Ion Railgun Analysis With Video

[Pilgrim_Grey]

But terrible damage per weapon bar and huge vulnerability to lateral movement and the inability to fire quickly.

 

Railguns have terrible dps. That's a fact. Obviously they are meant to be good, however, so they have compensating things such as range and burst. Another disadvantage is that they are on gunships, and as such don't have access to a variety of engine maneuvers and have lower health and shield values, as well as less maneuverability and speed, than strike fighters, and MUCH less maneuverability and speed as scouts. If you put a railgun on a strike or scout, that would be pretty ludicrous, right? In addition to breaking the game's own realism, of course.

 

The overall design of gunships is just fine. DPS means squat for them, burst means everything (including at the short range). That's not really all that different from most other classes, though they're obviously less bursty.

 

I have yet to see what you think is so bad about gunships that makes them NEED the ludicrous drain from ion. They flat out don't, and adjusting that debuff to less insane amounts isn't going to stop them from doing extremely good burst damage, or make the drain from ion be an extreme annoyance to a class in the middle of another dogfight or actively trying to shoot the gunship down. I don't want to get drained by any of the other ion weapons either, but they're at least going to leave me a fighting chance.

 

And again, just to make sure it's out there, I do fly gunships. I prefer strikes and scouts because I like how they play, but I do like switching to gunships here and there. I'm not going to lose functionality with them just because ion has a more realistic drain to it.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Pilgrim_Grey

[SammyGStatus]

As Alex on Jung'Ma once told me: Best defense vs an Ion railgun is DONT GET HIT. Easier said than done, but I've used that advice to avoid a lot of uncomfortable situations

[Zoom_VI]

As Alex on Jung'Ma once told me: Best defense vs an Ion railgun is DONT GET HIT. Easier said than done, but I've used that advice to avoid a lot of uncomfortable situations

 

So basically I should spend 100% of my time watching for gunships? Instead of watch for every other class in the game because every other class in the game can't do that kind of total BS?

 

Firstly rule of figuring out when something is overpowered: When countering it requires unrealistic situations.

[SammyGStatus]

So basically I should spend 100% of my time watching for gunships? Instead of watch for every other class in the game because every other class in the game can't do that kind of total BS?

 

Firstly rule of figuring out when something is overpowered: When countering it requires unrealistic situations.

 

OMG it's Crin! And no, you shouldn't watch exclusively for gunships.... but you should be able to identify the stellar pilots before the match, and construct a strategy to take them out as quickly as possible considering they'll do the most damage / make the biggest impact.

[Zoom_VI]

OMG it's Crin! And no, you shouldn't watch exclusively for gunships.... but you should be able to identify the stellar pilots before the match, and construct a strategy to take them out as quickly as possible considering they'll do the most damage / make the biggest impact.

 

Except nobody gives a crap for locking down me down because I cannot stunlock half of your team and then slug them all to death from 13km away.

 

The fact is a ace gunships has a far more massive strategic advantage over a ace of anything else. Mostly due to the insane range of railguns, and also due the massive destructive and CC power of the railgun options.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Zoom_VI

[Gavin_Kelvar]

You would expect the ion railgun to outperform the other ion weapons. Railguns are better per hit than any of the other weapons. Where they lack is dps, trading it for burst.

 

That being said- it outperforms it by a lot. And the mechanical ramifications of that slicer's loop is a pretty helpless opponent.

 

I don't mean to suggest that the railgun should do the same paltry drain of ion cannons, but the drain shouldn't be so vastly superior (as I noted earlier with ion cannons your enemy's shields will probably be gone before you'd achieved comparable drain to a single raingun hit).

 

Also I'm really not sure that the slicer's loop belongs on any ion weapon. That being said if it worked like the ion missile and only slowed regen by 50% it would be a lot more balanced than it's current form of completely halting regen.

 

I don't personally think there's a need for it to outperform every other ion weapon. Balanced to take into account the mechanics for railguns sure (ie not giving it drain identical to ion cannons) but being a railgun isn't justification for it being flat out better than every other ion weapon. Given that ion missiles have an 11 second reload time, the lock on time is comparable to the time it would take to charge a railgun to full, and has a similar firing arc I think if an ion weapon should have top burst it should be the missile since you have no chance for an immediate follow up shot unlike the ion cannon or railgun.

