ThutmoseV Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 Most of my time on GSF I have flown gunships and bombers with my main, Erannov, and solo queued. I would fly scouts or strikes from time to time, but if the opposition looked tough I would usually select gunship. I decided I had to get out of that rut by flying a Starguard strike fighter starting from stock. So I started using my alt Merenptah and would only fly the Starguard from his hangar. I was curious at how viable it would be. I also wanted to improve my flying skill and hoped that flying a strike fighter would force me to get better. I found this experiment very enjoyable. I flew a lot of matches, especially near the start when there were not many improvements for the ship, in the early afternoon when the best Imp pilots were not on as often. I found that against less experienced opposition, the Starguard was very viable. When I was in more difficult matchups, though, I had a hard time being as effective. Eventually I improved to the point where in evenly matched games I would at least not be a liability. The breakthrough match was this one, http://i.imgur.com/u7uC0wc.jpg, where I got 14 kills and 14 assists. This match did not have strong opposition, but it gave me confidence, especially since I only had 10k to 15k worth of improvements at the time. The build I am using is: Ion HLC Concussion missile Quick charge shield Barrel roll Frequency capacitor Large reactor Power thrusters For my active crew ability, I use the much derided hydrospanner. A strike fighter cannot avoid damage as easily as a scout, so it makes me able to keep fighting longer. I used concussion missile just to see if I could get locks with it. I found that I could, and if it ever did hit, it hits hard. Very useful against bombers and gunships, and occasionally I would hit an unwary scout who was out of missile breaks. Frequency capacitors seemed to increase my burst damage a bit. I have not used Ion much. It takes too long to switch during an attack run, when often I only get a short time to shoot. I will probably experiment with it, maybe in situations like satellite defense when defense turrets or mines are up, or other situations where teammates might be shooting at the same opponent soon. I have been using a style of picking my spots, jumping in quick, hitting as hard as I can as long as I can, then running away if a turning fight develops with a scout or multiple enemies go after me. I chose the speed increase with my 3rd tier of barrel roll, and use barrel roll a lot to make an escape. Most of the time I am in F3 for engine, to get in quick and get out quick. I saw no point in trying to add turning if I could not outturn a scout anyway. Of course, if a scout really wants to chase me, I might have a problem, but there is no avoiding that problem with any build or style with a strike fighter. The shields and hull of a strike means that it might take a lot of hits to kill me. I found that with the speed build and using barrel roll right at the start, I could usually be the first ship to get to a satellite at the start of a domination match. The biggest improvement in my flying has been the better coordination of roll with turn so I can use the faster pitch turns. I think it has made me more effective flying a scout. I am certainly not claiming that a Starguard is the best ship to fly. The advantages of a t2 scout outweigh the any advantages a strike might have. But it is viable. I think that it also proves that skill is more important than equipment in GSF. I might retire Merenptah now that I have completed my experiment, since he only has that one ship mastered, but I am sure I will be flying Starguard from time to time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archonitek Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Welcome to the club =D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jovianus Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Welcome to the club =D I always like seeing Strike Fighters on the field. It means I'm pretty much guaranteed a few kills in the match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Wait, POWER thrusters? How is this better than speed thrusters or regen thrusters? Boosting point A to point B, speed thrusters should beat power thrusters from a full point, and CLEARLY win if both start with less than 100% pool size. Regen thrusters are generally the champions. Do you know something we don't, or you just went with it and it seemed ok? Ex: power thrusters are the best thruster if you are hit with ion railgun or something, but that seems unlikely to matter enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThutmoseV Posted February 22, 2015 Author Share Posted February 22, 2015 Wait, POWER thrusters? How is this better than speed thrusters or regen thrusters? . Your probably right, but I did not do the theorycrafting to figure it out, I just went with it. My aim was to be able to make a quick getaway in more situations. In that situation, it seemed that the longer you can boost, the better chance you have. Also I need to have enough power for barrel roll as often as possible. If regen is better for that sort of thing, I'll be glad to switch, I am not dogmatic about stuff. I was very surprised how often I was the first to a satellite at the start. Even if no one on the opposition wanted to fly a speed scout for fast initial cap, I still expected t2 scouts to get there before me more often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 I think the big piece to that is the quick charge shield. The scouts are normally running distortion, and quick charge gives you a lot of efficiency. I prefer quick charge on strike fighters- it's much less defense than directionals, but the extra boost allows me to actually go to targets without having to stop for breath as often. You know what I think about hydrospanner, so I won't really comment on that. But the flipside is that you are using a Starguard with hydrospanner, not a Rycer with hydrospanner. This means you are stuck with either the awful astromech or the mediocre B-3G9. Either of these choices is a bit costly- I'm a big believer in firing arc with certain weapons, and concussion missiles and ion cannons are definitely on that list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickDagles Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 (edited) I find the Starguard and Pike are some of the best DPS ships in the game, and they excel at killing bombers. However, they're probably the easiest ships in the game to shut down. They just don't have access to any of the slippery tools that other ships have. No power dive, no evasion boosts outside of running interference, no healing, and only modest boosting ability. T1/T2/T3 scout get DF, powerdive, and booster recharge/tensorfield as options. They also have the best passive evasion and most efficient afterburner. T3 strike gets power dive and heals. T3 bomber gets powerdive and a nice defensive cooldown (interdiction drone). T1 GS gets DF and usually a full bar of engines whenever it is being engaged. Not to mention using a quarter shot of ion railgun will zap most of the engines out of your attacker. T3 GS gets DF and powerdive. The T2 GS is just as easy to shut down because it has nothing but a 20 second barrel roll cooldown. Edited February 23, 2015 by RickDagles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linuxizer Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 I would choose cluster missiles over concussion. In my best match with concussions, I fired 6. In a match with clusters, I fired > 30. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts