Thank you for killing GSF for me, Bioware - I was having too much fun playing it.

[Highborne]

The barrel roll nerf seems a bit overdone, but I suspect you'll need to use LOS heavily. IMO gunships were too strong prepatch, but EVERYONE used barrel roll.

 

I don't think this is worth quitting over at all, and I think if you can rail them twice you should win.

 

Pfft. Railshotting a strike fighter twice at full power only annoys it.

[Highborne]

After playing like 10 games last night as a GS and having an entire team say to go for me [Thank you TS with someone in the VoIP on the other side to let me know], I realize I'm going to die a lot more against GOOD pilots. Against the newbs, well they will still go down quickly. First match made contact with 40/50 points in TDM and died twice. Against Callem / Shayd on TEH, I had my highest death count at 6 (he came over and apologized for targetting me, but it made sense cuz as he said, I would've had more kill count than him). I get barraged with multiple missiles sometimes, which is frustrating, but it's just going to take getting used to / coordination.

 

TBH, the only OP aspect of the GS before was the ion's energy depletion. The BR was meh, but now survivability has been mitigated to require even more skill to survive when you have 3-4 pilots on you. Ahhh, I just want to play more!!

 

EDIT: BLC's on a scout need to go next

 

Once again: If the OP aspect of gunships was the ion gun (which it was, really), then nerf that. Don't turn the gunship into a (slowly) flying cardboard box which dies to anyone able to establish missile lock.

[Armonddd]

And when two scouts or strike fighters are constantly missile-locking you?

 

Why don't you have a buddy? If there's two of them, there should be two of you.

 

Who'd have thought it? Something meant to give you lateral speed....gave you lateral speed over people who took something else for an engine option.

 

Wrong -- barrel roll wasn't intended to be used for travel. Chris explicitly said that in the last stream. They nerfed engine abilities to make it easier to land missiles (which they felt weren't making enough of an impact), and they nerfed barrel roll harder because of its travel component.

 

Bzzt. No, no we couldn't.

 

Right, but you didn't need to. All you have to do is get to the capital turrets, the bomber's minefield, or your allies.

 

I don't have a problem with gunships retreating to their allies, but I do have a problem with the AI being so influential in a PvP game.

 

Speaking as someone who is very tired of getting two-shotted by #@$@ing strike fighters, I beg to differ.

 

Unless those two shots are both concs or torps, you're not getting two-shot. And if you're eating two torps consecutively, that's your own fault.

[Armonddd]

And when the lock time for cluster missiles (with shield penetration and armour piercing) is, what, three seconds? Four seconds? - how much does that help then?

 

Clusters don't have armor penetrating, and they only have 8% shield piercing. That's like 71 damage. That's not going to land a kill.

 

Pfft. Railshotting a strike fighter twice at full power only annoys it.

 

Good joke. Are you using plasma railgun exclusively or something?

[RiVaN_]

So Gunner's (who are the only ships able to one shot another mastered ship that is running with full hull strength and shields + Power to shields) are on here complaining that they can't just go sit in a spot for the whole match and rack up 20 or 30 kills and never die because now they have to do some dog fighting to stay alive...

In a Space piloting game...

You are complaining that you have to fly and evade fire in a flight and fight oriented game...

That is what I see as Ironic.

 

Speaking as someone who is very tired of getting two-shotted by #@$@ing strike fighters, I beg to differ.

 

As someone who dropped down to only playing GSF once a week because Gunners were 1 shotting my mastered flash fire; I can tell you that even if that were true it would simply be our reward for all the times Gunships have been able to 1 or 2 shot everything in the match.

Edited April 9, 2014 by RiVaN_

[Highborne]

Why don't you have a buddy? If there's two of them, there should be two of you.

 

And what's he going to do, hmm? Use sticks and harsh language against two strike fighters? They'll kill something as fragile as a gunship before their paint is scratched. The upside of being damned tough.

 

Wrong -- barrel roll wasn't intended to be used for travel. Chris explicitly said that in the last stream.

