Skill over gear: the proof

[DroidDreamer]

If this doesn't prove that skill is more important than gear, I don't know what will.

 

In the skill over gear debate, I'd be more interested in how you do with your maxed gunship vs other maxed ships. I have my suspicions that, given equal skill, the gunship stands a head above all other ships.

 

Not that I am terribly concerned over balance right now since we don't have bombers or the stealth ships that have been alluded to in certain tooltips. Those additions could really shake up balance considerations and, in the case of stealth ships, provide a very juicy/fun counter to gunships.

[Armonddd]

In the skill over gear debate, I'd be more interested in how you do with your maxed gunship vs other maxed ships. I have my suspicions that, given equal skill, the gunship stands a head above all other ships.

 

Preface: this is class balance, not skill vs gear. It's also a topic I care a fair amount about, so you've invited multiple textwalls upon yourself.

 

I do not have access to the gunship (yet - I have about 200k req saved up for Tuesday), but I do have a mastered Ocula and a mastered Rycer. I have not mastered the Blackbolt because I've been saving my req for the gunship, and I would probably rather master a Sting (which is identical to the Ocula except prettier and has achievements). I have practically ignored the Quell because I hate it.

 

In my experience (read: at my level of skill and considering only the domination maps), the "tier list" for these four ships is Sting, Blackbolt, Rycer, Quell. If I had a gunship, it would probably, as you say, be above the Sting - just because the ability to essentially stunlock an entire node is stupid, as is massive damage at such long range.

 

The Sting is a great ship partly because of its enormous mobility, which leads to more close-range encounters and thus more killing power, and partly because it has access to ideal components. Literally everything on that list is ideally suited to the scout's job. Specifically, you want to find a node you need, take it, and kill everything in your way. You also need to not die, both to random enemies you meet along the way and while defending a node. Like everyone else, you need to kill gunships if you see them.

 

I've talked elsewhere about the strength of burst lasers and cluster missiles in dogfights, though it's important to remember that they're strong components even without satellites to dodge around. It's equally important to note my rate of kills: two burst laser shots and a double volley of clusters kills most targets, and lets me quickly switch from target to target in a frenzied satellite fight. Booster recharge lets you get where you need to be when you need to be there, and combined with the scout's naturally high engine regeneration and low afterburner cost per second, you can afford to burn engine power on things like circling satellites, closing to very short range, outrunning missile locks, etc. Distortion Field is an immensely valuable cooldown that acts as an answer to almost any problem presented. Retro thrusters give me killing power since I don't need barrel roll to get me places. Lightweight armor, frequency capacitor, and turbo reactor are simply the best choices for their slot across all ships. Turning thrusters let me slip around satellites more easily, though speed thrusters are a great choice for chasing down enemies.

 

The Blackbolt is similar to the Sting, with a few exceptions. It gets a sensors slot instead of a reactor slot, which makes your shields significantly less useful. It doesn't get retro thrusters, so you need to work with barrel roll - theoretically, combined with the sensors slot and your systems slot (which has a sensor beacon instead of blaster overcharge), this means you're capable of running far out and feeding information back to your team. Unfortunately, the current maps are too small for this to be especially useful, and even if they weren't, well... I'd rather have someone out there who can kill things, not someone who blows up after telling me where the enemies are.

 

To make the Blackbolt more appealing, I'd want to see a map that encourages my team to plan ahead before they move out - maybe we need to go through hyperspace microjumps to get to certain battlefields (which have an indestructible sensor relay beacon with moderate communication range and a direct connection to a similar relay at the spawn), and you can only jump to and from home base, so if you make the wrong jump it takes a while to get where you need to be. Even then, I dunno, it feels like a Sting could do that job just fine.

