 2 quirks that do make them cheap and unfair and need to be adjusted. (One being 1-shot kills with bypass, and the other is how overwhelmingly effective they are in groups of 2 or more).

[Vember]

They combine the speed and maneuverability of a scout, with the firepower and quick lock on missiles of a strike fighter.

 

Weakest hitting missiles in the game. Less damage than rocket pods, big whoop. The ONLY benefit to cluster missiles is the rapid lock on time.

 

Yes, they're not as armored as a strike fighter, but considering they're a lot harder to hit It makes me wonder if SOMETHING should be taken from them.

 

How are they harder to hit? They turn faster? Learn to aim. They're a one shot for gunships with bypass, and go down to any strike fighter pilot that can aim worth a crap.

 

I'd remove their ability to use cluster missiles to be honest.

 

Again, weak missiles that do crap damage. I have zero trouble with flashfire/sting in my novadive (less than strike fighters). Only reason I don't fly strike fighters is cause they all look like crap.

 

On a side note, I'm still wrecking face in a novadive on a pub reroll with two upgrades, one to the default rapid fire laser, and one to rocket pods. A lot of people just can't handle getting blown up, apparently....its really not very hard to do well in this game with any ship, and any upgrade.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Vember

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Using the same Quad Lasers in close combat is a different story. Base accuracy will be about 110% + 6% from a crew member, but the -1.5% tracking accuracy have a large impact here. For the target being 20° of the center that accounts for -30% accuracy, leaving you with a chance of about 45% to hit. But (!) the tracking accuracy applies against every ship type. A strike fighter may have 11% evasion, wich will lead to a chance of about 75% to hit it under the same circumstances.

 

Shouldn't the conclusion be that weapons like Quad Lasers are not meant for close combat?

 

Now granted that quads aren't as ideal for point blank as others. However, arguably if I have a 75% chance to hit one type of enemy and, by virtue of a a single stat, less than 50% chance to hit that other ship in identical circumstances it doesn't say I'm using my weapon outside of it's effective range. It says there's a significant problem with that stat that allows you to artificially cause a weapon to be ineffective in a given scenario.

 

Heck if we're talking 3K, dead center so 100% base accuracy quads will have about a 90-95% chance to hit a striker, by comparison they'll only have around a 60% chance against a scout. So no matter what range you use the quads you'll have to fire fewer shots at a striker than you will at a scout to do the exact same damage.

 

Now if the chance to hit against both ships was within 10% accuracy of one another I'd say yes your conclusion is right. But if I can still hit a guy 75% of the time at point blank that indicates while it is not ideal at point blank because of a low ROF it should remain lethal against any target. All it simply shows is the severity that evasion reduces accuracy and the difference between hit chance when primarily relying on pilot skill to evade versus hit chance when using a stat to remove the requirement of pilot skill in evasion.

 

Flying my striker I can safely say it takes a LOT more effort to evade enemy fire because I have such a low evasion stat (despite having upgraded all the agility components I can to give me the maneuverability of a scout without agility upgrades) whereas in my scout I don't have to put in as much effort because I've automatically reduced an enemy's accuracy by 41% before taking any evasive action to force them to fire off center.

 

Evasion simply decreases the importance of pilot skill by allows pilots to fly sloppy and not put as much effort into learning manual evasive action techniques as pilots flying starfighters with minimal evasion stats.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Gavin_Kelvar]

You can pop them if you actually defend the turrets. A scout flying in a straight line pops just the same as any other ship. Evasion doesn't come out to a straight 41% chance to miss. If a scout flies straight in front of me without maneuvering, nearly all of my shots hit. As a scout pilot, if I fly in a straight line, nearly every shot coming my way hits.

 

I have the suspicion that what evasion actually does is amplify the accuracy penalty on incoming fire that originates from outside the center of the targeting circle by a set percentage.

 

You missed my point. Combined with an ability scouts get a 3-6 second near invulnerability to blaster fire when combined with maxed out passive evasion. I know, I've done this and taken minimal damage to my shields because I used the ability to grant me almost complete invulnerability to blasterfire. It doesn't matter if there is 1 defender or 10, for those 3 seconds their blaster fire is very unlikely to hit me. You can't defend your turrets if your weapons have virtually no chance to hit an enemy.

 

By comparison a striker will take a severe beating if not get shot down when defending fighters zero in on them. that's because they have no ability that will artificially increase the amount of damage they can take. (Whether you're absorbing the damage directly through shields or indirectly through dodges you're still increasing the damage you can take before being shot down).

