I saw this

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I don't see anything wrong with having a class that is able to one-shot the weakest ships in the game. I am sure we have all played plenty of games where this is common place (e.g., every FPS with a sniper). In my opinion, the frustration with gunships doesn't result from their ability to do massive damage at range, but it is really about the map design. Why don't we rage about snipers in every other game (well, some of us do)? Because we can generally LoS them very easily and make our way to the sniper without exposing ourselves to terribly much undo harm.

 

To a large extent, this simply isn't possible in GSF. The environments are necessarily rather open which provides commanding sight lines for gunships. As they stand, I think gunships are reasonably balanced, but the maps clearly weren't designed with their abilities in mind. That being said, I still really enjoy chasing down gunships in my NovaDive (except for Xi'ao: screw that guy).

 

I don't think it's map design per se but rather the inherent nature of starfighter combat. Take a ground FPS: unless you get into a heated firefight with at least one full squad you're unlikely to be putting yourself in harms way for a protracted period of time. A sniper might get you but only if they're looking at the right spot at the right time. In contrast with a dogfight, unless the scout burns down their enemy in a second, you're going to be exposed for quite a few seconds as you both attempt to shoot the other one down (high tracking penalties and RNG misses don't help speed this process up). So you are forced to stay in harms way much longer.

[Danylia]

My quick 2 cents:

 

The problem isn't Gunship by itself, because it offers more or less reasonable amount of both counter-play and counter-tactics, all of which was described and explained in this thread. The problem is Gunship stacking (where a "stack" begins is up for discussion, my personal opinion is 3+) because it negates or greatly diminishes much of the counter-stuff mentioned in the previous posts.

[MDVZ]

My quick 2 cents:

 

The problem isn't Gunship by itself, because it offers more or less reasonable amount of both counter-play and counter-tactics, all of which was described and explained in this thread. The problem is Gunship stacking (where a "stack" begins is up for discussion, my personal opinion is 3+) because it negates or greatly diminishes much of the counter-stuff mentioned in the previous posts.

 

I think GS are unbalanced in the meta because they are so hard to counter when stacked. You can sneak up on one and smash or occupy them, very rarely 3 or more and not two or more that are on voip.

 

A lone GS is trivial to occupy and easy to kill. But the OP is about neither of these things.

 

In reply to Ymris as well, (I haven't ignored your post mate, all of which is quite right except that....) we aren't talking about countering tactics, we're talking about what the OPs vid unhelpfully calls counter-play, which would be better called 'attack interactivity', whereby you're afforded some information that the single most powerful weapon type in the game is targeting you, and you get the chance to do something about it before it hits you.

 

The second biggest burst damage weapon (not counting certain mastered builds getting lucky crits) gives you warning: you get a missile lock and launch tone and co pilot warning, which gives you the chance to do something about it, which makes you feel like you can handle missile fire even as a new player. GS fire is far more deadly and gives you only the same feedback as normal blaster fire (except a little effect on your ship to let you know it was a railgun).

 

It would make flying GS harder, which obviously the regular GS pilots hate the idea of, and it would mitigate some difficulty for entry to the game as 'gunships just annihilate me' is a regular reason for people not getting past game 10, to the point where they learn what they can do against them.

[Ryuku-sama]

I think GS are unbalanced in the meta because they are so hard to counter when stacked. You can sneak up on one and smash or occupy them, very rarely 3 or more and not two or more that are on voip.

 

A lone GS is trivial to occupy and easy to kill. But the OP is about neither of these things.

 

In reply to Ymris as well, (I haven't ignored your post mate, all of which is quite right except that....) we aren't talking about countering tactics, we're talking about what the OPs vid unhelpfully calls counter-play, which would be better called 'attack interactivity', whereby you're afforded some information that the single most powerful weapon type in the game is targeting you, and you get the chance to do something about it before it hits you.