[Altheran]

I don't personally think there's a need for it to outperform every other ion weapon. Balanced to take into account the mechanics for railguns sure (ie not giving it drain identical to ion cannons) but being a railgun isn't justification for it being flat out better than every other ion weapon. Given that ion missiles have an 11 second reload time, the lock on time is comparable to the time it would take to charge a railgun to full, and has a similar firing arc I think if an ion weapon should have top burst it should be the missile since you have no chance for an immediate follow up shot unlike the ion cannon or railgun.

The only thing a Ion weapon needs, is being the best at destroying shields by a fairly good margin. Anything besides should be flavoring.

 

P.S. : IMO, if one Ion weapon should have an AoE it's Missile. Shots that explodes ? Please... Missiles that can't blast ? Sure...

[Armonddd]

Railguns have terrible dps. That's a fact. Obviously they are meant to be good, however, so they have compensating things such as range and burst.

 

And as I've been saying for a long time, their capabilities with range, burst, and lockdown more than compensate for the terrible dps, to the point where they break things.

 

The usual argument for railguns being powerful is that you can't use them in conjunction with blasters. In many situations, increased range alone is enough to compensate this downside. When comparing to other ion weapons in particular, combined fire is a worthless metric -- you flat out can't slot two ion weapons on the same ship, ever. Even if you include EMP weapons (because they're shutdown too, so it's a fair comparison), you flat out can't combine any two of ion cannons, ion missiles, ion railguns, ion mines, EMP field, and EMP missiles on one ship. By that logic, ion railguns should be only as good at shutdown as any other weapon.

 

But they're not -- they get infinite slicer's loop (something nothing else in the game can do), enormous AoE shutdown (something only EMP weapons get, and on a smaller scale), and inherent enormous drain to both weapons and engines (something other ion weapons just flat out don't get on a meaningful scale).

 

It's notable that EMP weapons get the very scary capability of shutting down various pilot abilities, which ion railgun does not, but they do so on a very large cooldown and leave you options to outfly the guy that shut you down. Ion railgun has neither of these downsides, and the engine drain means it essentially disables the target's engine ability anyway. Oh, by the way, the EMP ability lockouts (the scariest shutdown in the game after ion railgun) don't affect your shields at all -- ion railguns are versatile enough that they can be used to completely strip the target's shields if need be.

 

And then you add in the fact that ion railguns get anywhere from twice to quintuple the range of other viable shutdown weapons, don't require any kind of lock-on time or target leading, and can apply their full effect every 1.5 seconds (orders of magnitude faster than any other weapon but ion cannons, whose shutdown capacity is pitiful), and I see a weapon that's vastly overpowered in the shutdown department.

 

The rest of your points aren't related to the topic (ion railguns are too good at shutdown compared to other weapons), but I'll address them anyway:

 

Terrible maneuverability and speed aren't such a huge downside when your job is to kill things from a sniping point. And claiming they have "lower health and shield values" is flat out wrong -- their hull value is only slightly lower than the strike fighter, but their shield value is enormous. They're the second tankiest ship in the game, in addition to being the second least maneuverable ship in the game.

 

Furthermore, their access to barrel roll creates a mobility arms race. Either you have enough mobility to chase after a gunship using barrel roll, or you're getting shot by railguns. And, by the way, if you don't have barrel roll or t5 boost recharger, you're losing that arms race. This will, of course, change with 2.7 -- but the barrel roll nerf is going to have unfortunate side effects in addition to its main goal of making gunships easier to pursue.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Armonddd

[Drudenfusz]

I think it is funny that the railgun of the gunships provides me with a sniper gameplay feeling that the advanced class of the Imperial Agent which is actually called sniper lacks.

 

Anyway, have the feeling that I can predict most matches just by seeing how many people take a gunship into battle at the biginning... and even though I would love to play more with my strike fighters, they are just not as good as the gunships with their railguns.

[Verain]

I think it is funny that the railgun of the gunships provides me with a sniper gameplay feeling that the advanced class of the Imperial Agent which is actually called sniper lacks.

 

The ground game is wowlike, this is an fpslike. It should not be a surprise.