 

In my experience, and based on the tooltip wording, it's a flat 41% accuracy reduction, not a tracking penalty multiplier. At least I have no other logical reason for why I can make an attack run on a turret flying in a straight line, use an ability and the turret accuracy noticeably drops to below 50% even though I'm not taking evasive action so no tracking penalty is getting applied (honestly I'm not sure turrets even have a tracking penalty that could be multiplied).

Edited December 16, 2013 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Zoom_VI]

How are proton torpedos not overwhelmingly OP? How are ion rails not overwhelmingly OP? How are slug rails not overwhelmingly OP? How are objective zerging novadrives not overwhelmingly OP?

 

imo GSF only has underpowered things not overpowered ones.

 

Also gunships and novadrives have distortion field too not just flashfires.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Zoom_VI

[CKHelseth]

I am all for balancing and doing it in a timely fashion but I would like to see some kind of data that proves an imbalance. Right now I don't see any class of ship and think "I am screwed", only a few familiar pilots who excel with one ship or another.

 

Not saying that there aren't imbalances to be sorted out, I am sure there are, rather I think we need more than anecdotal evidence to start screaming nerf on anything.

[Helig]

and 41% chance to evade, and fast enough that you're never going to be able to fire fully charged shots directly in the center of your arc at them, so often you will aim spot on and completely miss because you're 5-10 degrees off your arc

 

5 degrees off center of your arc = 25% additional chance to miss, you have a 34% chance to hit then.

Evasion is the only thing preventing them from being annihilated the moment a skilled railgunner sets eyes on them.

Unless he's actively boosting/is performing an engine special, it's not hard to hit them with a railgun - well, at least if you have some muscle memory from first-person shooters. If you feel he's moving too fast at normal speed for your firing arc to follow, zoom out, that's it.

 

Also, Ion rail with AoE upgrade=lol.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Evasion is the only thing preventing them from being annihilated the moment a skilled railgunner sets eyes on them.

Unless he's actively boosting/is performing an engine special, it's not hard to hit them with a railgun - well, at least if you have some muscle memory from first-person shooters. If you feel he's moving too fast at normal speed for your firing arc to follow, zoom out, that's it.

 

Also, Ion rail with AoE upgrade=lol.

 

1)if a scout ship isn't aware of a gunship why shouldn't the gunship be able to hit them? It sounds like evasion just acts as a crutch for sloppy flying/lack of situational awareness in this case. I'd gather you've played FPS games so having evasion for the purpose that it sounds like you're suggesting is like asking for an RNG Neo-like bullet dodge to counter sniper's ability to 1 shot you.

 

I'm not saying gunships should 1 shot any ship class but I don't see why scouts should get special treatment by having a stat that makes them less likely than a striker to get hit by that first shot when they get caught by surprise.

 

2)if the scout is aware of the gunship and still needs evasion to bail them out It sounds to me like the scout pilot isn't thinking 3D in this case. I'd be curious to know from gunship pilots how random adjustments to elevation along with speed adjustments and left/right movement (relative to the gunship) screw up their aim. I have serious doubts that a scout that's aware of gunships and utilizing their agility and speed to its maximum potential make easy targets.

 

Scouts are without a doubt the most agile ships in the game so why do scout pilots insist that the only reason they aren't blown out of the sky by every ship in the game is because of evasion? (Yes I've heard the quoted argument pretty much used in the exact same way when discussing scout vs striker combat). If evasion is literally the only reason they aren't dying they're probably doing something wrong and making themselves much easier to shoot than they should be.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Svarthrafn]

For heaven's sake, people need to stop assuming that evasion is a flat chance to miss. It doesn't work that way. Scouts get shot down all the time, by all ship types. Get on a scout's tail, and nearly every shot hits. Edited December 17, 2013 by Svarthrafn

[DarthVindictus]

How are proton torpedos not overwhelmingly OP? How are ion rails not overwhelmingly OP? How are slug rails not overwhelmingly OP? How are objective zerging novadrives not overwhelmingly OP?

 

imo GSF only has underpowered things not overpowered ones.

 

Also gunships and novadrives have distortion field too not just flashfires.

 

Proton Torpedoes have a long lock on time, and a narrow lock on arc.

 

Ion rails need their upgrade effects to scale based on how charged the shot is, rather than allowing a 0 charge shot to disable ships as much as it does, there is a balancing issue there.

 

Slug rails are powerful but are still on gunships which have very distinct weaknesses, being slow, cumbersome turning, and ineffective at close range fighting.

 

Novadrives zerging a satellite is not as bad as Flashfires zerging a satellite.

 

Most matches I play I see 4+ Flashfires and realize I'm probably screwed for most of the match.