Gunshipes Ruining Starfighter

[dancezwithnubz]

There you wrong, until the barrel roll engine is maxed out., until the slug is upgraded 3 times, bare minimum, they are Just So-so. That is a barely second long burst of whatt amounts to straight line speed, meant to take a gunny out of close range, which can be easily closed by a decent pilot in ANY scout or strike.

 

Whereas, your suggest alternative, the Interdiction drive, used in conjunction with Full boost, won't take a gunship from fullstop firing position to out of range of a moving burst built Scout in time to save the airframe. A good burst builds can literally shred a full shield, full health GS in two accurate salvos. This has nothing to do with the Gunship's offensive power. It merely keeps the gunny from dying a flaming death for a few seconds, more if the gunny pilot is worth his boots.

 

For the record, I agree with you, on the Ion effects. It should be graded with the charge. But then again. I don't use the stop regen effect., as I prefer the AOE and throwing the brakes on them. In most situations where I take the first strike, my Ion is at half charge, if Not full.

 

Why? I want to take out your shield AND Ding your hull, leaving you exposed for teammates or a follow up slug.

 

A lot of you scout jockeys seem to thing Big and Slow should mean "Easy Kill." I'm really not sorry to disappoint you..

 

Also. Do you notice a red flash, as the Gunny speeds away? If so you just took a hit from a feedback shield. Which, has the option, when maxed, to do 690 dmg, and drain 25 energy from weapon and engine pools. Maybe that's why those Gunnys seem so much faster than you after they barrel roll away.

 

again: 15km range, can (with a crit I concede) one-shot any scout in the game. they don't need a huge nerf. I like gunships, truly I do, but they do need a couple of tweaks.

[NotThatOne]

again: 15km range, can (with a crit I concede) one-shot any scout in the game. they don't need a huge nerf. I like gunships, truly I do, but they do need a couple of tweaks.

 

Honestly, I think you just need to figure out more effective tactics to combat them. When i do get hit from behind, it's usually from someone that snuck around my flank while I was engaging other targets, or I got swarmed. (Believe me, I HATE the swarm, because it's the single most effective way to take me out of a fight.) Either I respawn, or spend time wasted going evasive, either way I'm not on station and laying down fire support, which is my job in the Gunny.

[Verain]

please, let's not descend into base, petty sarcasm. especially when gunships can, and regularly do, instagib me from halfway across the map.

 

A gunship kill requires a compliant target in most cases. Next time you get gibbed, think about if you were moving in a straight line or slowly orbiting someone in a turn fight. You will unlikely have been boosting while rolling and pitching.

 

The gunship kill can feel unfair, and in the case of the one-shot from full everything it is. That is actually being nerfed in the patch, and it's a damned good thing too. But scouts are capable of very heavy burst that you can't meaningfully fight back against. In fact, a decent scout versus a decent gunship, that gunship has but one choice...

 

gunships need some minor tweaks to bring them down a peg or two. i'm not calling for massive nerfs, just remove some clearly overpowered abilities from their roster, to whit: ion railguns applying their full effects from less than a full charge and barrel roll giving a supposedly slow and un-maneuverable gunship the kind of speed and maneuverability one expects from strike fighters.

 

...and your massive nerf proposal is removing that one choice. Which is to barrel roll away. The other engine abilities are for very niche behavior. For instance, interdiction drive can be used to play near a bunch of rocks or scaffolding, quickly snaring your very close opponent while you run out of los. But, that's usually a pretty bad play compared to barrel roll.

 

Now, barrel roll probably needs a longer cooldown. It's used on all three ship types in game, and it's used mostly to the exclusion of the other components. But, everyone already WANTS to use it. It would be good if the cooldown was longer such that you could at least justify the other components on a strike or a scout. But taking it away from gunships would be roundly horrible- the gunship would be fully useless against an opponent who maintains situational awareness just by pressing tab, noting a gunship at 18000m and closing, and reacts appropriately. I routinely run into these pilots, and killing them is absolutely hard enough as it is, as they have a six second bubble that they can use, and they don't have to use it until I'm actually going to fire a shot (which is obvious).

