Gunshipes Ruining Starfighter

[DonWild]

Just ran into a scouts worst nightmare. Flying 12 Empire ships, 4 scouts, 5 SF's and 3 gunships...against a premade Republican squadron of 6 gunships, 4 SFs and 2 scouts. The park 2 gunships in railgun range of the satellites, both flying wingman for the other and bug zapping every scout that comes near a satellite. They fly cover for any of their own smaller craft. The only way to take out a pair over any of the three satellites is to essentially throw every ship you have against the pair...which means while you're going after them and losing a third of your force, the other six Pubs are taking every point. Just went thru 5 scenarios lost every one with a high score of just over 300 points once.. rest of the time it was under 200. This isn't just bad flying, every ship we brought was either topped out or almost topped out. If you fly 4 ships at a pair of gunships, you might take out one...but you'll lose all 4 of your ships doing it. The missiles can be outrun or evaded but the railgun is just death. I can only see two possible balances to this; either nerf the railgun by dropping it's dps, its range or its rate of fire, or limiting the number of gunships in any given fight to a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio. As long as people throw up squadrons that are half gunships, the whole thing is going to degenerate into gunship fights; scouts just can't survive and I doubt SF's can.

[dancezwithnubz]

Depends.

 

If I'm scoping someone else and you surprise me from the side or back, the game's afoot, escape is part of the game, it also depends on how far you can stay on me. If I can't get rid of you by any other way than to go to my spawn ship and you're using cluster missiles, yeah, it stops being fun and starts being annoying at that point (see Tier 2 scouts), I can avoid direct fire weapons, but avoiding cluster missiles takes cooldowns that I run out of eventually.

 

But what I HATE, is when I'm scoped on a T2 scout at max range, charging a shot, and then they barrel roll directly at me and are within 5000m before my charge is finished, and because of their 71% evade chance during barrel roll, I miss my shot, and they're in my face.

 

Really makes me wish dampening worked properly.

 

scouts have only two options against gunships: stay out of range altogether or get in close and fast and force the gunship to start moving.

 

before you start whining about our evasion through barrel roll, remember, you can instagib us.

[reclipsed]

Deal with them? Lol.

Blow them up as they try to charge their little pansy gun up to take cheap shots on pilots actually trying to dogfight?

Not a lot of strategy behind that.

 

Keep enjoying your talentless "sniper class" ship, Chunk.

 

And what ship do you use to dogfight? Are you using a Scout with the burst setup?

[Sangrar]

I just love how anyone who plays a gunship is called talentless, apparently since I play gunship I am a talentless horrible person even though I play a lot with both the other ship types (not even the flashfire or pike just the regular default ships, saving requisition to try the bomber when it comes out on live servers) because I play a gunship, which I was a fan of since even when only the name came out ( I thought anything that had the name gunship already suited my trooper nicely) apparently I am a talentless creep and just because I blow up a lot of other gunships on both my strike and scout as well as blow up other strikes and scouts on them, because I play a gunship it means I am a horrible player who likes the "easy" ship.

 

 

Seriously though, as a gunship pilot when a scout or strike is within close range (about 2000 meters or less) it limits the effectiveness of my weapons and I am easily outturned and can quickly be defeated like that, I have noticed the same thing when I am on my scout or strike fighter, once I am closed in on that gunship and am just flying around it the gunship doesn't turn fast enough to get me til I at least burn a hole through his shields, its not that hard or impossible. Also, when you see the glow in the background of a railgun charging, don't just sit there, keep moving and if possible do some erratic maneuver like barrel roll to make them hopefully miss and have to charge up again. Another thing, I have heard in previous threads shouting for a "railgun detected" thing, just to ruin that fantasy, I could as a gunship just charge the beam aiming 1 centimeter to the left and then at the last split second turn it on you before the first letters of the warning even come through so hope I crushed that fantasy.

 

Lastly, I do agree that ion cannon should only debuff based on amount of charge and possibly replace barrel roll with some other ability to break missile lock (even though the other ships have the exact same ability and have a lot more engine power to back it up, seems balanced to me, I don't know) as well as nerfing bypass a bit, but not to the point where it is completely useless either, but that is as much as I am willing to budge on the notion that gunships need a nerf, that's it.

[Sinseia]

And what ship do you use to dogfight? Are you using a Scout with the burst setup?