[Verain]

Terrible maneuverability and speed aren't such a huge downside when your job is to kill things from a sniping point. And claiming they have "lower health and shield values" is flat out wrong -- their hull value is only slightly lower than the strike fighter, but their shield value is enormous. They're the second tankiest ship in the game, in addition to being the second least maneuverable ship in the game.

 

The base shield on a gunship is 1700. The base shield on a strike is 1800.

The base hull on a gunship is 1250. The base hull on a strike is 1450.

 

Having 100 less shield certainly doesn't qualify as enormous. Gunships are less maneuverable, have a lower speed, have less hull, have less shield. I actually think strike fighters got a base 5% evasion when I wasn't paying attention as well?

 

 

 

This doesn't change my position, which isn't really too far from yours- ion is too strong and needs a nerf. But the swarm of vocal type 2 scouts screaming in the forums to remove the only things that effectively kill them is generally disheartening, as is the unwarranted assumption than an across the board engine component nerf is "meant to make gunships easier to catch". It is much more likely aimed at the metagame choices of everyone picking barrel roll, and missiles not being as threatening as they should be, with rapid breaks being available everywhere.

[Armonddd]

The base shield on a gunship is 1700. The base shield on a strike is 1800.

The base hull on a gunship is 1250. The base hull on a strike is 1450.

 

Having 100 less shield certainly doesn't qualify as enormous. Gunships are less maneuverable, have a lower speed, have less hull, have less shield. I actually think strike fighters got a base 5% evasion when I wasn't paying attention as well?

 

Dulfy appears to have lied to me (by which I mean, told me the truth when I didn't ask for it). And you're right about the evasion bit.

 

This doesn't change my position, which isn't really too far from yours- ion is too strong and needs a nerf. But the swarm of vocal type 2 scouts screaming in the forums to remove the only things that effectively kill them is generally disheartening, as is the unwarranted assumption than an across the board engine component nerf is "meant to make gunships easier to catch".

 

I guess where we disagree is how strong a nerf ion railguns need. (I like how you refer to ion and everyone knows you're talking about the railguns, because the mines and missiles are a joke and the cannons do a completely different job.)

 

Also, I'd hope you'd think better of me than to say that I only want things nerfed because they kill me. I die more to bombers than gunships (anecdotally, at least), and my only complaints about that class are that the AI takes over too much that the player should be controlling.

[Verain]

Dulfy appears to have lied to me (by which I mean, told me the truth when I didn't ask for it). And you're right about the evasion bit.

 

You probably had different settings on each ship or something. I mean, you can make a gunship with more shields than a strike fighter, the strike fighter just gets something else in exchange. And one of the gunships has the excellent distortion field, but that weakens shields quite a bit in exchange for evasion, a harder compare.

 

I guess where we disagree is how strong a nerf ion railguns need.

 

Basically. I think there's a lot of good ways to tweak them besides just a flat nerf, but if you do a flat nerf it shouldn't be massive. I think a big place to hit would be that final talent. I mean, is it really good that the railgun can zero you out and keep you at zero? That seems like a very deliberate design choice. I'd like ion railgun to be way better at shields instead of stunlock, and system damage is interesting but the way it happens seems odd. I think it would be fair to punish people for getting hit with a full charge, and I think the 25% thing is odd. Which of these the devs decide to tweak (if any) is up for debate. But I'd be real sad to see indiscriminate nerfs. Thus far they've been incremental with their adjustments.

 

(I like how you refer to ion and everyone knows you're talking about the railguns, because the mines and missiles are a joke and the cannons do a completely different job.)

 

....or because we're in a thread whose first two words are "ion railgun", and it has nothing to do with any other ion. Context is key here, not power level.

 

Also, I'd hope you'd think better of me than to say that I only want things nerfed because they kill me. I die more to bombers than gunships (anecdotally, at least), and my only complaints about that class are that the AI takes over too much that the player should be controlling.

 

Yes, but you aren't the only battle scout that pops up in every thread. Your view is definitely warped, but there's others whose views are just unrecognizable.

 

I will point out this: you want to be able to outfly a railgun drone by zigzagging in the best zigzagger rather than by line of sighting it. The AI drones need to have perfect aim, or they are worthless. If instead of perfect aim they had, say, a 50% chance of hitting you, they'd increase the damage (likely by doubling it). If they instead made them have a shaky hand such that they were very likely to miss a laterally moving opponent, then you'd be immune to them. But that's a whole class feature- you shouldn't be able to do that. If the bombers are doing too much damage to scouts (and it's likely that this is the case) then the answer is to reduce the damage that these components do flat out, not put in some logic that allows anyone whose skill is "this tall" to totally ignore them.