 

Combat-wise, the Blackbolt trades burst lasers for rapid fire lasers (which are far from awful, but don't perform nearly as well against enemies that are trying to not get hit) and cluster missiles for rocket pods (which are absolutely amazing [did you know they have 20% shield piercing by default?]... if you're absolutely amazing at aiming). Both ships get Distortion Field. It can work, and I know a few pilots that make it work to great effect, but since the Sting also gets rocket pods, I don't see why I'd especially want to run a Blackbolt.

 

The Rycer is a theoretically tankier dogfighter than the Sting, but pays dearly for, at best, moderately increased defenses. For comparison, the Rycer gets 1440 shield power, 144 shield regen/sec, 1450 hull, 5% armor, and 11% evasion, while the Sting build above gets 1040 shield power (this appears to be before distortion field's -30% penalty), 65 shield regen/sec, 950 hull, 0% armor, and 41% evasion. The Sting's increased evasion alone makes up for most of its other disadvantages; Distortion Field is also much stronger than Quick-Charge Shield. However, the Rycer is bulkier, which makes it less vulnerable to surprise railguns and lets it tank some hits while finishing off a kill or turret.

 

The Rycer's damage output is generally subpar compared to the Sting's. You can see in the screenshot above that I'm optimized for shield penetration: heavy lasers and concussion missiles both penetrate shields and ignore armor, so at range, you can knock out someone's hull with several heavy laser shots and a concussion missile. One missile with bypass does a whopping 500+ hull damage (assuming you don't break their shields!), letting you take someone out in two or three laser shots and a single missile. Of course, you have to get that lock, which is harder than with clusters... and after bypass goes on cooldown, you're looking at five or six laser shots plus a missile (fortunately, your missiles make it harder for them to get away from you if you haven't already finished them off). On the other hand, rapid fire lasers tear through anything if you're close enough and can keep a bead on them for a few seconds... but the Rycer lacks the turning capabilities and engine power and efficiency to reliably get that close, while other ships can just zoom past you and there's not much you can do about it. Even slotting barrel roll hardly helps its case, since you can't afford to barrel roll towards all your targets or you'll get missiled to death.

 

The Rycer unfortunately doesn't get many good choices for shield components. Charged plating is more of a risk than a benefit, directional shield has wonky controls that can make you dead, and quick-charge shield has limited throughput (as compared to distortion field, which is as good as you need it to be) but at least gives you 45% shield regen after being hit (though that's of questionable value with such a short regen delay). Capacitor, Reactor, and Thruster slots are all great and provide significant benefits that the Rycer really wants, but the Magazine slot is far inferior to an Armor slot. You'd think a tanky ship would have access to an armor slot, but I guess not. (Side note, I have regeneration thrusters slotted because I use the afterburner so much, but I can see reasons to slot speed thrusters. Turning thrusters seem unnecessary to me - you'll lose turning fights against good scouts no matter what you do.)

 

The Quell is my least favorite ship. It's in most ways comparable to the Rycer... except for some reason mine is showing lower engine speed and lower shield regen. I'm not sure if that's because of base stats or if I'm missing something, but even if we give the game the benefit of the doubt and say my tooltips are bugged, the Quell trades a reactor slot for an armor slot (a losing trade, because while evasion is very nice, the turbo reactor is absolutely critical to recovering your shields). You also trade a pair of lasers for a pair of missiles, which means you give up specialized lasers that perform great in the circumstances you need them to for generic lasers that perform ok in every circumstance. Worse yet, you only get one laser that fits that description - heavy lasers are poor at close range, light lasers have short range (and are generally poor since they try to fill a hole between rapid fires and bursts with all the disadvantages of both), and quads are overall mediocre with high power draw.

 

But at least you get two missiles, right? Sure, except people on my server are learning that missiles are easy to avoid if you give them more than a couple seconds to do so. I've only been hit by proton torpedoes a few times total, ion missiles are hilariously bad, and if you're going to slot both clusters and concussion missiles you're going to find yourself frustrated when you run out of clusters. Like the Blackbolt, the Quell really wants a new gameplay format - I'm hoping that capital ship vs capital ship (supposedly coming out in February) will be a boon for both types of strike fighter.

