Devs: Please consider ways to reduce effectiveness of mine/drone stacking

[AceFirstCav]

even something as simple as backing your players up heck I did it in a gunship popping drones and mines. . I don't see what the issue is..

I would say try to go capture satelite, which is main point of Dominion type of game. You will not win with shooting drones and mines (or even bombers). You can even lead score board at the end, but your team will have score 0. Then you will maybe see the issue

 

. . .a good player will do that. as of now I hear /cry my bad game play can't beat his so nerf him so I can. how about get better dude.

So all will take bombers because thats only way to do better. Surprisingly lots of people is alreading doing this. Therefore Dominion is not need to play anymore. Just count Bombers and team with more bombers is winner. It will be simply and fast

[Armonddd]

The only thing keeping battle scouts from being the FOTM is mines. Leave them alone or nerf battle scouts at the same time.

 

That's a ridiculously oversimplified -- and therefore flat wrong -- analysis of the current meta.

[FridgeLM]

That's a ridiculously oversimplified -- and therefore flat wrong -- analysis of the current meta.

 

It really isn't. The only thing keeping semi decent battle scouts from going where they want and killing whoever they want is the fear they may hit a mine or the consequences of them hitting a mine. It sure isn't drones, because drones tickle by comparison.

 

It's that, and gunships.

Edited April 4, 2014 by FridgeLM

[wishihadaname]

If you build for it, bomber busting is feasible, that said you have to build a ship that does that and only that. I actually have done so. My main is a dampened blackbolt scout with sab probes, best turning radius in the game, and a nearly endless fuel tank for boosting out of trouble. I always spawn as this ship if the other team doesn't have bombers. If it does I switch to another ship because my carefully built and mastered blackbolt will be absolutely useless once bombers are on the field.

 

My anti bomber ship is a quell with heavy lasers built for range, protorps, emp missiles, maxed shields, maxed armor, directional shields, and built for speed as opposed to turning. It plays like a real world bomber. Its turn radius is lousy and its useless in a dog fight but it is great for making long range runs against a fortified satellite or bomber ball. In either case I use a combination of speed, shields doubled to front, and EMP missiles to clear a path to the bomber. I can take out a fortified sat, but it usually takes me at least a half dozen passes and at least 2 minutes overall to allow for shield regen and missile reloads. If there is more than one bomber all I can do is slow them down. This is on a ship SPECIFICALLY BUILT to counter bombers, it can't do anything else well.

 

Here are my proposed changes (because I think most of us can agree that bombers do need to be changed).

-Bombers can now trip their own mines, their team mates are fine you can only blow yourself up.

-Railgun drones no longer pierce shields (too good against scouts).

-EMP missiles now fire like rocket pods, 2 per volley and without needing a lock on.

 

for anyone curious, here is what i'm currently flying in any domination match that has bombers. It's hardly a hard counter, but its effective against a single bomber humping a sat provided you get him alone for about a minute or so. Don't try to dogfight with it, and forget about fighting gunships/scouts. This thing kills bombers and that's it.

http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/

Edited April 4, 2014 by wishihadaname

[ScipioAemilianus]

How about actually read the thread and make informed arguments?

 

Half the people here are arguing to nerf the tactics they use, because they're stupidly good.

 

I don't see why you think it's ok that the only realistic way to un-trench a bomber lolling his way around a satellite is to use a gunship in careful coordination with other ships. And, currently, that is the only way to counter mines and drones -- the EMP weapons don't do a very good job of it, and AoE ion railgun (which requires t4 and knowing what you're doing) is the only other counter in the game.

 

We can't "think of some other way" because no other way exists. It's like if I wanted to make lasagna but had no pasta of any kind and you were all "lol you have an entire kitchen here why don't you think of something". There's just no solution that results in anything resembling actual lasagna.

 

my bad I just have never seen this as a problem. maybe that's half your problem.