 

Hence my problem with Bioware over this. They certainly took their sweet time deciding that they had a problem with it.

 

They nerfed engine abilities to make it easier to land missiles (which they felt weren't making enough of an impact), and they nerfed barrel roll harder because of its travel component.

 

The only way you can possibly think missiles (which have a lock-on time in the 2-3 second range when properly kitted out) didn't make enough impact before was if you were willfully blind to the impact they made.

 

Right, but you didn't need to. All you have to do is get to the capital turrets, the bomber's minefield, or your allies.

 

That would be the capital turrets that don't exist anymore in deathmatches, right? And the bomber "minefield" of two mines, each with pretty damn small radii and easily avoidable by any half-decent scout pilot (I understand that strike fighters are less-responsive, but on the other hand they're also a lot tougher and can eat a couple of mines without dying). Which also relies upon your team having a competent bomber-jockey.

 

Also, why should I be forced to rely on team-mates to survive every single time anyone with missiles so much as looks my way?

 

I don't have a problem with gunships retreating to their allies,

 

When I can find them - and when they're interested in helping - sure. But even with a premade, that's not going to be all that often - they have their own business to conduct.

 

By changing the rules to make me even more reliant upon allies to survive, they've given *another* big advantage to premades over pug groups. And the premade already wins 9.5 times out of 10, as it should.

 

but I do have a problem with the AI being so influential in a PvP game.

 

Explain?

 

Unless those two shots are both concs or torps, you're not getting two-shot. And if you're eating two torps consecutively, that's your own fault.

 

They're lasers, tyvm. Not playing strikes that much, I don't know what the combination of abilities is (although I suspect that a companion's activated ability has something to do with it), but if a strike fighter can catch me unawares, I'm usually dead about a second after I'm first attacked.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Highborne

[Highborne]

So Gunner's (who are the only ships able to one shot another mastered ship that is running with full hull strength and shields + Power to shields) are on here complaining that they can't just go sit in a spot for the whole match and rack up 20 or 30 kills and never die because now they have to do some dog fighting to stay alive...

In a Space piloting game...

You are complaining that you have to fly and evade fire in a flight and fight oriented game...

That is what I see as Ironic.

 

And this - above - is what *I* see as strawmanning me.

 

I've made my grounds for complaint clear: I'm complaining because my ability to evade has been reduced. They haven't nerfed a gunship's offensive weaponry one bit - they've nerfed its ability to survive as a fighter rather than a mobile artillery platform.

 

And seriously? This whole "LERN2DOGFIGHT LOL" crap is getting really, really old. Gunships - even fully-mastered gunships - are too slow, to unmaneuverable and too fragile to dogfight effectively. In dogfighting, a gunship has a bomber's maneuverability and a scout's HP. And you think it can go toe-to-toe against a scout or strike fighter with a comparably-skilled pilot?

Edited April 9, 2014 by Highborne

[Zoom_VI]

And when two scouts or strike fighters are constantly missile-locking you?

So your complaining that you can't win when your outnumbered?

 

 

 

Who'd have thought it? Something meant to give you lateral speed....gave you lateral speed over people who took something else for an engine option.

Except every other engine ability does two things, it breaks locks and does a little trick, BR broke locks, did a little trick, and moved you vast distances for far less power than it would normally cost to go that distance. Simply put it outperformed everything else. The dev specifically stated that BR was not intended to be used in such a manner.

 

 

 

Bzzt. No, no we couldn't. Gunship engine power depletes significantly faster than scout or strike fighter engine power (speaking from experience with all three types of ships, although mostly GS and scout). I could lead a scout a merry chase for some time, but if I evaded one, it was by LOSing him until he gave up and looked for easier prey or out-piloted him and induced him to crash due to pilot error trying to follow me, not by outrunning him.

No, but gunships could evade a scout for so long that it was impractical for catch them. Also what about poor strike fighters who literally had zero chance to ever even touch a gunship.

 

 

 

Except that I'm fighting something tougher, stronger, faster and more maneuverable than myself. And yes, even a scout is tougher than a gunship.

