Quell vs Sting?

[Drakkolich]

Seismic Mine does not have any armor penetration. @Despon

 

Distortion Field starts at a 6 second duration. @Tunewalker

[tunewalker]

Seismic Mine does not have any armor penetration. @Despon

 

Distortion Field starts at a 6 second duration. @Tunewalker

 

Oh right, 3 seconds hasnt been since launch.... I knew something was off there...

[Mournblood]

What about Reinforced Armor for bonus health? That seems very useful against hard hitting gunships.

[Drakkolich]

What about Reinforced Armor for bonus health? That seems very useful against hard hitting gunships.

 

Reinforced armor is really only useful on ships that have the ability to heal themselves. It's really awful on the Sting because it's percentage based and the ship just starts with really low health anyways.

 

The actual best counter to Gunships railguns is Evasion and that's why we stack it so hard.

[Verain]

What about Reinforced Armor for bonus health? That seems very useful against hard hitting gunships.

 

Generally no, you want evasion.

 

Railguns don't have a good way to avoid evasion. Hitting something near a scout with ion to get the ion aoe to hit them for partial shield damage can often be the best shot to take.

 

 

Reinforced has some merit as part of a tanky build that plans to have almost constant access to heals.

 

 

Deflection: This armor offers defense against mines and a few missiles. It can also help versus quads and some of the lesser used blasters. It is only really helpful versus mines.

Lightweight: The best defense against railguns and also blasters. It doesn't help versus mines or railgun drone, however.

Reinforced: By boosting your health, you are harder to kill period- it is the only benefit that works against everything. However, the defensive bonus granted by it is smaller than the others.

 

 

In a scout, you should always take lightweight.

[RickDagles]

So I decided to try to reinvent the Pike so that it could be somewhat useful against meta ships in domination. The results have been pretty good! Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

Heavy laser cannons with armor pen, shield pen, and range capacitors for 6900m range - for taking out turrets, drones, and killing bombers.

 

Lightweight armor with suppression co-pilot ability gives you 54% evasion for 20 seconds. Basically you use this on any BLC scout that tries to give you a hard time. It will let you survive long enough to shoot a few clusters at him. If he runs away then line up some centered HLC shots to finish him.

 

Barrel roll with turning as well as turning thrusters, Qyzen Fess, cluster missiles set to range and double volley, and then magazine regen extender gives you the optimal cluster missiles for spamming against BLC scouts. And since you are using heavy laser cannons with range capacitors you don't need to worry about running out of blasters

 

Directional shield and large reactor.

 

Proton torpedo with speed and range upgrades so that you can lock onto gunships while they are shooting ion railgun at you. Not ideal but at least you can make them pop DF or barrel roll away. And both of those can help your team. Orient your directional shields to the rear if you see him charging ion, and then reorient them to the front when you see him charging slug. Also, make sure you strafe while locking on the proton, because he can actually miss the shot if he doesn't have wingman.

 

I had a pretty funny situation happen to me when I was trying this. I was at Denon A and flew to the large board between A and B. I sat there about 12000m away from a Gunship near B (but protected by the wall LoS). I strafed upwards and locked a torp on him. I saw that he was charging ion, so I put shields to the rear. He hit me with a full charge, did minor damage and drained my blasters and engines. I released my missile and he popped DF. I strafed behind the wall and waited for the proton to recharge. Then I strafed up, started locking on another. I saw him charge a slug so I put the shields to my front. He hit me and did some moderate damage, but then he barrel rolled right toward me to break the 2nd proton. I hit him with 3-4 HLC shots before he flew past me, then I quickly turned around (extra turning) and killed him with clusters. Such good fun haha.

Edited April 23, 2015 by RickDagles

[Archonitek]

Orient your directional shields to the rear if you see him charging ion, and then reorient them to the front when you see him charging slug.

