New classes of ships coming: What do you all think they will be?

[Trevor_the_Bruce]

I am really excited to see what these new ships bring to the table! I think this is a really cool idea, and the new ships might provide a hard counter to bombers and gunships being used all the time. I think we've already got a clue as to what one of the new class of ships features will be. Some of the component upgrades you can get for your scout say that it will detect people that are cloaked. A cloaked ship would be insanely good at taking out enemy gunships. What good is a slug rail gun that can shoot 17000 meters when a cloaked ship can come sneak up and unload on you. I could see this new cloaked ship beinggood against bombers and gunships but not doing so great against straight up dogfigh experts. Maybe a ship that has something like rocket pods but with a lot more punch to prevent the gunships from sitting and shooting? That would be really good i think. you sneak up and then unload your super rocket pod equivalents and take out the gunships really fast. Bombers aren't to much of an issue i think, but the gunships are creating a small problem since there just isn't a really hard counter for them. The scouts used to, but the scouts have a hardtime approaching a drone guarded gunship. I also think we might be seeing more support roll ships introduced to boost strike/scouts.

 

So what do you guys think we will be seeing introduced in these new classes of ships?

[Sindariel]

There's already a big thread about this topic.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=726850

[dan_the_man_]

There's already a big thread about this topic.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=726850

 

OP is talking about the infiltrators, not the type 3rds coming in 2.7

[Altheran]

So what do you guys think we will be seeing introduced in these new classes of ships?

 

You're speaking about Infiltrators, right ?

 

How I see them ?

 

Primary Weapons : Burst / Light / Rapid-fire / Laser (basic ones)

Secondary Weapon : Stealth generators *

Systems : EMP Field / Blaster Overcharge / Remote Slicing

Shields : Quick-Charge / Distortion / Charged Plating

Engines : Koiogran Turn / Snap Turn / Interdiction Drive / Weapon Power Converter

Sensors

Capacitors

Thrusters

Reactor

 

Mobility Stats (Speed / Turning Rate / Afterburners cost...) : Strike-like

Survivability Stats (Hull and Shield capacity) : Scout-like

 

* Stealth Generators : can differ on effectiveness and CD and or cost.

Exemples :

- One could be a permanent stealth but is always detected under 3000m, while another would be temporary but perfect. Both would stop if shooting, using afterburners, or hit by something.

- One could have a fairly decent CD after leaving stealth but be free to use (or flat cost), while the other one would have a rather short CD but constantly drains weapon power.

[Slivovidze]

I see the infiltrators bringing some unique laser, some actual shotgun. Not BLC type shotgun, an actual shotgun.

They may carry some new rockets as secondaries, like Ion Pods (dumbfire rockets with increased shield damage), some variant of Sabo Probe, and maybe some long range immobilizer (10k rocket with 3-4s lock-on with low damage, but 10-ish seconds of slow, or drains)

Their shields will probably feature at least one stealth field, which would be 10, 15 seconds long, tops, with cooldown of at least 25, 30 seconds after upgrades. It would have drastically lowered shield capacity, with evasion boost on par with Disto Field. Of course, interaction with enemies - shooting, getting shot, getting hit by mine, etc. would de-cloak, while interaction with objectives would be impossible while cloaked (nothing would happen). Other than that, they could have Disto Field, Quick Charge or maybe even the Engine Power Converter.

Their engines would be the classic dogfighting turn, probably a Retro Thruster, but no Barrel Roll. Instead, they's have some kind of warp drive, which would give the ship up to 3 (5?) seconds of insane speed boost (I'm talking thousand percent or even more), which would be interruptable by the user, and would have long-ish cooldown (45s upgraded?) with pretty big cost (25-40 upgraded?). Of course, they'd also have a Power Dive.

Other than that, capacitor, thrusters, sensors, reactor.

 

Their base agility would be equal or a tad lower than the one of scouts, their survivability would be close to zero. One-shot kills by non-crit, fully charged Slugs, I mean.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Slivovidze

[The_Raven_Lord]

Impossible! No ship that small has a cloaking device!

 

I know... I know, cannon has been ignored with the Makeb Storyline which uses a Stealth Fighter to get to the planet surface, and even in Clone Wars, there was an episode featuring a cloaked ship.

 

Personally, I think cloaked ships won't be a good thing for this game. As much as I'd love to see the Gunships tremble in pants *********** terror, I don't have high hopes that this will be any better for the meta game than the new T3 scouts.

[Bleeters]

My main concern with stealth right now is how they're going to balance it. There's currently only one way to remove stealth, via a system ability that really isn't that great. It stands to reason they'll add more alongside actual stealth ships, but there's no guarantee of that. I mean, it's Bioware. On the other hand, if stealth removal is commonplace, what's going to be the point of infiltrators in the first place?