I never realized a ship with less shields and hull, and required melee range was tougher than a ship that had more S and H and didn't have to fight in the middle of the furball.

 

Gunships suck at close quarters - inherently. It's not a bug, it's a feature - they're supposed to suck at close quarters. If you're a gunship and scoring CQ kills off other ship types, either you got lucky, you set it up to have a *big* advantage going into knife-range or they're piloted by bads.

And everything else sucks at long range compared to gunships, so whats this mean?

 

 

 

Speaking as someone who is very tired of getting two-shotted by #@$@ing strike fighters, I beg to differ.

If your dying to strikes you are probably doing something wrong. They are barely faster than you, their engine power consumption rate is high, and they lack any meaningful burst.

 

 

 

A valid criticism. So why not nerf the energy-drain effect on ion cannons instead - keep them as a shield depleter, but with only a minor energy drain attached? That'd address the problem, without turning gunships into large, slow, fragile targets. I'd have no problem with that - it would address the problem that is making people call gunships OP, without unduly penalizing those of us who do well by different tactics.

 

I actually would agree with this, however Barrel roll had to be nerfed because it was literally BiS on every single ship, nothing else could ever compete with it. BR wasn't just a gunship issue, gunships where just the posterboy for it.

 

Pfft. Railshotting a strike fighter twice at full power only annoys it.

Ion railing once at full power leaves it completely dead in the water. Also I believe anything that does 1600 damage with 28% shield piercing qualifies as a bit more than a "annoyance"

[Highborne]

Good joke. Are you using plasma railgun exclusively or something?

 

I did say "railshot". Remember that railguns only get 10% shield piercing. And that means that a full-power railshot (which takes more than twice as long to charge as a cluster missile does to lock and fire) will have 160 points pierce the shields.

 

And a strike fighter can eat several 160 HP hits before it even starts to worry.

[Altheran]

Ion railing once at full power leaves it completely dead in the water. Also I believe anything that does 1600 damage with 28% shield piercing qualifies as a bit more than a "annoyance"

 

Do these two hits to my Strike, I'm dead. And Strikes are the second thougher ship in the game.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Altheran

[Warhelm]

They're lasers, tyvm. Not playing strikes that much, I don't know what the combination of abilities is (although I suspect that a companion's activated ability has something to do with it), but if a strike fighter can catch me unawares, I'm usually dead about a second after I'm first attacked.

 

I think you're conflating Strike Fighters and Scouts. Burst Lasers and two-shoting you unawares in seconds is a Flashfire/Sting thing. Strike Fighters are the ones who give you all that sweet sweet torpedo love from 10k away.

[Highborne]

So your complaining that you can't win when your outnumbered?

 

No. I'm complaining that I have no chance of survival or evasion.

 

Except every other engine ability does two things, it breaks locks and does a little trick, BR broke locks, did a little trick, and moved you vast distances for far less power than it would normally cost to go that distance. Simply put it outperformed everything else. The dev specifically stated that BR was not intended to be used in such a manner.

 

And if distance was their main concern, then they can nerf the distance it goes without having to increase its cooldown. I always took it because with BR - unlike other "break lock" engine maneuvers - I can see where it's going to take me.

 

No, but gunships could evade a scout for so long that it was impractical for catch them. Also what about poor strike fighters who literally had zero chance to ever even touch a gunship.

 

Strike fighters have barrel roll also, do they not? And their engine power pool is closer to a scout's than a gunship's in any case.

 

I never realized a ship with less shields and hull, and required melee range was tougher than a ship that had more S and H and didn't have to fight in the middle of the furball.

 

The scout is faster and more maneuverable, sufficiently so to make it a vastly superior dogfighter. I always - without fail - did far better in close quarters with my scout than my gunship. Indeed, on my scouts, I make a point of trying to dogfight gunships, because the gunships have quite literally zero chance to win - the best they can hope for is to escape.

 

And everything else sucks at long range compared to gunships, so whats this mean?

 

I don't get to fight at long range anymore. That's what it means. They can now pick the range - every time - and can force me to fight at that range.

