Is everyone flying bombers and gunships or is it just me?

[DarthTyranid]

Cause I got to say the Bomber is lethal. And the Gunship is brutal.

 

The other ships lead to quick deaths.

 

Every match it seems to come down to whichever side has more bombers/gunships wins. I am sure balance is being looked at but I am also curious if other servers are having different trends?

[Zoom_VI]

Sever trends. I play GSF on both Jung Ma and Ebon Hawk. On Ebon I notice a crapton of bombers with nearly no gunships, while on JM I see a lot of gunships and very few bombers.

[Loc_n_lol]

On TRE there usually aren't too many of both. At least 50% of the pilots are flying a scout or a strike at any time.

Of course that includes those who only have the two starter ships in their hangar.

 

The side that fields the most bombers tends to win domination maps and gunships tend to dominate the scoreboards regardless of game-type. As on most servers I suspect.

[mr_sim]

For me the answer to your question is yes. However I consider myself a Strike Fighter pilot, see it still says so in my signature. The problem is my Rycer and Quell are now mastered, so my Razor and Mangler are my next project and then the Legion and Dustmaker come next. I truly dislike playing scout though I'll master them but just for the achieve.

 

My real point is that many players have now mastered their favorite ships and are now working alt ships. What you are likely seeing is a lot of veteran players who are setting aside their scouts/stikers for bombers and GS. As they are vets they are making brutal effective use of them too.

[Sinapus]

I tend to fly a Flashfire scout, though I did get enough comms to upgrade my warcarrier enough that I was able to hold a satellite for a game. I prefer zipping around and flinging cluster missiles everywhere, though.

 

[Ramalina]

Flew a few matches last night against mostly two ship pilot teams. Every single one of the two ship pilots had gunship and bomber as their ships.

 

So for whatever the reason, balance or working on alt ships, they weren't even queuing their strikes and scouts.

 

There were only two really good pilots on the other side though, so it was about even in terms of win loss ratio. Their less experienced gunships didn't cover each other, so they were vulnerable to groups of scouts from our side.

 

Bomber containing nodes were really slow to change hands though.

[ptwonline]

People fly gunships because they get the big kill/assist numbers, and because it's no fun getting picked off while you're trying to dogfight. So what happens is that fights become more and more dominated by Gunships in TDM, and Gunships and Bombers in Domination.

 

What actually works best is a combination: a few scouts/strikes to engage enemies, and then the gunships hanging back to pick them off while they are engaged. But the gunships are SO effective that it's driving more players to use them. You may not see it as much short term though because people are still trying to level up their other ships since their Gunships are maxed out or don't have gunships yet.

Edited April 2, 2014 by ptwonline

[AceFirstCav]

I would say that its depending on the type of game.

Dominion is becoming Bombers parade. Two games in row, two times were bombers half of whole adversary team suplemented with several gunships. All what they needed to do is fly to satelite, dump mines, drones and fly around. You can shot down one bomber (or Gunship), but it take some time. Meanwhile are all other satelites spammed with mines and drones. Entertaining way to victory and getting better score (if you are fan of camping and waiting for mines and drones to do your job).

Deathmatch is still good for fighters and scouts, but chance to be shot by Gunship during dogfight is also quite large. And with more players which can afford gunship it will be even greater. Fortunately Deathmatch is not so friendly for Bomber camping (besides respawn camping).

I wonder if this is direction which designers of GSF want to go - less dogfight, more camping. GSF is rapidly loosing FUN factor for me. It would be nice to know if this is intention, so I can stop hope for changes for the better.

[Zohkar]

I fly a gunship because I don't like the keyboard controls. If they had joystick support then I would enjoy dogfighting alot more and play scouts and strike fighters. Back in the days of flight simulators I was a very deadly fighter pilot but the keyboard controls just don't work for me. I use arrow keys to normally move so using the WASD keys is totally wrong place and then when I do I am constantly miss-clicking ESDF instead. While some people think by using a joystick might be a disadvantage in this game if it ever was added (not likely) one would never know until it was.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

While I do think bombers need some tweaking (particularly drones), as well as the ion railgun, well-coordinated teams of any makeup are the thing that makes the difference. I couldn't break a trio of gunships tonight because not enough of my teammates were trying to do the same. The one time I went in and had a couple others follow me, they were all dust.

 

Part of why that trio was devastating was our bad tactics, but also because they had strikes and scouts covering their front and distracting my teammates.

 

Some components are out of whack, but it generally comes down to tactics.

[Altheran]

I fly a gunship because I don't like the keyboard controls. If they had joystick support then I would enjoy dogfighting alot more and play scouts and strike fighters. Back in the days of flight simulators I was a very deadly fighter pilot but the keyboard controls just don't work for me. I use arrow keys to normally move so using the WASD keys is totally wrong place and then when I do I am constantly miss-clicking ESDF instead. While some people think by using a joystick might be a disadvantage in this game if it ever was added (not likely) one would never know until it was.

Not sure if...

 

I wouldn't say that GSF has keyboard control but mouse control with keyboard as a complement.

And if you don't like WASD, remap keys.

[NathanielStarr]

Well almost everyone that still bothers to play GSF still (and that number seems to go down a little bit every day) are playing gunships and bombers.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

Not sure if...

 

I wouldn't say that GSF has keyboard control but mouse control with keyboard as a complement.

And if you don't like WASD, remap keys.

