I am SICK AND TIRED of missing 41% of my shots because of Evasion

[Armonddd]

My rebuttal was to the claim that evasion makes the game 'luck-based'(as opposed to 'skill-based'). I pointed out that even with evasion replacing toughness as defense mechanic, the same amount of piloting skill is still required to deal with the enemy on a consistent basis.

 

So didn't address the argument at all, is what you're saying.

 

Skill-based vs luck-based play is not the same as how much skill is required in the game.

[Sharee]

Skill-based vs luck-based play is not the same as how much skill is required in the game.

 

Right. But he *did* make it sound like he thinks this makes the game require less skill:

 

Except those other mechanics don't take a notionally skill-based mechanic ("I have to actually work to hit someone") and move it to a luck-based mechanic (roll to hit).

 

Even with evasion, you still have to actually work to hit someone, no less than without evasion. Its just that sometimes you need to fire fewer shots to kill, sometimes more.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Sharee

[Caernos]

Even with evasion, you still have to actually work to hit someone, no less than without evasion. Its just that sometimes you need fewer hits to connect, sometimes more.

 

This is true to a degree. In order for any of my shots to connect at all I have to keep my crosshairs on the target (lead) while firing to do damage. It can be quite challenging with fighters maneuvering so yes, I have to work to keep my sights and weapons on the target.

 

The problem comes however in that even when I keep my crosshairs on the target perfectly (for example if going head to head or tailing a scout on an attack run) evasion means that there is a chance my shots will miss, no matter how skilled I am, no matter how hard I am working. Add in the 3 second evasion boost from DF (or it seems the more common 6 second boost) then I might as well be shooting my blasters into open space as it will become impossible for me to hit them while that boost is active, even with my crosshairs centered on the target.

 

Now, I am not trying to argue evasion should be removed or nerfed, I'm waiting to see what bombers can bring to the table and what the new EMP component/missile will do. I just thought I would try my hand at summing up the argument of skill over luck in this instance.

[DarthVindictus]

I think it's 16% now.

 

Improvement I guess, I won't be able to ONE SHOT a scout, but very close (well a crit will still one shot)

 

Though I still think that's a bit strong for burst lasers on T2 scouts. 25% penetration + blaster overcharge is extremely strong still and I still think T2 scouts are offensively too strong, not to mention 230 hull damage per cluster missile while it's up.

 

I think I'd rather just remove it from the game.

[Sharee]

The problem comes however in that even when I keep my crosshairs on the target perfectly (for example if going head to head or tailing a scout on an attack run) evasion means that there is a chance my shots will miss, no matter how skilled I am, no matter how hard I am working.

 

But the scout pays for that by being more fragile. It's a tradeoff. You see fewer hits land on him, even perfectly aimed ones, but you also need fewer hits to land to actually kill him.

 

Add in the 3 second evasion boost from DF (or it seems the more common 6 second boost) then I might as well be shooting my blasters into open space as it will become impossible for me to hit them while that boost is active, even with my crosshairs centered on the target.

 

You shouldn't fire blasters at him when you see him using DF. Pull up, boost, get distance, turn, lock cluster missile, and by the time the lock completes his DF will be gone and you can open blaster fire again.

[DarthVindictus]

They are making the shield bleed through down to 20% instead of 40% when fully upgraded. So only 20% of the damage will bleed through shields now.

 

Still seems like a waste of requisition to buy 20% shield pen on yourself with so many people running armor ignoring weapons Slug rails, burst lasers, rocket pods, concussion missiles, heavy lasers.. just.. why would you do that to yourself?

[Brewski]

I think it's 16% now.

 

Is that change confirmed on the PTS?

 

If so, I think it eliminates a lot of the complaints about burst damage from both Scouts and Gunships. At 16% Bypass is still a nice skill, but no longer the "must have" it is now for anyone trying to do burst damage.

 

And again this would show that the devs are listening and paying attention and making changes to account for balance issues. They are just taking their time and making sure to do it right rather than have a knee-jerk reaction and over-nerfing, which is just as bad (if not worse) than not making changes at all.

[tunewalker]

Still seems like a waste of requisition to buy 20% shield pen on yourself with so many people running armor ignoring weapons Slug rails, burst lasers, rocket pods, concussion missiles, heavy lasers.. just.. why would you do that to yourself?

