Buff strikes until the forums QQ

[Verain]

So, this is turning into a component buff thread. I think if the devs chose that route to buff strikes, it could absolutely work. I think if they want to do that, it may be part of an overall adjustment of outlying components (including nerfs on some). But I've gotta ask- what does that give strikes?

 

There's already a strike specific gun, it's quad lasers. Only two non strikes have it at all. The concept behind those ships is that they can equip strike weaponry. So if you give strikes a great gun, then you mostly leave quads in the dust. If you buff quads, then you just overreward flashfire. If you introduce that great gun, you should also put it on the ships that already have quads, because that's their concept. It's mostly treading water, and more importantly, it also erases choice- right now there's some pretty serious choice with quads and heavies, and ions on the type 1. Additionally, lights do show up on type 2 and type 3 at times.

 

But there IS a discrepancy in the components. Directionals, quick charge, charged plating, and shield projector all show up on strikes. The overwhelming choices are for directionals or quick charge, with plating being an interesting meta call for T2 and T3, but also entirely worthless against the MOST COMMON scout trick, burst laser cannon. The fact that NONE of these are actually able to defend well against a scout attack may well be fully intended, and I don't know about that, but it certainly is frustrating to have an enemy that just ignores your two button with the same weapon he uses for everything else forever. Also, slug railgun is in this category, and largely heavy laser: all reasonable weapons that are chosen and ignore plating completely.

So are these shields ok? Could they be buffed a little? I would argue that directionals and quick charge should be, and that charged plating is fine unless you are redoing a lot of things at the same time (but that its presence on the type 1 strike is an absolute requisition trap- it is flat out a dev mistake, and one of the few times they actually have a part of bad design somewhere).

 

Then walk over to the engine component. Strikes have some good ones, because they have plenty of the "move you around" ones, but the Pike in particular suffers for the lack of retros (again, probably a design point to make it distinct from the Starguard), and the lack of barrel on the Clarion combines with its lack of thruster to make it hard to move around the battlefield. On this note, I will say that I think the devs did a great thing: they made these ships feel VERY unique in their choice of mobility components. And so while "just give pikes retros" would be a great buff, I could totally see them not doing that and still making everything fine.

But move past the mobility components and things get odd. What's up with that thing where you convert your precious engine energy into other colors? Turning it into shields has SOME merit, if your playstyle involves LOS tricks a lot, and there's one guy who shows up at random to tell everyone to put this on the Pike. But does it really feel good? Do you go against a scout and think "good thing I have this ability to add +300ish shields every few seconds"? And converting it to WEAPON is just LUDICROUS. I mean, weapon power converter could say "you no longer expend weapon energy" as a passive, and never even COST your precious engine, and it would still be almost never taken. In this case, these components don't really do what they are meant to do, and they cost a lot. The "heavy" engine components are generally worse than the light ones, and the strikes get a mix of both- mostly to their detriment.

 

 

But seriously, close your eyes and pretend that the scouts weren't the issue that they were. Pretend that for some reason, no one could queue battle scout for a week. Now, suddenly, each strike actually has really good peaks and valleys, a lot to make one be a choice over the other, when they aren't all afraid of losing to a ship that can turn on 50% damage mode while permanently outmaneuvering you. You could decide that this means "boo battle scouts", but screw that.

 

If you buffed the strikes- pretend you buffed some combination of strike pitch/yaw, engine efficiency, and max speed (despite the numbers being close to scouts, just pretend that they get closer on all counts)- you would have changed the meta a lot. Pretend instead that strikes enjoyed a passive +15% range on their guns, or a +10% accuracy, or a +20% crit, or could lock on all missiles slightly faster, or whatever. Maybe they take a bit less time to reload their missiles too. A strike specific buff that actually made you frustrated to play against them. Like "oh there's that no-skill clown fast locking me again, he knows I can't win that kind of joust", much like the other ships can all exploit you in a straightforward fashion when you do (something). Strikes need (something).

Edited November 4, 2014 by Verain

[blade_mercurial]

What do strikes need in order to compete? Better damage and better manouevring. Give them flat out buffs to damage with either primary/secondary weapons (like +10% or whatever bonus works) and a boost to engine speed/turning (like +5% bump up from their current amount, or whatever number works). I really think its that simple, and playtesting will determine what 'right' percentage for these buffs should be, but I imagine my guesses aren't too far off...

