Barrel Roll

[Kuciwalker]

The range is only a significant advantage against enemies that are engaged with your other allies. Against an enemy that is engaged with you, the range is at best balanced and at worse a disadvantage. This is because railguns are virtually unusable within 5km against intelligent opponents, and it is very, very easy to close the other 10km without being hit.

[Zoom_VI]

not really the best way I have found to approach a gunship is to do a barrel roll (note: not the component) since a roll allows me to move forward a decent clip while also moving across my vertical and horizontal axis at the same time.

 

Or at least such a maneuver would be difficult to hit if railguns had to deal with lead indicators, unfortunately I have been shot out of the sky enough times to know that hitting targets boosting a full speed is easy enough at range. I have had cases where I have been moving on a erratic pattern perpendicular to the gunship at full boost, and still been easily shot. So strike or scout could never do that because my horizontal motion would have put my lead indicator three km over but yaknow railguns don't have to worry about such things.

 

Railguns break the game, they don't obey any of the rules that every other weapon obeys, and that's before you get into things like ion rail and native shield piercing.

[Ramalina]

Emphasis mine. I don't really agree with this. I think for most pairings, in 1v1 with equal skill it should be a stalemate. I am certain that if I didn't have to deal with other fighters, my scout would pretty much never die to a lone gunship. The railgun is very easy to dodge when you are looking for it and have the kind of thruster pool a scout does.

 

I also think that scout builds shouldn't just automatically, regardless of build, get super-duper-amazing-better-than-everyone-else long-range endurance. There are specific components on a scout that improve your endurance; it should be a meaningful tradeoff to forgo those for dogfighting components. My Flashfire runs barrel roll (with speed boost), regen thrusters, and C2-N2 as engineering companion. That's the maximum possible endurance build. If you build yours with retro thrusters (with turning boost), turning thrusters, and T7-01, that should mean you just aren't able to do some things the endurance build can. One of those things can and should include "keep up with a perfectly piloted gunship that is devoting all of its resources to running away".

 

Gunship engine choices being limited to BR are a problem, but it should be solved by massively buffing the other components. Interdiction drive, for example, is just objectively terrible. And weapon power converter should just be removed from the game, there are essentially no circumstances ever where it could possibly make sense for a gunship to, on the margin, trade mobility for additional weapon energy.

 

When I was talking about engine component choices I was talking about all choices on all ships, we don't all choose to live in the cockpits of our gunships.

 

Really engine component choice boils down to 1) Barrel roll, woo hoo!, 2) Koigran/Snap/Retro because either you're focused on dogfighting performance or because barrel roll isn't an option on that ship and, 3) crud, why can't this ship have a decent engine component (or what was I smoking when I made this build). Or to put it another way, comparative engine component balance is extremely out of whack.

 

There are clear mobility/maneuverability gaps between ship classes in GSF. For the most part if you choose to maximize mobility/maneuverability upgrades on one class you can get it to a point where it's about the same or slightly better than the baseline stats for the next better class. So if you call it 4 levels of maneuverability running from bomber through scout, you can pick up about half a level worth by making other performance tradeoffs. Only with a gunship and barrel roll it's more like a whole level worth. It works in the reverse too. Barrel roll is a bit too good as a gap closer for a strike or scout heading in at a gunship.

 

As far as movement in general goes for GSF, I think baseline speeds could use a slight buff, boost and barrel roll could use slight and moderate nerfs respectively. Overemphasis on cooldown based mobility (and I'm including boost in this because it works much more like a cooldown than like a real fuel consumption based afterburner model) devalues the class based differences in speed, endurance and maneuverability.

 

With things as they are now, a gunship with anything other than barrel roll is too vulnerable, a gunship with barrel roll is too mobile, and strike fighters of all stripes are slightly under-resourced when it comes to speed and endurance.

 

What gunships really need is for components other than BR to not completely suck for a gunship (it would be nice to have worthwhile options on other ship classes too, but they don't need that the way gunships do). Then it's fine to nerf the overgenerous mobility gains that come from barrel roll. They may also need slightly more capacity to boost in that case, or at least an option to choose between additional boost capacity and something else worthwhile.

