Sensor Beacon

[gsummers]

I've started playing around with new ships to change up my play experience. I am fascinated by the Spearpoint's Sensor Beacon. At first, it seems that this system has little to offer in a match, but with evasion and accuracy debuffs, maybe it can offer something.

 

Is there anyone out there who has maxed Sensor Beacon and thinks it just excels at awesomeness?

 

Anyone?

[Bolo_Yeung]

I am afraid it will be pretty little used. Both scouts that have it (Novabolt and Spearmark) have much better options (EMP field and Tensor Field respectively), so Sensor Beacon won't be a good option. It can have some use in Mesas TDM, in Domination maybe too (place in hard to get location so enemies won't bother with destroying it... or near sat), but I don't think it will be too good. EMP field is useable every 45 seconds and reduces accureacy by 20%, disables turrets and drones, destroy mines... Tensor Field is a must in higher level TDM.

Sure, with teanplay it can be pretty nice (accuracy reduction is cumulative with other debuffs) but for solo que I'd suggest EMP/Tensor. Or Targetting Telemetry with Rocket Pods - pretty devastating for stationary targets ...

Edited March 27, 2015 by Bolo_Yeung

[gsummers]

You raise an interesting point. I've been using targeting telemetry on my flashfire, but don't seem to be getting much out of it. Is it of little use when dogfighting with strikes or scouts? Would blaster overcharge be a better choice for a flashfire with burst/cluster?

[Verain]

TT is probably your best bet. It particularly helps with scouts, strikes, and gunships compared to blaster overcharge, mostly because these targets often rely on passive evasion, active evasion, and flying to stay out of your way.

 

TT doesn't help clusters much, but a big piece here is "do you have it mastered". The big money for TT comes when you get get the bottom left talent (tier 5 left - Precision targeting).

 

With every upgrade BEFORE precision targeting, it does this for BLASTERS and PODS:

+10 accuracy (huge), +5% crit

But only this works for clusters:

+5% crit

When you get that upgrade, it becomes:

15% crit, +25% crit magnitude

 

 

This talent changes the move a lot, because you can suddenly see red numbers, and they'll be larger than normal. Blaster Overcharge is by no means bad, but in general TT will see you hit enemies you would otherwise have missed, and loudly crit enemies you would otherwise have dealt less damage to. Enemies have to respond to TT or be punished by it. While the same is true of DO, it has less uptime than TT, and DO also has a problem firing into distortion compared to TT.

 

 

 

Sensor beacon actually has a pretty great effect for the few enemies it functions on. The problem seems to be that it is just overpriced, with some notable exceptions. The "intended" use of beacon seems to be "drop in the middle of a dogfight somewhere it won't be instantly destroyed", and the effect is "10% hit to your guys, -10% hit to the enemies" which should add up... but it never seems that great.

 

The scenarios where this matters are really thin, and the beacon itself is very fragile. Unlike the similar "taunt" effect of drones, the beacon can much more safely be ignored. A scenario where it matters more than the other options is just really rare.

[RickDagles]

Sensor Beacon might have a purpose if it increased the accuracy of your teammates by 10%. Then it could be added to the GS-bomber ball in TDM and help make your Gunships more accurate (basically like a permanent wingman-type boost). Meanwhile you could stack evasion on the scout and use it to 'kite' enemies toward your GS-bomber ball.

 

Currently the beacon is nearly useless.

Edited March 27, 2015 by RickDagles

[SWCNT]

I've had fun with it against GS groups, but it won't work in a competitive match.

Situation:

Multiple enemy GS cluster together--little to no bomber support

You are running a T1 scout with at least one GS in your premade

 

Run booster recharge, distortion, sensor beacon, running interference and speed thruster with power dive. Dive into the GS cluster and drop beacon, usually they will all try to focus you and ignore the beacon. Evade like crazy and while the GS's are distracted on you, have your GS's come in range and light them up. It's fun, but easy to counter. Like others have said, there are stronger options out there.

[Imgawna]

once it is maxed you can have 2 out at once and increase the area of effect. when i was using it i would put 1 at the sat and 1 at about gunship range towards their spawn to kill off any dampening fields as well

[Imgawna]

however my favorite system in the nova dive/ blackbolt is EMP pulse. with that + distrot field + snap turn means you have 3 missle breaks. also very effective vs. sats, taking them over quickly.

[jmonka]

My main actually has maxed sensor beacons -ranked up with both left options (I started flying the spearpoint when it first came out and wanted a different option than tensor since at the time -and since I solo que- after the first sprint to the sats in DOM it tended to have the effect of ramming my allies into things more often than giving them advantages when they were engaged since they weren't expecting the change in their flight characteristics).

While I think people discount sensor beacons a little more than they deserve, and I still do run them on that ship fairly often I do have to say that they are probably not the strongest option.