 

 

No one runs Armor Peircing on Concussive missiles they have to give up target engines for that and no one in their right mind currently does that.

 

Beyond that yes there are a lot of people running armor peircing but there are just as many that arent. And while its letting 20% through its still stopping the other 80% with very high stopping power on both faces. With the addition of bombers capable of repairing hulls with Repair drones, its not so hard to get the Hull health back. All-in-all its a wait and see how it looks kind of thing. The first week or so its going to be worthless but as more people gear out bombers and more tactics start showing up it may very well enter the Meta game as a viable build.

[Zoom_VI]

Improvement I guess, I won't be able to ONE SHOT a scout, but very close (well a crit will still one shot)

 

Though I still think that's a bit strong for burst lasers on T2 scouts. 25% penetration + blaster overcharge is extremely strong still and I still think T2 scouts are offensively too strong, not to mention 230 hull damage per cluster missile while it's up.

 

I think I'd rather just remove it from the game.

 

So you mention that you will still be able to shot a scout in the first sentence. and in the second claim scouts are OP.

[hadoken]

The idea is they SHOULD be. They're not, of course. If they were we wouldn't be having this discussion, and pigs would be flying. Either way, that certain components are clearly inferior to others IS a problem.

 

No, they shouldn't always be viable. There's no reason for example for them to try to put powerful skills in the first 3/4 tiers of every skill tree so that the ******* that comes in and spreads all his points evenly between all three trees can be viable. Just because you can increase the shields or armor in a scout build doesn't mean you should try to do both to make it into a tank and then whine when that isn't anywhere close to effective as an evasion based one.

[Itkovian]

No, they shouldn't always be viable. There's no reason for example for them to try to put powerful skills in the first 3/4 tiers of every skill tree so that the ******* that comes in and spreads all his points evenly between all three trees can be viable. Just because you can increase the shields or armor in a scout build doesn't mean you should try to do both to make it into a tank and then whine when that isn't anywhere close to effective as an evasion based one.

 

You're talking about having bad combinations of talents. Sure, that's fine. But the talents themselves should still be useful! If a talent is pointless and nobody picks it, on ANY build, then that's a worthless talent and there is a problmm with the design.

 

Likewise, our point is NOT that all combination of component should be viable, of course not. It is that each component should be useful in some way, that each component should be useful in some builds. If a component is never chosen by any build, then it's a problem and needs to be looked at (and either it be modified to be more useful, or the reasons why it is never used investigated to find the underlying issue).

 

Likewise, if a given ship only has one viable build, that's also a problem.

 

And yes, it SHOULD be an option to be able to build your Flashfire to soak damage instead of evasion. If evasion is hands down the better option, then yes, that IS a problem. They shouldn't be giving us the option to tank up our scouts if it never was meant to be a serious option. To do otherwise is terrible, terrible game design, and I am convinced that the devs know better.

 

That said, it could be that bombers will make tankiness more useful for scouts, since mines (and EMP missiles) will make evasion less useful.

[Ramalina]

*Edit: Heh, sniped by Itkovian. I type faster when the cat isn't trying to help*

 

They're not talking about balancing everything in a way so that you can select components at random and have equivalent outcomes.

 

They're talking about lack of balance in cohesive builds.

 

So for the same scout, you could have a dogfighting build for a close turning fight, one for high speed slashing attack runs, and one that's balanced in terms of speed and maneuverability.

 

The three sorts of builds should demand different sets of components, and the overall effectiveness them should be approximately equal in the hands of a skilled pilot.

 

The problem is when a lot of the components don't fit well in any build in any ship, and one or two builds on one or two ships are clearly better than all other builds on all other ships.

 

If you can remove a lot of your components from the available options, and it doesn't really have an impact on gameplay, it's a strong indication that the design is at least somewhat screwed up.

 

Based on the number of components available I'd expect there to be at least 3 or 4 viable builds for each of the ship types. Balancing 18-24 builds is a lot of work, and to be honest the situation is not that bad right now. Gunship slug guns and ion guns need to be looked at as does heavy scout cooldown stacking (mostly as relates to burst dps). That's a pretty short list considering how many ships and components there are.