[Nemarus]

If you build for it, bomber busting is feasible, that said you have to build a ship that does that and only that. I actually have done so. My main is a dampened blackbolt scout with sab probes, best turning radius in the game, and a nearly endless fuel tank for boosting out of trouble. I always spawn as this ship if the other team doesn't have bombers. If it does I switch to another ship because my carefully built and mastered blackbolt will be absolutely useless once bombers are on the field.

 

My anti bomber ship is a quell with heavy lasers built for range, protorps, emp missiles, maxed shields, maxed armor, directional shields, and built for speed as opposed to turning. It plays like a real world bomber. Its turn radius is lousy and its useless in a dog fight but it is great for making long range runs against a fortified satellite or bomber ball. In either case I use a combination of speed, shields doubled to front, and EMP missiles to clear a path to the bomber. I can take out a fortified sat, but it usually takes me at least a half dozen passes and at least 2 minutes overall to allow for shield regen and missile reloads. If there is more than one bomber all I can do is slow them down. This is on a ship SPECIFICALLY BUILT to counter bombers, it can't do anything else well.

 

Here are my proposed changes (because I think most of us can agree that bombers do need to be changed).

-Bombers can now trip their own mines, their team mates are fine you can only blow yourself up.

-Railgun drones no longer pierce shields (too good against scouts).

-EMP missiles now fire like rocket pods, 2 per volley and without needing a lock on.

 

for anyone curious, here is what i'm currently flying in any domination match that has bombers. It's hardly a hard counter, but its effective against a single bomber humping a sat provided you get him alone for about a minute or so. Don't try to dogfight with it, and forget about fighting gunships/scouts. This thing kills bombers and that's it.

http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/

 

These are decent band-aids, and I approve.

 

I think the biggest issue about Bombers--one which was called out by me and others in closed beta--is that they allow you to have tremendous killing and tactical power without ever having to aim to hit a moving target.

 

With my "Siege Engine" minelayer, the only thing I ever need to shoot at with my lasers are turrets--and they don't move. I mean, most of the time I do shoot other things because I'm bored. But I do far, far more damage just by slowing orbiting around and dropping little explosive turds. On occasion, I may get "strategic" and spawn a new mine to blow up an old one in someone's face.

 

But compare that to when I fly my Blackbolt in TDM, where I'm boosting, pitching, rolling, changing energy systems, engaging at multiple ranges, firing rockets, evading missiles at the last minute, hunting for power ups, and fleeing for my life to get off the sensors of pursuers... I can tell you that game is an entirely different one. It's far more fun and exhilarating and requires far more skill than sitting in place and hoping ignorant lemmings walk right into your death trap.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Nemarus

[Armonddd]

It really isn't. The only thing keeping semi decent battle scouts from going where they want and killing whoever they want is the fear they may hit a mine or the consequences of them hitting a mine. It sure isn't drones, because drones tickle by comparison.

 

It's that, and gunships.

 

No.

 

Try actually playing the class against skilled opponents.

 

Railgun and interdiction drones are scary -- railguns take out ~30% of your hull in one shot, with literally zero you can do to avoid it short blowing up the drone, except it has 10 km range and you have, at most, 6.5 km. Interdictions, meanwhile, turn you into a short range bomber with awful hull. Missile sentries are kind of scary, though they don't flat out ignore mechanics and it's possible to avoid damage from them... by sacrificing your lock breaks and potentially giving enemies the opportunity to drop a conc or torp on you. Drones are flat out not ignorable the way you seem to think they are.

 

You also can't just say "the only threats to scouts are mines" and then turn around and say "oh btw gunships too". "Only" and "and" are kind of opposites.

 

I'd also like to point out the ridiculousness of saying "scouts would be everywhere if their counters were removed" (no... really?!) in the same breath as "don't add counters to bombers". I mean... what do you think is going to happen here? It's not like there aren't already multiple servers where matches are determined solely by the number of bombers present.

