New Gunship Variant makes T1 and T2 Strikes obsolete

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I think one of the main problems is giving the T3 GS both power dive and DField. Sure it lacks the armor to take advantage of the evasion but you're giving it two missile breaks, one of which is the best engine for breaking missile locks. that seems a bit much when you're giving the GS the best point blank and long range weaponry.

 

Personally while clusters are good I prefer concussion missile on my striker, I have enough shields to be able to eat a cluster missile or two. I don't envy the idea of being unable to rabbit against the T3 GS BLC/cluster combo since they can just slug railgun me. I won't declare the sky is falling but I do think it will be a very formidable combo.

 

It does bother me though to see another ship with BLC when the T1 SF gets crummy RFLs

 

The T3 gunship sorta looks overtuned. I don't think the issue is to point to a generally weak set of ships and point out how it's better than them. I think like three people on the forum are on record as thinking strike fighters are fine, and I'm not in that camp at all.

 

I wouldn't say they're fine but I do think they have a pretty good offensive loadout. I think the main thing is that they don't really have a distinct role to play so a lot of their potential is wasted (to be fair there's no real purpose for a pure scout ship either). I think at this point hoping for changes that make a multirole ship truly worthwhile is out of the picture so what would probably be best is the buff their agility and engine stats as you suggested.

[tunewalker]

Honestly I love my pike, but the more changes i see, the more I think its about time to put the old pike out to pasture.

 

 

Its ok, at least the clarion is still good since it can provide heal support, and damage support depending on build.

[Devrius]

Scout is like 20% more maneuverable and 12% faster something right? I think that there's room to buff the strike without it becoming a scout- but since strikes are almost always out of breath, I agree with you on the efficiency.

 

Strikes and gunships use 10.4 I think, and scouts 8.7.

 

I think adding Engine Power to strike fighters is all they need, they are good at every role just not the best, expect at getting from one point to the other this or better engine efficiency would help.

 

They are smack in the middle for pretty much everything, from firepower to durability to maneuverability and speed.

 

It's just the engine seem on the small side or inefficient, at least to me.

 

Then again I'm pretty bias seeing how I prefer my Starguard to all other ships

[Icebergy]

There was already no reason to ever play a Strike, imo.

[Verain]

not sure but if I recall correctly a strike with speed thrusters outstrips a baseline scout by a fair margin so they are not that far apart.

 

Baseline scout seems at 780, baseline strike at 744, baseline gunship at 696. The scout is about 5% faster than the strike, and about 12% faster than the gunship.

 

 

Btw, the values with engines I gave earlier were with the engine efficiency crewmen, but that was for both values.

[Verain]

Then again I'm pretty bias seeing how I prefer my Starguard to all other ships

 

A lot of us really like our strikes, and have been trying to suggest buffs to them to make them a little more effective. One of the problems is that if you are "healthier"- big shield, big armor- how do you balance that in a game like this? I think the devs have a different weight for it than we do.

[tunewalker]

Baseline scout seems at 780, baseline strike at 744, baseline gunship at 696. The scout is about 5% faster than the strike, and about 12% faster than the gunship.

 

 

Btw, the values with engines I gave earlier were with the engine efficiency crewmen, but that was for both values.

 

Yep same, but thats cus everyone takes efficient maneuvers right....... RIGHT!!!!!

[Ramalina]

Strikes have a pretty small set of flaws.

 

Lack of dogfighting attribute budget. A strike can be competitive with (but slightly behind) an equivalently upgraded scout in boost ability or turn rate, but not both. Many builds with the Pike and Clarion lend themselves to a slash and run style that doesn't suffer too much from this, because turning ability isn't that important in that case. The Starguard's advertising for dogfight capability is flat out falsehood though. Of the ships well suited to a dogfighting role it is probably the worst. That said, I don't think the T3 GS will compete, because it will be even worse off in this respect than the Starguard is, and the Starguard is not in a good place right now. I think that if the gap between the 'neglected' quality of speed vs turn in an upgraded strike in comparison to an upgraded scout were reduced by 30 to 50 percent that'd probably get rid of the 'overly gimped in one' feeling strikes can have. Strike boost inefficiency is probably the primary culprit there.