 

The second biggest burst damage weapon (not counting certain mastered builds getting lucky crits) gives you warning: you get a missile lock and launch tone and co pilot warning, which gives you the chance to do something about it, which makes you feel like you can handle missile fire even as a new player. GS fire is far more deadly and gives you only the same feedback as normal blaster fire (except a little effect on your ship to let you know it was a railgun).

 

It would make flying GS harder, which obviously the regular GS pilots hate the idea of, and it would mitigate some difficulty for entry to the game as 'gunships just annihilate me' is a regular reason for people not getting past game 10, to the point where they learn what they can do against them.

 

I'm all for this. But it would be impossible.

On my Sheeps, I never target my target. NEVER. So it would simply means a random dude, most likely someone I want to keep far from me, would always hear me charging up while I kill his team.

If you don't bind the warning to targeting, then you just made GS completely unplayable since the seconds you begins to charge your railgun, the whole other team know you're in position.

[SammyGStatus]

I think GS are unbalanced in the meta because they are so hard to counter when stacked. You can sneak up on one and smash or occupy them, very rarely 3 or more and not two or more that are on voip.

 

A lone GS is trivial to occupy and easy to kill. But the OP is about neither of these things.

 

In reply to Ymris as well, (I haven't ignored your post mate, all of which is quite right except that....) we aren't talking about countering tactics, we're talking about what the OPs vid unhelpfully calls counter-play, which would be better called 'attack interactivity', whereby you're afforded some information that the single most powerful weapon type in the game is targeting you, and you get the chance to do something about it before it hits you.

 

The second biggest burst damage weapon (not counting certain mastered builds getting lucky crits) gives you warning: you get a missile lock and launch tone and co pilot warning, which gives you the chance to do something about it, which makes you feel like you can handle missile fire even as a new player. GS fire is far more deadly and gives you only the same feedback as normal blaster fire (except a little effect on your ship to let you know it was a railgun).

 

It would make flying GS harder, which obviously the regular GS pilots hate the idea of, and it would mitigate some difficulty for entry to the game as 'gunships just annihilate me' is a regular reason for people not getting past game 10, to the point where they learn what they can do against them.

 

 

Ummm... T2 scouts can burst you down in under a second. You can kill two enemies by the time it takes a GS to charge up once, with ease, yet GS is the ship that your citing isn't balanced in the meta? No no no. A stock GS vs a stock scout will not be taken out unless the scout pilot is horrible. Regarding gunship stacking, stack evasion scouts. EVERYTHING is intended to have a counter, and it does for the most part (looking at you, Ronald).

 

If you know there is someone carrying a big gun but after 2 seconds of trying to evade are essentially dead in the water, then you pursue!! You don't leave a Mage in the back lines to keep casting uninterrupted. They are super squishy and require being stationary for casting. The same is true with gunships. The mere fact that you can see what ships your enemy is using at any given time makes this whole notion seem really silly.

 

I sometimes target the enemy I'm shooting at, and I sometimes don't (often, it automatically targets if you start charging a rail gun while your cursor is over a target). You're saying you want a special notice to alert you whenever a GS attacks you, but it's fine when a scout has the lowest TTK (I consider TTK beginning for the GS at the first click to charge slug) with no warning besides the fact that you should be paying attention to the entire battlefield around you (Glowing ball). I don't blame scouts that sneak up on me while I'm targeting other players. If you're unable to understand that the biggest threats have the worst defense an that the best "counter play" is to not let them get established, much like bombers, then you're going to be bad at this game and make posts about how the sniper class doesn't offer counter play. This is silly. You want to counter? Pursuit and disruption. You want to complain about no counter play? L2P. You don't need to have "attack interactivity" when, after learning how to play TACTICALLY, none of this matters.

Edited November 13, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[MDVZ]

I'm all for this. But it would be impossible.

On my Sheeps, I never target my target. NEVER. So it would simply means a random dude, most likely someone I want to keep far from me, would always hear me charging up while I kill his team.

If you don't bind the warning to targeting, then you just made GS completely unplayable since the seconds you begins to charge your railgun, the whole other team know you're in position.

 

Fair point. Perhaps make rails require a target, for a start.