[tunewalker]

For Strike Specific buffs, that dont go changing the Chasis and just messing with components we really have to look at components hard. (specifically the ones on the strike and where else they are as to see what we can do, and also combinations and such)

 

Rapid Fire: 2 out of 3 strikes, Also appears on 2 of the "weaker scout" rarely used do to overall horibleness. High rate of fire means low damage per hit (yes they are "rapid fire lasers" in name, but they dont need to be THIS rapid fire with this low of damage) Low accuracy even at close range (their best accuracy at 500 meters is equal to Heavies, which are long range weapons meant for long range combat) and to harsh a tracking penalty. A rough buff to these weapons to make them good tracking weapons would need an increase in accuracy better tracking and a slight decrease in rate of fire to see actual damage from them. Making them specialized close in weapons would especially help the T1 Strike with its ability to swap weapons.

 

Light Lasers: These appear on 2 out of 3 strikes, and actually appear on a vast Majority of ships, but are rarely (this doesnt mean never if you use them for their High dps at close range, I dont care, fact is a vast majority do not and its usually only used on Scouts even though there are only 2 ships they dont apear on, T2 Strike and T2 GS) used on any. This is likely do again to honestly much to harsh tracking penalties for a close range weapon. A buff to this weapon would allow it to be a mainstay/ fall back weapon on any ship that feels they dont know what to do.

 

Quad Lasers: Appears on all 3 strikes, but also on most popular Scout, and a Bomber. These are honestly fantastic weapons. High dps and high energy cost, a real choice for Strikes, and honestly doesnt need much of a change at all. Any change to it would affect a ship that needs no help right now. Its good as is.

 

Heavies: 2/3 Strikes, but it also appears on the weakest Gunship, but ALL of the bombers. Every ship that has it.... takes it, except on occasion when they take Quads. Its a very good all round weapon and one again I dont feel needs touching. It would probably ultimately help Bombers more then strikes any way as only 2 strikes use it. Buffing it could also throw off its balance with Quads which its pretty balanced with as is.

 

 

Ion: unique to T1 Strike. Good accuracy, poor range, poor tracking. Good Shield damage, garbage the rest. This weapon is serious potential for utility to add to the T1 Strike. Any buff to this could create a proper weapon. increased range to quad range, reduce tracking penalty, increasing Hull damage a little, or increasing passive energy drain/ adding in a snare effect could make this a real choice useful for the T1 with its ability to swap weapons.

 

 

Secondaries: Strikes are the only ship type that ONLY has access to missiles for secondaries. Bombers (except the Decimus) get access to mines, Scouts (except the type 3) gets access to sab probe and Rocket pods. And Gunships get access to railguns. So this is going to largely look at missiles

 

Cluster: 2/3 strikes, but also appears on 1 GS, 1 Bomber and the most popular Scout. These are almost "universal" missiles as they get passed around to everyone. The GS and the Scout that get them are a couple of the most popular in the game. These have a real presence in what ever game they are in and their very short lock time and very short reload time with VERY good damage make for easily the best lock on weapon in the game. Their range is rarely a detriment by comparison to all it has going for it.

 

Concussion Missile: 2/3 Strikes and 2/3 bombers. This missiles is the hardest hitting missile in pure damage. It is fairly commonly used on the ships that have access to it for its average lock-on time and average reload. Its fairly reliable, but not nearly as reliable as the Cluster. No one really cares that it has longer range. In most situations if you have a chance to choose between these and Clusters, the person will choose cluster. A reduction in Lock time or Reload time (lock time say down to 2 seconds instead of 3 BEFORE reduction upgrade) would make them more prevelent, but it would also make 1 of the bombers think about dropping mines for it. A slight buff would be useful, but to much of one could scew in the wrong direction

 

Proton Torp: 3/3 Strikes, and Bombers, Weakest GS. Bombers never take this weapon, most others rarely take it. A punishing weapon nearly impossible to land. It can be used against bombers and thats it. The lock time is excessively long as is the Reload and the Small arc causes "phantom lock loss" quite often. Most are in aggreance this weapon needs to be easier to use, but again buff it to much and all of a sudden Bombers pick it instead of Mines (you would have to buff pretty HARD for them to choose it over since how hard it is to land on Scouts) So generosity could be used here, but not to generous.