 

Can't believe i never thought of that before. usually just pop shields to front and tank through it. But now i know

Edited April 23, 2015 by Archonitek

[Svarthrafn]

So I decided to try to reinvent the Pike so that it could be somewhat useful against meta ships in domination. The results have been pretty good! Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

Heavy laser cannons with armor pen, shield pen, and range capacitors for 6900m range - for taking out turrets, drones, and killing bombers.

 

Lightweight armor with suppression co-pilot ability gives you 54% evasion for 20 seconds. Basically you use this on any BLC scout that tries to give you a hard time. It will let you survive long enough to shoot a few clusters at him. If he runs away then line up some centered HLC shots to finish him.

 

Barrel roll with turning as well as turning thrusters, Qyzen Fess, cluster missiles set to range and double volley, and then magazine regen extender gives you the optimal cluster missiles for spamming against BLC scouts. And since you are using heavy laser cannons with range capacitors you don't need to worry about running out of blasters

 

Directional shield and large reactor.

 

Proton torpedo with speed and range upgrades so that you can lock onto gunships while they are shooting ion railgun at you. Not ideal but at least you can make them pop DF or barrel roll away. And both of those can help your team. Orient your directional shields to the rear if you see him charging ion, and then reorient them to the front when you see him charging slug. Also, make sure you strafe while locking on the proton, because he can actually miss the shot if he doesn't have wingman.

 

I had a pretty funny situation happen to me when I was trying this. I was at Denon A and flew to the large board between A and B. I sat there about 12000m away from a Gunship near B (but protected by the wall LoS). I strafed upwards and locked a torp on him. I saw that he was charging ion, so I put shields to the rear. He hit me with a full charge, did minor damage and drained my blasters and engines. I released my missile and he popped DF. I strafed behind the wall and waited for the proton to recharge. Then I strafed up, started locking on another. I saw him charge a slug so I put the shields to my front. He hit me and did some moderate damage, but then he barrel rolled right toward me to break the 2nd proton. I hit him with 3-4 HLC shots before he flew past me, then I quickly turned around (extra turning) and killed him with clusters. Such good fun haha.

 

This is the setup I've been running almost since GSF came out. I don't top the killboard, but I'm usually near the top. With a wingman scout or gunship you can really control a lot of space, and shields are almost useless against you. The psychological effect of constant missiles locking onto you gets overlooked too. It's easy to defend nodes, or provide fire support for taking over enemy nodes. Also, your huge range helps to prevent from becoming overextended.

 

Most of the people saying the T2 strikes are worthless just have a different flying style. It´s less like TIE Fighter, and more like Falcon 4.0.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Svarthrafn

[Verain]

This is the setup I've been running almost since GSF came out. I don't top the killboard, but I'm usually near the top.

 

Which means nothing. Anyone can do great with any ships, especially versus food. Most games are versus food ships.

 

It's easy to defend nodes

 

This is not accurate. A bomber on a node won't be hit my many of the ranged heavies mentioned, can't be damaged by clusters, and can't be locked with protons. The build being discussed is clearly not meant as node support. The proton/cluster Pike is certainly a favorite, but it needs to intercept a bomber in space- but it's by no means amazing or exceptional at that, especially compared to battle scouts doing the same thing.

 

Also, your huge range helps to prevent from becoming overextended.

 

This is true. But this build is bad at pushing bombers off of nodes, and was always poor at pushing scouts off nodes compared to before. The fact that you have threats at multiple ranges and don't need to fly to them has always been the strength of a cluster/proton Pike, but it doesn't make the ship good. It just means it manages to not have that weakness too.

 

Most of the people saying the T2 strikes are worthless just have a different flying style.

 

This actually angers me. It's not like we brushed this ship off. Tune can do better in a scout than he can in a type 2 strike, and he has a ludicrous number of hours in a type 2 strike. Stasie loved this ship at launch and played it hugely. Drako was all over it. It was my second favorite ship at launch as well.

