Strike Fighting 101

[RickDagles]

In a world dominated by bursty battlescouts, engine draining gunship snipers, and turtling mine spamming bombers, why would you ever want to choose a Strike Fighter?? Because it's a good challenge and it can be very fun and rewarding. With practice and application of proper strategy you may even find yourself topping the charts with one!

 

This post is loosely going to serve as a guide for beginning Strike Fighters. But mostly I made it as an open discussion so that I can learn a few things and get better too. So all you Strike pros please take note and throw in your 2 cents.

 

 

Shields

Strike fighters have the best baseline shields of any class. You want to focus on adding to this strength as much as possible. With a few exceptions, you should always be using directional shields, large reactor (when available), and the crew member with 10% increase shield hp. Start by using directional shields forward when jousting and putting them to the rear then running away/evading. You can fly with them normal most of the time and they are still much higher baseline shields than the alternatives. There will be more advanced directional shield tactics as you get more used to them and improve your situational awareness but don't get too hungup on that at first.

 

 

Evasion

A lot of people don't realize it, but using evasion is very important on Strikes. They have a baseline 5% evasion and you can add another 5% by choosing the correct defensive crew. If you fly well, you can force the enemy into huge tracking penalties with their lasers. This allows you to some damage that you otherwise would have received if you chose a different defensive crew. The T3 and T2 strike can further add to this evasion with lightweight armor. You might think the T1 strike gets the short end of the stick here but not quite -- although it can't get lightweight armor it can choose the engine move retro thrusters which gives you a huge evasion boost during jousts. Stack evasion as much as you can.

 

 

Heavy Laser Cannons

These things are beasts! When shot straight on, they are by far the most accurate lasers at mid-long range (which is the distance you want to be fighting at as a Strike). They syngerize extremely well with T1 strike retro thrusters. When upgraded they become even more beasly by chewing through deflection armor, turrets, and drones. And when fully upgraded they become an amazing finishing weapon because part of the damage ignores shields and goes directly to the enemy hull.

 

 

Jousting

Strikes can be excellent jousters, even against burst scouts! With your directional shields forward and evasion stacked you can survive the joust for a long time. If you plan on doing a lot of jousting you should be picking heavy laser cannons with frequency capacitors and weapon regen capacitors. I would also recommend using the crew member which gives you 13% efficiency to blasters. Wingman is likely the best co-pilot ability to use here, especially against evasion scouts. With practice, you will surprise a lot of battlescouts by winning jousts. Sometimes you can escape the joust with a completely undamaged hull. The T1 strike does best at the jousting because of its access to retro thrusters. The T3 strike doesn't have heavy lasers but you can do well with quad cannons. Quads have less range and more power draw so consider using range capacitors or damage capacitors instead. What's great about the T3 strike is that you can heal your hull after almost every joust.

 

 

Kill Scavenger

A strike equipped with fully upgraded heavy laser cannons (with shield penetration) can rack up tons of kills by seeking out enemies with full shields but low hull health. This tactic is especially useful when the enemy team isn't using a bomber with repair drones. With wingman, the heavy lasers are extremely accurate when shot in the middle of their firing arc. This allows you to sneak up on and 'snipe' unsuspecting scouts with low hull. If the scout is using lighweight armor then he will only have 950 baseline hull. If his hull is red then that's probably less than 200 health. A few well placed shots will kill him before he can realize what's happening and take evasive flying measures or pop DF. Range capacitors may work best here because they enhance the surprise.

 

 

Bombers/Satellites

The Strikes can be very good at attacking and defending satellites.

- Upgraded heavy laser cannon makes quick work of defensive turrets, mines, and drones.

- Thermite torpedos can cripple bombers if you have good teamates to follow up with attacks.

- Shooting an emp missile at a turret will destroy mines and prevent the enemy bomber from using his engine or shield ability.

- Spamming fully upgraded concussion missiles can be very powerful because they ignore enemy armor and penetrate shields.

- The T2 Strike and T3 Strike can equip charged plating and deflection armor to mitigate most of the damage from mines.

- The T1 Strike can use ion cannons to easily strip the bomber's shields.

- Although generally less effective than thermite torpedos, the ion missile can also be effective in stripping bomber shields.

- In conflicts at a satellite that doesn't involve an entrenched bomber, the T1 strike can be super deadly with good use of retro thrusters and cluster missiles. Just fly toward the sat like you are going to suicide, then hit retro thrusters and let a cluster rip on an enemy ship in range. Strikes do this better than battlescouts because they have a larger cache of missiles.

 

 

Ion Railgun

Unfortunately Strikes have a huge weakness. Gunships equipping ion railgun and wingman can completely cripple even a most expertly flown T1 or T2 Strike fighter. Although the evasion on the strikes is decent, it isn't enough to always avoid ion railgun shots, especially ones bolstered with 20% accuracy via the wingman buff. 1 full charged hit will drain your shields and engines, leaving you as a sitting duck. This is absolutely the biggest disadvantage the strike will face. If you are up against an enemy team with more than one decent ion gunship then you MUST switch to a T3 strike. Fortunately the T3 strike has the power dive engine move. When upgraded, this move can be used even if you have 0 engine power. So as soon as an ion railgun hits you, point your nose upward and use the ability. With practice you can become very good at using powerdive to get well out of the 15000m range and/or hide behind an object in order to avoid getting killed by a followup slug railgun. If there is only 1 ion gunship you can actually do half decent in a T1 or T2 strike by keeping your distance, staying behind teamates, and using directional shields well. If you put your directional shields to the rear while the gunship is charging up in blue ion railgun then he can't do very much damage to you. Remember that your engines will still be affected. If he is charging up in the normal orangy slug railgun then make sure your shields are all up front.