 

Nope, Star Guard? I guess. I hardly care what its name is.

 

"None of these are X-Wings" is all that really stands out in my head.

[BuckeyeChris]

Individual gunships aren't so bad but I think there might be a problem in how well they stack. They can cover each other well and be extremely difficult to approach. Yeah zigzagging towards one is a reasonably reliable way to take one out but it doesn't evade the other gunships covering the original. And when they're covering each other, they're ALL hard to approach. Especially when all they have to do is tap you with an ion railgun to set up the bigger shots.

The only real disadvantage is mobility but if they're set up on a satellite they control they don't need much mobility.

[renegadeimp]

Individual gunships aren't so bad but I think there might be a problem in how well they stack. They can cover each other well and be extremely difficult to approach. Yeah zigzagging towards one is a reasonably reliable way to take one out but it doesn't evade the other gunships covering the original. And when they're covering each other, they're ALL hard to approach. Especially when all they have to do is tap you with an ion railgun to set up the bigger shots.

The only real disadvantage is mobility but if they're set up on a satellite they control they don't need much mobility.

 

That is a very very rare scenario and hardly ever happens.

[blade_mercurial]

That is a very very rare scenario and hardly ever happens.

 

So you're agreeing that gunships can be OP in rare circumstances, but as it 'hardly ever happens' we should just leave it OP? Maybe its rare on your server, but on Ebon Hawk pubs often fly 3-4 GS and they can cover 2 sats on shipyards map (A & B) and if they're smart, take out anyone trying to approach them or the sats...kinda easy-win strat there.

 

Frankly, I think a few of the upgrades need tweaking, such as 20% crit chance on railgun, the energy drain on ion rail, and that's probably it. Of course, the flashfires/stings are really good too and is it coincidence that they and gunships have distortion field and burst lasers and these are the ships that get the most complaints about being OP?

[renegadeimp]

So you're agreeing that gunships can be OP in rare circumstances, but as it 'hardly ever happens' we should just leave it OP? Maybe its rare on your server, but on Ebon Hawk pubs often fly 3-4 GS and they can cover 2 sats on shipyards map (A & B) and if they're smart, take out anyone trying to approach them or the sats...kinda easy-win strat there.

 

Frankly, I think a few of the upgrades need tweaking, such as 20% crit chance on railgun, the energy drain on ion rail, and that's probably it. Of course, the flashfires/stings are really good too and is it coincidence that they and gunships have distortion field and burst lasers and these are the ships that get the most complaints about being OP?

 

ALL ships can be OP in rare circumstances. Saying they cant is just pointless.

 

Just remember, the gunship only has its strong damage to rely on. if you lower that damage, then theyd better get good manoeuvrability and defence to make up for it.

 

Also, read your closing statement. You are saying 2 types of ship are OP, yet you name 1 skill. Ever thought its that skill that needs to be brought into line and not an entire ship?

Edited January 15, 2014 by renegadeimp

[Eldrenath]

That is a very very rare scenario and hardly ever happens.

 

Speak for yourself and your server. Some matches on my server (maybe 25%) are absolute gunship bonanzas. I was in a match last night where 6 of the opponents were running gunships. Getting a gunship was EXTREMELY difficult, as soon as you ducked out from cover to get one, you got blasted by 3 others. It happened the whole match. We got some down, but anywhere in the open was a no man's land. You pop out and instantly got an Ion cannon love tap which crippled you, then you were blasted to bits by the 4 other gunships covering the area.

 

This does not happen all the time, but to say it hardly ever happens is simply not true. It absolutely does happen and leads to a very boring and frustrating match. I've solved the problem by dropping out of any match where the initial lineup shows 4 or more gunships on the opposing side. I know it won't be fun, so I drop the match before it begins.

 

When bombers come out this might get better, I have no idea. It's possible that gunships will be dealing with bombers. But as of right now, matches with tons of gunships absolutely do happen and they are not fun.

[renegadeimp]

Thats going to happen in pugs, which is why you need ... wait for it... Coordination and communication, in order to counter them. The way you and others describe it, youd think that this happens every single match. it doesnt, and youd be lying if you tried to say otherwise.

 

Again, gunships are easily countered, even if half the team is flying one.

[Eldrenath]

Thats going to happen in pugs, which is why you need ... wait for it... Coordination and communication, in order to counter them. The way you and others describe it, youd think that this happens every single match. it doesnt, and youd be lying if you tried to say otherwise.