 

The main problem I have with the beacons is that they simply have far too long of a cooldown for what they bring to the table to really compete with options like Tensor (which also has a shorter cooldown) and on the T1 scout I find booster recharge and even Targetting Telemetry to be even less dispensable so I just can't justify replacing one of them with the beacons as much as I'd like to make it work).

 

Ultimately, they can be used a variety of ways depending on your needs: probably the most obvious (if you use the accuracy debuff) you can drop one under a friendly satellite to give you and your allies a bit of a buff while fighting off an assault -and this does work to a degree except that the two biggest threats under a sat are mines and battlescouts with BLC and both of those are barely phased by the beacon (mines don't care about accuracy and a couple of them going off will destroy the beacon anyway and the BLC is so stupidly dangerous under sats that even though -10% accuracy technically will have an effect in my experience it's not enough of an impact to actually do any noticeable good for any allied ships being attacked by said BLC scout(s). These two issues, coupled with the fact that ion railgun spam quickly neutralizes the beacons (and with 60second cooldown you won't be putting another down for a quite a while) makes them decent when the sat is being attacked by a ragtag group with less threatening ships, against a more coordinated siege from multiple enemies flying ships that can threaten a sat more effectively they have (from my experience) little effect.

 

A second option for using them to defend satellites is in a situation where you are the lone defender of a remote sat (for example you are holding C while the other 7 are trying to take A & B). By placing the beacon at the edge of your sensor range between your sat and where the enemy will come from, you can buy yourself an extra second or two for allies to arrive after you call out. The reason this isn't very effective is that if your team is so much slower to react than the opponents' it's unlikely that 1-2 seconds will really change the outcome of that encounter and in addition once the incoming foe(s) get to the satellite you are holding you will want to be able to drop a beacon nearby to give you that 10% evasion boost to hopefully buy a few more seconds for help to come and since the beacons have a 60 second cooldown there's a big window between setting one up to watch for incoming and dropping a second one to buff your evasion at the sat.

 

In TDM their usefulness to buff allies is even more dodgy: of course you can plop them down beside friendly gunships as a sort of 'defense' against enemy scouts making runs for them, but since the debuff only works within a radius of 5k if the gunship moves either to get in range of a new target or to dodge an incoming scout (and with only a +10% evasion boost from the beacon he should still be running if a scout is focusing him) the beacon is useless and once again we're stuck with a 60 second cooldown before a new one can be placed. If the T1 or T3 scouts were very adept at peeling attacking scouts this might be an interesting tactic (not convinced it would be effective though) but since neither of those scouts has the peeling power of a T2 the gunship would usually be better off just having a T2 peel for him without any beacons nearby.

 

The other way you could try using them in TDM would be to dive into an enemy formation and drop a beacon before running like hell to give your own gunships a little edge against the enemy formation. The problem with this is that it's a very high risk maneuver in which you run a good possibility of being shot down taking the beacon with you and since you are sacrificing survivability -aka more 'get out of dodge' power (in the case of Booster Recharge or Tensor) or firepower you could use to take some of the formation out before they can retaliate (if not taking Targeting Telemetry) I just feel (in my own completely unscientific view) that the slight possible benefit the beacon might provide doesn't justify the cost of using it over the other abilities to do much the same job. -not to mention even if the first few seconds the enemies ignored the beacon, once it's destroyed you're faced with however much is left of that 60 second cooldown before you can try the same stunt again. (note I only solo que and don't use VOIP so it's possible people coordinating the deployment of the beacons over voice chat *might* find it more useful in such situations).

 

Now I will also mention one other place I find the beacons somewhat useful and that is when used as a sort of countermeasure when being chased: I've found that when I'm on the defensive in my spearpoint the beacons can often times give me the tiny bit of breathing room I need, I rarely just drop them when flying in a straightish line away from danger (although I suppose if the RNG gods looked favorably on this sacrifice they might still cause your pursuer a miss or two providing you with some breathing room), but if I'm making a turn sometimes I'll toss one out (in a similar RNG god sacrificial ritual) and I've found more often than you'd expect the pursuer goes all ADD perhaps thinking it's a repair probe and breaks off for a moment to hunt down the beacon -this only buys a few seconds since the beacons are paper thin but if that few seconds is all you need it can do the trick -worst case the pursuer has to deal with the RNG gods for a few seconds before they are out of the range of the beacon which might still buy you the needed time.

The most useful way of using them as a countermeasure when being however I would say is if you are running low on boost power and need a breath, find a nice rock/other terrain to hug making it hard for them to hit you and then release the beacon. Assuming they don't just chase after the beacon, then for a few seconds they not only are having to deal with you trying to LoS them around a rock but the few shots they do make will be harder to land -not to mention it gives you a slight bit more protection from a lurking gunship you might not have seen until he fires his first rail. Of course as soon as you break away to escape once you've caught your breath you can't use that trick for a minute but...

Please note, that while I have some success using the beacons as a bit of a distraction/time buying mechanism there are still far better options to get much the same result -ie booster recharge or tensor for the T1 or T3 respectively, and that's not even counting some of the great escape components that other ships types have access to such as the insanely useful interdiction drone (which oddly enough has a similarly long cooldown).