 

Lack of good short range primary weapons. If all the strikes had light lasers, and light lasers had armor piercing it would be a tremendous improvement for strike dogfighting. For that matter even plain laser cannons or rapids if they had armor piercing would be decent. I don't think they need the burst of BLCs, but something that doesn't make you wish it was something else every time you close to 4 km or less would be nice.

 

Weapon unwieldiness. The primary weapons swap delay on T1 strikes, not to mention that they don't have any really great combos like a T1 GS's Ion=>Slug swap. Reliance on missile dps that's pretty fair against a noob, but probably still too easy for a skilled vet to shut down. With the popular scout and gunship builds you should be able to force a strike to waste 2/3 of it's payload on missile breaks, and reduce the maximum rounds that hit per minute be 2 at the very most (though likely less than one if you're doing it right against anything other than cluster missiles).

 

The T3 GS doesn't have the latter two problems, but with speed and maneuverability worse than a strike, it's going to find serious dogfighting very rough going.

 

To answer Nem's question, I would trade the evasion for BLCs, though I'd rather have armor piercing LLCs or LCs because I don't think strikes need to be that bursty and I think BLCs are a bit cheesy. I would not trade speed and maneuverability for a railgun though. That would be flat out stupid for a strike.

 

The T3 will be a surprisingly good dogfighter for a GS, but it will still be a gunship trying to dogfight.

 

As far as strikes being antiquated?

 

I find your lack of faith in HLCs and Proton Torpedoes disturbing.

[tunewalker]

Strikes have a pretty small set of flaws.

 

Lack of dogfighting attribute budget. A strike can be competitive with (but slightly behind) an equivalently upgraded scout in boost ability or turn rate, but not both. Many builds with the Pike and Clarion lend themselves to a slash and run style that doesn't suffer too much from this, because turning ability isn't that important in that case. The Starguard's advertising for dogfight capability is flat out falsehood though. Of the ships well suited to a dogfighting role it is probably the worst. That said, I don't think the T3 GS will compete, because it will be even worse off in this respect than the Starguard is, and the Starguard is not in a good place right now. I think that if the gap between the 'neglected' quality of speed vs turn in an upgraded strike in comparison to an upgraded scout were reduced by 30 to 50 percent that'd probably get rid of the 'overly gimped in one' feeling strikes can have. Strike boost inefficiency is probably the primary culprit there.

 

Lack of good short range primary weapons. If all the strikes had light lasers, and light lasers had armor piercing it would be a tremendous improvement for strike dogfighting. For that matter even plain laser cannons or rapids if they had armor piercing would be decent. I don't think they need the burst of BLCs, but something that doesn't make you wish it was something else every time you close to 4 km or less would be nice.

 

Weapon unwieldiness. The primary weapons swap delay on T1 strikes, not to mention that they don't have any really great combos like a T1 GS's Ion=>Slug swap. Reliance on missile dps that's pretty fair against a noob, but probably still too easy for a skilled vet to shut down. With the popular scout and gunship builds you should be able to force a strike to waste 2/3 of it's payload on missile breaks, and reduce the maximum rounds that hit per minute be 2 at the very most (though likely less than one if you're doing it right against anything other than cluster missiles).

 

The T3 GS doesn't have the latter two problems, but with speed and maneuverability worse than a strike, it's going to find serious dogfighting very rough going.

 

To answer Nem's question, I would trade the evasion for BLCs, though I'd rather have armor piercing LLCs or LCs because I don't think strikes need to be that bursty and I think BLCs are a bit cheesy. I would not trade speed and maneuverability for a railgun though. That would be flat out stupid for a strike.

 

The T3 will be a surprisingly good dogfighter for a GS, but it will still be a gunship trying to dogfight.

 

As far as strikes being antiquated?

 

I find your lack of faith in HLCs and Proton Torpedoes disturbing.

 

Ya with distortion feild having a missile break, if you only have one missile and that missile isnt cluster, its really not that useful. Unless there are multiple on the target you arent going to land a missile and even then its rough.