 

 

Cluster Spam

With only 1 missile break, the strikes suffer from getting spammed by cluster missiles. The T1 strike feels it the hardest since it often uses its retro thruster engine for offensive purposes. The T2 strike usually uses the slooow cooldown barrel roll engine, making it also suffer quite heavily. Your best option against this spam is the T3 strike. You can use power dive every 10 seconds. This, combined with intelligent use of directional shields will mitigate most of the cluster damage.

 

 

Those are some basic things but I know there are a lot of players that are much better at Strike fighting than I am. So please share!

Edited December 19, 2014 by RickDagles

[tunewalker]

Nicely put together.

 

Nothing here I would really change. there is more you can add to it, like specific strats for T1, T2 and T3 strikes but overall good work. This is a good beginners guide to strikes.

[Hughh]

Nice work on putting this together. Some great advice in your post

[Ramalina]

Energy management is vitally important for strikes, because they are the most tightly energy constrained ship class in the game. Unless you've just spawned, you never really have as much energy as you'd like in a strike. There's an art to balancing energy management.

 

Power to critical systems at critical moments.

In combat, one system will be the one that you need most. You should have energy diverted to that system. Sometimes the system that is most important will change more than once per second and it's not always practical to keep up switching your energy system around that fast, but do your best.

 

Power to depleted systems at non-critical moments.

There are pauses in GSF combat, where you have the chance to refill depleted energy pools. The fastest way to do this is to shift power to the depleted pool while it is in normal (rather than recently used) regeneration rates.

 

Keeping a Reserve

If you run an energy pool down to zero, then you're out of luck if you need to use that kind of energy. Don't wait until your energy pools are empty to start trying to refill them. Example: at game start, instead of boosting all the way to a sat, and getting there with an empty gas tank, boost 2/3 of the way and then pause to refill your engine energy pool before boosting the rest of the way to the sat. That way you actually have enough engine energy to dogfight when you get to the sat. The same principle holds for weapons energy and shield energy. Predict which situations will call for a lot of energy use, and find opportunities to recharge before you need to use the energy. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is break off briefly so that you can fill up again. The powerups in Deathmatch games will refill the related power pool instantly, and can be very valuable for that reason.

 

Jousting: Don't joust a scout that's shooting rocket pods at you, unless you're positive that is doesn't have Targeting Telemetry available. Rocket pods get armor piercing and shield piercing early in their tree, and if they're using Targeting Telemetry as they should, you're going to be taking 28% of quite a bit of damage straight to the hull.

Go for a turning fight in that case, Pods are a giant pain to use on a target that's changing course rapidly. If you can, drag the turning fight to a place where there's a friendly ship to shoot the scout off of your tail.

 

Kill scavenging: Upgraded Concussion missiles are also good for this. They'll do about 300 damage through shields, and they're not excessively hard to land on a target that has used up a missile break recently.

 

Bombers/Sats:

 

For anti-bomber use, Concussion Missiles, even combined with Bypass, are not great. The amount of damage they get through is minor to a bomber. You're much better off with Thermite Torpedoes or Proton torpedoes. Concussion is a generalist missile, you take it for other reasons, it' s just not completely terrible against bombers the way Cluster Missiles are. The torpedoes can be hard to get locks with, but if you're going to be an effective strike pilot, more than any other ship class you'll benefit from learning to lock missiles with a narrow targeting arc.

 

The specialist anti-bomber missiles are not very good at the moment. You'll be better off with Clusters for dogfighting, Concussion Missiles for general use, or Torpedoes for taking out bombers.

 

When using ion cannon to attack a bomber be very mindful of where drones and mines are, and make quick passes. Ion Cannon is only really useful at ranges of about 3 km or less, and if you spend a lot of time close to a bomber you can expect to get a lot of mines deployed right in your face. Assess the situation, take out any particularly hazardous mines with HLC's, then fly in, hit the bomber, and boost back out again. It takes less than 2 seconds to wipe out a bomber's shield arc with Ion Cannons, so there's no reason to stick around and risk running over mines.

 

Clear out drones before taking on a bomber on a sat. They have long cooldowns, so it's worth getting rid of them. Your life is much harder if the bomber is getting continuous heals and you're taking constant damage from drones.

 

A T3 strike with repair probes is nearly as tough to kill on a sat as a bomber. If you want to hold sats, that's the strike to do it in. If you run into lots of bombers (every satellite you fly to has at least 3 or more) it might be worth using a charged plating build to reduce incoming mine damage. You pay a price in vulnerability to gunships and scouts with armor piercing though.

 

 

Ion Railguns: The real killer is actually the slowing effect of the Ion Railgun. If you're keeping a high engine pool reserve, a single hit won't fully drain your engine pool. It takes two shots to do that. The best option is to use line of sight obstacles so that you don't get hit in the first place. Basically, 8 km to 15 km is the range that you don't want to be in if you're facing a gunship. Against a T3 gunship, you also don't really want to get closer than 5 km, as the interdiction missile is just as deadly to strikes as a pair of Ion Railgun shots.

 

The key is situational awareness. A gunship you see at a range of greater than 15 km is not a threat. You fly without using boost (so that you start the fight with a full engine energy pool) and use line of sight cover to close to your primary weapon range and then you attack with the gunship at a significant disadvantage. My preferred strike for doing this is the T1, as an Ion Cannon build can destroy a gunship's shield arc in less than one second. It's worth noting that the rate of fire on the Ion Cannon is high enough that it will often land 2-3 shots even on a gunship with its evasion cooldowns active. That's enough to mostly erase its shields. Then hit it with a cluster or concussion missile and the fight is pretty much over.

 

A T3 strike will be more durable against a gunship, but it lacks the damage output to kill a gunship quickly and if a skilled gunship pilot decides to run the T3 has a very difficult time keeping up. A very cautious pilot in a Cluster/Concussion T2 can do fairly well against single gunships, but is deficient against multiple gunships. The T2 is the only strike weak enough that I'll actually swap out due to enemy team composition. If there are 4 or more enemy gunships, it's time to swap to another ship.