 

Also, I really don't see where you get the idea that any "semi decent battle scout" can "[go] where they want and [kill] whoever they want". Scouts are a high skill class by virtue of their extremely low durability, and anyone but an advanced or expert scout pilot is easy prey in a dogfight.

 

There are three other reasons why scouts are so popular, all of which you're completely ignoring: burst damage, ability to counter other classes, and lack of other options.

 

Burst damage is king in this game because this game allows burst damage to exist. I've expounded on the logic behind this in other posts, but the short version is that damage now is better than damage later. Scouts (of both varieties) bring burst damage in a way no class other than gunships can hope to compete with, and have done so since early access. That's right, people who knew what they were doing were running bursty Blackbolts and Novadives and doing just as well, if not better than, the people flying Stings and Flashfires. If you have any doubt on that front, head over to Pot5 and ask for Aya, Zuchisen, and Scrab. Admittedly, BLCs are currently overpowered, but that has almost no bearing on the popularity of T2 scouts; as long as they are capable of putting out massive amounts of burst damage with rocket pods, LLCs, BLCs, targeting telemetry, blaster overcharge, and booster recharge, T2 scouts will be popular.

 

Scouts act as a soft counter to gunships. I don't know if you remember back in December when early access was all we had and only a select few members of the community had gunships, but they're pretty powerful. Back then, when people had less experience chasing and destroying gunships, those select few were setting world records with six digit damage numbers and over 30 kills (plus maybe a dozen assists). Left unchecked, gunships are extremely dangerous, and a large part of the current meta revolves around using efficient tactics to neutralize enemy gunships without costing your team too much. These tactics are, often, simply inferior using a strike fighter. I don't know of a single strike fighter pilot who can neutralize gunships as efficiently as the best scout pilots can. In an imaginary world where scouts were significantly less popular, gunships would again reign supreme.

 

Finally, there's simply a lack of other dogfighting ships. Strike fighters are, in many situations, patently inferior to scouts. When I'm on my game (read: sober and in my Flashfire instead of my Novadive or something), there is only a single strike fighter pilot on my entire server who poses a real threat to me without damage overcharge. Even if this weren't the case, there simply aren't any other ships in the game that offer the high speed dogfighting playstyle the scout does, and alienating the players who enjoy that playstyle would be an awful design decision.

 

You are welcome to participate in the debate by discussing why mines and drones are or are not currently balanced in the context of the game, and to offer ideas for current and future bomber tactics and components, but simply saying "bombers are fine because T2 scouts were OP in 2.5" is not acceptable discourse.

 

If you build for it, bomber busting is feasible, that said you have to build a ship that does that and only that.

 

You can kind of do that, yeah, but really the best way to bust a bomber is to fly a gunship. Everything else is simply inferior at the job, unless the enemy bombers are so bad that it doesn't matter what you run. Your quell is, quite simply, less efficient at bomber killing than a mangler, and the mangler is better in every other department to boot.

 

Here are my proposed changes (because I think most of us can agree that bombers do need to be changed).

-Bombers can now trip their own mines, their team mates are fine you can only blow yourself up.

-Railgun drones no longer pierce shields (too good against scouts).

-EMP missiles now fire like rocket pods, 2 per volley and without needing a lock on.

 

Friendly fire is simply too easily abusable. We can't have nice things, remember?

 

I agree that the railgun drone needs tuning, and removing the shield piercing is a good place to start. It's still an aimbot with 100% accuracy, though, which is dumb. (Same applies to missile drones, which will gain popularity if no other change is made -- because they'll keep their shield piercing and we'll be back to the same basic problem.)

 

Deadfire EMP missiles might be interesting. Certainly their biggest problem is their long lock-on time and cooldown. That said, I'm not convinced they couldn't be done right with, say, 1.5s lock-on time and a significantly larger radius of effect.

[wishihadaname]

I would argue that my quell is better than the mangler because it is more manouverable and durable. I have significantly more shields and armor and I don't have to park myself in order to attack. I make passes at enemy emplacements while absorbing/evading enemy fire. A gunship needs support, my quell does not. I may not be able to dogfight but with my speed build and shields cycled to back I can lead you T-2 scout types on many a merry chase, and if I really need to I can joust pretty well.