 

Also worth stating is that the magnitude of the disparity is not huge. Noticeable and annoying yes, but not flat out broken.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Ramalina

[Armonddd]

And again this would show that the devs are listening and paying attention and making changes to account for balance issues. They are just taking their time and making sure to do it right rather than have a knee-jerk reaction and over-nerfing, which is just as bad (if not worse) than not making changes at all.

 

No they're not, they're making a knee-jerk reaction to nerf what's currently a (mostly) balanced skill on everything but gunships instead of nerfing the core problem. It's called a band-aid fix - you stick a band-aid on the wound, then you hope it's enough to make the hurt go away. A couple weeks later, when people are still complaining about how stupid railguns are, they're going to be all surprised the first nerf didn't actually fix anything.

[Armonddd]

Based on the number of components available I'd expect there to be at least 3 or 4 viable builds for each of the ship types.

 

Would just like to add that despite all my ************, I actually have all three of my pub's scouts running different builds right now - one I developed myself (as much as that's possible) for satellite superiority and two I picked up from other players for dogfighting superiority (one focuses on massive burst and some armor penetration, the other sets up both kills and assists with sab probe, which is great against enemy scouts).

 

Between the three builds, I'm running three different primary and secondary weapons, two different systems, and I've somehow been convinced to pick up barrel roll. It's a surprising amount of diversity in both build and playstyle, and it's a lot of fun to learn the different strategies.

 

Of course, it wouldn't be an Armond post if I didn't rag on gunships somehow, so I guess I'll say something about gunships only having one dominant build outside of possibly using plasma for debuffs in something like ranked matches.

[Brewski]

No they're not, they're making a knee-jerk reaction to nerf what's currently a (mostly) balanced skill on everything but gunships instead of nerfing the core problem. It's called a band-aid fix - you stick a band-aid on the wound, then you hope it's enough to make the hurt go away. A couple weeks later, when people are still complaining about how stupid railguns are, they're going to be all surprised the first nerf didn't actually fix anything.

 

Are you kidding me? Bypass is way overpowered on everything. It's why it's possible to melt any ship out there in a few seconds using Burst + BO + Bypass.

 

Bypass has needed a nerf badly for quite a while, I would rate it even worse than the ion love-tap, which they are also attempting to address. 16% Shield penetration is still a great skill, and allows gunships to one shot scouts if they land a critical while Bypass is active, and still allows strikes and scouts to use it to great effect while not making it the must-have skill it is now.

 

Also, if it seems under-nerfed to you I still think that is a better approach than over doing it. Inching towards the right mark is a far better approach than over-shooting it, and having to back track.

 

Railguns and gunships are not the problem, and they are not going away. It's something everyone need to get used to, get over, or move on about.

[Armonddd]

Are you kidding me? Bypass is way overpowered on everything. It's why it's possible to melt any ship out there in a few seconds using Burst + BO + Bypass.

 

Burst cannons plus two cooldowns will always melt things. Burst cannons plus rocket pods with no cooldowns will also melt things. Come to that, burst cannons alone will melt things.

 

You know what else melts things? Sab probe. When people can't (or, in a lot of cases, won't) avoid shots, they blow up fast. GSF is a very fast-paced game. Most of the time when people blow up in two seconds or so, it's because they made no effort to get out of the way.

 

Bypass has needed a nerf badly for quite a while, I would rate it even worse than the ion love-tap, which they are also attempting to address.

 

You're kidding, right? I mean, one-shotting scouts from ridiculous range is stupid, but spamming low-damage hits on a turret to make it so your opponents can't do anything to prevent your team from capturing that satellite is just incomparably worse.

 

Railguns and gunships are not the problem, and they are not going away. It's something everyone need to get used to, get over, or move on about.

 

Railguns are indeed the problem. There is not a single railgun that does not, by its very nature, ignore mechanics that the entire rest of the game relies on. Until and unless those problems are fixed, railguns are going to be an immense negative for game balance - and the way people "get over or move on" from them is going to be by not playing.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Armonddd

[relicsurf]

I am typing on my tablet so please excuse the grammar mistakes. I have read all the above and honestly some of you just like to argue and complain. The bottom line is stop the madness, evasion needs to be redone. I see too many pilots surving on evasion vrs skill. Yes I have played both and I made the decision not to fly with evasion. GSF is fun but things need work, so when great suggestions are made stop shooting them down and allow the ideas to flourish. Evasion is not the only issue, there are many, however this thread is about evasion. Bottom line it needs to be fixed, stop justifying why you run evasion, fly your ship without it and I challenge you to see if you are still a great pilot.