 

A lot of less experienced gunship pilots underutilize ion railgun because it doesn't do much hull damage and they don't like switching back and forth to slug railgun. This is a terrible tactical error on their part, and you should exploit it for all it's worth.

 

Miscellaneous:

Use your team as a weapon. Strikes have a combination of durability and speed that make them have long survival times if you fly defensively. If you're outclassed by an enemy ship run toward friendly ships. The attacker focused on you will make a very easy target for your teammates, or will have to break off their attack on you. This only works if your team is paying attention of course.

[Verain]

It's a nice guide, but I feel it misleads at places.

 

Advice like "get the biggest shields" is kind of dangerous. You get large reactor because it's the best for everyone, but do you go with directionals? They are unarguably the best defense in general (with charged plating dominating sometimes), but quick charge's lesser engine cost while boosting is a pretty big perk. I feel that's a choice, personally. Further, advising evasion stacking is certainly a valid strategy, but the amount of evasion you can get is just a lot less, and each point of evasion is worth more and more- switching to a 5% evasion crewmember can be worth more than 10% defense to a scout, but has a really hard time adding more than 6% to a strike, etc. I don't feel that lightweight armor is the only armor for strikes. Evasion is the best defense given its budget versus blasters and railguns, but doesn't help at all versus mines or missiles, so which is best is determined a lot by what you plan to do with the ship.

 

I also think that "your best option against (cluster missile spam) is the T3". No, your best option against that is a bomber. If you are giving advice about a T1 Strike, then say how a Type 1 Strike can handle the situation, don't advocate swapping to a different ship that isn't even that good at it. Heavy Lasers are great and everything you wrote is correct, but what does a Type 3 Strike do? Etc.

 

If you tailored your advice for each of the three strike fighters, I think that would really super help!

Edited December 19, 2014 by Verain

[RickDagles]

Thanks for the reply Ramalina. You make a lot of good points, especially the bit about awareness and energy conservation/keeping reserves. Both are paramount if you want to have any success. I think a lot of people try to fly Strike Fighters as "heavy scouts" but that simply is not effective. And it's the reason I contest that quick charge shield is garbage. If you're using quick charge shield you might as well fly a scout. The bit about not jousting rocket pods is wise as well. Although I think the Clarion/Imperium can do OK here since he can repair his hull.

 

You make a lot of good points Verain, thanks for the feedback. I think everything you said has merit except quick charge shield. If you pick quick charge it basically makes you lose every joust, which is otherwise huge strength of the Strikes -- especially the T1 Strike. And I feel like the instant recharge ability of the quick charge shield is pretty comparable to the redistribution effect given by swapping the directional shields. You're going to be a bit less speedy, but I think the ability to throw all your shields to the rear while running away is just as useful as having the extra engines.

 

Yes a bomber would be a much better counter to cluster missile spam, but I was trying to focus on Strikes. Directional shields are actually a decent counter to cluster missile spam. During that poor 3.0 patch that ruined DF missile break, I used directional shields on my Scouts and found that putting shields to the rear was essentially the same as popping DF. Yes, overall DF is the better pick for scouts due to stacking evasion and ability to break other types of missiles when that rare necessity presents itself. But the gap isn't as big as a lot of people think.

Edited December 25, 2014 by RickDagles

[Altheran]

I think a lot of people try to fly Strike Fighters as "heavy scouts" but that simply is not effective. And it's the reason I contest that quick charge shield is garbage. If you're using quick charge shield you might as well fly a scout.

A Strike with Quick-charge is nothing alike a Scout. It's a Strike with extreme Shield Regeneration. The end.

 

Playing a Scout is entirely different.

[RickDagles]

A Strike with Quick-charge is nothing alike a Scout. It's a Strike with extreme Shield Regeneration. The end.

 

Playing a Scout is entirely different.

 

While you are correct, the problem is that shield regeneration is vastly inferior to high base level shields due to the prevalence of quick burst killing builds in this meta. Also as stated, a tier 3 left directional shield build is comparable in its ability to regenerate and redistribute its shields. The reason to pick quick charge shield is for the added recently consumed energy regeneration perk. Except the best way to fight as a Strike doesn't involve much boosting around. If you want to play that role, you're better off with the scouts. Strikes are better suited in support roles and isolated 1 on 1 confrontations. Of course, this is all in my opinion and mostly heresay. It would be cool if one of the math guys like Drak or Trivers could do a calculation on quick charge vs directional shield overall effectiveness.

Edited December 26, 2014 by RickDagles

[Ramalina]

While you are correct, the problem is that shield regeneration is vastly inferior to high base level shields due to the prevalence of quick burst killing builds in this meta. Also as stated, a tier 3 left directional shield build is comparable in its ability to regenerate and redistribute its shields.

 

Quick charge isn't so much about high regeneration, you can do that just with energy management. It's about on demand restoration of damaged shields.

 

The reason to pick quick charge shield is for the added recently consumed energy regeneration perk.

 

Correct

 

Except the best way to fight as a Strike doesn't involve much boosting around.

 

If you ask for the opinion of experienced strike pilots, and they're all telling you that the mobility gained from quick charge shields is extremely valuable, enough so that they are competitive with directional shields, you might consider the possibility that it's time to re-evaluate your thoughts on how valuable boost is for strikes.

 

Boost usage is absolutely critical to effective strike employment, and that's why at high levels of play QCS is in general equivalent or superior to directional shields. The main difference between scout and strike boost employment is that a strike can never afford to waste engine energy and must continuously optimize regeneration of engine energy. Learning to play a strike well is actually good training for scout builds that trade engine endurance components for offensive components.

