Coordinated tactical idea?

[SammyGStatus]

If we have 2 Gunships that're approx 5000m apart, with 2 bombers (one to drop repair drone for each GS, and IDK the range of the repair), filled up the rest of the team as scouts and strikes, could we potentially create a ball of indestruction? The two GS's will take out the incs pretty quick by disabling with ions and popping with slugs. The bombers will be tough to kill and provide support for the GS's by giving them repairs, and the strikes / scouts could take care of the pilots who get passed. Is this a viable tactic for TDM / does it differ much from the wall of GSs / minefields already in play? I wish we could take a group into an empty space map and just practice, cuz you could really create some cool strats

[Verain]

Gunships act to deny space, but a coordinated assault can absolutely disturb that roost. The scenario you describe is a well balanced well coordinated one, however.

[SammyGStatus]

I just see it being really tough to break that combination, unless you have two teams of similar composition. Obviously pilots skill and gear makes a difference here, but all things equal, how could this really be taken down? Got the idea from watching GoT and no matter what scenario I come up with, this seems optimal

[Ramalina]

Likely counter would be similar comp but with 4 GS no bombers. Put GSs in pairs keeping 4 km distance, then do a pincher on the enemy gunships one at a time. If they run for cover Ion spam to flush em out, or just wreck the now unsupported scouts and strikes.

 

It's sort of a problem in the meta game right now. In most cases the easiest (and possibly best) solution to opponent gunships and bombers is to counter with more gunships (and maybe bombers).

[SammyGStatus]

If you could distract the gunships by flying Type 2 GS-killer scouts with high evasion, they could potentially penetrate through the defenses and take out a gunship, which would cause the plan to kinda crumble with the lack of firepower to deter the opposition.

[Ramalina]

Apparently I wasn't clear enough, the pincher isn't the two gunships 4 km apart, it's the two pairs of gunships. You need a lot more than 4 km separation to do a good pincher on a gunship at gunship engagement ranges. The point is to have enough of an angle between the elements that the gunship can't turn fast enough to engage them both.

 

With 4 on 1 I'm not sure you'd even to use ions at all, or at most use 1 ion.

 

Presumably you'd rely on your own scouts and strikes to hold off any enemy same class ships. Pair a scout with each GS and you can start doing nasty things like wingman + running interference combos as you engage.

 

Ideally you'd have gunships engage at about 14 km, and have the scouts hang back about 2 km so you share the buff while minimizing ion aoe targets.

 

I suppose that leaves maybe 4 strike fighters to use long/medium range missiles to give the GS killer scouts some missile lock tones to listen to as they come in.

 

Anyhow, general point would be to use 4 GS to overwhelm other side's gunships one at a time. The bombers would provide good defense against scouts and strikes, but don't heal well enough to overcome that level of concentrated GS fire. Not to mention possibly providing low evasion ion aoe targets if they aren't careful with positioning.

 

I think you'd have to be really hunkered down in tight cover for the two bombers to be as effective as an extra pair of GSs.

 

The thing is, with the right team compositions, you have situations where the optimal solution is to refuse to fight on terms favorable to the enemy, in which case you either get a draw or the team with the most impatient/least disciplined pilot loses.

 

I do think that full coordinated 12 v 12 GSF battles would be pretty cool. So as far as the thread title goes, yeah I think coordinated tactics on both sides of a match would be really great.

[Armonddd]

Hi, welcome to The Ebon Hawk, where this is more common practice than it really should be. We call it bomberball, and it's stupid.

 

Except instead of two bombers two gunships, you get four gunships, three bombers, and one guy derping around in a scout or strike.

 

In TDM, it's essentially impossible to score kills (excepting the strike/scout) unless your team has better gunships. If your team flies scouts and strikes, they're just going to blow up to mines and drones. In order to break the mines and drones, you need people in gunships with aoe ion that know what they're doing -- a tall order with most pugs.

 

In Domination, well, I think we all know how effective it is to sit a bomber on a point. After that, the gunships are just gravy.

 

The biggest reason why bomberball is dumb is because it can be made with stock bombers (because stock mines and drones are just that powerful) but can't really be broken without experienced pilots using t4 ion railguns (since EMP weapons are just that weak).

[Fractalsponge]

Shadowlands sees this on pubside a fair bit. Except you often see 4+ bombers filling huge areas with mines and drones. On TDM it's not usually a huge problem unless the imperial team is bad or lacks any good gunships. On domination, it gets old quick.

 

Not to say it never happens on imperial side either, but most teams I've run with are usually fairly balanced in roles. The problem is that multiple bombers in domination are too hard to disrupt or break at the node. Even very good teams need time to flip a node against 2 bombers that are awake, and pugs have pretty much no chance. It leads (at least in Domination) to a "first side to get 2 bombers on each of 2 nodes wins" type of scenario.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Fractalsponge

[Nemarus]

It basically only works against a team made up mostly of ignorant, overeager new pilots, since they will repeatedly rush the ball and die.

 

But experienced pilots are starting to realize that the best thing to do is to just stay well away from the roost, out of Gunship range. If your Strikes and Scouts come out, they will get overwhelmed.