 

Again, gunships are easily countered, even if half the team is flying one.

 

It would also be lying to say it "hardly ever happens". And yes, coordination would make it better. If you can communicate, through chat WITHOUT voice, during a match while flying around, to get 6 pilots to go together to take out gunships, yes it would work.

 

The problem is that gunships DON'T need that kind of coordination to dominate an area. There range is so huge that if there are enough of them then just by the nature of the maps they'll all be able to cover each other. They don't even have to coordinate. They pick their spots and go there. Since their range is so huge they don't have to move and they see anyone flying out to get the other gunships. No coordination needed, their massive range and Ion Cannon love taps are enough to almost eliminate the need for communication and coordination.

 

If you think a PUG in the heat of a match can get enough communication going through text to take out a group of 4 gunships dominating an area then you're simply not right. It won't happen. It COULD happen, but it won't. L2P, blah blah blah. Doesn't change the fact that it isn't fun for most PUG players (unless they're in the gunships) and it will make people stop queuing. It's not realistic and it simply doesn't work in practice. The proof is in the pudding (on my server anyway). I see the same regulars over and over and over and over. Rarely do I see new players queue and then keep queueing. I play 5-10 matches a night every night. And when I play pub side, 50%+ of my matches are against pubs because the imps don't queue anymore. And it's always the same folks by and large. New players are coming in, getting destroyed constantly by gunships, and just not coming back.

 

Sure, they could L2P, but the L2P process is so extremely frustrating and NOT fun that they'd rather not L2P. So the L2Stop Queueing.

[Kain_Turinbar]

Speak for yourself and your server. Some matches on my server (maybe 25%) are absolute gunship bonanzas. I was in a match last night where 6 of the opponents were running gunships. Getting a gunship was EXTREMELY difficult, as soon as you ducked out from cover to get one, you got blasted by 3 others. It happened the whole match. We got some down, but anywhere in the open was a no man's land. You pop out and instantly got an Ion cannon love tap which crippled you, then you were blasted to bits by the 4 other gunships covering the area.

 

This does not happen all the time, but to say it hardly ever happens is simply not true. It absolutely does happen and leads to a very boring and frustrating match. I've solved the problem by dropping out of any match where the initial lineup shows 4 or more gunships on the opposing side. I know it won't be fun, so I drop the match before it begins.

 

When bombers come out this might get better, I have no idea. It's possible that gunships will be dealing with bombers. But as of right now, matches with tons of gunships absolutely do happen and they are not fun.

 

Harbinger? I was in a match like that last night and it was insane. I've never seen a 12v12 before where 6-8 guys were in a GS before and it was a very weird match. I must have been Ion love tapped 30x in that match.

 

It was interesting finally getting to play as a gunship after a month of GSF play as well. I still don't think they are overpowered but in my first time out in one I set a new personal best in damage (37k) and had a hilarious stat sheet of 2 kills 13 assists.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Kain_Turinbar

[Fractalsponge]

I haven't seen that many matches with many many gunships. There are two things I've noticed about the ones I have seen:

1) The side with the most gunships tends to lose, because the numbers at the nodes are badly reduced.

2) The side with the best players tends to win, regardless of how many of a given ship type there are.

 

Let's face it, premades of veteran players on voice chat will tend to dominate a given area of the map unless they get hit with another coordinated premade or a few exceptional solo players, regardless of what they are flying. This is far more important to the outcome of matches than ship mechanics except in the most broken talents.

 

That said, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times in which multiple gunships have been able to shut me down, and I'm at 400+ matches. Most gunship players are actually not very good, and can't use their ships to max ability. Last night there was a shipyards match where the pub side rolled 4-6 gunships, and I killed 3 in a row right outside their spawn in a scout. If they were all great players, then sure, I'd probably have been toast, but I would have been toast solo charging them in anything if they were really good.

 

Getting some better matchmaking (or a better mandatory tutorial or something) is more important than complaining about gunships/stings/flashfires/whatever.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Fractalsponge

[SawneyRath]

All Gunship haters will be worshipping them after Bombers are released... If Bombers are nearly what they were in the beta, a Gunship will be the best way to take them out lol.

[Eldrenath]

Getting some better matchmaking (or a better mandatory tutorial or something) is more important than complaining about gunships/stings/flashfires/whatever.