 

Underutilizing boost basically turns a strike into an inferior version of a bomber. A strike can play, "poor man's bomber," better than a scout, but it's not nearly as good as a real bomber. There were niche strike builds that were useful on nodes before bombers went live, but now they are strictly inferior to bombers, even in the case of a mastered strike vs. a stock bomber.

 

If you want to play that role, you're better off with the scouts. Strikes are better suited in support roles and isolated 1 on 1 confrontations. Of course, this is all in my opinion and mostly heresay. It would be cool if one of the math guys like Drak or Trivers could do a calculation on quick charge vs directional shield overall effectiveness.

 

The T3 strike is suited to support. The T1 and T2 really aren't that great at it.

 

For all of the strikes, 1v1 is actually a fairly bad position to be in unless it's against a less geared and experienced strike, or sometimes against a bomber. Strikes do not excel at anything in particular, and as a result in a 1v1 where the other ship type has nothing to distract from maximizing the advantages it gets from being more specialized the strike will normally suffer badly.

 

What strikes thrive on is teamwork and distracted targets.

 

Quick charge and directional shields are situational. You have to alter your strategy and flying style around the choice of shield. If you play directionals like quick charge, or quick charge like directionals, you're going to have a painful disaster on your hands. They're both effective, but they're effective at different things.

 

As far as generalities of playstyle, choosing directionals means deciding that you're going to get hit a lot and then planning on dumping a lot of energy into being able to survive getting hit. It works, but it significantly reduces the resources that you have available to do other things. Choosing quick charge means planning on avoiding most incoming damage, using the active to cover for those few times that you don't succeed at damage avoidance, and having more energy to get where you want to go and to kill things with once you get there.

 

Survive unavoidable damage vs. more energy availability.

 

You can also look at as energy budgeting. Directionals increase the credit limit on your defense card, quick charge is a raise that you can spend anywhere you wish, but it doesn't increase your credit limits in any category (defense, mobility, damage).

 

Which choice is optimal depends on how good you are at avoiding damage, and whether or not the scale of unavoidable damage is enough to overwhelm the greater pool size of directional shields.

[Altheran]

I have one thing I don't agree with you, Ramalina.

 

In my opinion, Engine regeneration isn't that much of a reason to choose Quick-charge. It's more like a retribution for the loss of Shield strength.

By being more fragile, and not gaining any form of passive resilience, but an active one, the toll on one's engines increases. The engine bonus is probably there for this only reason. Without it, it would probably be a flawed component.

 

It happens to offer the possibility to use the ship more aggressively, slippery. But I think it should not be what a pilot should look for in this component, or he'll may overlook the defensive value of Quick-charge.

 

I personally choose Quick-charge for the way it defends me. It allows me to minimize the time I have to flee to regen a big chunk of damage, or alternatively, minimize the time between defense and striking back.

Here, it's not on-demand regeneration that interests me. It's pure fast regeneration.

Edited December 27, 2014 by Altheran

[Ramalina]

I'm definitely on board with the proposition that quick charge would be broken without the engine boost, (if that's what I'm taking it for, obviously I think it's important).

 

For the defensive end, I usually take damage at a low enough rate that using the active as a regular regen source would result in substantial overhealing of the shields, so I tend to reserve it for emergencies rather than using it as a mainstay of shield regen.

 

Without the active, quick charge shields don't offer a huge regen advantage, over directionals if you even the damage across arcs and take the 3 second regen delay reduction as the final upgrade for directionals, provided you put power to shields when you regen.

 

With the active and with power to something other than shields then quick charge blows directional regen out of the water. So it does offer some flexibility in defense playstyle, though I mostly lump that into energy budget when thinking about it. I suppose one could make the argument that if I rarely feel the need to use the active on quick charge, then the regen must be pretty amazing.

 

Out of curiosity, do you prefer the 60% recent regen T3 upgrade on quick charge or the reduced cooldown? And are you getting your regen primarily from the passive regen, primarily from the active, or a fairly even mix of the two?

[RickDagles]

Wow, I am really quite baffled that so many of you think quick charge is a viable option. I'm interested in how you avoid burst deaths with such low HP. Doesn't a sneaky quad/pod or blc/pod completely cripple you before you can react? Yes, I know to use tab and watch the mini-map for that, but it happens. And what about cluster spam? 4 of them pretty much takes you out. Which tier 3 upgrade are you picking?

 

I just fail to see how you can escape to regen shields against a good battlescout. Taking refuge behind an object or getting into a turning battle won't work vs anyone good with BLC. With directionals you can just lure him away and beat him in a 1v1 joust.

Edited December 27, 2014 by RickDagles

[Ryuku-sama]

Wow, I am really quite baffled that so many of you think quick charge is a viable option. I'm interested in how you avoid burst deaths with such low HP. Doesn't a sneaky quad/pod or blc/pod completely cripple you before you can react? Yes, I know to use tab and watch the mini-map for that, but it happens. And what about cluster spam? 4 of them pretty much takes you out. Which tier 3 upgrade are you picking?

 

I just fail to see how you can escape to regen shields against a good battlescout. Taking refuge behind an object or getting into a turning battle won't work vs anyone good with BLC. With directionals you can just lure him away and beat him in a 1v1 joust.

 

One thing to understand with strikes is YOU AREN'T IN A SOLO SHIP. Fly with your team, get peels off your ***. How to deal with a BLC scout?? Play a Retro-Jouster with HLC, Ion and Cluster. How to play against a quad'n'pods? Don't stay in their 12's.. Move, try to stay out of their pods firing arcs.

 

QCS give you the same boost efficiency scouts have baseline. You will boost as long as they will. You will be slower and regen engine slower once you're both out of engine, but yyou will run out at the exact same time the scout will considering said scout isn't using Booster, StE or Tensor.

[tommmsunb]

One thing to understand with strikes is YOU AREN'T IN A SOLO SHIP. Fly with your team, get peels off your ***. How to deal with a BLC scout?? Play a Retro-Jouster with HLC, Ion and Cluster. How to play against a quad'n'pods? Don't stay in their 12's.. Move, try to stay out of their pods firing arcs.

