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

[Altheran]

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...).

 

Scouts don't run HP most of the time. They usually have 950 HP, which is barely more than twice the guaranteed hull damage.

 

The difference with other shield piercing weapons is that none of them do such formidable damage, so they can't kill through shields that easily. Maybe Burst Laser could get easy kills as well, but other ones are no match.

[Llama-Eight]

Scouts don't run HP most of the time. They usually have 950 HP, which is barely more than twice the guaranteed hull damage.

 

The difference with other shield piercing weapons is that none of them do such formidable damage, so they can't kill through shields that easily. Maybe Burst Laser could get easy kills as well, but other ones are no match.

 

True, but they also don't take as long to charge/lock on/etc, with the exception of proton torps (but they ignore all armour & shields if Dulfy is correct). Railguns range & damage is the reason why gunships are relatively slow & unmaneuverable, yes, they can do a lot of damage (especially to a scout), but that's balanced by what happens if the scout gets the drop on the gunship (ideally from behind, they don't like it up 'em ). It also assumes that the railgun hits, which it may not due to lag, the target's evasion stat (which if they aren't using the hp armour is likely to be ~24-33% depending on which scout it is) & the target not flying in a straight line down the gunship's crosshairs.

[Armonddd]

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.

 

OP's argument was "twice the prep time for less effect", so I didn't feel the need to point out the charge time. Damage reduction exists inherently on all ships but scouts, and thus is fairly important.

 

Yeah, but that depends on how damaged they are.[...]

 

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).

 

Very few scouts run with reinforced armor, since evasion scales better the more you have of it. Also, I disagree with the design decision to let weapons with shield piercing one-shot a target with full shields.

 

Ignoring 5% armor is a 5.3% damage boost, comparable to the difference between taking Pinpointing and not taking it. Ignoring 10% armor is an 11.1% damage boost. Ignoring 18% armor is a 22.0% damage boost. And, of course, against defense turrets it's a 100% damage boost. Ignoring armor is a very powerful DPS boost.

 

The difference with other shield piercing weapons is that none of them do such formidable damage, so they can't kill through shields that easily. Maybe Burst Laser could get easy kills as well, but other ones are no match.

 

BLCs only get 8% shield penetration, which isn't much even on a crit. Most of my laser hits do about 800 damage, with crits spiking up to 1.2k-1.5k. That's no more than 120 hull damage.

 

True, but they also don't take as long to charge/lock on/etc, with the exception of proton torps (but they ignore all armour & shields if Dulfy is correct).

 

Sure, it's "mathematically" balanced, but it's just not engaging. If I get blown up by burst lasers or rocket pods, I'll shrug it off (unless some bull happens). If I get blown up by slugs, my first reaction is usually "what was that?" as I try to orient myself and figure out what hit me.

 

but that's balanced by what happens if the scout gets the drop on the gunship

 

I strongly disagree with this method of balance. "This guy can make your life hell and make you not want to play the game, but it's ok because you can do the same to him!"

 

It also assumes that the railgun hits, which it may not due to lag, the target's evasion stat (which if they aren't using the hp armour is likely to be ~24-33% depending on which scout it is) & the target not flying in a straight line down the gunship's crosshairs.

 

Against a good gunship, none of these but the RNG defense really matter. Against railgun drones, these three things never come into play at all unless you're lucky/good enough to zoom right over the drone as it's ready to release its charge.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Armonddd

[Kuciwalker]

I strongly disagree with this method of balance. "This guy can make your life hell and make you not want to play the game, but it's ok because you can do the same to him!"

 

Then you agree T2 scout burst needs to be nerfed...? T2 scouts have a lower average kill time on gunships than gunships have on them.

 

Against a good gunship, none of these but the RNG defense really matter. Against railgun drones, these three things never come into play at all unless you're lucky/good enough to zoom right over the drone as it's ready to release its charge.

 

You are downplaying the difficulty of aiming at the target... for a sniper class.

[Armonddd]

Then you agree T2 scout burst needs to be nerfed...? T2 scouts have a lower average kill time on gunships than gunships have on them.

 

I've been calling for a nerf to BLCs for a while now.

 

You are downplaying the difficulty of aiming at the target... for a sniper class.

 

That, or maybe I've been playing with good gunships?