I'm thinking like 5-10% less endurance for gunships fleeing with barrel roll, but maybe more baseline boost endurance and a hefty increase in survivability/escapability if the gunship chose something other than barrel roll.

 

I'm arguing for a slight speed/endurance nerf to barrel roll gunships in addition to buffs to other engine components, because I think that the class is designed to not need to run all that much, so if you give it mobility that competes with a baseline scout's mobility then you probably wind up having the gunship being overtuned and you have to come back with a second round of nerfs.

 

Strikes could use a slight to modest buff to either engine pool, engine power regen, or boost efficiency. As long as a strike has engine power available to boost it's fine, but as soon as it runs out it's stuck for quite a while. It's a lot like flying a gunship without barrel roll, only without the 'reach out and touch someone' style weaponry to compensate.

 

As far as a scout with baseline stats goes, it should definitely be able to keep up with a gunship that's running as hard as it can. In fact it should be able to at least gradually close the gap. It should also take long enough to close that the scout pilot starts wondering if it's really worth the effort, and the gunship should have options so that if it decides to stand and fight it's not one sided in favor of the scout.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Ramalina

[Altheran]

I have had cases where I have been moving on a erratic pattern perpendicular to the gunship at full boost, and still been easily shot. So strike or scout could never do that because my horizontal motion would have put my lead indicator three km over but yaknow railguns don't have to worry about such things.

 

Yeah, that part is pretty annoying. One would think that having erratic trajectories would hinders the one shooting at him, but in the end does not.

 

The only solution I found is to follow a bent trajectory to hope getting out of the Gunship's aiming reticle while still away, and then diving towards him when the range closes... But that means a longer use of afterburners, that also letting a bit of time to the Gunship to think about what to do.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Altheran

[reclipsed]

R.I.P. in peace, barrel rolls.

[Kuciwalker]

not really the best way I have found to approach a gunship is to do a barrel roll (note: not the component) since a roll allows me to move forward a decent clip while also moving across my vertical and horizontal axis at the same time.

 

Or at least such a maneuver would be difficult to hit if railguns had to deal with lead indicators, unfortunately I have been shot out of the sky enough times to know that hitting targets boosting a full speed is easy enough at range. I have had cases where I have been moving on a erratic pattern perpendicular to the gunship at full boost, and still been easily shot. So strike or scout could never do that because my horizontal motion would have put my lead indicator three km over but yaknow railguns don't have to worry about such things.

 

Why don't you try actually flying a gunship for some non-trivial amount of time before you speculate on what is or isn't hard for them to hit?

 

Flying erratically is not going to help you much, and is possibly why you have so much difficulty. The best and simplest way to make yourself hard to hit is to maximize your angular velocity relative to the gunship - i.e. fly laterally in a straight line at your fastest speed. This will rapidly take you towards the edge of the gunship's firing arc, which you want because A) railguns have a crippling tracking penalty and B) the firing arc is comparatively narrow. This forces the gunship to zoom out, recenter, and zoom back in - all of which takes precious fractions of a second, and may have to be done repeatedly.

 

This pattern has served me well against every gunship on our server I've run into. (Granted, I have not yet flown vs Tsuki in my scout.)

[Armonddd]

Or to put it another way, comparative engine component balance is extremely out of whack.

 

I would actually argue that barrel roll is fairly well balanced against retro on live. Both provide you with new tricks you couldn't otherwise accomplish, and both provide an important benefit. You could argue that barrel roll's combination of offensive utility, defensive utility/mobility, and forced movement away from a capture point is of more benefit than retro's offensive mobility and anti-mobility in a multi-man chase (i.e. I'm 7 km from my target and closing when someone launches a missile at me and I'm forced to retro away from my target), but I don't honestly think the delta there is very big.

 

For the most part if you choose to maximize mobility/maneuverability upgrades on one class you can get it to a point where it's about the same or slightly better than the baseline stats for the next better class.

 

I was curious about this, so I played around with Dulfy a bit.

 

o<class>: Optimized for engine power regeneration, then speed.

b<class>: Baseline stats. Power thrusters chosen when thruster component is forced.

t<class>: Optimized for turning speed.