 

 

The full charge ion aoe debuff is fine. But- it should at the very least drain relatively less engine and weapon power when used at a fraction charge. A half charge should drain half, etc. The final talent is harder to break down into pieces, and could be left unharmed as long as the drain itself wasn't so shocking via taps.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Verain

[dancezwithnubz]

Honestly, I think you just need to figure out more effective tactics to combat them. When i do get hit from behind, it's usually from someone that snuck around my flank while I was engaging other targets, or I got swarmed. (Believe me, I HATE the swarm, because it's the single most effective way to take me out of a fight.) Either I respawn, or spend time wasted going evasive, either way I'm not on station and laying down fire support, which is my job in the Gunny.

 

if your team's strike fighters and scouts were doing their jobs, you wouldn't be getting flanked.

 

and we're back at the beginning of the discussion. it's clear I'll not convince you of the need to remove barrel roll from gunships, but at least we can agree that the ion railgun needs a (minor) nerf.

[Verain]

if your team's strike fighters and scouts were doing their jobs, you wouldn't be getting flanked.

 

A gunship shouldn't need a whole team just to be able to leave the spawn point without dying immediately.

 

it's clear I'll not convince you of the need to remove barrel roll from gunships, but at least we can agree that the ion railgun needs a (minor) nerf.

 

Removing any component at this point would be disruptive. Nerfs to abilities and especially talents could still work, but if the gunship lost barrel roll I would seriously reconsider playing long term- there's no reason to buy req if it's going to be deleted or removed. My playstyle revolves around using barrel roll, and I'm 100% not alone, and if the devs listen to the nerf herders and just make the ship a sitting duck I seriously don't even know what the game is supposed to be then. Gamble with req and hope the devs don't delete your ship?

 

Ion aoe debuff effect def needs a nerf. It's really about the thing where you use one shot per second and fully drain the engines of a batch of ships, often by targeting a turret within los to effect enemies outside of it. Which also could be cleaned up, or maybe it's just intended to be able to threaten sat-humpers that much.

[dancezwithnubz]

Ion aoe debuff effect def needs a nerf. It's really about the thing where you use one shot per second and fully drain the engines of a batch of ships, often by targeting a turret within los to effect enemies outside of it. Which also could be cleaned up, or maybe it's just intended to be able to threaten sat-humpers that much.

 

i don't object to the effects of the Ion Railgun, I object to it applying all it's debuffs from a mere tap of the LMB rather than requiring a full charge.

 

i also feel that ALL Ion Weapons should deal ZERO hull damage.

[Verain]

i don't object to the effects of the Ion Railgun, I object to it applying all it's debuffs from a mere tap of the LMB rather than requiring a full charge.

 

i also feel that ALL Ion Weapons should deal ZERO hull damage.

 

 

The ion weapons deal about 20% of the hull damage that a "real" shot would do. I don't think that's out of line, and if they went that route some kind of debuff would have to be baseline.

 

The tap does at least incur a cooldown- you can't hit it 3 times in a second- but it's still far too effective to drain a group of enemies rapidly. The drain should scale with the charge.

[dancezwithnubz]

The ion weapons deal about 20% of the hull damage that a "real" shot would do. I don't think that's out of line, and if they went that route some kind of debuff would have to be baseline.

 

it obliterates shields and drains weapons and engine power, how much more debuff do you want? the 3s 40% slow is also annoying as all hell. the ONLY counter for a scout is a fully teched Booster Recharge and praying that barrel roll is off cooldown, otherwise i'm a sitting duck and most likely you're well out of range of my 7.5k, 80% accurate with a 5%/degree tracking penalty, limited ammunition 'omg so overpowered' rocket pods.

 

giving Ion weapons any hull damage on top of all of that has us rapidly moving into the fermented dairy products and derivatives section of your local supermarket.