 

Ion Missile: 2 Strikes and weakest scout, again most everyone is in aggreance this needs a buff. Reload time is ludicrous on it, and it has no reason to have that extra time over concs. it doesnt drain enough to warrant it and it deffinately doesnt do enough damage to shields to warrant it. It should just be the "shield damage, power draining" utility version of Concs, Lock time, reload time and all. This would help all those "weak ships" with it. Especially the T2 Strike that can have 2 missiles allowing it to fill its niche in at least 1 way. (also please fix snare bug so that talent actually works). All in all, needs reduced reload, and increased energy drain since it sadly drains less then Lock down or a Conc missile thats speced for it. (if conc reload and lock time is reduced as I suggest then this would need that as well)

 

 

EMP missile: same availability as Ion. Why is this so bad, Maybe its the attrocious reload time again, Maybe its the fact that its Moderate range and moderate lock time makes it hard to use. Maybe its the Attrocious damage. The fact that hitting with it does next to nothing. All I know is this is probably one of the worst weapons in the game. People will defend it to death about how it "clears" mine fields, ya it does, ussually at the expense of your life immediately afterwards, because you had to spend so long in range of your opponent locking this useless missile that did nothing to them except anoy them. Things that could change, Range, reload time, Damage (OH PLEASE CHANGE THIS) would like to see it do 400-500 Damage to all targets it hits, Utility (locking out something else in addition like secondary weapons maybe), duration. Anything and everything, make this weapon an actual choice and NOT just against bombers, in games you will face bombers, but never only bombers and 2/3 of the ships that get access to this weapon cant swap so they need something that is at least some what useful against most targets even if its only if the players crowd together, make it the Crowd control Missile. It can be specialized but not THAT specialized. Obviously USEFUL slightly specilized missiles helps the T2 Strike a lot. The T3 ships get the help from it not being TO specialized allowing it to be some form of utility they can choose to bring to their team.

 

Thermite: Only appears on 1 Strike and actually appears on the 2 "weaker" scouts and the "weakest" Gunship. See Proton torp.... that is all, less important for the fact that this is a buff Strikes thread and this is only on one Strike.

 

 

Systems:

 

T1: Ability to swap lasers (goes along with making Lasers more comparable, so there is a REASON to swap lasers. if one laser is best one area, the other is best in a different area (heavies best ranged, Rapids best tracking weapon (this means reliable DAMAGE with tracking) for example) there is a reason to swap and this becomes a useful ability.

 

T2: ability to swap missiles (same as T1 but with Missiles)

 

T3: Right now the most taken and only truly "useful" ability is the Repair Probes. Others are taken but not for competitive group play, only for "fun". Lets see what we can do about that.

 

Remote slicing: The damage to shields is a joke, especially since it doesnt count towards stopping the shields regening, first fix that. Second like most things JUST shutting down the system ability for 12 seconds (AFTER UPGRADES) on a person is laughable, especially with how long CD's are. If say it "reset CD on System ability AND locks out for 12 seconds" this might be usable, this way people with a "swap weapon" system ability cant use it for 12 seconds, and those that have a System ability with a CD get hit harder with a "cant use that now for how ever long your CD is" Also like most EMP suggestions (basically thats what this is) have it lock out Secondaries for a short while as well, technically EMP Pulse already slightly does so. Make this item the choice with Repair Probes by making it the idea of. "with one Remote slicing, I may be able to prevent more damage then I could ever possibly heal with Repair Probes". Uping damage to shield in addition to this would be a good boon to T3 Offensive arsenal.

 

 

Combat Command: This is on the T3 scout as well. Still rarely taken by any one. Few people care about Weapon Energy, but it does have some merit. This MAY be useful, if it applied to Secondaries as well, but mostly that would turn into a unsuspected buff to Gunships. Looking at it, it seems to be the "group weaker Target Talem" and even upgraded it could preform that job with 1 slight change. CD reduction Change from 1 min 30 seconds before upgrade and 1 Min after, to 1 Min before and 30 Seconds after. It still provides less crit, and less evasion then target talem, while providing more Weapon energy (which few care about) and more accuracy. If nothing about Target talem changes it also provides no increase in Crit Magnitude.

 

 

Engines: Nothing really unique, while I think the T2 could do with either Retros (thats kind of a T1 Thing) or better yet Power dive (kind of a T3 thing) nothign really special here, a buff to Shield power converter would usually help bombers more, and well Weapon converter has always been laughable, dont know what you could do there to make people even think about it.

 

Shields: Strikes have the highest base shields and Shield regen (which few people care about), but if you dont have good shield components to back that up, no one cares.

