What Happened to GSF?

[Svarthrafn]

I was quite active in GSF at launch. Wrecked face in a scout before switching to the strike fighter (dual missile variant) after hearing how "useless" they were. Wrecked face in that too. I'm not bad at this game. I remember all the scout/gunship is OP whining, but never felt that way myself.

 

I took a break from the game just before they introduced bombers, deathmatch, etc. Having now returned to the game, it feels like things are a bit out of balance...or something. I still do really well, but it just isn't fun. Too cluttered maybe? Also strike fighters still don't really have a defined role, unless their role is to wreck scouts, which is what I use mine for, and which is done better by something else.

 

So what happened? This was a fun minigame for me, and I'd like for it to be again; but it just isn't doing it and I'm not sure why.

[Drakkolich]

I was quite active in GSF at launch. Wrecked face in a scout before switching to the strike fighter (dual missile variant) after hearing how "useless" they were. Wrecked face in that too. I'm not bad at this game. I remember all the scout/gunship is OP whining, but never felt that way myself.

 

I took a break from the game just before they introduced bombers, deathmatch, etc. Having now returned to the game, it feels like things are a bit out of balance...or something. I still do really well, but it just isn't fun. Too cluttered maybe? Also strike fighters still don't really have a defined role, unless their role is to wreck scouts, which is what I use mine for, and which is done better by something else.

 

So what happened? This was a fun minigame for me, and I'd like for it to be again; but it just isn't doing it and I'm not sure why.

 

It's interesting that you think the game is out of balance now, because pre Bombers dominations meta was really just everyone doing circles around a satellite trying to hit each other when everyone had way too much evasion. Now with the many balance changes later the game is much healthier than back then.

 

There's 4-5 Ships that are very competitive and some of those even have different builds on them that are optimal for different situations.

 

Is it possible you perhaps were relying way more on your evasion to help you avoid damage back then? Now that you have to be aware of your position because of mines and drones the game has changed pretty drastically since the days of doing endless loops on satellites.

 

 

You are however right that Strike fighters still don't have a roll, we have been advocating for them to get buffed for quite some time now.

 

I'm sorry to hear you aren't enjoying it anymore there is still a great community for the game. I hold events every month where many really good pilots come together on one server to fight it out.

[Svarthrafn]

I didn't evasion-tank to begin with, though I had a little (which I don't think was effected by the rebalance that much) because I main in the Quell. I only flew the scout at first, when I was learning.

 

Personally I felt the evasion was a L2P issue. I ran heavy lasers on my Quell for the accuracy, shield penetration, and range, with protons and clusters for my projectiles. I never had trouble even with the best of scouts.

 

What I mean by out of balance is the players themselves. I thought they intended to introduce some sort of matchmaking with this game, but I'm guessing that never happened. I get my kills just fine and stay alive just fine dogfighting. It's just really hard to win when you have maybe two guys playing the objectives, and matches feel a lot more luck of the draw than I remember.

[JediMinerBob]

New guy here. I wasn't around pre-bomber but I can definitely say looking at Dracolich's videos and reading the threads here on the forum that there definitely seems to be a number of rich strategies to the game. Almost overwhelming for the new player, I might add.

 

But this forum and the people are great. Very helpful. If this is what it changed into, keep the changes coming!

[RickDagles]

There's 4-5 Ships that are very competitive and some of those even have different builds on them that are optimal for different situations.

 

 

I'd say 6 ships with nearly 20 unique builds:

 

T1 Laser/Pod Scout (Nemarus)

T2 Scout with 10+ viable combinations of BLC/Quad/BO/TT/Wingman/CF/RI/Booster Recharge/Clusters/Pods/Retro/Barrel Roll/Power Dive

T1 GS

T3 GS with retro/directional (Vexxial) or powerdive/feedback (Tsukiyomi)

T1 Bomber

T2 Bomber

Edited April 5, 2015 by RickDagles

[Drakkolich]

I'd say 6 ships with nearly 20 unique builds:

 

T1 Laser/Pod Scout (Nemarus)

T2 Scout with 10+ viable combinations of BLC/Quad/BO/TT/Wingman/CF/Booster Recharge/Clusters/Pods/Retro/Barrel Roll/Power Dive

T1 GS

T3 GS with retro/directional (Vexxial) or powerdive/feedback (Tsukiyomi)

T1 Bomber

T2 Bomber

 

Yep looks pretty solid for a list I mean there are a few more Bomber combinations as well, but that's almost all of the "top" builds I'd say.

[Drakkolich]

I didn't evasion-tank to begin with, though I had a little (which I don't think was effected by the rebalance that much) because I main in the Quell. I only flew the scout at first, when I was learning.