 

If your dying to strikes you are probably doing something wrong. They are barely faster than you, their engine power consumption rate is high, and they lack any meaningful burst.

 

Ah....yes. Because, of course, *my* choices affect the amount of damage *their* lasers do.

 

Ion railing once at full power leaves it completely dead in the water.

 

I agree - the ion cannon is almost certainly OP. So nerf that instead.

 

Also I believe anything that does 1600 damage with 28% shield piercing qualifies as a bit more than a "annoyance"

 

When they can take three hits (which is to say about 20-25 seconds of doing nothing but charging and firing) and still be charging down your throat (and I've only got time to charge and fire twice before they're in melee), what else *can* it be called?

 

Yes, they'll be down to (about) half hull strength after they've closed and destroyed me. That's assuming that they don't BR to get to close range, that I have about 20 seconds to fully charge my railguns, fire and reload twice and that I hit with every shot against a moving, dodging target.

 

They'll be damaged....but I'll be very, very dead. Every time, no exceptions.

 

*sighs* I probably shouldn't have made this thread - anyone expecting any kind of sympathy on the Internet is just asking for trouble. But I didn't come here to debate my decision...to be honest, I don't particularly know what I came here to do. Perhaps I was hoping to provide Bioware some feedback....not that they have a good record of paying a blind bit of attention to same (see: SGRAs for one example).

[RiVaN_]

I fly a gun ship from time to time, just so I can "know my enemy" so to speak. I prefer my flashfire so I can fly around, shoot stuff and watch it go boom. I'm not gonna complain because the most OP ship in the match just got easier to kill.

 

The price a gunship SHOULD pay for all that firepower is a lack of maneuverability and evasion. In real life a Gunship is a sluggish, hard to maneuver beast of an airplane. They don't have any dog fighting abilities, that is why thay have A LOT of fire power.

 

Perhaps BW and the Dev's are trying to put an ounce of realism into this game?

 

Just a thought.

(FYI I put those links in so that you can see what a real gun ship is like)

 

You are supposed to be a power house not a dog fighter, but you are also supposed to be a sitting duck to fighters. That is the trade off and that is why you need buddies to cover you and keep the fighters from taking you out so that you can do your job of killing stuff. It is their job to make sure you don't die.

Edited April 9, 2014 by RiVaN_

[DamascusAdontise]

 

 

The scout is faster and more maneuverable, sufficiently so to make it a vastly superior dogfighter. I always - without fail - did far better in close quarters with my scout than my gunship. Indeed, on my scouts, I make a point of trying to dogfight gunships, because the gunships have quite literally zero chance to win - the best they can hope for is to escape.

.

 

This is a little misleading, if all you fly is GS then your frustration is understandable. I cant go into reasons why you specifically go to kill GS but I do it because if I dont go after the GS they will make quick work of my scout. Scouts harass gunships because gunships harass scouts. Its not overpowered when paper overcomes rock is it? In this case though both the paper and the rock can kill one another (and quickly too) so what exactly is wrong with this?

 

I do agree that the BR nerf was heavy handed. I would have much preferred them go with 15-17 fully upgraded (and this would be for all the engine abilities except power dive - which stayed short) - Also increasing the energy required for engine maneuvers at the same time was very short sighted and made this change an even bigger issue.

 

All we can do is roll with the punches or move along, I will choose to continue because I cant make myself hate this game =/ I always end up finding "another way" to play, even if it is not my favorite way to play.

[Armonddd]

And what's he going to do, hmm? Use sticks and harsh language against two strike fighters? They'll kill something as fragile as a gunship before their paint is scratched. The upside of being damned tough.

 

If you're bad at avoiding damage, and your buddy's bad at killing things, then yeah, that's what's gonna happen.

 

Realistically, though? I've killed strikes in under two seconds because they were too busy focusing on my ally.

 

Hence my problem with Bioware over this. They certainly took their sweet time deciding that they had a problem with it.