 

oScout: http://puu.sh/7lFG3.jpg

tScout: http://puu.sh/7lFvz.jpg

bScout: http://puu.sh/7lFeI.jpg

oStrike: http://puu.sh/7lFDD.jpg

tStrike: http://puu.sh/7lFAg.jpg

bStrike: http://puu.sh/7lFnf.jpg

oGunship: http://puu.sh/7lFKY.jpg

tGunship: http://puu.sh/7lFMo.jpg

bGunship: http://puu.sh/7lFJB.jpg

bBomber: http://puu.sh/7lFS0.jpg

Unsurprisingly, bombers are unable to optimize for mobility -- the best they can do is bump their power pool up to 115.

 

(I'm so glad I installed puush, this would have been a huge ***** to do through imgur or something)

 

You'll notice that the strike's speed and turning rates leap above the scout's base stats with just +10% each. oStrike's regeneration stats are identical to oScout's, with the difference coming from base speed, afterburner activation cost, and afterburner consumption rate. That said, most scouts will take distortion field over quick-charge shields, which gives the strike an edge on recently consumed regeneration rate. In that kind of a realistic situation, with a full tank of gas, a scout will travel 13,074 meters in 15.2 seconds, while a strike travels 10,950 meters in 13.38 seconds. (My math my be a little off there -- the formula used was (((total pool - activation cost)/(cost per sec - recent regen rate)) * speed), tell me if that doesn't make sense.)

 

Gunship base stats are comparable to strike base stats, though they're a bit slower, a bit less maneuverable after a boost, and very very slightly less maneuverable in general. The biggest deal here is the lack of options to optimize with -- the gunship only really gets +10% speed or +10% turning rate from barrel roll.

 

Bombers, unsurprisingly, fall short in every category and have almost no means to improve.

 

Conclusion: most of a gunship's mobility comes from barrel roll, and thus is cooldown-based. Scouts and strikes can jump up a tier in mobility and maneuverability by choosing upgrades, but gunships only go up half a tier and bombers are triforce tier.

 

As far as a scout with baseline stats goes, it should definitely be able to keep up with a gunship that's running as hard as it can. In fact it should be able to at least gradually close the gap. It should also take long enough to close that the scout pilot starts wondering if it's really worth the effort, and the gunship should have options so that if it decides to stand and fight it's not one sided in favor of the scout.

 

Are you saying that a stock scout should be able to use afterburners and eventually catch a gunship using upgraded barrel roll and afterburners to get away? I think that's what happens now -- I haven't flown a stock scout in a long time, but the scout's engine efficiency is just so good that I can't imagine them having trouble.

[QuinMantha]

Mae, you keep telling folks how to kill me and it's starting to make me nervous...

[Zoom_VI]

Its not that scouts won't eventually run the gunship to ground its that the gunship will get to wherever it was going before then. Even if the gunship wants to run from A to C, the scout won't be able to catch them beforehand.

The gunships effectively can run forever because some third party will intervene way before the scout catches up.

[Armonddd]

Mae, you keep telling folks how to kill me and it's starting to make me nervous...

 

I, well, y'know.

 

You could switch to a scout or strike! Then my only advice for killing you would be "don't use crap components and get better/faster/more accurate".

[Verain]

The gunships effectively can run forever because some third party will intervene way before the scout catches up.

 

Clearly, once you target a gunship, you should become immune to the rest of everything. This is a solo game, after all, and your ability to outmaneuver a gunship in a scout is because you are an elite ninja warrior, not because you chose a ship with far better turning and speed, and you deserve that kill because you saw a gunship and boosted towards him. Clearly, he should just get locked down by your presence, unable to barrel roll.

 

Wait, that's a different scout that does that thing. You shouldn't have to roll that scout either. That would be unfair.

[Itkovian]

Clearly, once you target a gunship, you should become immune to the rest of everything. This is a solo game, after all, and your ability to outmaneuver a gunship in a scout is because you are an elite ninja warrior, not because you chose a ship with far better turning and speed, and you deserve that kill because you saw a gunship and boosted towards him. Clearly, he should just get locked down by your presence, unable to barrel roll.