 

I think what I'd like to see is stealth removal on strike fighters, or perhaps specialised sensors that aid detection to make that component slot actually worth having.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Bleeters

[Altheran]

My main concern with stealth right now is how they're going to balance it. There's currently only one way to remove stealth, via a system ability that really isn't that great. It stands to reason they'll add more alongside actual stealth ships, but there's no guarantee of that. I mean, it's Bioware. On the other hand, if stealth removal is commonplace, what's going to be the point of infiltrators in the first place?

 

You can actually make so stealth work only from a minimal distance (under that distance, you're visible), and specify on the component that yours and ennemy sensors modify that value.

Exemple : "Makes you invisible from ennemies that are at least 5000m away from you. Detection and Dampening bonuses from Sensor Components alter that value. You are also visible to ennemies who are in communication range from someone seeing you"

Edited March 6, 2014 by Altheran

[Bleeters]

You can actually make so stealth work only from a minimal distance (under that distance, you're visible), and specify on the component that yours and ennemy sensors modify that value.

Exemple : "Makes you invisible from ennemies that are at least 5000m away from you. Detection and Dampening bonuses from Sensor Components alter that value. You are also visible to ennemies who are in communication range from someone seeing you"

Well true, but the dispel radius of targeting telemetry being 3000m leads me to suspect they won't go that route.

[Altheran]

Well true, but the dispel radius of targeting telemetry being 3000m leads me to suspect they won't go that route.

 

Indeed, numbers from that component don't seem compatible with that mechanic.

 

EDIT : Maybe that incompatibility may exist for one stealth generator, though. I doubt they would not give us a choice of several stealth generators.

Like in my earlier post (#4), one generator may have that rather big range flaw, but may be the only one which can be maintained indefinetely.

 

And after a second thought, it would not be as incompatible as it first appeared. Boosting Sensor range by 5 000m would also increase the user's detection range by 5 000m too. 10 000m of temporary stealth detection seem pretty useful... Detect, then shoot = uncloak. Or better : detect then close-in = automatic uncloak.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Altheran

[Mallorik]

The new class looks like the deathstar and when an enemy ship gets within 10k meters of it just explodes and kills every enemy ship on the map, its for people who cant get the hang of flying a bomber.

[Slivovidze]

Stealth wouldn't be that hard to balance. As long as it is always temporary with semi-long cooldown and everything interrupts it, it shouldn't be that big problem. And it could even bring some big debuff, like no afterburners while in stealth, or just a 50% slow, or stuff.

 

There are lots of AoEs already, plus I can imagine stealth giving use to things like that sensor drone (could have decloak added), or sensors component (like, if cloaked ship would get into sensor focus of a ship with sensor component, and would be in close-ish distance, and would stay there for a second or two, they would be de-cloaked).

[Salakast]

Presumably stealthies would be the hard counter to Gunships, so what would be required would be long enough stealth to close from 16,000m to weapons range, presumably stealths will be working with a fairly close range toolkit.

 

Question is, will they have any form of EMP/Ion engine disabling option to prevent the GS barrel rolling away, or will they have the agility to chase them/short enough stealth cooldown to avoid being turned on and munched?

 

I'm expecting them to have fairly paper thin shields/hulls. Possible problem with that build I see is that it has potential to encourage synergy of gunship/bomber as a number of GS in a bomber minefield nest would probably prevent the stealthies getting close enough.

 

All speculation at this point of course

[Ramalina]

Doubt that stealth generator would be in secondary weapon slot. System, shields, or engine slots would be reasonable candidates with system being by far the most likely.

 

I'd suspect fairly strong-ish hulls, but weak shields that refill fairly quickly.

 

Probably enough burst damage, disable, etc to be really annoying. I.e., if they do the normal MMORPG thing any scout or strike that gets ambushed by one will go from 100% to dead in one stunlock (I'm not saying this is good design, just that the design has something like a 99% or higher probability of being like this).

 

Possibly slow enough that they won't be able to catch anything other than bombers and gunships without barrel roll.

 

Basically I'd expect a scout or strike moving slow enough for a infiltrator to catch to be helpless against the infiltrator. Balance coming from even a Infiltrator equipped for maximum speed being unable to keep up with a strike fighter with no speed upgrades at all, and from being very easy kills if they get caught with their cloaking down.

Not very good design, but it's what you get if you try copying the stealth class MMORPG stereotype into GSF.

 

I sincerely hope that they come up with something more interesting and original than that though.

[Altheran]

Doubt that stealth generator would be in secondary weapon slot. System, shields, or engine slots would be reasonable candidates with system being by far the most likely.

 

Ah, you may be referring to my post (the one detailing components and putting shield generators on secondary weapon slot). I put them there because of the hint about Infiltrator in Kuat Drive Yards. There if you end to the building chain control commands, they ask you to build a ship. If you follow instructions, you'll build an Infiltrator prototype, that will not have secondary weapons. Trying to put some will end by the prototype having a critical error and exploding. According to the notes left by engineers on a table, secondary weapons cause interference with the Infiltrator systems.