 

QCS give you the same boost efficiency scouts have baseline. You will boost as long as they will. You will be slower and regen engine slower once you're both out of engine, but yyou will run out at the exact same time the scout will considering said scout isn't using Booster, StE or Tensor.

 

It's not that you aren't in a solo ship, it's that you're not in a solo-carry ship. I actually switch to my strike sometimes when I feel like I have too many threats to deal with. In my scout I'm able to kill fast enough that if the enemy team are all average pilots I can kill them fast enough that it doesn't matter who's on my team, however if I have multiple near Scrab-level opponents and I'm getting focussed by them my strike does a better job at taking them out of commission.

[MiaowZedong]

Quick charge isn't so much about high regeneration, you can do that just with energy management. It's about on demand restoration of damaged shields.

No, that's meaningless. You need to stack all the shield bonii possible in-game for your QCS shields + your on-demand regen to equal having no shield component. It's still inferior to the ammount of shields you could have passively with Directional Shields, so even if you do use QCS active and do not use the DS active, you would have more survivability with DS.

 

The fact is QCS is an unambiguous loss of survivability even compared to not having a shield component. Yes, that's stupid, but it's how the game is set up.

 

If you ask for the opinion of experienced strike pilots, and they're all telling you that the mobility gained from quick charge shields is extremely valuable, enough so that they are competitive with directional shields, you might consider the possibility that it's time to re-evaluate your thoughts on how valuable boost is for strikes.

 

Boost usage is absolutely critical to effective strike employment, and that's why at high levels of play QCS is in general equivalent or superior to directional shields. The main difference between scout and strike boost employment is that a strike can never afford to waste engine energy and must continuously optimize regeneration of engine energy. Learning to play a strike well is actually good training for scout builds that trade engine endurance components for offensive components.

All experienced strike pilots? No, certainly not. I've played both strikes and other classes for hundreds of games, possibly more than a thousand on strikes (I believe it's still my most-flown class), and I can assure you I wouldn't take QCS into a competetive match ever. Of all the shield options available, it is the one I would not ever run against serious opposition.

 

Why? Because it turns you into a free kill. For a gunship, a QCS strike is an easy two-shot kill. Not two-hit kill, but two-shot kill, and that is the major difference with a scout. The scout derives huge survivability from stacking evasion and having a second missile break; QCS strikes have similar HP pools, without the huge evasion stack and with less missile breaks. In addition, they are still less mobile than the scout, less agile, and they can maybe equal the scout's offensive capability (or not, depending which type of strike you're comparing to which scout build). Basically a QCS strike is trying to be a scout and failing miserably.

 

As useful as the regeneration from QCS is, it's just not worth it. If you need that mobility more than anything else, fly a scout, it's massively superior. If you seriously want to play a strike you need to play it to its few strengths.

Underutilizing boost basically turns a strike into an inferior version of a bomber. A strike can play, "poor man's bomber," better than a scout, but it's not nearly as good as a real bomber. There were niche strike builds that were useful on nodes before bombers went live, but now they are strictly inferior to bombers, even in the case of a mastered strike vs. a stock bomber.

The fact is, a strike is not really a superior ship in any case. They're not without strengths, of course. Strikes do better with unavoidable damage than pretty much any other class, provided you don't handicap yourself with QCS. A T1 strike can burst really hard and take a significant ammount of time and effort to kill, especially for gunships, while a T3 strike can be really survivable against bombers and provide good support. But they are not good at boosting all the time.

For all of the strikes, 1v1 is actually a fairly bad position to be in unless it's against a less geared and experienced strike, or sometimes against a bomber. Strikes do not excel at anything in particular, and as a result in a 1v1 where the other ship type has nothing to distract from maximizing the advantages it gets from being more specialized the strike will normally suffer badly.

Most strikes builds make good bomber hunters. The fact is, they don't "excel" at 1v1 or any other situation, but a well-built Type 1 Strike is a nasty surprise to anyone who underestimates it. You may have a ship that outmatches it on paper and still lose if you don't show an experienced pilot the proper respect.

 

Also, your opinion is probably influenced by flying so much with QCS, which means you're in trouble if somebody so much as looks your way.

 

What strikes thrive on is teamwork and distracted targets.

All ships do, arguably gunships more than any other, but all ships do. This is no reason to limit yourself to kill scavenging.

Edited December 27, 2014 by MiaowZedong

[Fractalsponge]

I'm not going to do a point-by-point on this, but a non-T3 strike with directionals instead of QCS is trying to do something that is a bad idea in gsf: tank damage instead of dodge it. Fine for bomber/node work, but against a gunship, you're going to end up drained and dead.

[tommmsunb]

I'm not going to do a point-by-point on this, but a non-T3 strike with directionals instead of QCS is trying to do something that is a bad idea in gsf: tank damage instead of dodge it. Fine for bomber/node work, but against a gunship, you're going to end up drained and dead.

 

Can confirm. QCS is the only viable shield option for strike fighters the engine regen you get is too clutch.

[RickDagles]

How to deal with a BLC scout?? Play a Retro-Jouster with HLC, Ion and Cluster.

 

You will lose every joust with QCS.

 

 

QCS give you the same boost efficiency scouts have baseline. You will boost as long as they will. You will be slower and regen engine slower once you're both out of engine, but yyou will run out at the exact same time the scout will considering said scout isn't using Booster, StE or Tensor.

 

False. According to tooltips, scout afterburner activation costs '4' and all other ships (strikes included) cost '5'. Also the default afterburner consumption rate for scouts is 8.7 while strikes burn it at 10.4.