 

just look at concussive Lock on time and CD 2.6 lock on 6 sec CD, 5.5 with rapid reload, thats 8.1-8.6. With engine maneuvers ONLY 1 of every 2 can even have a chance to hit. With distortion, they can block its only 1 in 4 and you have to be on the target for around 27 seconds before you can actually land a single missile other then clusters. All other Missiles besides clusters and concussive have a 12 second CD and 2.6-3.4 lock time so even with rapid reload thats 13.6-15.4 seconds, should be noted Thermites and Protons are the 15.4, so unless the only missile break the person has is barrel roll they can indeffinately dodge Proton's and Thermites, this is of course not even counting travel time, or the tiny firing arc or the ease of which it is to LoS one of these things thanks to their insane lock time.

 

The funny thing with all of this though and what makes it not as bad as it reads and the reason skilled strike can get kills with this, the effectiveness of Missiles increases exponentially with the more strike there are. The more firing missiles the more the dodges will be used and the more Losing needs to be done, but thats also part of the problem, once LoSed any and every strike is essentially useless. Scouts are not this way because of close in weapons.

 

The other funny thing is though.... so does every other weapon or composition in the game save maybe Minelayers. The more gunships that are stacked the better they cover each other and work off each other the better their burst slaughters the enemy team, assuming not ALL are gunships. The more Scouts the harder time the team has of getting away from anything as tiny ships stay so close that nothing can hit them.

 

I am honestly just getting at a loss with my Pike, its fully upgraded (and i mean fully every component with every tier and 100k req that i dont know what to do with) Try to build it for fighting T2 or T1 scouts get destroyed and go well what do you guys recommend and hearing.... play a scout a bomber or a gunship. Bomber sit someplace and lawls as mines kill, Gunship shoot them before they shoot you and scout well just beat them at their own game. So I try to build it to fight bombers struggle to get a good bomber off the node as missile times take so long that easily LoSed ask what could I do better, response, play gunship and snipe or play another bomber and out fight on the node. Try to spec it for taking on gunships, one tap of a Ion and any gunship wins, what should I do..... awnser dont get hit, and scouts are better for that any way. Try to specialize for hitting multiple targets, fighting close with a scout while retaining long range fire power with missiles, response, try to be ok at everything and succeed at nothing..... I just dont know any more.

 

In matches against less skilled opponents I can still wrack up 20+ kills and no deaths, but the moment a good ANYTHING save for another strike fighter gets on me I feel its just a ticking time bomb till I am done. If a team mate doesnt peel its going to be a short time before i go boom.

 

Hit and fade slash attacks are really all i have been successful with in the pike, the problem is, it rarely finishes any target it starts and those that dont get finished are likely on my tail for 90% of the rest of the game, because cant count on people to actually want to peel for a strike. They only peel for gunships.

Edited May 2, 2014 by tunewalker

[Kalphitis]

Agree with your comments tune...mostly I just do hit/fade attacks at targets somewhat far out and switch targets if they get close and want to dog fight.

 

Hit and fade slash attacks are really all i have been successful with in the pike, the problem is, it rarely finishes any target it starts and those that dont get finished are likely on my tail for 90% of the rest of the game, because cant count on people to actually want to peel for a strike. They only peel for gunships.

 

This is why I really just don't like playing the Quell or Pike. Having retro thrusters on the T1 SF is a godsend for me. Targets are much more easy to finish off when you can just back up (simultaneously breaking their missile lock) and lighting them up with HLCs/missiles with directional shields pointing forward.

 

If somebody starts chasing me and I can't shake them or get a peel:

 

-LOS for a while then randomly boost 8-10K away and turn to face them...commence HLC/missile lock with retro thrust if needed.

 

--or--

 

-LOS then randomly retro thrust, forcing them to overshoot you, commence HLC/missile lock

 

Unfortunately, competent scouts will pop evasion cooldowns when they go head to head against a SF....at that point it's just roll the dice to see who wins.....evasion cooldowns on the scout or directional shield on the SF? I typically like my odds.