 

Wait, that's a different scout that does that thing. You shouldn't have to roll that scout either. That would be unfair.

 

The fun part is that there is a new role coming up: the Infiltrator.

 

And those will be the ninjas best suited to sneak up on an unsuspecting gunship.

[Zoom_VI]

Why don't you try actually flying a gunship for some non-trivial amount of time before you speculate on what is or isn't hard for them to hit?

 

Flying erratically is not going to help you much, and is possibly why you have so much difficulty. The best and simplest way to make yourself hard to hit is to maximize your angular velocity relative to the gunship - i.e. fly laterally in a straight line at your fastest speed. This will rapidly take you towards the edge of the gunship's firing arc, which you want because A) railguns have a crippling tracking penalty and B) the firing arc is comparatively narrow. This forces the gunship to zoom out, recenter, and zoom back in - all of which takes precious fractions of a second, and may have to be done repeatedly.

 

This pattern has served me well against every gunship on our server I've run into. (Granted, I have not yet flown vs Tsuki in my scout.)

 

Except even moving at a high velocity relative to the gunship still accomplish anything until I exit their firing arc, if they are already charging, I have to execute that in less than 2 seconds, plus at 14km range exiting their firing arc means traversing 5+ km. And if they are going for a min charge ion rail then I have a sixth of a second to escape.

 

Of course against any other weapon in the entire game moving onto a perpendicular trajectory will give me immediate reprieve since it will put my lead indicator somewhere on the other side of the map even while my ship remains in their firing arc.

 

But of course railguns can fire a solid slug faster than the speed of light....

[Kuciwalker]

Conclusion: most of a gunship's mobility comes from barrel roll, and thus is cooldown-based. Scouts and strikes can jump up a tier in mobility and maneuverability by choosing upgrades, but gunships only go up half a tier and bombers are triforce tier.

 

Yes, and this is why I want to preserve the fairly unique flying style of gunships as compared to strikes and scouts, because it is interesting and different.

[Kuciwalker]

Except even moving at a high velocity relative to the gunship still accomplish anything until I exit their firing arc, if they are already charging, I have to execute that in less than 2 seconds, plus at 14km range exiting their firing arc means traversing 5+ km. And if they are going for a min charge ion rail then I have a sixth of a second to escape.

 

False:

 

1. As I've mentioned several times now, railguns have a crippling tracking penalty. Combined with your base evasion it's not hard for the gunship to have a <50% base chance to land the shot.
   
2. The purpose of a high angular velocity isn't just to get outside of the firing arc, it is to make it difficult for the gunship to actually track you with their cursor. I personally have the hardest difficult tracking targets moving at maximum speed in a straight line transverse to my firing arc. Maybe other gunship pilots are different, but with a few exceptions I don't think you should be complaining about them. I know that I've never had particular difficulty attacking any of the gunships I've encountered on our server using the tactics I've been advocating - and I am only a part-time scout pilot.
   

 

Again, stop speculating about what maneuvers make it hard for gunships to hit you when you haven't even flown a gunship.

 

But of course railguns can fire a solid slug faster than the speed of light....

 

The unrealism is from applying a leading indicator to blasters, not from applying it to railguns. A physical slug traveling at velocities to make it equivalent in power to the heavier starfighter-mounted blaster weapons would traverse the 15km in a tiny fraction of a second.

[Ramalina]

The unrealism is from applying a leading indicator to blasters, not from applying it to railguns. A physical slug traveling at velocities to make it equivalent in power to the heavier starfighter-mounted blaster weapons would traverse the 15km in a tiny fraction of a second.

 

You've got it backwards. Laser weapons should be travelling at just about 300 million meters per second in vacuum, meaning that at ranges of less than 30,000 km, you shouldn't need much in the way of a targeting lead.

 

Due to physical limitations on melting/abrading away the rails on a railgun, a railgun slug/canister (I assume the plasma and ion ones use canisters containing some sort of charge/warhead, because you can't fire a cloud of plasma or ions with a railgun) you're talking speeds of about 2 -10 km/s in most cases, so figure 1-5 seconds worth of lead prediction needed for a realistic railgun shot.