 

It's not a different flying style. If you are better in your type 2 strike than you are in your type 2 scout, you are bad at the scout (you may also be good at the strike, but the salient point is the scout performance). If you are getting good success versus good pilots in the type 2 strike, you are probably overestimating the quality of your opponents or underestimating the quality of your companions.

 

I've never flown against you, but if a type 2 strike ace was doing stuff that got amazing results, I feel we would have heard about it by now.

[Verain]

So I decided to try to reinvent the Pike so that it could be somewhat useful against meta ships in domination.

 

I mean, I like the effort. I especially like the suppression to escape some scout fire. But you present this as a serious ship. Would you want to fly it on serious night? Is it meant to be a real ship in the meta, or just better at some things than prior type 2 strikes?

 

Such good fun haha.

 

Heh, nice. That is all how it's supposed to work- I just think the pieces don't come together tightly enough.

[Ramalina]

Directional shield and large reactor.

 

I must have missed the patch notes on the patch that added a reactor component to the T2 strikes.

That would be a nice buff to the T2s, even if they got rid of the armor to do it.

 

I suppose it's an ok build for a good pilot farming unskilled opposition, as long as there aren't any good pilots on the other team that decide to pressure you, but that pretty much describes every T2 strike build. It does have the basics of the, "a weapon for every range," family of builds.

 

With more skilled opposition regen thrusters are probably going to serve you better than turning, and RI better than suppression.

 

As far as proton against gunships goes, with a turning thrusters build on the strike a good gunship is going to have a fairly easy time of resetting range to 15 -10 km, and wearing away at the strike, especially if they Ion a few times to empty your engine pool. I'd probably go HLCs to Cluster fishing for a disto use, and then if they cooperate start locking the proton after they barrel on the slim chance that a shot can be made before they LOS or disto comes off of cooldown. If you're in ideal railgun range warning a gunship that your T2 strike is there is a bad idea, and so is trying to trade shots with a GS that's aware of your presence unless you know that the GS pilot in question is very unskilled.

 

If I'm trying to be as competitive as the T2 will allow I'll take either an HLC-Conc-Cluster or Quad-Conc-Cluster build. The, "might hit a good pilot," of Concussions is better than the, "won't hit a good pilot," of Protons. HLCs are the more generalist build, Quads if you're taking a, "let someone else kill the CP bombers," approach.

 

Strictly speaking wingman is probably the best copilot active for serious competition, but I'm somewhat fonder than I should be of the trolling potential of Bypass + AP Concussions and of Lockdown + snare upgrade Concussions. RI if you prefer a more defensive style.

 

With all that said, I usually run HLC-Proton-Concussion, because I find that the torps are lots of fun even if they're not particularly dangerous to good pilots. If your ship can't compete except in farm games, you might as well maximize fun when it comes to the build.

 

Speaking of which, I should play with an LLC-Cluster-Conc (snare), turning thrusters, Lockdown T2 build sometime soon.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Ramalina

[Svarthrafn]

@Verain:

 

I'm not bad in the scouts at all. I've done the 25-30 kills/match dance, and it *is* a different flying style. This is the same problem people have had since GSF launched, which is hopping into a strike and expecting it to perform like a scout. Close-in dogfighting is the scout's thing. If you hop into a strike, you're not likely out-duel a scout in a situation like that. I still kill plenty of scouts, but not in knife fights. In fact if I end up in knife fight with a scout, I've already screwed up and am probably screwed if it's a good pilot. It helps to think of the strike as a bridge between the scout and the gunship. Think like a gunship.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Svarthrafn

[Verain]

No, the problem is not our expectations. I never expected a strike to be a scout. Neither did anyone. We expected the strike playstyle to be rewarded.

 

Your final answer is really gonna be "no one here understands how to strike"? Ramalina doesn't understand strikes? Tune doesn't understand strikes?

 

 

That's ludicrous.

[Svarthrafn]

No, the problem is not our expectations. I never expected a strike to be a scout. Neither did anyone. We expected the strike playstyle to be rewarded.