 

This is a pretty good point, to be honest. And you're probably right--I have been in matches with multiple gunships and been able to take them out if they aren't good. But if multiple of them have fully upgraded ion cannons it is a good bit tougher, than slow can be devastating. Even if you're not flying in a straight line at the gunship (which everyone knows is not a great plan) if you are approaching another and get that ion cannon slow from the love tap maneuver, your likelihood of success falls precipitously.

 

But your point definitely remains 100% valid. Better matchmaking is really needed. Since most folks tend to agree that skill / experience > gear matchmaking becomes very crucial. If new players are regularly pitted against experienced teams its going to be a frustrating experience for them and the barriers to entry for new players will limit the number of new players that queue regularly. Last night was the first time that premiums were in, and I can say that my personal experience last night was that there was no matchmaking going on or if there is then there aren't enough players to make it work. When I queued up on imperial side, every match I was in had at least 50% imperial players with 2-3 ships (with names I'd never seen in over 500 matches) against regular republic players that I have seen in many matches that have lots of experience, skill AND heavily upgraded ships. The matches I was in were very rough for new players on imperial side.

 

But I must be honest, one night possibly isn't a good sample size just yet. But since it was the first night of access for a lot of players, I was hoping that matchmaking might be lumping in newer players together. But I wasn't seeing that--when I was on pub side or imp side, I saw extremely lopsided matches. I knew from looking at the names and ships before the matches that it would be lopsided and indeed it was extremely lopsided.

 

But as much as sometimes gunship bonanza matches can be very frustrating, I absolutely must agree with your above quote that better matchmaking is far more important than buffs and nerfs.

[ptwonline]

All Gunship haters will be worshipping them after Bombers are released... If Bombers are nearly what they were in the beta, a Gunship will be the best way to take them out lol.

 

Actually, I suspect people will just hate the bombers, not praise the Gunships.

 

We're giong to see a lot of complaints that Bioware added bombers just to justify their Gunships, and that Gunships are still hated.

[RiVaN_]

1) How to build a Gunship hunter

My Build: FlashFire

Copilot ability that adds 30% sheild piercing to guns.

Quad Laser Cannons (Mastered)

Cluster Missile (Mastered)

Blaster Overcharge (Mastered)

Damage Capacitor (Mastered)

Add in what ever else you want in the rest of your components, but this will give you max damage over time.

 

2) Learn how to hunt a gunship.

 

See unsuspecting GS sitting still and doing it's thing, if they are not facing/targeting you approach them diagonally from below and to the side. If they see you get in behind and above them.

Once you are at about 6500 meters switch full power to guns, at 5900 meters pop blaster overcharge and your copilot ability. As soon at the GS is in range open up with blasters and start locking on your cluster missiles, fire them when locked.

BOOM!! Unless the GS has fortress shield you just Killed that space sniper.

 

The ideal scenario is that you approach the GS from above and behind so if they are smart and the flee as soon as you start shooting you can chase them, keep missile lock and kill them anyway.

 

My point is that once I start to open up on a GS they have the length of time it takes me to lock my cluster missile (about 5 sec) before I kill them. GunShips aren't the problem, players that don't use tactical skills in combat are.

Gunships are sitting ducks, unless the Gunner is skilled. Even then I whittle them down enough that my wing man can avenge me.

Edited January 15, 2014 by RiVaN_

[ptwonline]

I haven't seen that many matches with many many gunships.

 

That will change with Gunships just now being available to more players, and so they will be levelling them up.

 

For now it won;t be too bad, but once they start getting more experience and gear, all those gunships will make matches a nightmare.

 

This morning in an 8v8 the other side actually had 7 gunships (and 1 strike fighter). I knew something was wrong when the first satellite I was at was 2 of us in Scouts vs 4 Gunships, and when I went to another satellite they were dominating again with 3 gunships. We kept blowing up the Gunships but as they respawned and came back they were naturally at range and so in a perfect place to nail you as you try to take out the others. We won because I finally had enough, brought out my own Gunship, and blew them all up one by one because I had better upgrades and more experience. But in a few days that won't work anymore.

 

Prepare for mega-complaints about Gunships.