 

I really don't get the "it needs to be joystick supported crowd" anymore. As others have pointed out, your weapon tracks off of center and it'd be a pain to try to make it work with the joystick. The keyboard + mouse approach does make for a lot of control that isn't that hard to use. I went in not knowing what to expect and moved pretty well in my first couple of matches.

[TheRampage]

On rep side i fly only Rampart. On Imp side I fly all. Most of the pilots I know fly all/dont fly ships they mastered.

 

Other then ones who are strictly one ship flyers.

[Zohkar]

I really don't get the "it needs to be joystick supported crowd" anymore. As others have pointed out, your weapon tracks off of center and it'd be a pain to try to make it work with the joystick. The keyboard + mouse approach does make for a lot of control that isn't that hard to use. I went in not knowing what to expect and moved pretty well in my first couple of matches.

 

Most people who learned to fly with a joystick back then have learned to lead a target using the reticle in the center of there screen. Also alot of current hud displays now show a lead target of potential movement based on speed and tragectery of the target they happen to be lining up on. Tho it would be interesting to see are entire airforce re-tooled to using a keyboard and mouse in actual combat... something about them not staying on the desk while going vertical might be implied.

[-Streven-]

Cause I got to say the Bomber is lethal. And the Gunship is brutal.

 

The other ships lead to quick deaths.

 

Every match it seems to come down to whichever side has more bombers/gunships wins. I am sure balance is being looked at but I am also curious if other servers are having different trends?

 

Harbinger seemed to trend this way but then kind of normalized. Haven't played since last week but when I was on it was good times with lots of dogfighting.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I wouldn't say everyone is playing bombers and GS on JC, but a fair few seem to be using them now. Mostly what I've noticed is an increasing prevalence of "jumping" bombers that effectively means you have to stay on target much longer than if they were flying smoothly.

[-Streven-]

I wouldn't say everyone is playing bombers and GS on JC, but a fair few seem to be using them now. Mostly what I've noticed is an increasing prevalence of "jumping" bombers that effectively means you have to stay on target much longer than if they were flying smoothly.

 

Smells fishy to me.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

Most people who learned to fly with a joystick back then have learned to lead a target using the reticle in the center of there screen. Also alot of current hud displays now show a lead target of potential movement based on speed and tragectery of the target they happen to be lining up on. Tho it would be interesting to see are entire airforce re-tooled to using a keyboard and mouse in actual combat... something about them not staying on the desk while going vertical might be implied.

 

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say with this. That GSF's setup is dumb because the air force and actual pilots do something different? That'd only matter if GSF and SWTOR was claiming to have some true piloting sim, which they don't. It's fighters in Star Wars, and you can do that however you like that makes the game work. That's like saying some of the Rogue Squadron games from a decade ago or whatever weren't good because they weren't flight sims. They were quite fun to play, actually, and GSF is too.

 

I wouldn't mind having a reason to break out my joystick to pilot again (haven't used it since my BF2 days), but I also can see it's not really needed and could be detrimental with how GSF is set up. I actually used to be more for joystick inclusion before I saw how GSF works, and I'm partially more down on it because I've seen too many posts from people that argue for joystick usage while also arguing that GSF sucks because it's not a flight sim. That's usually how the argument goes, too... not really an argument for how they would help or make it better, just that it sucks because it isn't like something a player imagined in their head for how things should be.

 

It's not that players aren't entitled to some of that, but there are too many fans and gamers out there that have "my way or the highway" approaches to movies and games.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Smells fishy to me.

 

Yeah I've literally seen them fly smooth and the second I get my first shot off they start jumping all over. In a fairly regular spurt so it's not random lag. So either self induced lag or they've got a macro that is regularly hitting the booster. Personally I'm inclined to say self induced lag as I haven't ever really seen the jumping end due to a loss of engine power as one would expect would eventually happen using highly inefficient 1 second boosting.

[Altheran]

Yeah I've literally seen them fly smooth and the second I get my first shot off they start jumping all over. In a fairly regular spurt so it's not random lag. So either self induced lag or they've got a macro that is regularly hitting the booster. Personally I'm inclined to say self induced lag as I haven't ever really seen the jumping end due to a loss of engine power as one would expect would eventually happen using highly inefficient 1 second boosting.

And they'd hinder themselves with micro-boosts because of E->S converter.

[MCaliban]

Play Imperial side on Harbinger. The majority of our pilots still fly scouts.

 

Fly them right into the Republic's minefields and gunship lines.

[Zohkar]

It's not that players aren't entitled to some of that, but there are too many fans and gamers out there that have "my way or the highway" approaches to movies and games.

 

Agreed, this is why I'll be stuck flying things like the bomber or gunship because using the keyboard is alien to me and the fact my manual dexterity isn't like it was in my teens. Got to love degeneritive diseases that attack one's ability to use hands and feet hence why I stopped playing ground pvp and I limit myself to only a couple matchs of space. Most my time is spent doing PvE content playing a turret class healer where I don't have to move as much.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Zohkar

[-Streven-]

Play Imperial side on Harbinger. The majority of our pilots still fly scouts.

 

Fly them right into the Republic's minefields and gunship lines.

 

Truth! Lol. It seems to me there are a lot of newer folks on harbinger and many veterans not playing as much. The end result being lots of matches that are focused on dogfighting and not an over abundance of bomberballs. Whatever the case it has been a great server to play on.

[MCaliban]

I'm going to have to agree. I don't know why the game keeps on dropping me into newbie matches, but they tend to be far more frantic and rough than when I know the players on the other side. This can be incredibly fun.