 

TL;DR: The Flashfire/Sting has BiS component slots and choices within those slots, everyone else is inferior.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Armonddd

[DroidDreamer]

Wow, dude, thanks for the detailed analysis. I think the consensus is that the Strikers need some love. They SHOULD be tankier/tougher with more damage output.

 

Setting aside the gunship, I do agree that the Sting packs the most punch. I also don't like that Distortion Field is BiS. I wish you could just choose your components and playstyle. I am a stubborn *** so I favor quick-charge shields to an evasion build even though I know I am gimping myself.

 

I like the IDEA of the Quell but, even though I haven't played it yet, my observations are the same as yours going against them. In a choice against other ships, I single them out first for kills! I wish they had made bombers the long range missile boats.

 

It's going to be interesting to see how it shakes out with the new ships, bombers plus the suspected stealth class. I think we'll have a better idea of class balance then, plus if any of this ships are in rock-paper-scissors relative to each other.

[Armonddd]

Wow, dude, thanks for the detailed analysis. I think the consensus is that the Strikers need some love. They SHOULD be tankier/tougher with more damage output.

 

You're welcome. Like I said, this is something I'm passionate about, so I have a lot of thoughts to go on paper from time to time.

 

I'm not sure strikes should necessarily have more damage output, but they definitely need to fill a niche that doesn't exist right now. Maybe capital ship vs capital ship will have ship sections that take extra damage from missiles/torpedoes/etc.

 

I wish you could just choose your components and playstyle. I am a stubborn *** so I favor quick-charge shields to an evasion build even though I know I am gimping myself.

 

That would be the ideal of class balance. After writing that analysis, I'm leaning towards a slight nerf for the parts scouts get (maybe distortion field lasts 2s + 2s upgraded, burst lasers do 10% less damage, small-ish things like that) and a buff for strikes in various areas (maneuverability is really the problem, I think).

 

It's going to be interesting to see how it shakes out with the new ships, bombers plus the suspected stealth class. I think we'll have a better idea of class balance then, plus if any of this ships are in rock-paper-scissors relative to each other.

 

Yeah. This is definitely the important thing to remember. We're playing an unfinished version of the game; it's probably too early to really cry for nerfs, since everything will be overhauled in the next month and a half or so anyway.

[Armonddd]

For those who play on Pot5: were Hydra and Tux having an off night?

 

Of course, my ship is somewhat more upgraded now. Speed thrusters and frequency capacitor are stock, turbo reactor and lightweight armor are mastered, retro thrusters, distortion field, booster recharge, and cluster missiles are rank 2, and burst cannons are rank 3. I'm certainly seeing the throughput of some of the upgrades (getting those major components to rank 2 is a massive survivability increase if you know how to time missile dodges), but I'm still far behind some of the people in that match (especially the pubs whose names I left in).

 

And no, I'm not screenshotting all my components again. It's 2 am and I've let GSF get away with me again. (Also I upgraded frequency capacitor after the match without thinking about it.)

[Soul_of_Flames]

I do noticeably worse on ill-equipped alt ships than I do on my main. Even in matches were the enemy barely puts up much of a fight. On my main's ships, I can go matches without dying and top charts, but on an alt, I die almost constantly and usually end up in the middle section of the scoreboard.

 

It's one thing to know how to play the game vs players who don't, but you'd be fooling yourself by saying it outweighs the benefits of an upgraded ship.

[Armonddd]

It's one thing to know how to play the game vs players who don't, but you'd be fooling yourself by saying it outweighs the benefits of an upgraded ship.

 

My point is, if I can do 26k damage on a ship with one upgrade unlocked while getting farmed, there's really no excuse for people who do less than 10k damage, and they certainly shouldn't be crying about being matched against people with better upgrades than they until they improve their game.