 

Also does evasion work on those things? If not, what?

[Armonddd]

You probably had different settings on each ship or something.

 

I think we can blame a lack of distortion field on the gunship and the presence of quick-charge shields on the strike.

 

I think it would be fair to punish people for getting hit with a full charge

 

I don't (and this is a core thing I expect we'll disagree on forever). There's too many situations in which a gunship can hit you with a full charge when you're not expecting it. I'd honestly prefer a system where the gunship is rewarded for getting off a full charge shot, than where his target is punished for being hit by a full charge shot.

 

Now, if railguns made your sensors go nuts when you were being targeted, I could totally see punishing the player for getting hit by a full charge shot. That said, it would obviously have to mesh nicely with the rest of the game, which is tricky (and why they pay game designers to do their work instead of hiring randoms at minimum wage).

 

....or because we're in a thread whose first two words are "ion railgun", and it has nothing to do with any other ion. Context is key here, not power level.

 

Well, the context of the current discussion involved a comparison of all ion and EMP weapons, but ok.

 

The AI drones need to have perfect aim, or they are worthless.

 

This is wrong, and if it weren't wrong, it'd be hilariously bad game design.

 

The AI drones need to have as good aim as a human, because this is a game played by humans. Currently, an awful sniper shot can switch to a bomber and literally deploy an aimbot (now with no more wallhacks!) to do his sniping for him. That's stupid and massively devalues skill.

 

If instead of perfect aim they had, say, a 50% chance of hitting you, they'd increase the damage (likely by doubling it). If they instead made them have a shaky hand such that they were very likely to miss a laterally moving opponent, then you'd be immune to them. But that's a whole class feature- you shouldn't be able to do that. If the bombers are doing too much damage to scouts (and it's likely that this is the case) then the answer is to reduce the damage that these components do flat out, not put in some logic that allows anyone whose skill is "this tall" to totally ignore them.

 

Also does evasion work on those things? If not, what?

 

Putting in an arbitrary accuracy rate would be dumb, I agree. But giving them a shaky hand doesn't mean you'd be immune to them -- or at least, not any more than you can become immune to gunships manned by actual people. If your skill is "this tall", you (theoretically) will not be hit by a railgun ever. Why is it that at that point it's ok to be hit by the AI? I didn't sign up for fighting the AI, I signed up for PvP.

 

Re: evasion: anecdotally, they ignore evasion and/or have a ridiculously high accuracy stat. I have been hit in the middle of a barrel roll several times, and twice hit and killed in the middle of a barrel roll with distortion field up. That's 90% evasion, in addition to unpredictable movement. Why is it ok that a drone can hit me in that situation, but no human ever has?

 

One of the most rewarding sights I saw yesterday was the yellow line of a slug shot in front of me right after I hit retro. That's skilled piloting paying dividends, and I don't think you'll try to tell me that it's unfair that my skill was too good and I was immuning railguns. But against a railgun drone, that would have hit and possibly killed me (I had orange hull). Why the double standard?

[Verain]

II don't (and this is a core thing I expect we'll disagree on forever). There's too many situations in which a gunship can hit you with a full charge when you're not expecting it.

 

But that is your fault. Many ships can do something interesting, dangerous, or bursty.

 

This is wrong, and if it weren't wrong, it'd be hilariously bad game design.

 

No, it's correct, and it's SOLID game design. You just don't get that there's a second player involved in pvp.

 

The AI drones need to have as good aim as a human, because this is a game played by humans[/i].

 

 

NO.

 

Humans have widely different skillsets. Things that aren't humans need to always do the same thing. That means, hitting you or missing you 100% of the time. (this doesn't mean that they need to be immune to accuracy rating and evasion, however, merely that a shot needs to always hit regardless of juking).

 

Note that the railgun drone will not do something I do: as a player is about to LOS, I'll release a partial shot. It won't kill them, but it still does damage. The railgun, even if you have 50 hull and 0 shield, won't shoot early. In fact, if you spend 2.5 seconds in its line of sight, it won't release early and kill you.