 

Sammy, your defensive rant missed the point. It's not complicated.

 

A lucky, mastered scout has the sort of damage you're talking about, for a start, and only with BO or TT up. Stock GS have far more first-hit damage, and its after the first hit that counts from the perspective of the target, not after start of charge. Were it after start of charge, we quite probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

BLCs also give you 0.75 seconds just stop travelling in a straight line and immediately start fighting back, whereas the GS is well outside your ability to immediately engage and is more likely to be able to land a second shot due to the perspective and fov the distance gives the pilot, unless you can locate and los or get to them very quickly.

 

This is mildly irksome for experienced players (some even like it), but it's a brick wall for getting into the game for new ones. Hence, something to make rails more like missiles, so it's interactive to be fired at, and the target feels like they can do more about it when actually being shot at.

 

Not everyone flies or wants to fly a scout built purely to kill GS, btw. The simple fact that that is so popular should tell you something as well

Edited November 13, 2014 by MDVZ

[StrixHiraeth]

Ah.

 

I disagree, I don't think the sniper's intended target should know about the shot ahead of time. Regardless of how frustrated people might get, gunships are far from the untouchable killing machine this thread seems to suggest. The best thing to do is assume there is always an unseen gunship targetting you, and fly accordingly.

 

If new pilots stop flying because they can't get over the frustration of being sniped a few times... well, they're missing the bigger picture. It's not like there's ever a point in a player's GSF career when they stop getting blown up... it's sort of part of the game.

 

And I don't see anything wrong with the fact that there's a learning curve involved in GSF; anytime you have a learning curve, it's going to turn some people away, and that's okay, just means the game wasn't for them.

 

I don't think it's map design per se but rather the inherent nature of starfighter combat. Take a ground FPS: unless you get into a heated firefight with at least one full squad you're unlikely to be putting yourself in harms way for a protracted period of time. A sniper might get you but only if they're looking at the right spot at the right time. In contrast with a dogfight, unless the scout burns down their enemy in a second, you're going to be exposed for quite a few seconds as you both attempt to shoot the other one down (high tracking penalties and RNG misses don't help speed this process up). So you are forced to stay in harms way much longer.

 

Hm... Are you talking about a dogfight that is being observed by a gunship? By keeping your scout in the fight that long, you're basically asking to be killed anyway. Scouts aren't (and to my mind, shouldn't be) ideal for any fights that last any length of time. Do you mean getting into a dogfight with a gunship? Hey, it's not like the gunner likes the situation any better than you do. Both of you are out of your comfort (and safe) zones.

 

I think GS are unbalanced in the meta because they are so hard to counter when stacked. You can sneak up on one and smash or occupy them, very rarely 3 or more and not two or more that are on voip.

 

Huh. It really sounds like you're saying that gunships *would* be balanced if you could... sneak up and occupy 3 or more at a time? O.o

 

Regarding gunship "stacking": So? Send more than one ship after them, then.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Ymris

[MDVZ]

Ah.

 

I disagree,

 

Huh. It really sounds like you're saying that gunships *would* be balanced if you could... sneak up and occupy 3 or more at a time? O.o

 

Regarding gunship "stacking": So? Send more than one ship after them, then.

 

Then we'll have to agree to diagree, and

 

Touche

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Hm... Are you talking about a dogfight that is being observed by a gunship? By keeping your scout in the fight that long, you're basically asking to be killed anyway. Scouts aren't (and to my mind, shouldn't be) ideal for any fights that last any length of time. Do you mean getting into a dogfight with a gunship? Hey, it's not like the gunner likes the situation any better than you do. Both of you are out of your comfort (and safe) zones.