 

Can you please explain what you believe the "strike playstyle" to be then? It certainly isn't what the descriptions of the ships say, so what do you say it is?

Edited April 24, 2015 by Svarthrafn

[Nemarus]

@Verain:

 

I'm not bad in the scouts at all. I've done the 25-30 kills/match dance, and it *is* a different flying style. This is the same problem people have had since GSF launched, which is hopping into a strike and expecting it to perform like a scout. Close-in dogfighting is the scouts thing. If you hop into a strike, you're not likely out-duel a scout in a situation like that. I still kill plenty of scouts, but not in knife fights. In fact if I end up in knife fight with a scout, I've already screwed up and am probably screwed if it's a good pilot.

 

I agree that this "different style" is great fun to fly on occasion. But in truth, if you want to play this "different style" optimally, the Pike is not the ship to do it in.

 

A Sledgehammer with HLC, Concussion Missiles or Proton Torpedoes, Directional Shield, and Power Dive does mid-range combat much, much better. Why? In order of importance...

 

1) Power Dive gives you a 10 second missile break, a travel skill, and a zero-cost engine ability to get out of Dodge after being hit by an Ion Railgun.

2) Concussion Mines or Interdiction Drones act as a deterrent to Scouts wanting to crowd you, and let you actually serve a purpose under a satellite--all without having to win any turning wars.

3) 2000 Hull, which is 550 more hull than the Pike/Quell can have.

4) 10% inherent DR, 5% more than the Pike/Quell

 

What do you lose?

1) 19% Evasion -- useful, but honestly it's not really enough to make a difference against most attacks

2) A second missile -- honestly I don't find this all that useful. If you're fighting at mid-range, you should be using Proton Torpedoes OR Concussion Missiles--not both. And while having Clusters as a backup is kinda useful, their limited range requires you to concede your range advantage and win turning wars. I feel like a Mine or Drone is a much better backup.

3) Some turning. But honestly, you're trying to kill centered targets from 7-10k out. If you're in a turning battle, you've already lost.

 

As far as shields, the two ships are just about equal. The Pike has higher base shields, but the Sledgehammer gets a Large Reactor. At the end of the day the Pike has 2160 shields per arc and the Sledgehammer has 2100 shields per arc. 60 isn't going to make a difference (though the Pike shields will recharge a little bit faster).

 

If the Pike had access to Retro Thrusters or Power Dive or Interdiction Missile, that would change the equation considerably. But as it stands, the Sledgehammer is simply the better mid-range battler.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Nemarus

[Svarthrafn]

I actually agree, Nemarus. Bombers are...something which give me mixed feelings about GSF.

[caederon]

Can you please explain what you believe the "strike playstyle" to be then? It certainly isn't what the descriptions of the ships say, so what do you say it is?

My take...

 

If you eliminated the T2 scout from the roster of Scouts, the remaining T1 and T3 scouts would exemplify the ideal "scout playstyle" ... fly fast, outmaneuver opponents, use diverse systems to mess with them, and contribute offensively at short range without being the dominant offensive force.

 

The "strike playstyle" to me involves trading mobility for heavier firepower and greater survivability. Currently, the T2 scout has heavier firepower than any strike, by a wide margin. The T3 gunship is a better example of a strike fighter than any of the strike fighters. If you fly a T3 gs without its railgun, its a better version of the T2 strike. There is really no role strikes currently perform that is not outdone by some other ship of a different class.

 

If I were designing the ship lineups from scratch, with an eye towards giving every class a real role, here's how I would break down the armaments available:

 

Lasers

Scouts: RFL*, LLC, LC, Ion Cannon

Strikes: BLC, QLC, HLC

 

Missiles

Scouts: Cluster, Ion*, EMP*, Rockets

Strikes: Cluster, Interdiction, Concussion, Proton Torpedo, Thermite Torpedo, Rockets

 

*this assumes changes are made to these components to give them competitive relevance

 

Scouts would still be very useful, would have good offensive capabilities, and would fit their role more. Strikes would suddenly -have- a role because they could do certain things better than scouts.