 

Quick Charge: appears on 2/3 Strikes and 2/3 Scouts. Rarely taken do to large hit to shields (IE the one advanatge the Strike has lost by taking this shield.... benefit, it starts to catch up in efficiency, but does so at such a high cost it doest matter) A buff to these would help manueverability of the Strike and its survivability. To large a buff how ever will turn into a T1 and T2 scout buff, if you some how miraculously made Quick Charge better then Disto for 99% of the player base (if you use it on your scout more power to you, but majority dont for obvious reason).

 

Directionals: All strikes, Best scout (never uses it), 2/3 Gunships, and a Bomber. These appear fairly often, but are most often found on Strike pilots (and the one bomber, which sometimes we swear thinks its a strike with how many commonalities it has with them) A buff to this will largely be a buff to strikes. As long as again it doesnt miraculously get so buffed that Battle scouts (and 1 of the 2 gunships) start picking it over Disto field.

 

Charged Plating: a Niche shield that occassionaly finds its place in the its found on all strikes (though it is a complete trap on the T1, and almost a trap on the T2 with its inability to heal and being a strike not having great hull strength to begin with) and 2/3 of the bombers. Usually stronger on the bombers do to their higher hull health and base DR. Making this more useful on strikes with out making it OP on bombers could be difficult. No suggestions here, but could be interesting to see what people come up with.

 

 

Shield Projector: only appears on 1 Strike, also apears on "weakest Scout" and T2 bomber. What to say, bassically the AE version of Quick Charge, except instead of instant Regen on button its HoT (no one likes) and DOESNT provide the only REAL advantage to Quick Charge, Recently Regened Engine Regen for more efficient boosting. At least it doesnt take As MUCH a dive in health as Quick Charge, overall Weak shield is Weak. Buff..... everything. The HoT could be 75% to 100% of shields over 6 second (that might actually catch peoples attention until they realize its still kind of meh) It could not have a detrement to its base shields... all kinds of things, but all in all, bad shield is bad.

 

(just as an example of how bad the shield is Repair probes have a talent that heals 225 Shield power every 3 seconds to ALL nearby allies, projector has a limit, over 6 seconds this is a total of 450 shields.... of STRIKES, those with the highest shields, this is around 25% of their base shields, for scouts (the more popular ship and weakest shields) this is 35% Base. This talent is rarely taken as most find AMMO more appealing. It also provides hull repair, and has no detriment to base shields of the player in question)

 

 

 

I think thats everything component wise. I think the real issue is the top. Primary weapons have the This is a good weapon, all the rest are bad weapons Vibe (IE good weapons include Heavies, Quads, and Burst) Alright weapons include (Laser cannon, Lights (only on scout), and Ion) and "Bad" weapons include (Rapid fire lasers). If Lights were good and so were the rest... the T1's ability to swap lasers will be useful. If Missiles such as Ion and EMP werent bad, and other missiles were more reliable as well (besides cluster) then the T2's ability to swap would be more useful, as would the T3's secondaries choices. There is a lot of ways to balance strikes with out changing the chasis I think. Just back those crappy primary and Secondary weapons good please and thank you.

[MiaowZedong]

.

That's the problem. Are scouts too good? Doesn't matter. This game has three good classes and one poor one. The FIRST priority should be fixing the poor one. Does anyone really think the game just can't be balanced with scouts having two-three missile breaks? I would argue it is almost balanced already- it just needs strikes in the party. So lets take the bulk of our angerface, and ask for strikes to be frustrating to play against.

 

That's the thing, ok? When the scout can't be hit, that's his thing. When the gunship hits you from range, that's his thing. When the bomber lets out the poops and you have to run away, that's his thing. Strikes don't really have a thing. .

You are basically making the same mistake you criticised in the "tiers" thread. The question is not "are strike fighters bad in the current meta?" but "are strike fighters so bad, in absolute terms, that even if scouts were deleted from the meta we would not see more of them?". And I put to you that without scouts, we definitely would see more strikes. This is practically a point you made yourself—delete T2 and T1 scouts from the meta, and strikes would be the main dogfighters. They don't have any real problem with bombers (arguably, strikes fare better against bombers than scouts already, just not "better enough") and the only real issue they have dealing with GS is Ion Railgun—only available on one of the three gunships, and pretty much inarguably overtuned. Against Plasma or Slug Railguns, Directional Shields definitely allow a strike to survive charging into its range (despite the shield piercing on Slug).

 

I'm not saying "delete scouts and everything would be fine for strikes", and I think we all agree that it would leave the T1 GS the top dog meta-wise, but strikes are not as far behind the power curve as you make them out to be. They are arguably the weakest class, but the absolutely worst thing for them is that they are in direct competition with the strongest class.

 

In fact you say it yourself:

.

The idea that strikes are a generalist or balanced or a hybrid is wrong. Do they have a little railgun? Little mines? No? Not a hybrid. Slow scout.

Exactly. Dedicated strike pilots tend to object, but strikes are like scouts, only slow and squishy where the scouts are fast and tanky.

 

I don't know what the devs' intention was, and it doesn't matter (I suspect it was "I like scouts, let's give them goodies"). I think most players come into the game expecting strikes to be heavy fighters (slow, tanky, good firepower) and scouts to be light fighters (fast, not so tanky and/or not so good firepower). In actual fact, though, it's more a case of the scouts being the good fighters and the strikes being the bad fighters. And because they share a niche, that makes balancing the two classes inextricably linked.

 

Now, the imbalance is, in my opinion, more because of core problems being inherited by ships than specific components. I really disagree with you when you say battlescouts are "overtuned" or strikes "undertuned". Overtuned applies to Ion Railgun, undertuned applies to Plasma Railgun; in those cases you nerf a talent or two in one, buff a talent or two in the other, and you get balance by tweaking like that. For strikes and scouts the problems are deeper. I've written enough about why Evasion stacking shouldn't be a thing, so now I'll give a few examples of how fundamental GSF design screws the strikes.

 

For starters, GSF revolves around high burst damage. Even something like QLC and Clusters, which isn't even a meta high burst combo, can (mitigation notwithstanding) burn just about any ship down in about two seconds (the exception being bombers, especially overcharged shields builds). How does this affect strikes? Well, strikes have the most base shields in the game, but it really only allows them to eat 1 or 2 more shots in a game where you can be hit 3-5 times a second by a single attacker.

 

In real terms, having a small advantage in shield capacity just doesn't matter much in the face of high burst damage. For it to matter, strikes would need to have, like bombers, a big enough HP pool that Clusters' cooldown time would become a factor in slowing the damage, and even then it would just favour Rocket Pods over Clusters rather strikes over scouts. This is basically a game where you need to prevent the damage, rather than eat it, so the strike's shield advantage is weak.

 

That's not the only problem for strikes, though. They can all equip missiles with long lock-on timers, significant flight times and long cooldowns. Proton torpedoes are as ubiquitous as QLC among strikes. In a meta dominated by fast burst damage, the problem is that, if you're landing even one of these, you've probably taken longer to get your kill than a meta build would have; deities help you if you have to launch more than one against the same target. The problem isn't that they don't kill people (as I'm sure someone will point out that they do) but that these slow missiles don't kill people fast enough. For the T3 strike (or T3 scout for that matter) that's actually fine: a support ship can have weaker secondaries. The T1 and T2 strikes have no role other than killing people, and for that they need to be able to compete in a burst meta, which basically means Clusters. In other terms, even without the other problems plaguing them, long lock-on, long flight time missiles are never an optimal choice of secondary due to the dominance of burst damage.

 

This leads on to the other major problems of missiles: firstly, the ninja lock loss. It's a bug and it's affecting gameplay alot. Something needs to be done; if it can't be fixed behind the scenes, for the sake of all that is good and holy, just give missiles a 100ms or so grace period before their lock actually breaks. Secondly, missile breaks everywhere: a scout or a good gunship can chain two missile breaks in quick succession, and a scout or T3 GS can average a missile break every 6.7s over a sustained period if they want. Even assuming they never break LOS or fly out of range or out arc, the list of missiles with a lock on plus cooldown period of less than 6.7 secs is Clusters and that's it.

 

Concussions, Ions, EMP, etc cannot ever hit a PD+DF ship, short of a monumental misplay by the target or multiple attackers drawing out the breaks. Let's not even bring torpedoes into it. This means that even if you buff the missiles in other ways, remove ninja lock loss etc, people will just take Power Dive more often (they already take DF) and missiles will still be bad. In fact, if you count the 3-second duration of an engine break (30% uptime for Power Dive!) even Clusters have a pretty hard time hitting someone specced for maximum missile breaks, and crucially, only after a while (in a meta dominated by burst damage, again). This affects all classes to a degree, but only strikes have lock-on missiles as their only secondaries.