 

While I'm not a fan of the lack of communication from the devs, and I do think they should have predicted the travel use of barrel roll, it does take time to figure out whether the difference between what you expected and what you made actually needs changing. Sometimes happy accidents happen, and nerfing it in early access before figuring out how things sit together would have caused other problems.

 

The only way you can possibly think missiles (which have a lock-on time in the 2-3 second range when properly kitted out) didn't make enough impact before was if you were willfully blind to the impact they made.

 

2-3 seconds (longer for some of them) is an enormous amount of time. Pre-patch, my scout basically only got hit by clusters. Today and yesterday, I've gotten hit by significantly more missiles and I have to learn to fly more defensively.

 

That would be the capital turrets that don't exist anymore in deathmatches, right?

 

Right. I was talking about Domination, obviously.

 

And the bomber "minefield" of two mines, each with pretty damn small radii and easily avoidable by any half-decent scout pilot (I understand that strike fighters are less-responsive, but on the other hand they're also a lot tougher and can eat a couple of mines without dying). Which also relies upon your team having a competent bomber-jockey.

 

No, no, and no.

 

No bomber brings only two mines to the table unless they're incredibly powerful (namely, Seismic and Interdiction) or they're trading one of their mine slots for a torp (admittedly a poor trade).

 

The radius of effect of a mine is far from tiny. You can easily cover a satellite or hide them behind an asteroid. Then, anyone who follows a retreating gunship gets surprise shrapnel. You can also simply wall off an area and snipe from behind there.

 

None of this requires an especially skilled pilot.

 

Also, why should I be forced to rely on team-mates to survive every single time anyone with missiles so much as looks my way?

 

Because it's a team game and everyone else has to? Gunships are more reliant on team support than most ships, but they make up for that by providing enormous amounts of support themselves.

 

When I can find them - and when they're interested in helping - sure. But even with a premade, that's not going to be all that often - they have their own business to conduct.

 

If you fly a target over to an ally, nine times out of ten that ally is going to attack the guy behind you because he's the first guy he tabs to. Lots of people also realize the value in helping a teammate and the ease of attacking someone preoccupied with their own target.

 

Explain?

 

Railgun drones take out a quarter to a third of a ship's hull with each shot. Missile sentry drones force me to burn my lock breaks or suffer the same. Neither require any input from the player.

 

They're lasers, tyvm. Not playing strikes that much, I don't know what the combination of abilities is (although I suspect that a companion's activated ability has something to do with it), but if a strike fighter can catch me unawares, I'm usually dead about a second after I'm first attacked.

 

Two heavy laser shots do, at most, 734 shield damage plus 140 hull damage. With crits, that's 1101 shield damage and 210 hull damage. Even with distortion field penalizing your shield pool, that's nowhere near enough for a kill -- it's not even enough to take out your shields. You are not being two-shot.

 

I've made my grounds for complaint clear: I'm complaining because my ability to evade has been reduced. They haven't nerfed a gunship's offensive weaponry one bit - they've nerfed its ability to survive as a fighter rather than a mobile artillery platform.

 

The answer to this complaint is "get better at evading". No one's telling you to dogfight -- that's a really dumb thing to do, even with actual gunship stats instead of your exaggerated comparisons -- but there are plenty of things you can do to increase your survivability.

 

I did say "railshot". Remember that railguns only get 10% shield piercing. And that means that a full-power railshot (which takes more than twice as long to charge as a cluster missile does to lock and fire) will have 160 points pierce the shields.

 

And a strike fighter can eat several 160 HP hits before it even starts to worry.

 

Slugs get 20% shield piercing by default and can upgrade for 28% total shield piercing. In addition to that, they do a lot of shield damage, ignore armor, have no lock-on time, have thrice the range of clusters, and have superior burst capability (including crit chance, once mastered), all of which you conveniently ignore.

 

Two fully charged slug shots won't kill most strike fighters unless you crit, but a fully charged ion shot followed by a fully charged slug shot will. In the process, you'll drain his engine and weapon power to nothing and do some significant aoe power drain and shield damage.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Armonddd

[Zharik]

You guys got suckered into an argument with Highborne, who was in it merely to complain. Facts be damned...