 

See? It always does the same thing. It's a robot. This lets you play your game around it. If you could just wiggle (and coincidentally you play the best class at that) and ignore the whole thing, that would be awful.

 

Currently, an awful sniper shot can switch to a bomber and literally deploy an aimbot (now with no more wallhacks!) to do his sniping for him. That's stupid and massively devalues skill.

 

The bot is stationary, though. It has very little health. It has time before it turns on. It can't shoot through line of sight. It stupidly acquires the nearest target, begins charging, and fires if the target is complacent. And that shot? Hits for 600.

 

Putting in an arbitrary accuracy rate would be dumb, I agree. But giving them a shaky hand doesn't mean you'd be immune to them -- or at least, not any more than you can become immune to gunships manned by actual people. If your skill is "this tall", you (theoretically) will not be hit by a railgun ever. Why is it that at that point it's ok to be hit by the AI? I didn't sign up for fighting the AI, I signed up for PvP.

 

 

So did the other guy who deployed the railgun. If your skill is "this tall", guess what can beat that? A railgun aimer with sufficiently better skill. A taller gunship can beat you.. Being "this tall" don't cut it. It's a competition.

 

Re: evasion: anecdotally, they ignore evasion and/or have a ridiculously high accuracy stat. I have been hit in the middle of a barrel roll several times, and twice hit and killed in the middle of a barrel roll with distortion field up.

 

I think this is either a problem or an undocumented feature.

 

That's 90% evasion, in addition to unpredictable movement. Why is it ok that a drone can hit me in that situation, but no human ever has?

 

It might not be, or it might be a swell counter to evasion, a far too powerful stat. But I generally don't understand why the accuracy isn't taken account of. Probably because it would push the damage up too high?

 

One of the most rewarding sights I saw yesterday was the yellow line of a slug shot in front of me right after I hit retro. That's skilled piloting paying dividends, and I don't think you'll try to tell me that it's unfair that my skill was too good and I was immuning railguns. But against a railgun drone, that would have hit and possibly killed me (I had orange hull). Why the double standard?

 

Because you didn't just have "skilled piloting"- you had piloting more skilled than the other player's aim. You outplayed him.. The stationary drone is put there as area defense- if you can "outplay it", then it may as well not exist, because everyone would focus on becoming "this tall". That drone is his system component and why he picked his ship. It's no ok for you to learn how to boost scoot whatever and totally ignore his mechanic, which is, yes, what it would come down to.

 

I've nailed scouts through all there fly zip boost spin nonsense, and then through their RNG absurdity dodge thing, and seen them explode into pieces in space. Why? Because I outplayed them (and then passed the RNG checklist). That feels good. If every scout I saw was guaranteed to be hittable by some skill at the helm, that would be a problem (ex, you dodged, but the game guarantees a 2 second window to splat you in even though you are at 16km now). This is no different than that, and not at all related to an actual AI gunship.

 

 

So if you combine those two experiences- a good player shooting at a good player dodging- the result is not random, it's determined by who outplays who (and a roll of the die- you could meaningfully argue that a railgun that was aimed at you shouldn't be powerful to deal the damage every time, and you should get a chance to dodge, which the game designers definitely agree with, hence the evasion stat).

 

 

If the drones had shaky aim, you just have to be "this tall". Once you learn the exploit, the entire ship is worthless.

 

 

You aren't the player. The other guy is too. It's a pvp game. His stuff needs to do what he tells it to do, and that is "snuff any drone that is in line of sight after you activate and stays there for the duration of your charge".

Edited March 19, 2014 by Verain

[Armonddd]

But that is your fault. Many ships can do something interesting, dangerous, or bursty.

 

My fault because I couldn't keep track of the gunship and the two guys behind me and the powerups/satellites?

 

Gunships are inherently harder to play against because they perform in situations with multiple opponents (2v2, 3v3, etc). In those situations, the best tactic is to burst down an opponent and un-even the odds -- and that's exactly what gunships do best. The only ship that comes close to providing that kind of contribution is a scout with BLC, which is also too powerful right now.

 

No, it's correct, and it's SOLID game design. You just don't get that there's a second player involved in pvp.

 

Care to present an actual argument about that, instead of just "it's true because I say it is"?