 

Personally I felt the evasion was a L2P issue. I ran heavy lasers on my Quell for the accuracy, shield penetration, and range, with protons and clusters for my projectiles. I never had trouble even with the best of scouts.

 

What I mean by out of balance is the players themselves. I thought they intended to introduce some sort of matchmaking with this game, but I'm guessing that never happened. I get my kills just fine and stay alive just fine dogfighting. It's just really hard to win when you have maybe two guys playing the objectives, and matches feel a lot more luck of the draw than I remember.

 

I'm curious what server/time of day you're playing on. If only 1 game is going at a time it's very difficult for there to be any matchmaking as it just pulls everyone that's queue'd in to get the game going. Matchmaking does indeed happen however you need more players playing at the same time and also for players on both sides to be of equal skill. For example on the event nights I mentioned we get some really close matches because of the amount of players queueing up at the same time.

 

Matchmaking is based on 3 aspects, 1: Games played 2: Highest upgraded ship on your bar when you queue up 3: Time spent in queue.

 

If a really skilled player queue's at the same time as an unskilled one if they both have about the same amount of games played and both have atleast 1 mastered ship on there bar they are considered equal in the eyes of the matchmaker.

 

I hope that helps clear up your concerns.

[Svarthrafn]

That does clear things up a bit. I play very late in the evening so population must be an issue. Especially now that GSF is not "new" and likely has a smaller population than when I used to play.

[RickDagles]

Yep looks pretty solid for a list I mean there are a few more Bomber combinations as well, but that's almost all of the "top" builds I'd say.

 

Ok fixed

 

T1 Scout Laser/Pod/TT/Wingman

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Wingman (best anti-scout build?)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Running Interference (evasion scout)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Concentrated Fire (monster crit scout aka bomber melter)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/BO/Wingman/freq capacitor (rapid fire BLC scout)

T2 Scout BLC/pod/TT/Wingman (highest DPS BLC build - original Scrab build)

T2 Scout Quad/pod/TT/Wingman/Retro/Distortion Field (Otoshi build)

T2 Scout Quad/pod/TT/Wingman/Retro/Directional Shield (I'm prob the only that uses this)

T2 Scout Quad/cluster/TT/Wingman (Sanic build?)

T2 Scout Quad/cluster/BO/Wingman

T2 Scout BLC/pod/Booster Recharge/Wingman/Barrel Roll/Double turning/freq capacitors (new Scrab build)

T2 Scout BLC/pod/TT/Power Dive/Double Turning/Running Interference (Willie build)

T1 GS

T3 GS with Reg Lasers/Retro/Directional (jousting build)

T3 GS with BLC/Powerdive/Feedback or DF (slippery build)

T1 Bomber with Charged Plating/Interdiction Mines (anti-bomber)

T1 Bomber with Overcharged Shield/Engine 2 Shield Converter/Concussion mines (anti-scout)

T2 Bomber with Railgun Drone/Seeker Mines x3/Lightweight Armor/Running Interference (Deathmatch specialist)

T2 Bomber with Railgun Drone/Seeker Mine AoE/Deflection Armor/Hydrospanner (T1 Bomber Domination Ally)

 

Honorable mentions:

T2 Bomber with Interdiction Drone/Seeker Mine AoE/Lightweight Armor/Running Interference (anti-scout)

T3 Strike with Quads/Proton/Repair Probe/Directional Shield/Power Dive (Deathmatch - deroosting GS, killing railgun drones, and kiting scouts toward allied GS-bomber ball)

T3 Bomber with Ranged HLC/cluster/Interdiction Drone/Directional Shield/Power Dive (Deathmatch - good synergy with T2 Bomber against a Scout heavy team)

Edited April 5, 2015 by RickDagles

[Drakkolich]

T2 Bomber with Railgun Drone/Seeker Mines x3/Lightweight Armor/Running Interference (Deathmatch specialist)

 

I've actually been testing many different copilot abilities with this build lately. We have actually found Suppression to be really good in team scenarios. 25% less accuracy on a Scout opening up on your Gunships is really nice, gives just enough time for your railgun to kill them.

 

I've also been testing In Your Sights, which when coordinated on said Scout lets your Gunships get a monster accuracy boost vs them to actually be able to hit them.

 

My normal one is usually Wingman however I just cycle it between my Gunships normal Wingman's so they get more uptime. I still think this is probably the most powerful copilot for teamplay like that however the others do help in a lot of situation aswell.

 

All that aside Running Interference is also really good in helping your Gunships win Gunship duels or just sticking on top of them to give them better evasion vs enemy Scouts tailing them.

 

 

Love the list of builds by the way, thanks for putting that up.