[Kuciwalker]

I've been calling for a nerf to BLCs for a while now.

 

You've been using words like "overtuned" whereas you complain that railguns are totally gamebreaking.

 

That, or maybe I've been playing with good gunships?

 

*rolleyes*

[Zoom_VI]

You are downplaying the difficulty of aiming at the target... for a sniper class.

 

Its not remotely difficult to hit things with railguns, and yes kuci I have used my gunship recently. It's certainly way easier than try to hit a target in melee range while moving around at 800 km/s. The fact that zooming out makes things even easier to hit is just plain laughable.

[Altheran]

The fact that zooming out makes things even easier to hit is just plain laughable.

 

Maybe if the accuracy were a linear scalar from ??% to 75% but gaining 0.5% per zoom percent... Maybe without tracking penalties... (if it's going so fast that it doesn't have a travel time, there shouldn't have any tracking issue, right ?)

 

Just a wild thought.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Altheran

[Kuciwalker]

Its not remotely difficult to hit things with railguns, and yes kuci I have used my gunship recently. It's certainly way easier than try to hit a target in melee range while moving around at 800 km/s. The fact that zooming out makes things even easier to hit is just plain laughable.

 

Next time we're both on you run GS, I'll run FF. You're welcome to try to hit me.

[stabberwock]

edit - deleted response. Edited April 10, 2014 by stabberwock

[Broba]

Excuse us all for playing the worlds smallest violin orchestra. Gunships were OP. end of story. Now they are more balanced. If you can't deal with that, play a different ship. gunships are snipers, snipers just don't sit in open space and pick off targets. Find cover, which every map of GSF sufficiently provides, and you will have ample survivability, and more than decent offensive production. Also the Barrel Roll nerf affects every ship not just gunships, so if you land just a single ion rail on a ship, there is a good chance that ship is going to be toasted as it floats uselessly through open space...

[Kheld]

 

 

Gunships are STILL massively OP in the right hands.

 

If the opposing team has 2 skilled players with them its game over for your team..

Edited April 11, 2014 by Kheld

[Llama-Eight]

Sure, it's "mathematically" balanced, but it's just not engaging. If I get blown up by burst lasers or rocket pods, I'll shrug it off (unless some bull happens). If I get blown up by slugs, my first reaction is usually "what was that?" as I try to orient myself and figure out what hit me.

Funnily enough, that's usually my reaction to being killed by a T2 scout (whether I'm zoomed in trying to hit someone else or not) that's just blown it's offensive cooldowns & (sensibly) attacked from not-infront of me.

 

Its not remotely difficult to hit things with railguns, and yes kuci I have used my gunship recently. It's certainly way easier than try to hit a target in melee range while moving around at 800 km/s. The fact that zooming out makes things even easier to hit is just plain laughable.

That's not always true, if you're trying to hit a scout with lots of evasion from long/mid range while they're busily furballing with someone else. I've missed 2-3 shots in a row before with the target dead centre of my aiming reticule (though not necessarily in the middle of the screen, so there's presumably a tracking penalty in there somewhere).

[Armonddd]

Funnily enough, that's usually my reaction to being killed by a T2 scout (whether I'm zoomed in trying to hit someone else or not) that's just blown it's offensive cooldowns & (sensibly) attacked from not-infront of me.

 

And this is exactly why I've said gunships aren't fun to play and aren't fun to play against.

[Verain]

And this is exactly why I've said gunships aren't fun to play and aren't fun to play against.

 

I actually find them very fun to play and play against. It's annoying when:

 

> If the enemy team dramatically outskills mine, their gunships will erase me. Since everyone is targeting me in a game with this much delta, this is frustrating, because I can't hinder the gunships, and I can't call for peels.

> If I get ion pegged through defensives I get cross- I get that I'm running numbers and numbers can fail, but this is still frustrating.

> If I'm on a gunship and the enemy team outskills my team, I simply have no way to run at all in TDM, and spend the whole game floating around scaffolding whilst 2-3 battle scouts try to line up burst shots.

 

Every situation where I'm frustrated with gunships- on either side- happens when I'm in a situation where the enemy team has a lot of edge over mine. This could be because I'm on a naked alt solo, or just really bad luck with a solo queue. In the latter case, I normally have the entire enemy team on my nuts, because not only is it pretty rare for them to have a chance to attack me but also because in those situations I'm the only interesting thing on the map.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in MOST games....