 

I did mean the case where the GS is observing the dogfight. While I do agree a scout shouldn't be desirable for a protracted dogfight I wasn't specifically referring to scouts (or at least not fully mastered ones that can burn down a guy in a second), I was also thinking of strike fighters (where a protracted fight is inevitable due to their inferior burst DPS to scouts). At any rate the point was that scout or strike, especially a newbie that has yet to master each component, the nature of a dogfight means you'll probably be engaged long enough that a GS has plenty of time to draw a bead on you. Which I think is relevant to the discussion since it basically means GS counterplay relies heavily on flying a mastered, or near mastered, scout that can burn targets down very, very fast to minimize exposure and counterplay opportunities decrease with a less mastered scout or if you switch to a strike fighter. (Besides loving strike fighters I think they also bear mentioning since they're one of the two starter ships).

 

That's where I think the problem lies: in the context of a dogfight GS counterplay relies heavily on burst to minimize time on target and exposure to a GS railgun. Any ship that lacks high burst will have less counterplay opportunities due to increased time on target. You could have incredibly good situational awareness, something a newbie likely lacks in addition to high burst DPS, but you're counterplay will likely be limited to attempting to both LOS the GS and the guy you were dogfighting since engaging the GS will just allow the guy you were dogfighting to get on your tail (undesirable under any circumstances) and obviously ignoring the GS will prove deadly. There are certainly cases where maybe you'd have other counterplay opportunities other than break LOS but they may be circumstantial and/or rely on a specific build/ship (for example a strike fighter is not likely to have many/any evasion CDs to blow and using your engine ability to evade a GS may not always be desirable for a scout or strike).

[SammyGStatus]

Fair point. Perhaps make rails require a target, for a start.

 

Sammy, your defensive rant missed the point. It's not complicated.

 

A lucky, mastered scout has the sort of damage you're talking about, for a start, and only with BO or TT up. Stock GS have far more first-hit damage, and its after the first hit that counts from the perspective of the target, not after start of charge. Were it after start of charge, we quite probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

BLCs also give you 0.75 seconds just stop travelling in a straight line and immediately start fighting back, whereas the GS is well outside your ability to immediately engage and is more likely to be able to land a second shot due to the perspective and fov the distance gives the pilot, unless you can locate and los or get to them very quickly.

 

This is mildly irksome for experienced players (some even like it), but it's a brick wall for getting into the game for new ones. Hence, something to make rails more like missiles, so it's interactive to be fired at, and the target feels like they can do more about it when actually being shot at.

 

Not everyone flies or wants to fly a scout built purely to kill GS, btw. The simple fact that that is so popular should tell you something as well

 

What I get from reading this: experience OP - design a game to focus on the new players rather than the end game. Disagree? Also, low level / stock GS can't hit anhything until crew skills + t4 slug so again, this is still wrong. The slug has a built in OP counter play called "missing when you were dead on"

Edited November 13, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[MDVZ]

What I get from reading this: experience OP - design a game to focus on the new players rather than the end game. Disagree? Also, low level / stock GS can't hit anhything until crew skills + t4 slug so again, this is still wrong. The slug has a built in OP counter play called "missing very occasionally when you were dead on"

 

Fixed that for you.

[Fractalsponge]

Fixed that for you.

 

How many gunship matches have you played? What's your accuracy?

[MDVZ]

How many gunship matches have you played? What's your accuracy?

 

meh. What I personally can or can't do in a gunship is irrelevant, and asking me what my own stats are is just a rhetorical tactic to put me down rather than the question in hand. I know I'm not good with them, but I'll show you my ~50% accuracy with a GS for couple of hours in them if you show me 0% because they 'can't hit anything' without t4 slug (which none of mine have). I've seen 60%-70% accuracy from experienced players in stock or near stock GSs, and in all probability so have you.

 

Depends which hyperbolic statement you prefer, I suppose, mine or the one mine was replying to.

 

All still completely beside the point, though.

Edited November 13, 2014 by MDVZ

[Fractalsponge]

meh. What I personally can or can't do in a gunship is irrelevant, and asking me what my own stats are is just a rhetorical tactic to put me down rather than the question in hand. I know I'm not good with them, but I'll show you my ~50% accuracy with a GS for couple of hours in them if you show me 0% because they 'can't hit anything' without t4 slug (which none of mine have). I've seen 60%-70% accuracy from experienced players in stock or near stock GSs, and in all probability so have you.