[tunewalker]

Agree with your comments tune...mostly I just do hit/fade attacks at targets somewhat far out and switch targets if they get close and want to dog fight.

 

 

 

This is why I really just don't like playing the Quell or Pike. Having retro thrusters on the T1 SF is a godsend for me. Targets are much more easy to finish off when you can just back up (simultaneously breaking their missile lock) and lighting them up with HLCs/missiles with directional shields pointing forward.

 

If somebody starts chasing me and I can't shake them or get a peel:

 

-LOS for a while then randomly boost 8-10K away and turn to face them...commence HLC/missile lock with retro thrust if needed.

 

--or--

 

-LOS then randomly retro thrust, forcing them to overshoot you, commence HLC/missile lock

 

Unfortunately, competent scouts will pop evasion cooldowns when they go head to head against a SF....at that point it's just roll the dice to see who wins.....evasion cooldowns on the scout or directional shield on the SF? I typically like my odds.

 

The more I think about it the more i Feel the Barrel roll nerf hit the Pike harder then any other ship. It killed its mobility and survivability hard. That barrel Roll made it the king of slash attacks and a good second responder, now its just hard to do anything in it. Its my favorite ship to, but I just dont think i can play it in a competitive zone, I need to fly somthing else. Dont get me wrong, barrel roll hurt gunships, but no to the point where some one is looking at it and going, wait what is this thing even supposed to be used for, like some are doing with the pike.

Edited May 2, 2014 by tunewalker

[MystbladeWA]

The more I think about it the more i Feel the Barrel roll nerf hit the Pike harder then any other ship. It killed its mobility and survivability hard. That barrel Roll made it the king of slash attacks and a good second responder, now its just hard to do anything in it. Its my favorite ship to, but I just dont think i can play it in a competitive zone, I need to fly somthing else. Dont get me wrong, barrel roll hurt gunships, but no to the point where some one is looking at it and going, wait what is this thing even supposed to be used for, like some are doing with the pike.

 

Hmm interesting. My Pike/Quell is still my go to ship when i need **** done. I have My Quell as a legit Gunboat with HLC/Conc/Proton and my Pike as a more of a Bashemup allrounder with Quad/Cluster/Proton.

 

The only ship i really need to be using BR as a defensive maneuver very often is my Pike as that often gets into the thick of things. But given the T2s ability to be a ranged fighter, i don't often end up using BR on my Quell much. In either case, I haven't really noticed a drop in my efficacy on either ship since the nerf.

[Rollory]

I am honestly just getting at a loss with my Pike, its fully upgraded (and i mean fully every component with every tier and 100k req that i dont know what to do with) Try to build it for fighting T2 or T1 scouts get destroyed and go well what do you guys recommend and hearing.... play a scout a bomber or a gunship.

 

Wow, no. I fly the Pike/Quell specifically to hunt scouts. Cluster missiles repeatedly until they missile break, then concussion to hurt, peppering them with heavy laser shots whenever I can. If I don't have another ace on my tail I can pretty reliably take down nearly any scout that way - and the few that I can't, I keep them very busy for several minutes during which they're not killing my teammates.

 

I do fly with power to engines 90% of the time, and I'm careful about what I use barrel roll for. Often I'll let a scout "escape", but keep him in sight, and close in again a bit later. You just have to keep harassing them nonstop, and don't let them set up straight-line attacks on you.

 

Hit and fade slash attacks are really all i have been successful with in the pike, the problem is, it rarely finishes any target it starts and those that dont get finished are likely on my tail for 90% of the rest of the game, because cant count on people to actually want to peel for a strike. They only peel for gunships.

 

I think the first part of this is the direct cause of the second. People are constantly breaking off from fighting me. Part of it is that the T2 scout types really want to pad their kill count and they get frustrated when they've been either chasing someone for a minute with no measurable progress, or are tired of constantly getting peppered with clusters. (Especially if you have the DOT upgrade on them to suppress their shields.) Part of it is that they realize that I'm winning a battle of attrition on hull points. I don't rack up scout-level kills but I do get them.

 

Good situational awareness and evasive tactics are key.

 

Rhodogast / Kelril, The Ebon Hawk