 

... ok fine I fly it on principle, its called galactic star FIGHTER not galactic star SNIPER. Never did like the idea of gunships, bombers even less, though I understand different playstyles are needed to draw in different people.

[FridgeLM]

simply saying "bombers are fine because T2 scouts were OP in 2.5" is not acceptable discourse.

 

Strawman, and you're not the arbiter of what is acceptable discourse.

 

Any attempt at addressing bombers must also address battle scouts (and speed to a lesser extent) or else they'll run as rampant as they did in 2.5 because they're, comparatively, just as OP as they used to be in 2.5 but they have a very hard counter in bombers (minelayers more so than drones). That evasion nerf does literally nothing when they're still kings of short range burst damage - strikes, which I used to fly, still can't compete, which is something you admit. In a meta without bombers, strikes have no place other than to hug a node in domination and try not to die.

 

And yeah, gunships are arguably OP too.

Edited April 4, 2014 by FridgeLM

[Socrotes]

dropping seismic and interdiction mines to deal ~1000 direct hull damage to everyone within 2000m every 15 seconds. .

 

This isn't strictly true: one of the best counters to mines is charged plating combined with deflection armor. Granted, this makes you quite weak versus heavy lasers, burst lasers and slugs, but almost entirely negates the damage from mines. In fact, running into a node that has a billion mines with charged plating and nullify running makes each mine hit for damage in the single digits and is one of the most effective ways to clear out a minefield. Of course, you still have to kill the bomber, which is far from easy...just thought I would mention this.

 

Molva- POT5

[Nemarus]

This isn't strictly true: one of the best counters to mines is charged plating combined with deflection armor. Granted, this makes you quite weak versus heavy lasers, burst lasers and slugs, but almost entirely negates the damage from mines. In fact, running into a node that has a billion mines with charged plating and nullify running makes each mine hit for damage in the single digits and is one of the most effective ways to clear out a minefield. Of course, you still have to kill the bomber, which is far from easy...just thought I would mention this.

 

Molva- POT5

 

New mines, every 15 seconds! Your charged plating doesn't last forever.

[Bleeters]

Can't say I'd complain if they removed the shield piercing from railgun drones, the only reason I bother chucking them out is to help get assist mvp achievements.

[Kuciwalker]

You can kind of do that, yeah, but really the best way to bust a bomber is to fly a gunship. Everything else is simply inferior at the job, unless the enemy bombers are so bad that it doesn't matter what you run. Your quell is, quite simply, less efficient at bomber killing than a mangler, and the mangler is better in every other department to boot.

 

I don't really agree with this. I think in a vacuum (see what I did there) a strike is generally better than a gunship at dealing with a bomber. A strike has straight up more DPS than a gunship (ESPECIALLY when you include missiles), HLC makes it easy to dodge mines, and a strike is durable enough to eat mines anyway. Bombers can easily take four fully charged railgun shots to kill, which is an eternity. It's also harder to LOS a strike fighter (because a gunship at railgun range has to close the entire distance to get around LOS).

 

The problem is that strike fighters are just horrifically vulnerable to gunships and to a lesser extent scouts. And so a bomber supported by a gunship is hard to feasibly attack with a strike fighter.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Kuciwalker

[Gavin_Kelvar]

The problem is that strike fighters are just horrifically vulnerable to gunships and to a lesser extent scouts. And so a bomber supported by a gunship is hard to feasibly attack with a strike fighter.

 

To be fair the reason strikers are so vulnerable is because bombers still take a while to burn down in a striker which leaves more than enough time for a GS to take them out. Given that the strikers are already tanking damage from mines/drones that the bomber keeps laying they have no ability to also tank GS/scout/striker.

 

I've generally found the only way a supported bomber goes down is if allied fighters (ideally scouts) protect the fighter(s) (ideally strikers) making attack runs against the bomber. Which kinda makes sense that you need a team to overcome a supported bomber.