[DarthVindictus]

No one runs Armor Peircing on Concussive missiles they have to give up target engines for that and no one in their right mind currently does that.

 

Beyond that yes there are a lot of people running armor peircing but there are just as many that arent. And while its letting 20% through its still stopping the other 80% with very high stopping power on both faces. With the addition of bombers capable of repairing hulls with Repair drones, its not so hard to get the Hull health back. All-in-all its a wait and see how it looks kind of thing. The first week or so its going to be worthless but as more people gear out bombers and more tactics start showing up it may very well enter the Meta game as a viable build.

 

You go ahead and tell that to me when I or another gunship slug rails you for 1056 hull damage. You take 2 shots now like a scout instead of 3.

 

Then you'll blame it on GS's being OP, rather than realizing it was your own choice of components that screwed you more than anything.

 

Really though, armor penetration is so widespread an way too potent. I'd run damage reduction armoring if it wasn't for the fact that every ship has easy sources of armor pen. Gunships with slug rail, flashfires/stings with burst lasers and rocket pods, novadrives/blackbolts with rocket pods, and strike fighters with heavy lasers. Are you really going to risk that you'll have matches with no flashfires/stings, no gunships, and no scouts except those running sabotage droids and sensor beacons (lol?), and all the strike fighters are running quad/ion/rapid and cluster missiles?

[Armonddd]

You go ahead and tell that to me when I or another gunship slug rails you for 1056 hull damage. You take 2 shots now like a scout instead of 3.

 

Then you'll blame it on GS's being OP, rather than realizing it was your own choice of components that screwed you more than anything.

 

It's actually both. Burst lasers crit for less damage right next to the target than a fully charged slug does on a non-crit from almost four times the range (where it's much easier to line up the shot and much harder for the target to engage you)... and slugs inherently get both 100% armor penetration and 30% shield piercing, whereas bursts have to choose between 100% armor penetration and 9% shield piercing. Balanced? I think not.

[Sharee]

I have read all the above and honestly some of you just like to argue and complain. The bottom line is stop the madness, evasion needs to be redone...

 

<looks at thread title>

 

Oh the irony.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Sharee

[Brewski]

You're kidding, right? I mean, one-shotting scouts from ridiculous range is stupid, but spamming low-damage hits on a turret to make it so your opponents can't do anything to prevent your team from capturing that satellite is just incomparably worse.

Both of these issues are being addressed, so I fail to see the problem. The Bypass nerf will make it so maxed slug guns can't one shot maxed scouts without a critical, and the Ion love tap is being addressed by the charge time fix. One or both may prove to need more adjustment down the road, but these are both a step in the right direction and prove that the devs are paying attention. They just don't share your belief that radical and immediate change must be done for anything you don't like. (Thank god.)

 

Railguns are indeed the problem. There is not a single railgun that does not, by its very nature, ignore mechanics that the entire rest of the game relies on. Until and unless those problems are fixed, railguns are going to be an immense negative for game balance - and the way people "get over or move on" from them is going to be by not playing.

There is not a single railgun that is not a mechanic this game relies on. They were planned and balanced into the very nature of the game, and are here to stay. If you choose to stop playing, that is your right, but predictions of doom for the game based on the existence of gunships are way overwrought.

 

I do not fly gunships because I suck at them. However I also do not die any more often to gunships than I do to strike fighters or scouts despite the fact that I primarily fly a ship that can be one shot from 15k away without warning. I kill gunships, they kill me. Fun is had. Where's the problem?

 

Wrenching it back on topic....

Like it or not, evasion falls into the same category. It's a core mechanic that is not going away or being radically altered. Small tweaks are needed and will, I believe, be made, but altering such a core mechanic at this point in the release would cause way more trouble than it's worth. More energy needs to be spent on trying to find the right tweaks to bring things into balance rather than arguing for the removal of things that will not be removed. It's wasted time and energy, and not productive.