 

There's also the issue of boost endurance. Currently Strikes have the same as Gunships and Bombers, with only a slight speed edge over GS and a more significant one over Bombers. Still, as Tunewalker pointed out in his thread, Strikes need to be able to run down those ships. How much of a buff they need in this department is debateable, but I don't see a reasonable argument for not buffing their boost efficiency at all.

 

TL; DR: scouts and strikes compete for the same niche, strikes need a fundamental buff, scouts a fundamental nerf, bombers and GS really only need some component tuning (but may be indirectly affected by fundamental changes focusing on strikes and scouts) and above all, we need a balance pass—any balance pass is probably better than none.

Edited November 4, 2014 by MiaowZedong

[tunewalker]

So on the lines of my previous post. Time for another Tune's suggestion that is a terrible, no good, very bad Idea . Primary and Secondaries adjustments.

 

 

Light lasers, as I said they are a very prevalent weapon on ships, not in game.... suggested buff Accuracy and tracking (you will see this alot) base 10% increase (becomes 90% base at 4k... 96% with crew, 106%, at 3k, and 126% at 500) Decrease tracking to .8 per degree, and finally decrease RoF to 150 base, with out affecting DPS (damage per hit goes up) Reason for this is why I believe no ship takes them. To hard to use, especially at its max range which is definately a range most ships that have it will use it at (all bombers, most Gunships, all scouts and most strikes)

 

 

Rapid Fires. Match accuracy of above (90% base at 4k, 96% with talent, 106% at 3k, and 126% at 500) decrease tracking penalty to .5. Decrease RoF to 180 with out affecting dps (damage per hit goes up). (same reasons as above, also need a good tracking weapon and an easier to use weapon for new pilots means more retention means more people playing, means good for game).

 

Quads. Increase base long range accuracy by 5%. (5k Meter accuracy becomes 90% no change to all other ranged accuracy) (Minor buff to bring its accuracy in line with Laser cannons)

 

Laser Canon. Reduce tracking Penalty to 1. (reason to go for LC instead of Quad)

 

Burst Laser Increase RoF to 100 base. Increase all accuracy 2% before talents, Talents remain unchanged. (lessens burst, makes slightly easier to use, as other lasers have become easier.)

 

Ion: Give base 2 power drain per hit, increase Range to 5k. (make weapon useful)

 

Heavies: Decrease tracking penalty to 1.5 per degree (Sharing with quads both becoming the "worse tracking" they still have bad tracking by comparison to the other weapons now (all 1 and below), and honestly still cant be really used in those tracking ranges, but Quads scale better as it gets closer and do more damage, Heavies do less, but have more range and access to armor pierce.)

 

Secondaries.

 

Concussion: Lock Time reduced to 2 Seconds base, Reload time to 4 seconds base

 

Proton torp: lock time reduced to 3 Seconds Base, Reload to 6 Seconds base. Arc increase 2 Degrees base, (14 before upgrades)

 

Ion: Lock time reduced to 2 seconds Base, Reload 4 seconds, Drains 35 Weapon and Engine now, replace crit talent with damage talent same amount. Fix slow bug, lasts 6 seconds.

 

Thermite: 3 second lock, 6 second reload. Arc increase to 14 before upgrades

 

EMP Missile: 2 Second Lock, 4 Second Reload. increase damage to 400, Increase AE damage to full Missile Damage. Both Resets CD on System ability AND locks out for 15 seconds. Locks out secondary weapons 3 seconds.

 

 

That concludes, Tune's Terrible, No good, very bad suggestions for primaries and secondaries. Thank you.

Edited November 5, 2014 by tunewalker

[Altheran]

Now, the imbalance is, in my opinion, more because of core problems being inherited by ships than specific components. I really disagree with you when you say battlescouts are "overtuned" or strikes "undertuned". Overtuned applies to Ion Railgun, undertuned applies to Plasma Railgun; in those cases you nerf a talent or two in one, buff a talent or two in the other, and you get balance by tweaking like that. For strikes and scouts the problems are deeper. I've written enough about why Evasion stacking shouldn't be a thing, so now I'll give a few examples of how fundamental GSF design screws the strikes.

 

 

For starters, GSF revolves around high burst damage. Even something like QLC and Clusters, which isn't even a meta high burst combo, can (mitigation notwithstanding) burn just about any ship down in about two seconds (the exception being bombers, especially overcharged shields builds). How does this affect strikes? Well, strikes have the most base shields in the game, but it really only allows them to eat 1 or 2 more shots in a game where you can be hit 3-5 times a second by a single attacker.