 

that being said a buff to EMP weapons that gives them the power to destroy both mines and drones would be welcome.

[-Streven-]

The problem is that strike fighters are just horrifically vulnerable to gunships and to a lesser extent scouts. And so a bomber supported by a gunship is hard to feasibly attack with a strike fighter.

 

Really? You make it sound like strikes are so pathetic. I really wish we all played on the same server cuz I just don't get this sentiment towards strikes. They are really quite good and can take on any other ship in the game.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

I'm not sure about the EMP pulse, but if the tier V option for EMP missiles was a bigger blast radius that did take out drones and such for sure with a slightly shorter lock time versus the engine breaker, that could be a solution.

 

I have to honestly wonder if that's part of why EMP missiles have the long lock or something (though of course it could be a matter of some developer thinking they're better than they are).

 

I'm not sure if that solution is even needed, though. I just wish there was better options for countering bombers... the EMP options just don't do the job.

[Kuciwalker]

Strikes are just so easy to hit in a gunship. Scouts move faster and pack serious evasion.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Really? You make it sound like strikes are so pathetic. I really wish we all played on the same server cuz I just don't get this sentiment towards strikes. They are really quite good and can take on any other ship in the game.

 

I think it's leftover from pre-2.6 when strikers really were at the bottom of the food chain. There are enough vets still around to preserve the bad rep strikers got back then and so you get a cycle of vets telling newbies that strikers are worthless who then tell other newbies. I suspect the vets who praise strikers are striker pilots that suffered through the pre-2.6 days and learned how to tap the striker's potential to the fullest to overcome rather harsh odds.

[FBPL]

There's just no solution that results in anything resembling actual lasagna.

 

Moussaka?

[Altheran]

Moussaka?

 

#CloseEnough

Edited April 5, 2014 by Altheran

[SammyGStatus]

I don't really agree with this. I think in a vacuum (see what I did there) a strike is generally better than a gunship at dealing with a bomber. A strike has straight up more DPS than a gunship (ESPECIALLY when you include missiles), HLC makes it easy to dodge mines, and a strike is durable enough to eat mines anyway. Bombers can easily take four fully charged railgun shots to kill, which is an eternity. It's also harder to LOS a strike fighter (because a gunship at railgun range has to close the entire distance to get around LOS).

 

The problem is that strike fighters are just horrifically vulnerable to gunships and to a lesser extent scouts. And so a bomber supported by a gunship is hard to feasibly attack with a strike fighter.

 

This two a T. I can two shot a strike with the T4/T5 upgrades on a slug railgun, but 4 fully charged railguns doesn't break the bomber? Those things have massive HP, as they were intended to, but as Nemarus stated, he's getting a boatload of constantly regening shields on top of a huge hull ontop of laying things down to prevent us from getting close to destroying him (minus the strikes v bomber scenario which seems to be the best way to take them down). The issue that I have with them isn't so much in TDM. If there are bombers in TDM, that's all well n good because they're so slow, my GS can take the time to pop a few ions to kill shields then zerg them with slugs (that makes sense to me as they're flippin fortresses, albeit I wish BW would drop the amount of full slug charges to 3 if I crit one).

 

The bigger issue seems to be more with the mines they lay. Sure, it's a pain to kill the bombers, but if you kill the bomber, the mines explode (another slight annoyance but I get it). I've had to adjust my role as a ship devastator to a minesweeper, and everytime I played that game as a child, it sucked too.