[Imgawna]

am I the only one who likes the T3 scout? one of my favorites for dom matches. i use:

 

LLC, EMP missles(shield block), tensor(turning/recharge), distort, snap turn, and hydro spanners.

 

this is a great ship for taking nodes. 1 emp to a turret spots them from shooting while you circle the sat and take them out. also clears the area of mines and disables probes. having a tensor at the start of a dom match can be key to winning by getting you teams bombers to the sats in 1 boost.

[PavSalco]

I will tell you what happened. A hive tactic happened with gunships supported by drones and probes killing you from either side and either distance, so what you can only do is to hide behind asteroids and don't be farmed.

 

Whenever I join Deathmatch and see the opposite team sticking gunships with bombers I just get a sudden urge to delete swtor from my hard disk.

 

Don't get me wrong. GS + Bombers are balanced in Domination because the speed matters in that mode, so Scouts and ST have some advantage but in Deathmatch GS + Bombers are unstoppable.

Edited April 5, 2015 by PavSalco

[Magira]

Ok fixed

 

T1 Scout Laser/Pod/TT/Wingman

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Wingman (best anti-scout build?)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Running Interference (evasion scout)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/TT/Concentrated Fire (monster crit scout aka bomber melter)

T2 Scout BLC/cluster/BO/Wingman/freq capacitor (rapid fire BLC scout)

T2 Scout BLC/pod/TT/Wingman (highest DPS BLC build - original Scrab build)

T2 Scout Quad/pod/TT/Wingman/Retro/Distortion Field (Otoshi build)

T2 Scout Quad/pod/TT/Wingman/Retro/Directional Shield (I'm prob the only that uses this)

T2 Scout Quad/cluster/TT/Wingman (Sanic build?)

T2 Scout Quad/cluster/BO/Wingman

T2 Scout BLC/pod/Booster Recharge/Wingman/Barrel Roll/Double turning/freq capacitors (new Scrab build)

T2 Scout BLC/pod/TT/Power Dive/Double Turning/Running Interference (Willie build)

T1 GS

T3 GS with Reg Lasers/Retro/Directional (jousting build)

T3 GS with BLC/Powerdive/Feedback or DF (slippery build)

T1 Bomber with Charged Plating/Interdiction Mines (anti-bomber)

T1 Bomber with Overcharged Shield/Engine 2 Shield Converter/Concussion mines (anti-scout)

T2 Bomber with Railgun Drone/Seeker Mines x3/Lightweight Armor/Running Interference (Deathmatch specialist)

T2 Bomber with Railgun Drone/Seeker Mine AoE/Deflection Armor/Hydrospanner (T1 Bomber Domination Ally)

 

Honorable mentions:

T2 Bomber with Interdiction Drone/Seeker Mine AoE/Lightweight Armor/Running Interference (anti-scout)

T3 Strike with Quads/Proton/Repair Probe/Directional Shield/Power Dive (Deathmatch - deroosting GS, killing railgun drones, and kiting scouts toward allied GS-bomber ball)

T3 Bomber with Ranged HLC/cluster/Interdiction Drone/Directional Shield/Power Dive (Deathmatch - good synergy with T2 Bomber against a Scout heavy team)

 

That's a nice list. But my "best" ship is not there. This is my Spearpoint / Bloodmark with Tensor and Interdiction. Of all my ships she has the best WIN% across all servers and factions.

[Verain]

The Stasiepedia lists good builds for every ship, but it obviously leaves out many niche ships, especially for those with multiple good builds. I would definitely say that the game has a pretty good meta right now.

 

I also want to say that suppression is definitely an underestimated ability. It can peel decently and counter burst cooldowns acceptably well, and is a pretty solid support. I've had decent use of it on an Imperium, but the bombers running it seem a bit smarter, mostly because support bombers get so little utility out of their copilot compared to most other builds. It's not perfect by any means, but it can definitely help.

[AceFirstCav]

Matchmaking is based on 3 aspects, 1: Games played 2: Highest upgraded ship on your bar when you queue up 3: Time spent in queue.

This is interesting info about matchmaking. But I think that you are missing main decision point for most servers with average GSF population. GROUP or SOLO queue.

Group have definitely priority. So if there is premade group of veterans players, matchmaking system have no problem to put them against newbies. That leads usually to mentioned situation, where one skilled pilots can be together with bunch of newbies against premade. And because group have priority, next match have high possibility to be same.

It´s a nice loop.

low GSF population => unbalanced matches => low GSF population

[Verain]

I think you are overestimating the number of players who will quit the game because good players play it.

[Magira]

I think you are overestimating the number of players who will quit the game because good players play it.

 

I am certainly not known for loving premades. ^^

 

But as long as my win% is present as a soloist at 60-70% is the GSF world to me still very much in order.