 

In real terms, having a small advantage in shield capacity just doesn't matter much in the face of high burst damage. For it to matter, strikes would need to have, like bombers, a big enough HP pool that Clusters' cooldown time would become a factor in slowing the damage, and even then it would just favour Rocket Pods over Clusters rather strikes over scouts. This is basically a game where you need to prevent the damage, rather than eat it, so the strike's shield advantage is weak.

 

That's not the only problem for strikes, though. They can all equip missiles with long lock-on timers, significant flight times and long cooldowns. Proton torpedoes are as ubiquitous as QLC among strikes. In a meta dominated by fast burst damage, the problem is that, if you're landing even one of these, you've probably taken longer to get your kill than a meta build would have; deities help you if you have to launch more than one against the same target. The problem isn't that they don't kill people (as I'm sure someone will point out that they do) but that these slow missiles don't kill people fast enough. For the T3 strike (or T3 scout for that matter) that's actually fine: a support ship can have weaker secondaries. The T1 and T2 strikes have no role other than killing people, and for that they need to be able to compete in a burst meta, which basically means Clusters. In other terms, even without the other problems plaguing them, long lock-on, long flight time missiles are never an optimal choice of secondary due to the dominance of burst damage.

 

This leads on to the other major problems of missiles: firstly, the ninja lock loss. It's a bug and it's affecting gameplay alot. Something needs to be done; if it can't be fixed behind the scenes, for the sake of all that is good and holy, just give missiles a 100ms or so grace period before their lock actually breaks. Secondly, missile breaks everywhere: a scout or a good gunship can chain two missile breaks in quick succession, and a scout or T3 GS can average a missile break every 6.7s over a sustained period if they want. Even assuming they never break LOS or fly out of range or out arc, the list of missiles with a lock on plus cooldown period of less than 6.7 secs is Clusters and that's it.

 

Concussions, Ions, EMP, etc cannot ever hit a PD+DF ship, short of a monumental misplay by the target or multiple attackers drawing out the breaks. Let's not even bring torpedoes into it. This means that even if you buff the missiles in other ways, remove ninja lock loss etc, people will just take Power Dive more often (they already take DF) and missiles will still be bad. In fact, if you count the 3-second duration of an engine break (30% uptime for Power Dive!) even Clusters have a pretty hard time hitting someone specced for maximum missile breaks, and crucially, only after a while (in a meta dominated by burst damage, again). This affects all classes to a degree, but only strikes have lock-on missiles as their only secondaries.

 

There's also the issue of boost endurance. Currently Strikes have the same as Gunships and Bombers, with only a slight speed edge over GS and a more significant one over Bombers. Still, as Tunewalker pointed out in his thread, Strikes need to be able to run down those ships. How much of a buff they need in this department is debateable, but I don't see a reasonable argument for not buffing their boost efficiency at all.

 

TL; DR: scouts and strikes compete for the same niche, strikes need a fundamental buff, scouts a fundamental nerf, bombers and GS really only need some component tuning (but may be indirectly affected by fundamental changes focusing on strikes and scouts) and above all, we need a balance pass—any balance pass is probably better than none.

THANKS.

 

Reading the forums started to make me depressed, people endlessly asking for this or that to do more, especially the Strikes...

...while actually for the core of a Strike to work, bulkiness, backloaded burst, these are the non-Strike things that need to do less, because they put the norm way to high for any of the Strike core concepts to work.

 

And that goes further than just Strikes : Regenerative shields. That's a tactic open to all ships, but that is almost inexistant because damage outputs are so high and sudden, that you generally just can't even try to regen.

 

There's just one thing I am not sold. The boost endurance.

You said you don't see any reasonable argument against, I'll give you one reason to think twice about it : actually, Gunships do not deserve to be outrun by Strikes.

It's a change that should be done or not while considering Strikes and Gunships as one.*

Consequently, I think it would be safer to balance damage as they are now, rather than trying to give them better uptime and flee time.

 

*Open spoiler for explanation of the blunt affirmation. (Disclaimer : off-topic and extreme)

 

In reality, Gunships are disguised Strikes, they are Pike/Quell with railguns.

 

Just like them they have twin secondaries.

Just like them they can be a cannon+missile fighter.

Just like them they can be ships with just missiles as secondaries.