[Elly_Dawn]

i wouldn't call them overpowered, a GS rarely ever gets a shot off on me unless i'm totally focused on another target or out in the open... heck the other day just one wingman and myself held a satellite by ourselves in Blackbolts, not even past Lvl.2 on any of our upgrades and we held off 2 Gunships, a fighter, and a scout that came in to assist the gunships and they still didn't get more than one turret off of our satellite, the whole match, they kept coming back for more and getting shot down... GS overpowered?.. only if you fly in a straight line and don't use the environment to your advantage, but that's pilot error, not imbalance...

[mattycutts]

OP

 

U think gunships are easy skill, lack of skill anyone can play them? try one proper.

 

i see lots of top graded gunships finish no where near me. firstly we have to fully charge our weapons, be surprised how many actually miss thats why u dont see 100% hit ratio on gunships.

 

try hitting a fly dotting across ya scope at speed while maintaining a charged weapon.

 

How long u think a gunship lasts when 2-3 scouts peel off and go gunship hunting?

 

and trust me when bombers come in, youll thank god for gunships.

 

currently can take 4-5 fully charged railgun hits to about detroy one unmodified bomber. lol how long u reckon scouts/fighters would last without the dps of a gunship picking all the mines,drones off your flight path to the bomber.

[Verain]

it obliterates shields and drains weapons and engine power, how much more debuff do you want?

 

Unsure, but it would need something else baseline to make it worth using if the hull damage was actually zeroed.

 

So, a fully charged and upgraded rail slug is 1760. Ion is less than 400 to hull. The hull damage portion is fine.

 

the ONLY counter for a scout is a fully teched Booster Recharge and praying that barrel roll is off cooldown

 

Well, the first hit doesn't take you ooe from full. So you have time to hit barrel roll or distortion field immediately and los or boost. The six second distortion field is enough time to get enough engine power to boost as well from a full drain. There ARE ways to handle it. That doesn't mean it's a legit tactic.

 

The full ion charge railgun hit is fine, it's them little ones.

[Nethgilne]

Agreed that Ion rail gun needs a nerf. But overall, I understand the role and function that GS's are meant to fill, that is, long range support and damage.

 

However thats a role I always felt that the bomber should have been filling. This has become more apparent with the announcement of the actual bombers, which will behave much more like minelayers/ defenders then actually bombing anything.

 

If BW could do it again, I would have liked it if they replaced gunships with bombers that fired powerful player guided 'bombs' deployed from a distance. The current iteration of "bombers" can stay as they are but just renamed "minelayers" as that is what they are. But as it stands now, I sincerely doubt they'll shelf a whole class of starships this far into the game.

[NotThatOne]

A gunship shouldn't need a whole team just to be able to leave the spawn point without dying immediately.

 

 

 

Removing any component at this point would be disruptive. Nerfs to abilities and especially talents could still work, but if the gunship lost barrel roll I would seriously reconsider playing long term- there's no reason to buy req if it's going to be deleted or removed. My playstyle revolves around using barrel roll, and I'm 100% not alone, and if the devs listen to the nerf herders and just make the ship a sitting duck I seriously don't even know what the game is supposed to be then. Gamble with req and hope the devs don't delete your ship?

 

Ion aoe debuff effect def needs a nerf. It's really about the thing where you use one shot per second and fully drain the engines of a batch of ships, often by targeting a turret within los to effect enemies outside of it. Which also could be cleaned up, or maybe it's just intended to be able to threaten sat-humpers that much.

 

When I'm pounding Ion AOE shots off a turret, I'm doing it at full charge, because it's the only way I'm going to damage the sat humpers, and more often than not teammates are actively engaged with them, Once again. That's my job in the Gunny: Fire Support.

 

But yeah, I fully agree the Ion "love tap" tactic is total BS,and the Ion debuff needs to be scaled with the charge on the weapon.

[NotThatOne]

it obliterates shields and drains weapons and engine power, how much more debuff do you want? the 3s 40% slow is also annoying as all hell. the ONLY counter for a scout is a fully teched Booster Recharge and praying that barrel roll is off cooldown, otherwise i'm a sitting duck and most likely you're well out of range of my 7.5k, 80% accurate with a 5%/degree tracking penalty, limited ammunition 'omg so overpowered' rocket pods.

 

giving Ion weapons any hull damage on top of all of that has us rapidly moving into the fermented dairy products and derivatives section of your local supermarket.

 

Ions already do a little bit of hull damage if the shot takes out the shield protection.

[Eldrenath]

Complain all you like, there is absolute 0% chance gunships will be removed. Personally I'd LOVE to see them go. I hate being in a fun dogfight that instantly ends because a gunship in one shot blows up the guy I've been chasing. Or I've been engaging someone who was kicking my butt, I finally turn the corner and get the upper hand and BOOM I get taken out in half a second by a gunship.

 

So I hate gunships and think they bring nothing but negatives to the game. But that's my personal opinion and my personal playstyle preference--this game is not designed for ME, but for as many people as possible. I fully understand that adding the gunships brings in a lot of players that love to play snipers but otherwise might not play GSF. And once we see bombers added to the mix, the gunship role might be clarified somewhat and be ore in-line with the game system.

 

But as many people here have pointed out, Ion Cannon is ridiculous. As it stands now, it's practically an "I win" button.

[-KeggER-]

Woa woa woa, hold the phone... What is this "Gunshipe" thing you're speaking of?

[Lytewraith]

I'm not sure but if you guys find out could yu let me know I think its like the bridge boss you never see him coming ether lol

[DarthVindictus]

I can't be the only one out there who feels this way, but gunships are the worst thing about starfighter. They're OP and cheap as hell. Whereas with strike fighters and scouts the game is about actual dogfighting, trying to chase down, outmaneuver and shoot down your opponent, with a gunship it's more like shooting ducks at a carnival. Essentially those players who have no sense of sport or no skill when it comes to flying use them.

 

I would propose that, as much as I would like to see them removed entirely, they just need a redesign. Make them the ship that focuses extensively on guns over missiles, but get rid of the long range cannon and just what would amount to a bigger energy pool with better regen than any other type of fighter. Essentially, whereas with other fighters you have to be smart and not shoot at nothing and run your batteries dry, with a gunship you could hold down the trigger for a really long time before you deplete the supply of energy you have.

 

I don't know, this is just one idea, but they really need to be nerfed or redesigned imo.

 

With their slow speed and turning, you would have free kills. That's what you're asking for with your "redesign"

 

A gunship can't win even a straight joust with just lasers while a strike or scout is able to supplement their primary damage with missiles on top, that's in the case where they DON'T try to use their superior maneuverability to not even get hit by the gunship.

 

There's basically only 2 things that need changed with gunships:

 

1. Ion cannon's debuffs need to scale with charge level, so you can't just tap the button to drain a ship's engine and power and continually snare it/disable its regen without having to charge at all.

 

2. not even a gunship thing, bypass needs to be removed, it's way too powerful no matter what ship you use it on, 35% shield piercing across the board is just ridiculous. That's the reason anyone gets oneshot is bypass.

 

Otherwise gunships are easy to harass and distract from being effective, because they're absolutely garbage in a short range fight, they have a good laser (burst laser cannon) but no missiles to supplement damage and terrible maneuverability, they turn like a semi truck and travel at a snail's pace. Scouts and Strikes kill them all the time because they can just spam lock on missiles and exhaust the gunship's ability to avoid them, and with no engine energy left they're a sitting duck that can't get away, and can't fight back.

[DarthVindictus]

The problem with the gunships, really, is the railgun. It's a no-delay weapon: the shot literally moves instantaneously from the firing point to the target. There is no chance for it to be evaded. Even laser bolts and missiles can be dodged, but not railshots. Yes it's annoying but it's ridiculously unfair and most importantly, extremely un-Star-Wars in my opinion. Railguns mounted on starfighters? Since when? Since never. Only in SWTOR.

