Bomber spam, the lazy man's win button and why they need to change.

[Ryuku-sama]

That build is painfully bad. Please stop posting it.

 

I know! My point is simple. If I can kill bombers with this ****.. anyone can kill bombers with anything.

 

Bad bombers = Food.

[btbarrett]

I know! My point is simple. If I can kill bombers with this ****.. anyone can kill bombers with anything.

 

I think THAT might be a stretch, but I do think it is fair to say that every ship has the capability to deal with bombers if they are built correctly. It IS true that newer players are at a disadvantage against bombers, but that is more of a skill/experience issue than a gear issue.

[MiaowZedong]

I know! My point is simple. If I can kill bombers with this ****.. anyone can kill bombers with anything.

Exception: they have a full charged plating build and you don't have armour piercing.

 

Well, you CAN kill them in that situation, but you almost certainly won't.

Edited December 1, 2014 by MiaowZedong

[Ryuku-sama]

Exception: they have a full charged plating build and you don't have armour piercing.

 

Well, you CAN kill them in that situation, but you almost certainly won't.

 

LC+stock pods (no armor pen)+TT. Wait for the CP to fall off.. Zoom in, burst, zoom out.... Charged Plating is really easy to burst through if it isn't up And honestly.. There is very few bulds without any armor pen.

 

Quad/Ion/Cluster T1 Strike.

Support T3 Strike w/o Thermite

T3 Scout w/o Thermite

T1 Scout with Sabo... T2 is better just for BLC on a Sabo build.

T2 Strike Cluster/Ion/not-HLC.

 

As you can see. Very few of these builds are really used.

[Verain]

It's true that a team of 8 bomber pilots who barely know how to fly could win a domination match fairly easily 9 out of 10 games.

 

That's actually an interesting claim, but I have no idea about whether it is true or not. I suspect it is not.

 

Certainly, if a player is truly green, he will do better on a strike than on a scout, and likely better on a bomber than anything. But that's REAL fresh- just a few games total- and mostly based on the fact that whatever has the most health is probably going to live the longest, and being able to drop a mine at least threatens an area, while the green pilot can't hit anything with blasters yet.

 

I doubt most games are total noob v. total noob, though. And total noobs will die to any pilot flying any ship.

 

I would like to see some sort of limiting factor placed on bombers and also gunships to bring them more in like with scouts and strike fighters as far as lethality.

 

So, based on the performance with JUST totally new players, you want the game redesigned? Even if your assessment was accurate, it would be a terrible idea to redesign the game around total noobs.

 

Also, I dispute that bombers, whose damage is pretty much 100% opt-in, are somehow more lethal than scouts, who can score subsecond kills.

 

even a couple bombers or gunships can decimate a team of green to semi-green pilots.

 

Stasie, Drako, Sheep and I once decimated a team of semi-green pilots, while flying strike fighters with the rule "cannot boost or use engine components". It was hilarious. So many players are so out of water in a three-space game that they don't even understand anything- that doesn't mean that this corner of the game should be redesigned around these derps.

[btbarrett]

Stasie, Drako, Sheep and I once decimated a team of semi-green pilots, while flying strike fighters with the rule "cannot boost or use engine components". It was hilarious. So many players are so out of water in a three-space game that they don't even understand anything- that doesn't mean that this corner of the game should be redesigned around these derps.

 

Damnit, why is that not a video on Drak's youtube channel? I had been considering putting together a 4-man with the worst builds possible, just to see. I was thinking a t3 scout w/ rapids, a sensor beacon, shield projector, interdiction drive, and ion missiles. Actually, I just threw up in my mouth a bit at the prospect of flying that ship.

[Verain]

The stuff we have captured is just a small fraction of the total stuff that goes on- plenty of time Drako isn't streaming, after all.

 

Plus, honestly, a game like that is demoralizing to the foes- would you want to be immortalized as the guy who lost to a strike fighter slowly crawling across the map, never boosting or pressing 3? IMO it wouldn't be the best sportsmanship to show off something like that. I just brought it up as an example of how new players aren't a very good metric of anything.

[Verain]

Exception: they have a full charged plating build and you don't have armour piercing.

 

If you lack armor piercing, you simply can't handle charged plating on anything- not the Type 2 or Type 3 Strike, not the Type 1 Bomber, and honestly, not even the Type 1 Strike and Type 3 Bomber, who will live a lot longer than they should with like 70% reduction, thought they obviously shouldn't be running that stuff.

 

But protons and thermites always ignore armor, and thermites make EVERYONE ignore armor on the target for the duration- even stock. While these torpedoes are generally more for support, they can absolutely target bombers, and food ship bombers will take torpedoes all day.

[Camelpockets]

I think you all just need to switch to Elite Dangerous. You won't have to worry about bombers because there won't be any.

[StrixHiraeth]

In my opinion, it's not the side effect of having specialized ships (Strikes can be specialized)

 

Strikers can't lay mines or drone, can't snipe, and can't have the engine power of scouts. So they can't specialize in the same sense.

 

I maintain that in any match with a diversity of ship types and pilot types, it will be an even fight; using 4+ of any ship type but strikers will make it seem like that ship type is dominant.

 

I'd even go so far as to say that if someone can organize a team of 4+ bombers, they are anything but lazy.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Ymris

[Verain]

I think you all just need to switch to Elite Dangerous. You won't have to worry about bombers because there won't be any.

 

I don't think there's much overlap between this and Elite Dangerous. A good way to put it is this:

 

GSF:

 

Strike Fighter: 3

Scout: 3

Gunship: 3

Bomber: 3

 

ED:

 

Combat Ship: 2

Multipurpose Ship: 6

Freighter: 3

Passenger: 1

Explorer: 1

 

 

I'm sure that in time, there will be a bunch more of everything over there, and etc. But the fact is, GSF is objective based pvp in warships, and ED is mostly about a game where you have a persistent world of things happening. GSF can feature fluid multiship dogfights and area based denial, while ED has like a billion procedurally generated worlds (and I don't even think the billion is an exaggeration) and you can go a super long time without ever running into a single other person.

 

 

 

Comparing ED to GSF is like comparing SWTOR to Ikaruga, I guess is my point.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, I also agree that strike fighters are in no way "generalists". If strikes had actual generalist abilities, such as a 5 button that dropped half a concussion mine on a 30 second cooldown, or the ability to turn on a mode which, for 10 seconds out of every 50, made the strike fighter's blasters have a 10km range, then I would say that they were generalists capable of switching to what the team needs. Instead, they appear to be a take on the "heavy fighter"- basically a scout with medium range weapons, low mobility, a decent shield, and a total lack of ability to ignore missiles. But they do the same job as scouts, mostly.

 

 

Exceptions can include the very tanky version of the Type 3 strike, but even that isn't multirole- it's the paladin.

[SammyGStatus]

SWTOR GSF and ED are nothing similar - ED & SC, sure. It's a lot closer of a comparison. GSF and anything like these two games - nope. BTW, Arena Commander 1.0 in SC end of this month? ED finishes gamma n goes live the 16th?! Holidays ftw!

 

To retort to bombers - 1 player can't defeat a team of bombers. Our (Scrab, Tomeeteje n I) old motto was "buff bombers", but when you have 5 green horns on your team with a well coordinated opposite side, it really doesn't matter - you're losing.