 

The other thing the roost needs to watch out for is an enemy with Damage Overcharge. If a skilled pilot (especially in a Scout or Strike with longer range weapons (5-7k) gets a Damage Overcharge, he can clear the whole cluster out in seconds. He'll probably still die to mines, but he'll get 3-6 kills for his 1 death.

 

I've done it several times. And once the formation breaks down, the rest of my team can come in to clean up. That being said, it takes both power-up luck and an elite pilot to really capitalize on that opportunity ... and if the enemy team contains any new pilots, they'll likely still be throwing themselves against the doom wall.

 

So in short ... yes this strategy will score you wins against lemmings. Against experienced teams, you're more likely to just get a boring stalemate with each side roosting on their own side of the map, while Scouts and Strikes skirmish a little bit here and there.

[Kuciwalker]

Things you would need to do to fix this (pick 2-3):

 

1. Reduce range on railgun drone to 8k.
   
2. Buff AOE on EMP ability / missile to 6k (or at least the drone-clearing part of it per Verain's suggestion)
   
3. Reduce EMP missile lockon time by 50% when it's targeting a mine or drone
   
4. Buff EMP missile range to 10k.
   

 

To be clear, the problem is not gunships, despite appearances! The problem is bombers and the quadratic scaling of drones and mines. Without bombers evasive scouts have a shot versus equal numbers of mutually supported gunships through a man-to-man offense. Minefields + gunships hard counter scouts by forcing extremely precise flying to avoid the mines at the same time you need extremely fast flying to dodge the gunships. Meanwhile strikes, which normally are great versus bombers, are far too slow and vulnerable to gunships, especially if they are trying to lock on to the bombers with missiles.

 

If you take bombers out of the mix, mutually supported gunships have to choose between grouping together (average distance 5-7km) or spreading out (average distance 12-15km). If they group together they are much weaker supporting each other because a scout in the middle will have a very high angular velocity and be harder to track. If they spread out then there are approach vectors to each gunship not covered by multiple lines of fire.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Kuciwalker

[Ramalina]

Things you would need to do to fix this (pick 2-3):

 

1. Reduce range on railgun drone to 8k.
   
2. Buff AOE on EMP ability / missile to 6k (or at least the drone-clearing part of it per Verain's suggestion)
   
3. Reduce EMP missile lockon time by 50% when it's targeting a mine or drone
   
4. Buff EMP missile range to 10k.
   

 

To be clear, the problem is not gunships, despite appearances! The problem is bombers and the quadratic scaling of drones and mines. Without bombers evasive scouts have a shot versus equal numbers of mutually supported gunships through a man-to-man offense. Minefields + gunships hard counter scouts by forcing extremely precise flying to avoid the mines at the same time you need extremely fast flying to dodge the gunships. Meanwhile strikes, which normally are great versus bombers, are far too slow and vulnerable to gunships, especially if they are trying to lock on to the bombers with missiles.

 

It sounds suspiciously like you're saying the EMP weapons should be buffed to the point of actually being worth taking in a bomber rich environment. Maybe even enough so that substituting into the standard variations of proton/concussion/cluster is competitive enough to make you think hard about the tradeoffs EMP brings.

[okiobe]

The OPs suggested composition is easily broken with T2 scouts (BLC) and strikes. The drone carrier just doesn't provide enough protection from close range engagements. it is better for harassing from a distance. All you need to do is barrel roll in and burst down even one GS and the ball breaks (BR in boost our or boost in BR out). All the strike has to do is tank the first hits of a lurking rail gun drone. If they aren't a concern then two T2 scouts can do it on their own. Neither gunships nor bombers provide good close range support. You would need your scouts and strikes to be in the ball ready which most won't be/aren't willing.

 

Mines hard counter this which is why you usually see the minefield ball as opposed the the repair/railgun drone composition.

Edited April 3, 2014 by okiobe

[Nemarus]

Things you would need to do to fix this (pick 2-3):

 

1. Reduce range on railgun drone to 8k.
   
2. Buff AOE on EMP ability / missile to 6k (or at least the drone-clearing part of it per Verain's suggestion)
   
3. Reduce EMP missile lockon time by 50% when it's targeting a mine or drone
   
4. Buff EMP missile range to 10k.
   

 

To be clear, the problem is not gunships, despite appearances! The problem is bombers and the quadratic scaling of drones and mines. Without bombers evasive scouts have a shot versus equal numbers of mutually supported gunships through a man-to-man offense. Minefields + gunships hard counter scouts by forcing extremely precise flying to avoid the mines at the same time you need extremely fast flying to dodge the gunships. Meanwhile strikes, which normally are great versus bombers, are far too slow and vulnerable to gunships, especially if they are trying to lock on to the bombers with missiles.

 

If you take bombers out of the mix, mutually supported gunships have to choose between grouping together (average distance 5-7km) or spreading out (average distance 12-15km). If they group together they are much weaker supporting each other because a scout in the middle will have a very high angular velocity and be harder to track. If they spread out then there are approach vectors to each gunship not covered by multiple lines of fire.