 

**Edit, I think I misread and we basically agree, though thinking about this, it means that railgun shots should be almost as easy to evade as missiles in a realistic scenario, or maybe even easier at ranges greater than 3 km.

 

As far as target lead projections on the HUD, that's been standard for guns on fighters for at least 2 or 3 decades now here on Earth. Some planes even have radar modes specifically for it.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Ramalina

[MaybeEvil]

Definitely looking forward to the changes to barrel roll.

 

Probably more looking forward to all the QQ and tears when the changes actually hit...although those that can adapt will be just fine. Those that can't will probably rage and then uninstall

[Armonddd]

Yes, and this is why I want to preserve the fairly unique flying style of gunships as compared to strikes and scouts, because it is interesting and different.

 

I can respect that, even if I'm not sure I agree with it.

 

In that case, then, you can break a ship's mobility down to a function of ((base speed * time flying at base speed) + (boosted speed * time boosting) + (speed with cooldowns * uptime of cooldowns)). For a straight line, anyway. Realistic situations tend to favor cooldowns and boosting, because a lot of the time when you're shooting someone you're moving at base speed, and thus mobility is significantly less important than maneuverability.

 

The issue I could take with this nerf is that it reduces the mobility of all ships using barrel roll, instead of the mobility of ships using barrel roll that have too much mobility. But, again, I'm kind of undecided on the whole thing, and the only real problem I have so far is the lack of communication.

[DamascusAdontise]

One of the things im confused about this change:

 

Who is it supposed to affect?

 

Is it intended for a specific ship?

 

Or is it a rework of the engine abilities in general because the devs feel all classes are too mobile?

 

Is it an attempt to make other engine abilities more useful when compared to BR?

 

////

 

IMO - This change is meant to target gunships, Barrel Roll allows this large sniper ship to be rather nimble and maneuverable (sometimes a little too maneuverable for what it is supposed to be).

 

If this is the case I would just remove barrel roll from gunships rather than change the way every ship performs. I still think that BR is fine in its current incarnation, but I could see them upping the cooldown (just the cooldown) a little (say 13-15 fully upgraded)

 

This double value + power change is heavy handed and will affect the game negatively (IMO) Not looking forward to this part of the patch, but alas I remember thinking this with 1.6 and after the patch I was just as deadly. We will be okay whatever they decide, but I hope they ere on the side of caution, currently its too big.

[Armonddd]

One of the things im confused about this change:

 

Who is it supposed to affect?

 

We have no idea, because while the devs read these forums (or at least, they read them enough to delete my threads), they don't actually communicate very much.

[Nemarus]

One of the things im confused about this change:

 

Who is it supposed to affect?

 

Is it intended for a specific ship?

 

Or is it a rework of the engine abilities in general because the devs feel all classes are too mobile?

 

Is it an attempt to make other engine abilities more useful when compared to BR?

 

////

 

IMO - This change is meant to target gunships, Barrel Roll allows this large sniper ship to be rather nimble and maneuverable (sometimes a little too maneuverable for what it is supposed to be).

 

If this is the case I would just remove barrel roll from gunships rather than change the way every ship performs. I still think that BR is fine in its current incarnation, but I could see them upping the cooldown (just the cooldown) a little (say 13-15 fully upgraded)

 

This double value + power change is heavy handed and will affect the game negatively (IMO) Not looking forward to this part of the patch, but alas I remember thinking this with 1.6 and after the patch I was just as deadly. We will be okay whatever they decide, but I hope they ere on the side of caution, currently its too big.

 

I suspect this change has a very simple goal:

 

Make Barrel Roll have a less dramatic effect on all of GSF.

 

Given the length of distances generally traveled in GSF (especially between nodes/spawns in Domination), Barrel Roll effectively equalized mobility between Scouts, Strikes, and Gunships. All three can take Barrel Roll, and if they do, they can all get from spawn to a node, or from one node to the other, in approximately the same time. They Barrel Roll immediately, use afterburners for 10 seconds, and then Barrel Roll again. The amount of engine energy they have left when they reach the satellite may differ slightly, but all will get there at about the same time (and all three will have more energy left than what they'd have if they flew to the node on afterburners, without Barrel Roll). This reduces the impact of the classes' mobility, which devalues the strengths of the Scout to the Strike to the Gunship.