 

They do not deserve their chassis to be weaker than a Strike, and consequently, railguns do not deserve to be stronger than Missiles and Torpedoes.

 

If one really think about it, he'll see that not following the aforementioned "rule" is the flaw of Gunships as they are now :

 

A Comet breaker, is by nature bad because Plasma and Torpedoes are all worse than Slug in all aspects, while Gunships need more than just Slug to offset for their bad chassis.

The extreme nature of railguns to offset the Gunship's bad chassis, cause to shape the meta by imposing extreme burst, hurting Strikes and unallowing the use of regenerative tactics.

 

But if the chassis of a Gunship is the one of a Strike, Torpedoes becomes "okay". Using twin torpedoes becomes "okay" too.

If railguns shouldn't outperform torpedoes, then Plasma goes from "weak" to "at the right place". Would remain Slug and Ion as overtuned.

By reducing Slug, you partly address the issue with huge burst hindering Strikes' bulkiness to work. You also unlock possibilities for the retuning of Ion, as you can now remove or lower effects without risking to make it uninteresting compared to Slug.

And lastly, the combination Slug+Plasma would at least make sense, as it would make it outperform consecutive Slug within a reasonable time. (If Slug = 1200, Plasma/Slug beats twin Slug by the time the second shot fires)

 

Address the railguns extreme tracking penalties so that evasion is less of a thing, and so that Gunships do not become Scout fodder, and that's "conceptually" fine.

(Sounds overly magical, I know)

 

[tunewalker]

THANKS.

 

Reading the forums started to make me depressed, people endlessly asking for this or that to do more, especially the Strikes...

...while actually for the core of a Strike to work, bulkiness, backloaded burst, these are the non-Strike things that need to do less, because they put the norm way to high for any of the Strike core concepts to work.

 

And that goes further than just Strikes : Regenerative shields. That's a tactic open to all ships, but that is almost inexistant because damage outputs are so high and sudden, that you generally just can't even try to regen.

 

There's just one thing I am not sold. The boost endurance.

You said you don't see any reasonable argument against, I'll give you one reason to think twice about it : actually, Gunships do not deserve to be outrun by Strikes.

It's a change that should be done or not while considering Strikes and Gunships as one.*

Consequently, I think it would be safer to balance damage as they are now, rather than trying to give them better uptime and flee time.

 

*Open spoiler for explanation of the blunt affirmation. (Disclaimer : off-topic and extreme)

 

In reality, Gunships are disguised Strikes, they are Pike/Quell with railguns.

 

Just like them they have twin secondaries.

Just like them they can be a cannon+missile fighter.

Just like them they can be ships with just missiles as secondaries.

 

They do not deserve their chassis to be weaker than a Strike, and consequently, railguns do not deserve to be stronger than Missiles and Torpedoes.

 

If one really think about it, he'll see that not following the aforementioned "rule" is the flaw of Gunships as they are now :

 

A Comet breaker, is by nature bad because Plasma and Torpedoes are all worse than Slug in all aspects, while Gunships need more than just Slug to offset for their bad chassis.

The extreme nature of railguns to offset the Gunship's bad chassis, cause to shape the meta by imposing extreme burst, hurting Strikes and unallowing the use of regenerative tactics.

 

But if the chassis of a Gunship is the one of a Strike, Torpedoes becomes "okay". Using twin torpedoes becomes "okay" too.

If railguns shouldn't outperform torpedoes, then Plasma goes from "weak" to "at the right place". Would remain Slug and Ion as overtuned.

By reducing Slug, you partly address the issue with huge burst hindering Strikes' bulkiness to work. You also unlock possibilities for the retuning of Ion, as you can now remove or lower effects without risking to make it uninteresting compared to Slug.

And lastly, the combination Slug+Plasma would at least make sense, as it would make it outperform consecutive Slug within a reasonable time. (If Slug = 1200, Plasma/Slug beats twin Slug by the time the second shot fires)

 

Address the railguns extreme tracking penalties so that evasion is less of a thing, and so that Gunships do not become Scout fodder, and that's "conceptually" fine.

(Sounds overly magical, I know)

 

Let me get this straight, you want to Nerf EVERYTHING down to strike burst and survival levels instead of bringing strikes up to the same level of play as every other ship. How exactly, and how do you expect it not to turn Domination matches into utter frustration from inability to remove targets from sats.

 

Am I also reading you want to make "slug = Missiles" some one please explain why that is bad, I dont have the words for it.