[okiobe]

The meta changed and you refuse to adapt. Got it.

[Devrius]

Hummm, me think someone was leaning a bit too hard on the BR crutch and now that it's gone the weight of his refusal to learn to *fly* his ship broke it since said crutch was render a wee bit slender since the nerf.

[Korithras]

@OP: Forgive me if I don't shed any tears for gunship pilots. Until bombers came along, they were the cheapest, easiest-to-play ship because it didn't require any dogfighting skill, you just sat outside of the combat zone and picked off targets one by one. Then, if somebody did attack you, you barrel roll and run. Now all of a sudden, they give the ship a handicap so that it's more competitive for ships that have to get in close to kill you, and it's unfair? Or you poor baby.

 

Cry me a river, you won't be missed. One less gunship out there for me to have to put up with.

[Mograr]

yup gsf dead for me ...before it was a skill game now anyone can kill you in 2 shot...so they don't have to balance anything just a group thing...

someone says oh yeah u complaining because now u die alone against 3 ....

yeah because before... 3 bad players was killed easily .....

[Verain]

Capitalization no...

[MCaliban]

Gunships are snipers. People hate snipers. It's difficult to have a conversation about gunships because there's always a percentage of participants who hate the idea of a non-dogfighting class of ships. In their eyes, GSF is about constantly flying around, maneuvering, and shooting at ships as they zoom by.

 

Having read through the forums since they first opened, I've heard that GSF is being ruined by:

1) Scouts that satellite hump

2) Gunships that snipe at other ships

3) Bombers that lay down too many mines

 

I do all these things and I find myself frustrated with the vocal base of players that believe there's only one right way to play.

 

What I fear is that while gunships will be continue to be nerfed in various ways, I doubt they're ever going to get increased maneuverability, speed, or shields. Gunships will be punished for being gunships, but not given the tools to be effective dogfighters.

[Llama-Eight]

Slugs get 20% shield piercing by default and can upgrade for 28% total shield piercing. In addition to that, they do a lot of shield damage, ignore armor, have no lock-on time, have thrice the range of clusters, and have superior burst capability (including crit chance, once mastered), all of which you conveniently ignore.

 

They also have a fairly long charge time as well (2.7s v 1.3s). Does anyone use the damage reduction armour? If not, that armour piercing is neither here nor there, plus if a gunship is "doing it right", they'll use an ion to take down most of the shields on the target do that 25% shield piercing isn't going to give much benefit either.

[Altheran]

Does anyone use the damage reduction armour? If not, that armour piercing is neither here nor there, plus if a gunship is "doing it right", they'll use an ion to take down most of the shields on the target do that 25% shield piercing isn't going to give much benefit either.

 

Some ships have passive armor, regardless or components.

Ion isn't really needed either, as a fully charged Slug will do guaranteed 400~450 hull damage, which is enough to kill most ship that have been damaged but have full shields. In addition, Ion doesn't deal significantly better damage...

[Llama-Eight]

Some ships have passive armor, regardless or components.

Ion isn't really needed either, as a fully charged Slug will do guaranteed 400~450 hull damage, which is enough to kill most ship that have been damaged but have full shields. In addition, Ion doesn't deal significantly better damage...

 

Yeah, but that depends on how damaged they are. A Sting with fully upgraded reinforced armour has 1,170 hp so would need to be at less than 40% hp, a Blackbolt with fully upgraded reinforced armour has 1,140 hp so would also need to be at less than 40% hp to be killed. If we're going to talk about ships that are already damaged, any ship with a shield-piercing weapon could kill any other ship, it just depends on how much hp the target has (my Novadive could kill a bomber with a single rocket if said bomber was a flaming wreck...).

 

Edit: I didn't realise that every ship (except scouts) gets a base 5% damage reduction (except bombers that get 10%). That said, 5% damage reduction isn't much, nor is being able to ignore that (IMO).

Edited April 10, 2014 by Llama-Eight