 

What is clear, it needs a lot of patience. My first launch with a Scout I had after 3 months. I was really bad at the beginning and could not accident-free orbit a satellite. But it's worth, GSF is pure fun when you get better.

[AceFirstCav]

Each lost player is bad for GSF. It is maybe overestimated by me and at same time undestimated by you.

And it´s not about "good" pilots. It is just that current system is very unfriendly for new players. Although a lot of people advocate this as "survival of fittest", GSF is still just part of game made for profit. So no players, no game development.

In my opinion is this one of many issues which prevent more people to enjoy GSF.

[tunewalker]

From a Type 2 strike fighter perspective... 1 you are much less mobile then you used to be because of the huge Barrel Roll Nerf, making YOU more suseptible to missiles and thus more vulnerable.

 

Also Because of that same nerf, in conjunciton with the nerf to evasion on Disto, more people are going for the missile break option there, before there were ways to trick people into popping their Barrel Roll, and then you could hit them with a missile AFTER that because they DIDNT take the second missile break, now because they DO its actually made some of your bigger missiles slightly LESS reliable, even though the smaller ones ARE technially slightly more reliable...

 

 

Edit:: that being said you can STILL find a way to do well in a Strike even if it isnt the most optimal way.

Edited April 5, 2015 by tunewalker

[RickDagles]

I've actually been testing many different copilot abilities with this build lately. We have actually found Suppression to be really good in team scenarios. 25% less accuracy on a Scout opening up on your Gunships is really nice, gives just enough time for your railgun to kill them.

 

I've also been testing In Your Sights, which when coordinated on said Scout lets your Gunships get a monster accuracy boost vs them to actually be able to hit them.

 

My normal one is usually Wingman however I just cycle it between my Gunships normal Wingman's so they get more uptime. I still think this is probably the most powerful copilot for teamplay like that however the others do help in a lot of situation aswell.

 

All that aside Running Interference is also really good in helping your Gunships win Gunship duels or just sticking on top of them to give them better evasion vs enemy Scouts tailing them.

 

 

Love the list of builds by the way, thanks for putting that up.

 

I mostly use Running Interference selfishly when my bomber is hit by a full ion railgun. With some luck and smart maneuvering the gunship might miss its followup slugs and I can stay alive. I also will sometimes use it to joust an incoming scout that I know is also going to get hit by my railgun drone.

 

I also really like using In Your Sights because it allows your entire team (even far away gunships) to land shots on an evasion scout. I feel like Wingman is less useful because it's not always feasible to stay in that 3000m range.

 

I never thought about using Suppression. That sounds really cool. You can basically cancel out the TT/wingman combo. Sounds like a great way to focus a particularly problem scout ace.

 

What's your experience with using a debuff scout? EMP field seems like it has potential on paper, but I have never been able to make it effective. I feel like it would work decently well in a defensive role, but a T2 bomber does the job much much better. On the offensive side, I find that it is very difficult for my team to capitalize on the debuffs because the enemy team can simply LoS for 18 seconds. A few battlescouts may be able to capitalize on it, but then I'd likely be helping the team more by fielding my own battlescout.

 

It's too bad combat command doesn't effect railguns. I think spearpoint and clarion could have been a real asset in deathmatch.

Edited April 7, 2015 by RickDagles

[StrixHiraeth]

am I the only one who likes the T3 scout? one of my favorites for dom matches. i use:

 

LLC, EMP missles(shield block), tensor(turning/recharge), distort, snap turn, and hydro spanners.

 

this is a great ship for taking nodes. 1 emp to a turret spots them from shooting while you circle the sat and take them out. also clears the area of mines and disables probes. having a tensor at the start of a dom match can be key to winning by getting you teams bombers to the sats in 1 boost.

 

The S-SC4 Bloodmark is my favorite ship to fly. It's just... fun to fly! It looks cool, and is extremely slippery. I run laser cannons, thermites, power dive, distortion field, and running interference. And tensor field, of course. Survivability is extremely high thanks to the evasion and maneuverability, but it is hard to get kills outside of a group of ships. Still, there's little in the game that's more satisfying than landing a thermite torpedo. And it does work well for de-roosting gunships.

 

That being said, I don't know a way to make the type 3 scout competitive with the other builds listed in this thread. I wish people weren't so competitive in GSF anyway; then maybe we'd see more fun builds that aren't necessarily optimal (looking at you, type 2 scouts with BLC. Shoo.).

Edited April 7, 2015 by Ymris

[AlrikFassbauer]

I wish people weren't so competitive in GSF anyway; then maybe we'd see more fun builds that aren't necessarily optimal (looking at you, type 2 scouts with BLC. Shoo.).

 

GSF : The min-maxing game.