 

Humans have widely different skillsets.

 

True. I absolutely agree with this.

 

Things that aren't humans need to always do the same thing. That means, hitting you or missing you 100% of the time.

 

...What? Where did this come from? There's no logic to this conclusion.

 

Note that the railgun drone will not do something I do: as a player is about to LOS, I'll release a partial shot. It won't kill them, but it still does damage. The railgun, even if you have 50 hull and 0 shield, won't shoot early. In fact, if you spend 2.5 seconds in its line of sight, it won't release early and kill you.

 

That seems a fair penalty for deploying an aimbot to shoot for you while you go do something else.

 

If you could just wiggle (and coincidentally you play the best class at that) and ignore the whole thing, that would be awful.

 

No one said their tracking had to be that awful.

 

The bot is stationary, though. It has very little health. It has time before it turns on. It can't shoot through line of sight. It stupidly acquires the nearest target, begins charging, and fires if the target is complacent. And that shot? Hits for 600.

 

Again, that's not nearly enough downsides to make up for the fact that you're letting the game play itself while you go do something else with your lasers and such.

 

So did the other guy who deployed the railgun.

 

Obviously not -- he obviously signed up to drop AI-controlled drones in an otherwise PvP situation. Why game companies seem to think this is acceptable is beyond me.

 

If your skill is "this tall", guess what can beat that? A railgun aimer with sufficiently better skill. A taller gunship can beat you.. Being "this tall" don't cut it. It's a competition.

 

Again, why is it fair that the AI gets to be the tallest? All of my evasive skill buys me a ton of time against other pilots -- but once a railgun drone enters the fray, my evasive skill is worthless unless it involves blocking line of sight (which may leave me open to other attacks).

 

It might not be, or it might be a swell counter to evasion, a far too powerful stat. But I generally don't understand why the accuracy isn't taken account of. Probably because it would push the damage up too high?

 

On the one hand, passive evasion is kinda dumb and should probably be removed entirely. On the other hand, I wouldn't complain at all if distortion field granted 100% evasion for its duration, and evasion simply didn't exist otherwise. In that kid of world, I could see it being balanced at 1s up, 15s cd, or something like that.

 

Either way, it exists and people have expectations of it. When 60% evasion does stuff against slug railgun shots but nothing against railgun drone shots, people get upset.

 

Because you didn't just have "skilled piloting"- you had piloting more skilled than the other player's aim. You outplayed him.. The stationary drone is put there as area defense- if you can "outplay it", then it may as well not exist, because everyone would focus on becoming "this tall".

 

But it's PvP. Why do I have to learn to outplay the drone instead of the pilot? That's just ***-backwards.

 

That drone is his system component and why he picked his ship. It's no ok for you to learn how to boost scoot whatever and totally ignore his mechanic, which is, yes, what it would come down to.

 

That's the hazard of letting the AI play for you. Want to do better? Try actually playing the game yourself.

 

I don't see why the AI should be outsmarted in PvE but not PvP, and I still don't see why the AI should be allowed in PvP, much less dominant.

 

I've nailed scouts through all there fly zip boost spin nonsense, and then through their RNG absurdity dodge thing, and seen them explode into pieces in space. Why? Because I outplayed them (and then passed the RNG checklist). That feels good.

 

And I would rather you be able to do that without passing the RNG checklist, because hitting someone through an engine ability or other evasive maneuver is skill. But again... railgun drones do that all the time, with zero exertion on the part of the player.

 

You aren't the player. The other guy is too. It's a pvp game.

 

And again... why am I fighting his drones instead of him? Makes zero sense to me in a PvP game.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Armonddd

[reclipsed]

Why? Stunlocks are not fun. I don't pay BW so other players can tell me "you're banned from the game now", which is essentially what stunlocks do.

 

Further, I play my flashfire for a reason -- I enjoy zipping around as fast as possible, getting as close to the target as possible, and blowing him up at close range. I totally respect that other people have other preferences -- maybe they don't want to zip as much as they want to boom with torps, or maybe they prefer the slow and steady approach a bomber gives, or maybe they simply prefer the extreme range of a gunship. All of that is cool, because different people play the game in different ways.

 

But when another player is suddenly telling me how to play the game? When a mouse release means I'm suddenly no longer allowed to play the game in the (only) way I find fun? Not cool.