 

 

Let's do a little comparison to see how pointless it is to pick QCS Strike instead of just picking a scout:

 

T1 QCS Strike 1800 shields,1450 armor (3250 hp), 10% Evasion, 5% Dmg reduction,10.4 afterburner consumption

T2 QCS Strike 1440 shields,1740 armor (3180 hp), 10% Evasion, 5% Dmg reduction, 10.4 afterburner consumption

T2 QCS Scout 1300 shields,1140 armor (2440 hp), 15% Evasion, 0% Dmg reduction, 8.7 afterburner consumption

 

So essentially you're gaining 740-810 hitpoints and giving up your systems ability and LOT of engines. You get to use the HLC/missile combo which overall has about the same accuracy as the Quad/Pod/Targeting Telemetry combo but significantly less DPS.

 

You might be saying to yourself that this is a terrible T2 Scout build! Well yea it is, you should be stacking evasion as a scout. But if you're saying this is a terrible scout build then how is it possibly a good Strike build? You think those 740-810 hit points are going to save you? That's 2-3 blaster hits, 1 BLC hit, 1 cluster missile, 1 seeker mine, 1 railgun hit, etc. Is 1 hit really going to save you?

Edited December 27, 2014 by RickDagles

[Ramalina]

Wow, I am really quite baffled that so many of you think quick charge is a viable option. I'm interested in how you avoid burst deaths with such low HP. Doesn't a sneaky quad/pod or blc/pod completely cripple you before you can react? Yes, I know to use tab and watch the mini-map for that, but it happens. And what about cluster spam? 4 of them pretty much takes you out. Which tier 3 upgrade are you picking?

 

I just fail to see how you can escape to regen shields against a good battlescout. Taking refuge behind an object or getting into a turning battle won't work vs anyone good with BLC. With directionals you can just lure him away and beat him in a 1v1 joust.

 

Well if you use the cooldown that's an extra 648 shield health replaced, and if you have large reactor, you're sitting at 1800 shield health to begin with, so it's not really a particularly low shield hp if you use the active efficiently.

 

T2s are in a worse position because they don't have reactors, but they still have stronger shields and hulls than the scout does, and with careful flying they can manage. How they choose to manage varies by specific build.

 

Rocket pods are very visually distinctive, and very easy to avoid if you notice the person shooting at you. They also have a modest rate of fire, so it's often quite easy to dodge after the 1st or 2nd shot, even if you didn't notice the attacker before they started firing.

 

BLCs are chiefly dangerous when boosted by cooldowns and at point blank range. The goal isn't so much to never get hit by a persistent BLC scout, as to delay getting hit until their cooldown is no longer active. Boost and LOS are adequate to accomplish this. In sufficiently tight spaces, it can also be a bit easier to fly through with a strike, as the lower speed makes it a bit easier to avoid overshooting and crashing into things. Taking advantage of the fact that turn rate and turn radius are different things. Due to the slow rate of fire, extreme LOS mazes can be very effective at reducing incoming BLC damage, if there's enough obstacle around it also starts to neutralize their firing arc advantage. If you can't LOS then distance is your friend. The damage fall-off with range for BLCs is very punishing, so just running can counter them pretty well. The best bet is usually a mix of boost and LOS. You don't want to be activating boost a lot of times, but if you run and LOS you can grab a little bit of regen while the pursuing scout flies around the obstacle. Getting halfway across the map and ending up with them out of fuel, out of cooldowns, and surrounded by your allies is the ideal endstate.

 

For clusters, you're facing a short range build. I usually either LOS a lot, or turn to face them and boost past before they have time to shoot. They will eventually get shots off if they're good, but if you're making them take three passes per shot it's not cluster spam so much as cluster trickle, and the scout is looking at taking 30 seconds or more to kill you. If you're answering with ion cannons or clusters of your own, then the scout has to start thinking about if it's actually going to survive a battle of attrition, and you're either getting passive shield regen or having the active on quick charge come off cooldown, so you can start drawing things out to 5 or even 6 clusters. The longer it goes, the worse off the scout is, until their cooldowns reset. Even then, if they're burning multiple cooldown stacks to take you out, things aren't exactly going well for them.

 

I'll also point out that if you try a 1v1 shield tanking joust vs a scout, they're going to demolish you if they know what they're doing. They won't accept the offer to slug it out face to face unless their offensive and defensive cooldowns are ready to go, at which point they have the advantage (or in the case of a BLC/Cluster scout they just won't joust head to head at all because their weapons loadout isn't suited to it). Jousting is mostly about knowing who is going to win before the joust starts, and refusing to joust if you're not going to be the winner. Scouts are much superior to strikes at avoiding disadvantageous jousts, so it's not wise to rely on jousting to defeat them.

 

The point isn't to survive in every case, but to draw out the time to kill for as long as possible, and do something useful at the same time. Hold a sat, demolish sat turrets, pressure a gunship, peel an enemy off of one of your teammates, that sort of thing. A scout is mostly useful when racking up kills at a high rate. A strike that can occupy a scout for a long time and do productive strike activities at the same time is giving their team an advantage over the scout's team.

 

Normally I expect 0-3 deaths per match running a quick charge strike, which doesn't really change for directional shields. The difference is that unless there's an opportunity to be holding a single contested area for the whole match, I expect to contribute a lot more to winning the match in a quick charge strike, because it's much more likely that I'll be able to get to a useful position in a timely manner and with enough resources to be effective.

 

No, that's meaningless. You need to stack all the shield bonii possible in-game for your QCS shields + your on-demand regen to equal having no shield component. It's still inferior to the ammount of shields you could have passively with Directional Shields, so even if you do use QCS active and do not use the DS active, you would have more survivability with DS.

 

The fact is QCS is an unambiguous loss of survivability even compared to not having a shield component. Yes, that's stupid, but it's how the game is set up.

 

Maximum burst survivability and survivability are not the same thing. If the initial burst is survived, then the state of the shields when the next damage arrives is what determines survival, and QCS are much better than baseline shields when it comes to that.