[Armonddd]

Both of these issues are being addressed, so I fail to see the problem. The Bypass nerf will make it so maxed slug guns can't one shot maxed scouts without a critical, and the Ion love tap is being addressed by the charge time fix. One or both may prove to need more adjustment down the road, but these are both a step in the right direction and prove that the devs are paying attention. They just don't share your belief that radical and immediate change must be done for anything you don't like. (Thank god.)

 

Neither of those are going to be anywhere near enough. I've enumerated on this multiple times in multiple places. All railguns are inherently broken because they can't effectively be countered by other ships, are significantly more powerful than other weapons, and are the easiest weapons in the game to use. Until those issues are addressed, bandaid nerfs like these are going to solve nothing.

 

There is not a single railgun that is not a mechanic this game relies on. They were planned and balanced into the very nature of the game, and are here to stay.

 

They were? It sure as hell doesn't feel like it. They literally ignore mechanics that are crucial to other guns. Leading your target, having line of sight on your target, being close to your target so you can maximize your damage, hell, even actually aiming at your priority target - all of these are mechanics railguns ignore to various degrees.

 

I kill gunships, they kill me. Fun is had. Where's the problem?

 

If you have fun being able to do almost literally nothing because you have no power to engines, no power to weapons, and no power to shields, good on you.

 

Like it or not, evasion falls into the same category. It's a core mechanic that is not going away or being radically altered. Small tweaks are needed and will, I believe, be made, but altering such a core mechanic at this point in the release would cause way more trouble than it's worth. More energy needs to be spent on trying to find the right tweaks to bring things into balance rather than arguing for the removal of things that will not be removed. It's wasted time and energy, and not productive.

 

Evasion also absolutely needs to be removed. It's a classic problem among game designers - when there's a problem, the designers say "what do I need to add?" instead of "what do I need to remove?" It actually extends beyond game design into any sort of art or literature design, but that's slightly besides the point.

 

There is no logical argument for the devs to not remove broken mechanics unless they simply do not see why they are so broken. The point of updating the game is to make it better. The point of the devs spending their time and money on things is to efficiently improve the game. There is no more efficient way to do this than to remove problematic mechanics. I wouldn't even complain if they took the lazy way out and converted all evasion to armor. These things are just that problematic, and removing them will just be so huge an advantage, that any other course of action is simply inefficient.

 

Besides, this isn't even release. We're still in "early access" - which means we're paying to beta test the system. The most important part of a beta test is player feedback, and that's why I'm so vocal about removing these garbage mechanics.

[DEATHICIDE]

Maybe you should have addressed the gunship who apparently was able to smoke you enough times through your evasion build to drain you.

 

Use your maneuverability and speed to close and blow it up.

 

I have no problem doing it in a star, pike, or either scout, even in my own gunship.

 

So why do you "scout pro"?

 

No offense but... seriously?

[DarthVindictus]

It's actually both. Burst lasers crit for less damage right next to the target than a fully charged slug does on a non-crit from almost four times the range (where it's much easier to line up the shot and much harder for the target to engage you)... and slugs inherently get both 100% armor penetration and 30% shield piercing, whereas bursts have to choose between 100% armor penetration and 9% shield piercing. Balanced? I think not.

 

It's balanced by the fact that if you get within 5000m range of a gunship their best option is to make a run for it, in the slowest ship in the game, because their turning is even worse, and they don't have any secondary missiles they can fire on the run much less lock on fire and forget.

 

You can get from 15000 to 5000m in one barrel roll in under 3s.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Evasion also absolutely needs to be removed.

 

I'd certainly be in favor of this and personally I think it should just be replaced with a buff to both engine speed and turning (say 10% each since that seems to be the standard buff amount for those two stats). It'd just be replacing RNG evasion with a stat buff to allow a player to be better able to manually take evasion. If you're good it'll be a nice buff, if you have an obsession with flying in straight lines it won't be that great.

 

At the very least though it needs to be toned down significantly to make it an alternate, but in no way superior, option to damage reduction armor. Between evasion protecting both hull and shields and there not being a 100% passive counter to it the way armor piercing counters damage reduction evasion is inherently better than damage reduction armor in it's current form.