 

Oh, and railguns are again the only thing in the game that does that.

 

 

I respect your posts and submit you're a decent person, but a FlashFire pilot talking about how OP a Gunship is makes me spit out my cold, stale coffee.

 

FlashFires may not be as strong because of some nerfs and the introduction of the Bombers, but you guys were ruling the space for months.

[Zoom_VI]

FlashFires may not be as strong because of some nerfs and the introduction of the Bombers, but you guys were ruling the space for months.

 

So that means our opinions are worthless post nerf? That's like saying operatives are not allowed to comment about balance because they where the FOTM in 1.1.

[Armonddd]

I respect your posts and submit you're a decent person, but a FlashFire pilot talking about how OP a Gunship is makes me spit out my cold, stale coffee.

 

Well, I mean, I guess you're welcome for not having to taste that awful stuff anymore?

 

Seriously, the fact that my ship needs a nerf does not negate the fact that other ships also need changes. I've called for changes to pretty much every ship since day one.

 

(also space hadn't been out for months when 2.6 hit, unless you're counting the closed beta I didn't participate in)

Edited March 19, 2014 by Armonddd

[Pilgrim_Grey]

I respect your posts and submit you're a decent person, but a FlashFire pilot talking about how OP a Gunship is makes me spit out my cold, stale coffee.

 

FlashFires may not be as strong because of some nerfs and the introduction of the Bombers, but you guys were ruling the space for months.

 

People need to stop saying stuff like this. Battle Scouts pre-2.6 have nothing to do with how gunships work in 2.6, particularly opinions on gunships in 2.6.

 

Verain, you said people should be "punished" for getting hit by a full rail charge. They already do, they get a higher damage shot, which does make a big difference. Seriously, knowing how much damage railguns do, they'd still be viable if you took out all the shield piercing and debuffs the three types can do. Because they do a lot of damage in one burst.

 

But we're not even arguing for that much, we're just saying the debuff is out of whack.

 

If we really want to get in the drone thing, I do think the railguns should have some kind of accuracy check. I've apparently been more unlucky than Armondd and been hit mid-maneuver by a gunship more than once (though this kind of thing made me wonder if there was a way to hack the game for accuracy), but assuming everything was on the up and up there, they at least had a skill and accuracy check. As it is, to have a drone autohit that also has as much shield piercing as a player's slug railgun or a concussion missile that has an accuracy check... yeah. That's pretty lame and there isn't much a player can do to counter it.

 

There is a possible balance point where drones can have good accuracy but not have them be autohit (and even if they're not autohit... which we don't know, they have a lot of accuracy).

[-Streven-]

Drones should be autoaim not auto hit. They should absolutely have to respect accuracy and evasion stats. To include buffs and debuffs.

[Altheran]

Drones should be autoaim not auto hit. They should absolutely have to respect accuracy and evasion stats. To include buffs and debuffs.

I agree.

 

But so that they respect accuracy, they need a fixed turn rate, like a player ship. At the moment, they always face you, so they never suffer from tracking penalty or firing arcs.

They still won't do the human "cursor mistakes", they won't lack rapidity to sudden direction changes, like we'd expect from a computer's analysis speed. But at least they won't defy "hardware" limitations.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Altheran

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Drones should be autoaim not auto hit. They should absolutely have to respect accuracy and evasion stats. To include buffs and debuffs.

 

Just make them respect LOS and evasion like sat turrets do now and I think the problem is solved. I'm not sure with the AI that they can have accuracy stats in the way we the players do (and I'm not sure it would be worth the hassle of writing all the code to implement it if it doesn't already exist) but they can certainly make it respect evasion.

[Verain]

Drones should be autoaim not auto hit. They should absolutely have to respect accuracy and evasion stats. To include buffs and debuffs.

 

I don't understand the logic of them ignoring evasion, but I am glad something does. It would be a sizable nerf to make it no longer ignore evasion, and a metabuff to evasion, which hardly needs it.

 

Still, it makes no sense.

[Davionix]

Drones need their autohit because unlike other ships they are :

 

• stationary
  
• deal less damage per laser
  
• have less shield
  

 

If you remove their autohit and thus reduce their damage even more by make them occasionally miss, their value as support will greatly diminish and they will just become cannon fodder.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Davionix