 

It's very easy to get back to full shields quickly in a QCS build compared to a directionals build, and baseline shields aren't even remotely competitive in comparison. Directionals aren't at a large long term disadvantage regen wise, but they have less burst heal than QCS, and are a little bit more sensitive to continuous light damage impairing regen. You can switch to reactors other than large to offset that, but doing so erases most of the shield size advantage. If you're keeping the size of incoming bursts below what quick charge can handle, there's little advantage to having a larger initial shield.

 

Quick charge aren't about eating massive bursts though. They're about getting you to the best position at the best time, provided you manage to avoid or reduce burst damage.

 

It's a completely different style of play. Directionals played right, are about exploiting a greater ability to soak damage. Quick charge is meant to work as a backup to situational awareness and maneuvering as your primary defenses, the payoff is that if you don't make your shields do too much work, you get an increase in your total energy budget.

 

Compared to a strike you're just as much better off soaking damage with a bomber as you are trying to avoid it with a scout.

 

Why? Because it turns you into a free kill. For a gunship, a QCS strike is an easy two-shot kill. Not two-hit kill, but two-shot kill, and that is the major difference with a scout.

 

Ah, no. It may turn you into a free kill, but I generally try not to let gunships sneak within range and take potshots at me. Sometimes I don't succeed, but needing better situational awareness is not the same as the component being deficient.

 

An evasion build T2 is a two hit kill to a railgun. If you pair QCS with large reactor or reinforced armor, the resulting strike is a 3 hit kill for a gunship, just like any of the directional shield builds.

 

BTW, what server do you play on that railgun misses do damage? Every server I've played on requires them to hit, even Ion rail has to hit something in order to do splash damage. Or do you play on a server where every gunship pilot has 100% hit rates? Even superb gunship pilots sometimes miss shots at strikes, and a strike pilot on the defensive can greatly increase that chance.

 

As useful as the regeneration from QCS is, it's just not worth it. If you need that mobility more than anything else, fly a scout, it's massively superior. If you seriously want to play a strike you need to play it to its few strengths.

 

The fact is, a strike is not really a superior ship in any case. They're not without strengths, of course. Strikes do better with unavoidable damage than pretty much any other class, provided you don't handicap yourself with QCS. A T1 strike can burst really hard and take a significant amount of time and effort to kill, especially for gunships, while a T3 strike can be really survivable against bombers and provide good support. But they are not good at boosting all the time.

 

Strikes are better at maneuvering to avoid damage than anything other than scouts, provided they don't handicap themselves with the wrong thrusters and directional shields. They're still tankier than gunships and scouts too.

 

Also, your opinion is probably influenced by flying so much with QCS, which means you're in trouble if somebody so much as looks your way.

 

Yes and no. I flew directional only for a very long time, I was fond of the system from the X-wing series. I started using QCS on TEH and Bastion GSF alts, and was surprised and very pleased by the difference in maneuverability, and I found the difference in survivability to be too small to notice, though you have to fly quite differently to pull it off. I generally find QCS strikes to be quite tanky, in the sense that if you're flying to get the most out of the build it's very rare to receive seriously threatening levels of burst. It's quite different from a scout, where evasion cooldowns and the possibility of a lucky shot slipping through mean you have periods where you have to be much more risk averse than a QCS strike in the same situation.

 

 

Defensive flying is very powerful, it does not require scout levels of boost to perform effectively (though more boost does help, which is part of why QCS and regeneration thrusters are very valuable), and if done correctly you don't need shields that can survive massive bursts because you're not taking massive bursts.

 

I think we've sort of derailed the thread though. We're getting way past the realm of strike 101.

 

If you boil what we're talking about down to that level, it comes out more like this:

 

Practice using evasive flying to avoid getting shot, ideally by using objects in the GSF battlespace to block the line of sight that your opponent needs to fire weapons at you.

 

It's possible to get good at defensive flying very quickly if you actually focus on improving. Most beginners are too absorbed with trying to blow things up, and get shredded as a result.

[tunewalker]

I Largely agree with Ram, but I rarely run QCS on a T2 the lack of a reactor I usually find makes the T2 to punishable for its lower shields. The T1 with a reactor on the other hand I do find in a good spot with QCS. Just like I wont run CP on a T1 cus it lacks the armor. i do think QCS need a buff but its by no means a large one.

[Altheran]

I didn't expect so much participation all of a sudden.

 

Well, since I was asked my choices of upgrades earlier, here's mines :

Starguard - Turbo Reactor and CD upgrade

Pike - Regeneration upgrade

 

The only thing I have to add to Ramalina's explanation, who gets the philosophy of the component quite accurately, is that I think people overestimate the possibilities of Directionals.

 

I often read that "Quick-charge regeneration rate is actually pretty much standard because of Directionals' prioritization". Actually nobody knows how Directionals work behind the scenes.

I have my own theory, and according to it, shield regeneration of Directionals doesn't compare with the one of Quick-charge in the way people suppose it does.

 

Theory for those interested :

 

In my theory, Directionals do not increase one arc but creates a second pool.

 

Schematically, one ship would be like this :

Front <- ( Fore 1 ( Fore 2 ( Hull ) Aft 2 ) Aft 1 ) -> Rear

 

By default values of shields would be like this :

( 100% ( 0% ( Hull ) 0% ) 100% )

 

And Directionals would apply some kind of +75/-75 modifiers like this :

Front <- ( 25% ( 0% ( Hull ) 75% ) 100% ) -> Rear

Front <- ( 100% ( 75% ( Hull ) 0% ) 25% ) -> Rear

 

This theory is based on the fact that after suffering great damage while in neutral shield position, cycling through positions will not approximately even Front and rear shield current values. Instead, it will approximately be like before the cycling beside little variation coming from natural regeneration.