 

AS a gunship I have an absolute blast. Gunships are the greatest because you can quickly respond to calls and do so without flying into a trap, and I'm a huge fan of CC classes in any game. A couple well placed Ions can completely disrupt the "gang up on the strike" hard swap tactic that enemy premades quite obviously use, and we coordinate those well. As a gunship in this role I get peels when I need them (often before I know what's going on), and lining up burst is also a powerful trick.

 

AGAINST gunships I like being able to offer defenses for my friends and peel them by charging in or simply missile toning from long range, forcing them to run. The only unfun thing is being hit by ion, but at least I know I screwed up if that happens. I like how helpless they are when I approach them from a direction they aren't looking, and everyone is always very appreciate when you peel some ion guy.

 

 

 

Like any well done sniper, they are annoying to have as enemies, but they add a lot of strategy and depth. I particularly like outplaying enemy gunships on my own, but my favorite kills remain when I get to plant mines next to them, or place two mines and charge them while shooting and the poorly played gunship barrels through the mines.

 

 

 

From a design perspective, I don't really understand the burst laser / light laser choice and the heavy laser / laser choice on the other. A ship that is poor at dogfighting has a few ways to express this, and one of the choices is poor lasers. However, the gunship frames are clearly larger and meant to support the mounting of both railguns and blasters. The burst / light choice seems odd- burst is primarily associated with the little ships and is devastating close range, and light is mostly a slightly more reasonable version of burst, giving up the ka-pow for higher dps. Meanwhile, heavies are kind of bad at dogfighting while having other strengths, so I definitely understand them on a gunship, but why "laser" and not "quad laser"? And this is the ship with capacitor! I just don't understand the flavor they are going for, is all. Are gunships supposed to have great blasters or average or poor? It's likely not poor, but.. odd.

 

 

 

Anyway, the frailties of this class- brought out more with the patch- are meant to balance its great strengths. I'm not 100% sure gunships are in the right place- I am much more reliant on LoS and peels than before, which seems to make almost every gunship I play against "make them barrel -> win". It's likely intended, and it IS adding depth, but OP's complaint I get- I just think that the power of the railgun shouldn't come with as little tradeoff as it was before.

 

 

I'm particularly pleased with the ion nerf. I really feel that they nailed ion balance this time. I also feel that every patch has made the pvp better, which is NOT something I normally feel in years of gaming. The "wheel of success" is the worst model, and never acknowledged, and thus far GSF is dodging it.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Verain

[Kuciwalker]

And this is exactly why I've said gunships aren't fun to play and aren't fun to play against.

 

I strongly disagree. I enjoy chasing gunships in my scout (both before and after the patch, gunships were always my #1 priority to chase unless I had to cap a node) and in my gunship I actually enjoyed (past tense) being chased by a scout - because surviving the chase from a good pilot required a lot of tricky flying and rarely offered you a respite.

[Ramalina]

Anyway, the frailties of this class- brought out more with the patch- are meant to balance its great strengths. I'm not 100% sure gunships are in the right place- I am much more reliant on LoS and peels than before, which seems to make almost every gunship I play against "make them barrel -> win". It's likely intended, and it IS adding depth, but OP's complaint I get- I just think that the power of the railgun shouldn't come with as little tradeoff as it was before.

 

Gunships are in a good place as far as the overtuned aspects being brought into line. Ion tapping, and running well enough to have Gazelle be just as reasonable a name as Quarrel or Mangler.

 

Gunships are not in a good place (or if they are there's a component combination and/or playstyle that has eluded most of the playerbase) when it comes to their shield options and engine options other than barrel roll.

[Verain]

I strongly disagree. I enjoy chasing gunships in my scout (both before and after the patch, gunships were always my #1 priority to chase unless I had to cap a node) and in my gunship I actually enjoyed (past tense) being chased by a scout - because surviving the chase from a good pilot required a lot of tricky flying and rarely offered you a respite.

 

I think you are making a bit much of the nerf. I'd say give it a bit of time to settle in. All ships were annoyingly slippery before. I do think it's odd that gunships have so many worthless components, when in a more developed meta we would have something we could take that would really hurt a scout trying to chase us (ex: an interdiction field that was meaningful), while the normal escapes would remain valuable for evading other targets.