 

Depends which hyperbolic statement you prefer, I suppose, mine or the one mine was replying to.

 

All still completely beside the point, though.

 

Nope, if I wanted to put you down, I'd have done so in the original post.

 

The point is this: if you do not have sufficient personal experience to make claims about balance of certain components or certain ships based on actually playing them, then shut up about balance. You don't get to impute that it takes little skill to get results with something while being unable to demonstrate it.

 

Good accuracy in stock gunships are obtained by people that are damn good, and usually by using their experience to place themselves in optimal situations. Under pressure (even just 1v1 pressure), stock gunships crumple, and mastered gunships need real skill to survive.

 

Sammy's point about missing while dead on would be obvious if you actually understood what playing a gunship against a good opponent was like. A competent scout attacks a gunship by twisting around the axis of approach, while boosting, ideally with a cooldown up (dfield and running interference are both common, so you can keep a very high uptime of +evasion buff). They're still dead on, more or less, but even the best gunship pilots will routinely miss against such a target.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Fractalsponge

[MDVZ]

Nope, if I wanted to put you down, I'd have done so in the original post.

 

The point is this I'm going to make it about you anyway

 

Things I've been on the giving and receiving end of, in scout (which I prefer to play) and GS (which I find boring). Still beside the point.

 

Very good artwork btw.

[Fractalsponge]

Things I've been on the giving and receiving end of, in scout (which I prefer to play) and GS (which I find boring). Still beside the point.

 

Very good artwork btw.

 

I see this discussion is about as pointless as I anticipated. Oh well. Hopefully you actually get out and play some more ship types, rather than QQing about them in the forums.

[MDVZ]

I see this discussion is about as pointless as I anticipated. Oh well. Hopefully you actually get out and play some more ship types, rather than QQing about them in the forums.

 

Hopefully you develop your reading comprehension and address the actual topic in future. Maybe go through the thread again and try to find the point that you stopped understanding it.

 

You are right that this is pointless, though, just not about why.

 

Oh well.

Edited November 13, 2014 by MDVZ

[Fractalsponge]

I get the point about gunships being hard for new players to deal with. I'm taking issue with your flippant dismissal of what the meta does to effective railgun accuracy. It's an old sore on the forums, and usually bundled along with some tripe like "gunships take no skill." It's especially galling when it comes from people that have no experience with it at all. Maybe you've got 1k gunship games under your belt - in that case, you'd still be wrong to imply that railguns are easy to hit with, but I'll take back everything about you not having any experience.

[SammyGStatus]

I get the point about gunships being hard for new players to deal with. I'm taking issue with your flippant dismissal of what the meta does to effective railgun accuracy. It's an old sore on the forums, and usually bundled along with some tripe like "gunships take no skill." It's especially galling when it comes from people that have no experience with it at all. Maybe you've got 1k gunship games under your belt - in that case, you'd still be wrong to imply that railguns are easy to hit with, but I'll take back everything about you not having any experience.

 

Thank you for trying to explain the point. Biggest issue here is just lck of xp. This isn't putting anyone down, merely stating a fact. It is reasonable to assume that people who haven't flown every ship as often as someone else will have false assumptions. Hell, I can't even name the components on ANY bombers because I have like 12 matches in them. THAT is why he was asking to know your stats. Xiao and I have been playing GS for a long time, and as a result, we're able to give pretty spot on rationale as to what's actually going on in your GS encounters. Now....

 

New players must play the tutorial and read A LOT. By no means is this a good tutorial, but it's better than nothing AND will increases the understanding of the gameplay. Unfortunately beyond ere, you really can't tell what you're supposed to do against a series of gunships, a bomber ball, or the insta kill scouts. This is the largest gripe I have - all tactics are learned while playing, making you very ineffective until you have the experience AND gear to compete. This isn't a balance issue, this isn't a GS or counter play issue. This is an issue where the expectation is to go into a new game and know what to look for in order to avoid getting blasted. The same with gear, once you have more experience, you're able to actually perform, instead of presenting false information. I average 30-40% accuracy with a team of evasion scouts and 80+ when it's all strikes and bombers.