 

The only logical explanation of this behavior, is that the amount of shielding deployed on one side is never mixed with the amount that was originally there, indicating that they somehow form two separate pools.

 

This mechanic tend to induce some particularities on the regeneration abilities of the component.

If a "strengthened arc" is actually made of two pools, then they are supposed to be able to regenerate for themselves only. As a consequence, "strengthening" an arc after it has been damaged would have no effect on how fast it will be refilled.

 

Also, the only possible condition for observing abnormally high regeneration on one side would be that the two pools of a "strengthened arc" were incomplete at the same time. The conditions for this to happen in combat would be unclear, as we don't know if damage dealt to a "strengthened arc" would prioritize the original arc or the additional one or both at the same time.

 

My personal guess on the matter would that the additional one is consumed at the same time as the original one according to two behaviors :

- suffering enormous damage on the big arc (emptying entirely or almost entirely) ends putting you back in neutral mode forcibly

- suffering minor damage does the same thing when trying to strengthen an arc with the help of an almost empty one.

This two behaviors seems to indicate that strengthening is forcibly stopped when the additional pool is emptied, and that this pool isn't consumed especially early or late.

 

It means that if these guesses are right, damage done to a preemptively strengthened arc may regenerate as fast as it would on some shield like Quick-charge since the damage is effectively halved between two pools, but any damage done while pools are unique will actually regenerate at the basic rate and are impossible to minimize by other means than Power to Shields.

 

[Fractalsponge]

Also, it should be noted that directionals is absolutely the worst possible choice for anyone that needs a "101" type intro to play. Getting the most out of them, hell, not accidentally prioritizing the wrong arc and getting instagibbed, is likely to be well beyond the capability of novice pilots, compared to quick-charge's effects. Never mind the enormous increase in mobility associated with QCS.

[tunewalker]

I didn't expect so much participation all of a sudden.

 

Well, since I was asked my choices of upgrades earlier, here's mines :

Starguard - Turbo Reactor and CD upgrade

Pike - Regeneration upgrade

 

The only thing I have to add to Ramalina's explanation, who gets the philosophy of the component quite accurately, is that I think people overestimate the possibilities of Directionals.

 

I often read that "Quick-charge regeneration rate is actually pretty much standard because of Directionals' prioritization". Actually nobody knows how Directionals work behind the scenes.

I have my own theory, and according to it, shield regeneration of Directionals doesn't compare with the one of Quick-charge in the way people suppose it does.

 

Theory for those interested :

 

In my theory, Directionals do not increase one arc but creates a second pool.

 

Schematically, one ship would be like this :

Front <- ( Fore 1 ( Fore 2 ( Hull ) Aft 2 ) Aft 1 ) -> Rear

 

By default values of shields would be like this :

( 100% ( 0% ( Hull ) 0% ) 100% )

 

And Directionals would apply some kind of +75/-75 modifiers like this :

Front <- ( 25% ( 0% ( Hull ) 75% ) 100% ) -> Rear

Front <- ( 100% ( 75% ( Hull ) 0% ) 25% ) -> Rear

 

This theory is based on the fact that after suffering great damage while in neutral shield position, cycling through positions will not approximately even Front and rear shield current values. Instead, it will approximately be like before the cycling beside little variation coming from natural regeneration.

 

The only logical explanation of this behavior, is that the amount of shielding deployed on one side is never mixed with the amount that was originally there, indicating that they somehow form two separate pools.

 

This mechanic tend to induce some particularities on the regeneration abilities of the component.

If a "strengthened arc" is actually made of two pools, then they are supposed to be able to regenerate for themselves only. As a consequence, "strengthening" an arc after it has been damaged would have no effect on how fast it will be refilled.

 

Also, the only possible condition for observing abnormally high regeneration on one side would be that the two pools of a "strengthened arc" were incomplete at the same time. The conditions for this to happen in combat would be unclear, as we don't know if damage dealt to a "strengthened arc" would prioritize the original arc or the additional one or both at the same time.

 

My personal guess on the matter would that the additional one is consumed at the same time as the original one according to two behaviors :

- suffering enormous damage on the big arc (emptying entirely or almost entirely) ends putting you back in neutral mode forcibly

- suffering minor damage does the same thing when trying to strengthen an arc with the help of an almost empty one.

This two behaviors seems to indicate that strengthening is forcibly stopped when the additional pool is emptied, and that this pool isn't consumed especially early or late.

 

It means that if these guesses are right, damage done to a preemptively strengthened arc may regenerate as fast as it would on some shield like Quick-charge since the damage is effectively halved between two pools, but any damage done while pools are unique will actually regenerate at the basic rate and are impossible to minimize by other means than Power to Shields.

 

Its not about how the prioritization works.

 

If you take damage to shields in the rear when they are evened out. Shift them back, then front then even again you will notice your shields are now BOTH damaged, thanks to this you can "double up" on your shield regen, as you are now regening both sides instead of just one.

[Ryuku-sama]

Its not about how the prioritization works.

 

If you take damage to shields in the rear when they are evened out. Shift them back, then front then even again you will notice your shields are now BOTH damaged, thanks to this you can "double up" on your shield regen, as you are now regening both sides instead of just one.

 

You are right and wrong. You will regen your front shield, and your rear one will begin to regen after the normal delay.

 

That's why the regen on Directionnal during downtime is that strong, you can regen your damaged side by shuffling your shields and evening damage out. One side will still be in lower regen tier (aka no regen without QCS) and the other will be at full regen. Then just shuffle them again to strenghten your damaged side.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Ryuku-sama

[Altheran]

Its not about how the prioritization works.

 

If you take damage to shields in the rear when they are evened out. Shift them back, then front then even again you will notice your shields are now BOTH damaged, thanks to this you can "double up" on your shield regen, as you are now regening both sides instead of just one.

 

I'll try again, but I'm almost certain I tried that once, without effect.