 

Now don't get me wrong; you can still use it for most/all of the above mentioned situations and I do myself (I can't explain it but somehow the spearpoint with beacons is just more fun than the spearpoint with tensor for me) *but* when I am honest with myself, from my experience, there usually are some better options to use for most any situation is all.

 

 

Afterthought: Now after all my rambling on about what you can use the beacons for even if they aren't the most useful option, I do wonder if the beacons' debuff can stack -ie if 3 scouts all put beacons under the same sat if the ships in their radii would recieve +30% evasion... Even though I run with the 2nd beacon option, due to the cooldown I've not really had many opportunities to see if dropping them both in the same area actually stack or not. Not sure if taking 3 scouts with beacons would make it worth it for the team even then but it would be interesting to know...

I wonder if one of the theorycrafters has ever tested this?

[Nemarus]

Sensor Beacon would be great if all ships had sensor ranges 7500m less than they currently do. In that world, having a deployable sensor/communicator relay would be neat.

 

Imagine a world where, to shoot from maximum range, Gunships had to have a beacon or ally ship near its intended target! Sure, most of the time that is already true, but it would add some interesting tactical texture I think.

 

I think that was the original design intent of Sensor Beacon and Communications Sensors. Unfortunately, Dampening Sensors and Scouts in general would be much too powerful in that world. They could sneak up on anyone, and they'd be yet another example of being their own best counter.

 

Oh, if only fate had not conspired to give Scouts burst damage.

 

<incoming dreamy tangent>

 

What a world we could have had. A world where Scouts were valued for their Sensor/Communication capabilities, their mobility, and their evasiveness, not for their ability to kill in under two seconds. If only Scout systems were all utilitarian, and not offensive.

 

Burst damage should've been the specialty of Strikes, born of the fact that they can shoot lasers and missiles at the same time. No one else should've had that ability.

 

Scouts should've been pure pew-pew-pew, able to do decent sustained damage so long as they could use defense, mobility and utility to stay alive.

 

Gunships should've been pure sssssssssssshhhhhhhhhoooooooooot!

 

Bombers should've been boom-boom-boom, droooooone, or laser-laser-laser-laser-torpedo.

 

Strikes should've been pew-pew-missile-pew-pew-missile.

 

</dreams>

[DarthTyranid]

 

Bombers should've been boom-boom-boom, droooooone, or laser-laser-laser-laser-torpedo.

 

Strikes should've been pew-pew-missile-pew-pew-missile.

 

</dreams>

 

What kind of noob are you!? Clearly the Strikes should be pew-pew-pew-missile-pew-missile-pew-pew.

 

Are we even playing the same game?

[Nemarus]

What kind of noob are you!? Clearly the Strikes should be pew-pew-pew-missile-pew-missile-pew-pew.

 

Are we even playing the same game?

 

Obvious hax. Reported.

[Ardaneb]

I think they should buff the communication and sensor range of the probes. Buff them a lot (maybe 15K each). Probably a cooldown reduction. Perhaps a little dampening buff too. No one uses them. You have to make it so they give so much information that they are worth getting rid of targeting telemetry. The idea would be that you could have one of two placement strategies:

1. Place them between the satellites near the opponents side of the map. Give your team a complete picture of all enemy movements/names at all times. Protect the sensors. Flow to the enemy point of attack. Find weaknesses the moment they develop in the enemy position (maybe even useful in TDM).

2. Drop one under the satellite for the debuff if things get too concentrated in one area.

 

I think it will probably have to be a near complete picture of enemy movements on even denon to be worth giving up any of the five other components. However, it has the potential to be meta-changing (more zerg vs counter-zerg). I would give up TT on my S2E to see those bombers coming in.

 

Unrelated suggestion: A player should have to be dark-side 6 to use EMP/sabotage probe. It may be less powerful than TT/pods, but it is pure evil.

[RickDagles]

I think one thing that everyone is ignoring is that this component may actually be useful if STEALTH SHIPS weren't cut.

[DarthTyranid]

I think one thing that everyone is ignoring is that this component may actually be useful if STEALTH SHIPS weren't cut.

 

That is an excellent point.

[caederon]

I really like the idea of giving Sensor Beacon a massive detection range increase. If it covered half the battlefield, there would be real utility to dropping one. Tactical awareness is hugely advantageous.

 

I'm not convinced stealth ships were ever a good idea to begin with. We don't know what role the devs intended them to fulfill when they were in the concept stage. I don't see a lot of roles that they could fill that are currently unoccupied. So, if they had jammed them into the game, they would have been redundant or would have required a drastic rebalancing of existing classes to give them a reason to exist.

 

That said, it clearly seems like a mechanic they wanted to implement from the start given the largely useless anti-stealth abilities of certain systems. They probably concluded it had been a bad idea somewhere down the line and didn't want to dump more resources into it.

 

- Despon