 

Here's my tips for gunships in the current game. You might not need them, but apparently some do.

 

1- Ask where the girl bombers (dronecarriers) are going. Ask where the boy bombers (minelayers) are going. Try to plant yourself near the girl bombers nest initially, as this creates a natural harass. You'll still be swapped to, but they won't get it for free.

 

2- Arrive late to the party. You can still barrel roll off the start, but in the old days it was reasonable to begin sniping with negligible engine power as long as you weren't gonna eat ion. Nowadays you need to expect full engine power for when you get chased. Make sure that when you get swapped to you'll have at least 80 engine and barrel roll off CD. Arriving late often allows for a fighter ball to develop, and you can just start shooting at that. You are successful if the fighter ball resolves in your favor!

 

3- Burst early, burst hard. Bypass or Wingman are my choices here. Often a full charge ion is a lovely way to say hello to team of folks. Do not neglect the power of 20% accuracy or 16% shield pierce on your opening attacks- changing misses and shield hits into devastating hull hits is the name of the game. Score a kill if you can, and definitely be sure to make a mark.

 

4- Have an escape. This is the biggest thing- you need something you can fly back to. On an early or losing Dom, this can be your cap ship. In ANY game it can be a minefield. The boy bomber pimp-pad is safer than the girl bomber nest during most of the game- enemy gunships are the exception. It's reasonable to barrel roll immediately on pursuit as long as you'll be able to occupy at least 12 of those seconds with clever flying, using disto field to bridge the gap. Your needs increase if you are on the torp gunship, but you also will be able to double front your shields when sniping and double back them when evading.

 

5- Your goal is to make your enemies overrun your position and not have clean shots. About one full second of solid bead on you will cost you hull or even kill you against certain builds, so the place you ran to should offer this. Worst case is a long cylinder- if you don't even have this you're in trouble. Your goal in all of these situations is to build up your engine power so you can take the enemies somewhere to be peeled. If you boost, your enemies will have to boost- especially if they are using short range weapons. If you stop on a dime (sudden scope) your enemies can easily overshoot you. Beware of this trick- it's no panacea- but it can actually get kills versus the lesser opponents, who will outnumber you.

 

6- Don't be afraid to stomp the newbs. You shouldn't win most of your melee fights with scouts and strikes, all things being equal. So don't let them be. A good scout won't fall for this, but if the enemy team is all good scouts that would be unusual. Even with a good scout on you, you can often find ways to squeeze shots off on the rest of the team- a half charge ion can make a massive difference in your teams favor to a fighter ball, and bored friendlies might actually bother to peel.

 

7- Get help! As you float around an asteroid or within a scaffold, that's not your endgame. You want to build up enough engine power to go somewhere legit and safe- flying through allies who are in target acquire mode can often provide them with a new plaything. Nothing feels better than evading a good scout and strike for minutes, barreling through friendly, and then sniping them as they try to flee and your allies lock missile. It's a team game, and your team wants to help you, but you need to stack it in their favor if you can.

 

 

 

I want to emphasize the last point- GET HELP! Just as you are optimal for supporting your team from range, creating a devastating and heartbreaking scenario for the enemy fighters, your team mates are optimal for supporting you. Their missile locks and superior evasiveness are not something your pursuers can ignore.

 

 

 

 

The changes feel most unfair when you queue up with 6 two ships and a 1 three ship versus an enemy team with four three ships and four pilots. Previously, you could occupy a lot and carry, and now you can't. I'm going to cautiously say- that's better game balance. I know it's frustrating, especially as some servers have hour long queues followed by double premade versus you + allderp on TDM, and you end up circling your cap ship snagging an occasional kill off the foodships and getting focused yourself- but that's because you got in such an unbalanced game, not because barrel roll got nerfed.

[Verain]

Gunships are not in a good place (or if they are there's a component combination and/or playstyle that has eluded most of the playerbase) when it comes to their shield options and engine options other than barrel roll.

 

1000% agree.

 

Here's the gunship options that need buffs:

 

Fortress Shield: This is the worst choice anyone can make in the whole game. It's called fortress shield, and here's how it starts: Shield Power Capacity (per arc): -30%

This item is a "trap". Meaning, it has a description that implies that it has a role, but it not only is terrible at that role, but it guarantees the frustration of anyone who uses it.

Your baseline shield with large reactor and companion: 2210

Your fortress shield version of that: 1700

Your shield when you have fortress up: 3400

In practice, this is without meaning. Being stationary greatly increases damage taken- by far more than a mere factor of two. Shields have no damage reduction. Shield pen still walks through. The only weapon fortress shield works properly against is plasma railgun- everything else does far too much damage for this boost to matter.

 

Fortress shield needs to either be a snare on you plus more defenses, or actually just eliminate shield piercing for its duration instead of giving you a boost. The fact that you give up directional or distortion is too great. The fact that the final talent doesn't help you survive is also crap.

 

Directional would have left you with 2380 instead of 1700. The double front shields seem to be close to 4000 or so- I'm not exactly sure, but you will have similar protection if not more from whichever direction you aim them. Distortion is trivially better- 9% evasion plus an active that grants evasion and breaks a missile lock?

 

 

Feedback shield is also worthless. At least it doesn't actively make you die faster as fortress shield does. Reflective damage is inherently odd in a game like this, and a version of this worth using would probably be punishing. Stasie has suggested a cooldown move that gives you massive reflect- such as 100%- during a small duration. I just think it should be scrapped and redesigned- OR- the talents could be redesigned to make it more defensive instead.

 

 

 

The engine components- interdiction, weapon power converter, and rotational- are all too niche to be used. Interdiction they will simply not make worth using no matter what we say- the aoe snare effect is frustrating and powerful. It needs defensive options. Weapon power is interesting, but needs to bribe you- perhaps with increased damage- yes, to railguns- for seconds after being activated it will be worth having. You'll still die, but at least someone could use it without being wholly wrong. Rotational could either break missiles, make missile locks take longer, or reduce damage from missiles- and it would see use. It's actually an aggressive and interesting option, but giving up a missile lock break is just not ok.

[TrinityLyre]

I like how helpless they are when I approach them from a direction they aren't looking, and everyone is always very appreciate when you peel some ion guy.

Ion guy? Is that the new name? Because I was rolling with this.

[Ramalina]

Verain, I'm going to quote transplant your post to the GSF/GS balance thread I just made.

[SammyGStatus]

Ion guy? Is that the new name? Because I was rolling with this.

 

I LOL'd. That's some great broken English right there.

 

OT: If they could buff something to survivability, it would be nice. A starfighter would be what I expect to take down a gunship, or a swam of scouts. Not just 1 with BLCs. I understand the mobility issue, but that was exhilarating when I'm focused by 5 players and evading all of them, even if it's only for a minute or 2. It made up for the fact that the rest of my team was so awful, that by having everyone opposing us focus me, they'd have easy shots as I flew around the map leading the congo-line of soon-to-be-dead ships (lets face it though, teammates rarely can do anything resembling helpful albeit the very rare times when your que pops and you see a recognizable name). If you don't want GSs to be mobile, at least give them something to survive a SCOUT. Strikes are fine - they're devastating at times and really suitable for killing bombers plus can zerg a GS quick with T5 heavys / simultaneous conc loading. But having pretty much no ability to evade after the first round of missile locks is terrible, and the speed at which some of these scouts fly prevent hitting them at all, especially with high evasion means that I can fire two shots dead on and miss, only to die two seconds later (the entire time it takes a scout to close that distance is under 6 seconds, and that's including getting a shot or two off). Tone down scouts and that in itself will buff GSs

 

OH and BTW! I played against someone in a blackbolt named Smolder last night. He did very well against me, and he wasn't using Bursts! Tip of the cap to you sir!

[Vladnar]

A gunship needs to be able to kill you very quickly from huge range, thats the point of them.

 

A gunship should have great solid defence with terrible manoeverability (?) so the job is get in close fly around them and blow them up over many shots.

 

IF ANYTHING ELSE IS GOING ON THEN THEY'VE TAKEN A VERY WRONG TURN SOMEWHERE.

[xxIncubixx]

Gunships need to rely on other ships to protect them thats is fine, since they have super range and can sometimes one shot... GS as they were pre patch were a 1 ship army