 

If are a Strike or a Gunship, and one of the Engine Component choices you have says, "Be as fast as the fastest Scout!" wouldn't you take it? That is effectively what Barrel Roll does (again, given the length of common tactical distances in GSF). And even Scouts feel pressure to take Barrel Roll, because if they don't, they will be slower than other Scouts who do take it.

 

Given that, I'd guess 90% of serious pilots choose Barrel Roll. A few might take Retro Thrusters for their use in dogfighting, and Bombers can't, but I think most everyone else takes Barrel Roll--if they don't, they are gimping themselves. And when you have a component that is the "obvious" choice across multiple classes of ships, then you know something is wrong.

 

The correct fix here, I think, would've been to reduce the forward distance of Barrel Roll significantly, so that it becomes just another missile evasion skill, and not a travel skill. BioWare have instead opted to keep the travel skill component of Barrel Roll (though they've nerfed it by increasing the cooldown and cost). Additionally, because of the increase in cooldown and cost, they've reduced the effectiveness of Barrel Roll as a missile evasion skill.

 

So now the choice becomes a bit harder. Do you still take Barrel Roll for that lessened travel skill utility, even knowing you'll have a harder time avoiding missiles? Or do you take something like Snap Turn, which is cheaper and can be used more often?

 

Either way, everyone is going to be relying more on afterburners and proper engine energy management now. And as a result, Scouts will get a stronger advantage due to their inherent speed and engine regen.

 

Yes, this change "hurts" everyone who uses Barrel Roll (which is nearly everyone), but it hurts Scouts the least, because it reemphasizes their mobility over other classes.

 

As for Gunships ... it is going to be easier to kill them, not harder. Using a Barrel Roll to close in on a Gunship is stupid. It was before and is now. To kill a Gunship, you flank it--no reason to boost toward it--save your engine energy, since you know the Gunship will have full engine energy. Once you're in range, start shooting. If it Barrel Rolls away, Barrel Roll after it to keep in range. At that point, you'll have the faster base speed and the stronger engine regen. There is nowhere for the Gunship to run--it must get to allies or turn and fight.

 

Now, there is the issue of Barrel Roll no longer being an emergency escape from an Ion Railgun hit, since you won't have enough energy to use it. That's a separate issue... the Ion Railgun energy drain is way too strong. But that is not justification to leave Barrel Roll in its broken state.

[Altheran]

So now the choice becomes a bit harder. Do you still take Barrel Roll for that lessened travel skill utility, even knowing you'll have a harder time avoiding missiles? Or do you take something like Snap Turn, which is cheaper and can be used more often?

 

Well, if Koiogran Turn and Retro Thrusters would have remained unchanged, people would probably wonder about it.

But since they received the same treatment, many won't even think about it and keep using it.

 

That aside, it would be nice to at least have the Engine cost written in the tool tip... There may be some difference in cost with Koiogran Turn and Retro Thrusters in the end, that we wouldn't even be aware of it.

[Armonddd]

Well, if Koiogran Turn and Retro Thrusters would have remained unchanged, people would probably wonder about it.

But since they received the same treatment, many won't even think about it and keep using it.

 

They actually only get half the nerf barrel roll gets.

[Nemarus]

Well, if Koiogran Turn and Retro Thrusters would have remained unchanged, people would probably wonder about it.

But since they received the same treatment, many won't even think about it and keep using it.

 

That aside, it would be nice to at least have the Engine cost written in the tool tip... There may be some difference in cost with Koiogran Turn and Retro Thrusters in the end, that we wouldn't even be aware of it.

 

They did not receive the same treatment, though I agree the tooltip needs to be clearer.

[Altheran]

They actually only get half the nerf barrel roll gets.

Unless they changed something lately, when I read the notes, the three components had their CD and Cost increased and the only components receiving half the nerf (cost only) was Power Dive.