 

The game mechanic is horrendous for this weapon and it's what makes me wish most days that gunships were just gone entirely. Watching four gunships rain down rail-gun shots, all in formation to combine fire against two separate satellites simultaneously and cover each other against everything short of a full-team assault on the things, was a plain enough repeated scenario for me to realize how imbalanced..... terribly imbalanced it is.

 

Railguns are mitigated by evasion, trust me. I miss scouts all the time.

[Nydus]

I don't mind gunships, the only thing that can get irritating is when they somehow shoot me through an asteroid or satellite...

 

- Arcada

[xyrmagus]

Railguns are mitigated by evasion, trust me. I miss scouts all the time.

 

And no one else thinks it's a problem that scouts are infinitely more tanky thank strike fighters (and gunships can be as well) purely due to having passive ~50% evasion, and over 100% with a cooldown? IMO, distortion shield's penalty needs to be much, much bigger than 30%. At least 50%, maybe even more.

[Sharee]

And no one else thinks it's a problem that scouts are infinitely more tanky thank strike fighters (and gunships can be as well) purely due to having passive ~50% evasion, and over 100% with a cooldown? IMO, distortion shield's penalty needs to be much, much bigger than 30%. At least 50%, maybe even more.

 

Its 41% max passive evasion. And in many scenarios it isn't nearly that much. For instance burst laser at short range with pinpointing has 121% passive accuracy. You can increase it further with a very long lasting(20 seconds) active ability (wingman) for another 20% accuracy boost, neutralizing the passive evasion completely.

[xyrmagus]

Its 41% max passive evasion. And in many scenarios it isn't nearly that much. For instance burst laser at short range with pinpointing has 121% passive accuracy. You can increase it further with a very long lasting(20 seconds) active ability (wingman) for another 20% accuracy boost, neutralizing the passive evasion completely.

 

That's a very specific scenario. Strike fighters, for example, can't use burst lasers. And that only covers Burst lasers at VERY close ranges (less than 500 meters)... basically when people are humping satellites (which isn't scenario you typically engage a gunship, you are usually chasing them out in the open after they've been discovered in their hiding spot, using boosters on and off). Between 500 and 3k meters, you're looking at 91% base accuracy, and 76% for anything greater than 3k, so you're more likely actually missing 50-65% or so of your shots in the vast majority of the time (hence my comment of 50%). Almost no one uses the 20% accuracy because when you would pop it, they are poping their other cooldowns and running away. Most of those 20s are wasted, where as its much easier to sneak in at least the first few seconds of a DPS cooldown like 36% more crit (which, in the 1-roll system actually NEGATES evasion anyway, if I recall correctly). Anyone using anything OTHER than burst at <500 meters is still taking a massive hit. We can call evasion in its current form balanced if you want, but you can't really argue then that ships WITHOUT evasion will need a massive buff to compensate. As it is the effective HP of a strike fighter is ~half that of a scout when factoring in evasion (but ignoring benefits to maneuverability and speed).

Edited January 13, 2014 by xyrmagus

[Beakertanks]

I am just going to say that by and large Gunships put up higher damage numbers than other classes. This, however, is anecdotal. I know Bioware tracks these sorts of things to determine balance. My problem is not with individual gunships. My problem is with multiple gunships. If two of them are working together, they are very very difficult to defeat. Of course the argument could be made that the same is true for any ship class. TL;DR they seem overpowered and I would like an explanation by the devs on how they see them working out at this point.

[dancezwithnubz]

My problem is with multiple gunships. If two of them are working together, they are very very difficult to defeat. Of course the argument could be made that the same is true for any ship class.

 

multiple, co-ordinated (voip) gunships can go into a PUG and demolish all before them.

 

i've come up against squadrons of five+ gunships on occasion. I'm not sure if they were all communicating, certainly some of them were. when you're in a total pug against such opposition, all you can hope to do is destroy enough turrets & cap enough nodes to earn some decent requisition out of what will be a painful, albeit blessedly short, domination match.

 

i'm not complaining, i need to get sorted with some voip squadrons of my own. i can accept that part as 'working as intended'.