 

Like Xiao, I'll also take back what I said about experience if you've played those 1000 games in a GS. Until then, your verdict can't be considered fact because it's just too far off base with reality :/

[StrixHiraeth]

New players must play the tutorial and read A LOT.

 

I never did. I did the tutorial once, the first time I flew. I never looked anything about GSF up until after I'd mastered my first ship. I honestly can't say I've learned anything from teh intarweb that profoundly changed the way I fly, either. I learned through trial and error, what works and what doesn't... I admit that by the time I finally did look at Stasie's guide, it was nice to get some information on WHY certain things worked better than others.

 

To this day, I don't use flytext (floating combat text) at all. I can't stand it.

 

Am I a good pilot? I think most people who fly with me are glad when I'm on their team, and most people I fly against pay attention to what I'm doing. My ships on The Ebon Hawk are still lacking in upgrades... got most of their engines upgraded to lower the cooldown, and I have DF upgraded to break locks on my Sting, but that's about it so far.

 

I just... really liked the idea of flying a Star Wars fighter, and for me that was enough. For what it's worth, there was no particular ship type that I struggled with before I knew what I was doing--only particular pilots.

 

The "Counter Play", as described in the video in the OP... well, gunships do create counter play. People in this thread just happen to think it should have been a different sort of "Counter Play". It's a matter of opinion.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Ymris

[arkanone]

My quick 2 cents:

 

The problem isn't Gunship by itself, because it offers more or less reasonable amount of both counter-play and counter-tactics, all of which was described and explained in this thread. The problem is Gunship stacking (where a "stack" begins is up for discussion, my personal opinion is 3+) because it negates or greatly diminishes much of the counter-stuff mentioned in the previous posts.

 

Right. Getting into a gunship and parking in the general vicinity of a couple other gunships doesn't exactly require stellar teamwork and strategy.

 

What's telling is when a notorious gunship player tries to fly something else and then hops back in their GS when they start losing. I'm sure an "ace" or two here will be quick to say they never do that.

[Fractalsponge]

Right. Getting into a gunship and parking in the general vicinity of a couple other gunships doesn't exactly require stellar teamwork and strategy.

 

What's telling is when a notorious gunship player tries to fly something else and then hops back in their GS when they start losing. I'm sure an "ace" or two here will be quick to say they never do that.

 

Hell yes they would. What, you think once the first strategy stops working you're locked in? Are you one of those people that respawns in the same ship with the same tactic that thinks "next time, next time I'll get em!" after getting torn apart by XYZ?

 

Never mind the fact that plenty of gunship aces have incredible results in other ships.

[SammyGStatus]

Right. Getting into a gunship and parking in the general vicinity of a couple other gunships doesn't exactly require stellar teamwork and strategy.

 

What's telling is when a notorious gunship player tries to fly something else and then hops back in their GS when they start losing. I'm sure an "ace" or two here will be quick to say they never do that.

 

Gunship stacking sucks unless you're in a gunship, which also sucks. Though a GS wall would be struggling against a evasion scout team. And I wouldn't fault any player who knows what ship they can contribute to the team most effectively. Why gimp the team because you want to dick around, ya know?

[ALaggyGrunt]

A GS wall would struggle against a coordinated evasion scout team. If the scouts go in one at a time, they just die like any other ship.

 

The reason you end up with GS walls usually is because it's the only thing that's effective against superior dogfighters, especially strikes. No, that's not a joke, some GS pilots I fly against literally can't handle a striker with a battlescout, but they have no trouble hitting it when it's snared and out of energy at 10km+.

[Altheran]

A GS wall would struggle against a coordinated evasion scout team. If the scouts go in one at a time, they just die like any other ship.

 

Even if they charge approximately together, you can be sure there will be two or so of scouts that will be almost instantly wiped by cross firing.

From there, it's hard to conceive they can win the fight with numerical disadvantage at equal skill levels.