 

This.

[Zoom_VI]

If you could distract the gunships by flying Type 2 GS-killer scouts with high evasion, they could potentially penetrate through the defenses and take out a gunship, which would cause the plan to kinda crumble with the lack of firepower to deter the opposition.

 

Drones and mines ignore evasion

[Kuciwalker]

If you could distract the gunships by flying Type 2 GS-killer scouts with high evasion, they could potentially penetrate through the defenses and take out a gunship, which would cause the plan to kinda crumble with the lack of firepower to deter the opposition.

 

1. Gunships don't "crumble" to Flashfire pressure. An individual gunship pressured by a Flashfire will have dramatically reduced offensive capability but will still take a while to kill if piloted correctly.
   
2. Flashfires cannot pressure a gunship in a minefield.
   

[SammyGStatus]

Hence the conversation we had the other night. Mines = fine; Minefields - cruel and unusual. As a gunship it still takes me 4 shots to kill a bomber too (if they're all slug) so you can't even drop em in a reasonable amount of time (with a GS, as I can't speak to the other classes on how well they perform). No wonder scouts are having such an issue with this

[Armonddd]

Mines = fine

 

Inasmuch as 100% shield penetration on a fire-and-forget weapon is fine, yeah.

 

Things you would need to do to fix this (pick 2-3):

 

1. Reduce range on railgun drone to 8k.
   
2. Buff AOE on EMP ability / missile to 6k (or at least the drone-clearing part of it per Verain's suggestion)
   
3. Reduce EMP missile lockon time by 50% when it's targeting a mine or drone
   
4. Buff EMP missile range to 10k.
   

 

There's a couple other approaches I could see working well. Because mines and drones can be deployed much more efficiently than they can be destroyed, increasing their cooldowns would be a step towards fixing the problem. Giving more ships options that let them eliminate multiple mines/drones at once would help. Increasing the power of the current EMP weaponry against mines and drones specifically would help.

 

What if we had anti-bomber weaponry on more component slots? Consider the following:

 

Pulse Jammer (shield component for strike fighters)

 

Active ability (cooldown: 30 seconds): Send out a pulse of electronic noise immediately and after one second. Each pulse has a radius of 5,000 meters. Enemy mines and drones caught in the pulse are disarmed and destroyed. Each pulse increases your sensor dampening by 3,000 meters for 2 seconds and decreases the communications range of affected enemy ships by 3,000 meters. Enemy ships caught in the initial pulse additionally suffer a 200% penalty to accuracy for one blaster or railgun shot.

T1: Increases sensor dampening to 5,000 meters and communications range penalty to 5,000 meters.

T2: Decreases cooldown to 20 seconds.

T3: Increases pulse radius to 7,000 meters. || Initial pulse breaks incoming missile locks.

 

-Pulse twice to counter newly-dropped mines, which otherwise would act as a hard counter to this strategy. Skilled players can attempt to use the second pulse to increase the effective range of the jamming.

-5,000-7,000 meter range should allow a pilot to negate a minefield on a satellite, which appears to have been the intent of EMP field.

-Straight up destroying mines and drones allows ships to spec an "anti-bomber" build, which adds a level of strategy to build decisions. For veteran players, this allows a pilot the ability to hard counter bombers across multiple playstyles (instead of being forced to play a gunship).

-"Increases <effect> to value" nomenclature (instead of the standard "by value") makes upgrades slightly easier to understand.

-Sensor dampening buff and communications and accuracy debuffs give this ability a measure of utility when not facing bombers, where it would otherwise be useless.

-Secondary pulse is useless against enemy players -- don't mess up the timing in a dogfight.

-A 200% accuracy penalty effectively negates the next shot without resorting to RNG defense. Ideally, this prevents more damage the more dangerous a weapon is (e.g. negating a BLC shots does more for you than negating a RLC shot would).

-Final upgrade allows pilots to specialize in dogfighting or clearing minefields, which again adds depth and strategy to build choices.

 

 

I could also potentially see an engine component that recharges engine power and destroys nearby mines, or a laser that does increased damage to mines and drones and deals aoe if the primary target was a mine or drone (though justifying that lore-wise would be... interesting).

 

Thoughts?

[Kuciwalker]

There's a couple other approaches I could see working well. Because mines and drones can be deployed much more efficiently than they can be destroyed, increasing their cooldowns would be a step towards fixing the problem.

 

Bombers are already really boring to play... making it so they can only do stuff once every 30s instead of once every 20s doesn't help. I literally alt-tab and read stuff when playing my bomber if I'm not actively dogfighting.

 

Giving more ships options that let them eliminate multiple mines/drones at once would help. Increasing the power of the current EMP weaponry against mines and drones specifically would help.

 

What if we had anti-bomber weaponry on more component slots? Consider the following:

 

*snip*

 

Thoughts?

 

Complicated. I'd kind of rather put very minor anti-mine stuff on existing components. Make the ion cannon stun drones. I dunno.

 

Oh, and again, kill the shield piercing on seismic mines.