[okiobe]

Teams that stack many gunships only do so because the other team isn't countering them. Like many previous post have stated, scouts are a great counter to gunships. I've been in matches where the other team starts out with 3-4 gunships and by the end of the match there was only one flying a gunship. On my flashfire I look for them them at 20-30k m out and barrel roll behind them and burst them down. Many times I don't even use missiles because that causes them to barrel roll away.

 

Gunships are easy to play only if they aren't hunted.

 

Edit: I do agree that the ion cannon power drain needs to be tweaked. Barrel roll for them is fine. The CD could be extended a little.

Edited January 15, 2014 by okiobe
add comment.

[RiVaN_]

Teams that stack many gunships only do so because the other team isn't countering them. Like many previous post have stated, scouts are a great counter to gunships. I've been in matches where the other team starts out with 3-4 gunships and by the end of the match there was only one flying a gunship. On my flashfire I look for them them at 20-30k m out and barrel roll behind them and burst them down. Many times I don't even use missiles because that causes them to barrel roll away.

 

Gunships are easy to play only if they aren't hunted.

 

Amen Brother!

If you are against a team that knows how to hunt a gunship the the GS is actually a very challenging role to play.

[Kain_Turinbar]

That will change with Gunships just now being available to more players, and so they will be levelling them up.

 

For now it won;t be too bad, but once they start getting more experience and gear, all those gunships will make matches a nightmare.

 

This morning in an 8v8 the other side actually had 7 gunships (and 1 strike fighter). I knew something was wrong when the first satellite I was at was 2 of us in Scouts vs 4 Gunships, and when I went to another satellite they were dominating again with 3 gunships. We kept blowing up the Gunships but as they respawned and came back they were naturally at range and so in a perfect place to nail you as you try to take out the others. We won because I finally had enough, brought out my own Gunship, and blew them all up one by one because I had better upgrades and more experience. But in a few days that won't work anymore.

 

Prepare for mega-complaints about Gunships.

 

The best way to level a ship isn't to play that ship constantly though. That would take forever to get upgrades......when I was new I thought that was how it worked and after you use up all of your daily bonus even a winning match where you did great gets you maybe 750 requisition or so. Get put on a bad team, have a bad match, etc and lose and maybe get as low as 300-500. Once I started flying all ships enough every day to burn through all the of the daily 500 bonus and then use that and the DAILY, win 1/lose 2 matches quest to convert to Fleet Req I went from from gaining 2500-5000 per day in the ship I was tring to upgrade (only play a few GSF matches a night usually then go back to gear progression) to 9-11k. If its a weekend and I can play longer after the daily is done and I've used up my bonus on all ships then I fly the CM market ships for their inherent bonus. If I played smart like this from the beginning I would probably have 3 ships mastered now instead of 1.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Kain_Turinbar

[Icebergy]

If by 'ruining' you mean 'giving me too many free kills on my scout', then yes, gunships are ruining GSF.

[ptwonline]

Teams that stack many gunships only do so because the other team isn't countering them. Like many previous post have stated, scouts are a great counter to gunships. I've been in matches where the other team starts out with 3-4 gunships and by the end of the match there was only one flying a gunship. On my flashfire I look for them them at 20-30k m out and barrel roll behind them and burst them down. Many times I don't even use missiles because that causes them to barrel roll away.

 

Gunships are easy to play only if they aren't hunted.

 

Edit: I do agree that the ion cannon power drain needs to be tweaked. Barrel roll for them is fine. The CD could be extended a little.

 

They were stacking that many gunships because they only just got access to them, and wanted to level them up. ALL the players on the other side had 3 ships, and from what I saw 7 of the 8 chose gunships.

 

And you know how this works: you have a couple of people on your side killed, now they have to respawn and fly back, and in the meantime the other side has a numerical advantage and can more easily kill the remainder, making them have to repsawn and fly back. And so the numerical advantage can often remain. It's not that people weren't trying to take out the gunships. It's that they were always outnumbered by the gunships, which makes it incredibly hard to take them out. While you're trying to take out one the other one nails you.

 

It was only after I hopped into my own gunship and took out 3 at one node that we finally recovered and the pattern of respawns vs full team changed.

[RiVaN_]

If by 'ruining' you mean 'giving me too many free kills on my scout', then yes, gunships are ruining GSF.

 

Says one of the master GS hunters of JC!

 

There is only one opponent I don't like to see in a Pub v Pub match and that is you!

But I'm always happy to have you on my team.

Edited January 15, 2014 by RiVaN_