 

Being a GS means you're able to have some mobility in your role, so the T4 AOE Ions are a huge benefit, as one full charge (even on a nearby ship) should be enough to clear most of them (at least to my knowledge). If you're up against a bunch of 2/3 ship players on the opposing team, and your team has 4 bombers, what's going to happen? These new players are probably going to get really discouraged by being unable to kill any of those bombers, or will get rocked in a Dom match because no one has a single upgrade and a stock bomber vs stock anything else still has an advantage in my opinion (Takes like 6 slugs with a stock GS too, though I can't confirm if my stock GS was shooting at a STOCK bomber as I can't remember what outfit of weps he was rocking )

 

Decrease the overall damage of the mines A SMIDGE, or maybe come up with an overlapping penalty (if two mines are too close to each other (i.e. 500m) then their accuracy is reduced b/c of overlapping signals, or something (you can support that with IRL concept of interference on non-dual-band wireless routers). Bring down the hull of the bombers a bit. The shields are fine, because let's be honest, they should be tanks, but I should be able to knock down the shields and come close to one shotting in a GS. If a scout has BLCs, he should be able to take down the bomber that has no shields.

 

Unfortunately. anything + a bomber at a sat wins, and the only counter is another bomber (which I'm cool with as that's proper tactical preparatiion) really. I'm moreso looking at this from a "Victory for the Team" perspective, as that's more important than my KD. Doesn't it seem like the balance is quite there on the bombers inability to be moved from a Sat, which is my biggest issue. Hope you guys can come up with some more creative solutions for this condundrum and have the devs take note of how the pilots who have well over 500+ games are baffled as to why it's allowed for 6 bombers to be on one team holding 2 sats, especially after they've hunkered down, without any REALISTIC way to take them out

Edited April 5, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[Morgrid]

The shields are fine, because let's be honest, they should be tanks, but I should be able to knock down the shields and come close to one shotting in a GS.

 

Uh.....

 

No, you should not. A gunship should not have that much power over other ships. Bombers have massive hull over the rest of the ships currently available, but the 2nd lowest base shields - both Strikes and Gunships have higher.

 

1300 for Scouts, 1500 for Bombers, 1700 for Gunships, 1800 for Strikes

 

Bombers rely on being able to soak as much damage as possible while punishing those who get too close - that's the entire basis of their survivability, just like yours is based off of spamming barrel roll and distortion field.

 

Now if you take away the shields that bombers have, you need to take away armor penetration as well to even that out.

[QuinMantha]

Yes, but when a ship is SO GOOD at area denial, and one of the two game modes depends SO HEAVILY on area control, things get out of whack.

 

Keep in mind, my Bomber isn't just a defender. It is the ultimate node attacker as well...

 

...So far the ONLY thing that has been reliably able to challenge this build/tactic is someone running the exact same thing.

 

Guys, to direct your attention back to a major point.

 

Dear GOD.

 

I have been on the receiving end of this, haven't I? During a match, I don't have quite enough situational awareness to suss out just what happens to me when the reason I'm dead isn't immediately apparent, and I'm already getting set up for my next attack run. But this...this has happened to me, and it's cost me matches. Matches that could have been won.

[SammyGStatus]

Uh.....

 

No, you should not. A gunship should not have that much power over other ships. Bombers have massive hull over the rest of the ships currently available, but the 2nd lowest base shields - both Strikes and Gunships have higher.

.

 

I was saying that once a bomber has no more shields, I should be able to take it out with one fully charged slug that has 100% ignore armor and an inc to hull strength. And based of what Nemarus said, he has full shields pretty much constantly. Not so much specifically talking about strength of them, but more about the fact that they refill very quickly. The shields are always there.

 

Not being able to move you off a node is a seriously gameplay balance if the most destructive ship can barely dent you (considering my crit with slug is 2400 against a bomber)

Edited April 5, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[Zoom_VI]

I was saying that once a bomber has no more shields, I should be able to take it out with one fully charged slug that has 100% ignore armor and an inc to hull strength. And based of what Nemarus said, he has full shields pretty much constantly. Not so much specifically talking about strength of them, but more about the fact that they refill very quickly. The shields are always there.

 

No the fact that its takes so many slugs to kill the bomber is the offset for the fact that bombers are literally incapable of threatening a gunship.

 

Perhaps a better balance would be to make it so other ships besides gunships can fight bombers effectively?