 

- Despon

[Nemarus]

My take...

 

If you eliminated the T2 scout from the roster of Scouts, the remaining T1 and T3 scouts would exemplify the ideal "scout playstyle" ... fly fast, outmaneuver opponents, use diverse systems to mess with them, and contribute offensively at short range without being the dominant offensive force.

 

The "strike playstyle" to me involves trading mobility for heavier firepower and greater survivability. Currently, the T2 scout has heavier firepower than any strike, by a wide margin. The T3 gunship is a better example of a strike fighter than any of the strike fighters. If you fly a T3 gs without its railgun, its a better version of the T2 strike. There is really no role strikes currently perform that is not outdone by some other ship of a different class.

 

If I were designing the ship lineups from scratch, with an eye towards giving every class a real role, here's how I would break down the armaments available:

 

Lasers

Scouts: RFL*, LLC, LC, Ion Cannon

Strikes: BLC, QLC, HLC

 

Missiles

Scouts: Cluster, Ion*, EMP*, Rockets

Strikes: Cluster, Interdiction, Concussion, Proton Torpedo, Thermite Torpedo, Rockets

 

*this assumes changes are made to these components to give them competitive relevance

 

Scouts would still be very useful, would have good offensive capabilities, and would fit their role more. Strikes would suddenly -have- a role because they could do certain things better than scouts.

 

- Despon

 

For a Strike to be more useful than any other existing non-Strike variants, it really needs three things in my view:

1) Exclusive access to BLC's (Why use a Strike with BLC's when you could have a Scout or Gunship with them?)

2) Exclusive access to HLC's (Why use a Strike with HLC's when you could have a Gunship or Bomber with them)

3) A way to survive Ion Railgun

 

The Strike may have a decent frame (best shields, good turning, decent hull), but none of those are good enough give up Scout evasion/mobility, a Gunship's railgun, or a Bomber's mines/drones. I believe the only way a Strike becomes better is if it has exclusive access to the best primary weapons.

 

If every other ship were limited to Rapids, Lights, and Medium Laser Cannons, then the Strike would have a defined role and unique capability--to carry the most "extreme" primary weapons: BLC's (extreme burst) and HLC's (extreme range). You could also count Quads as an "extreme" weapon of sorts, as they take the base of Medium Laser Cannons and increase damage at the cost of extreme energy draw.

 

Though ultimately, I'd be fine with the "dogfighter" variants of Scouts, Gunships, and Bombers still getting access to Quads. But not BLC's or HLC's. Those are best-in-game primary weapons, and the Strike should have owned them exclusively.

[caederon]

For a Strike to be more useful than any other existing non-Strike variants, it really needs three things in my view:

1) Exclusive access to BLC's (Why use a Strike with BLC's when you could have a Scout or Gunship with them?)

2) Exclusive access to HLC's (Why use a Strike with HLC's when you could have a Gunship or Bomber with them)

3) A way to survive Ion Railgun

I'd be ok with that. As much as I love BLC on my T1 gs, I would not be greatly upset if the "gunship playstyle" was confined to long range engagements and was more reliant on having support from teammates. It would make sense to have the defining features of each class be exclusive...

 

Scouts: best mobility, best utility systems

Strikes: best blasters, best missiles, best shields

GS: best range, best debuffs

Bomber: best defense, best area-denial

 

Making strikes more survivable against ion rail could come through giving Power Dive to all strikes, or maybe strikes could have a significantly decreased regeneration delay compared to other classes. While dealing with ion rail is a problem, strikes can do it. There are a (very) few really good T1 strike pilots out there like Barondeathmark on Harbinger who can take on gunships and have a pretty decent chance of coming out on top, regardless of ion rail. I agree strikes need more survivability in general against ion, but the real problem is currently that other ship classes do what strikes are supposed to, but better.

 

- Despon

[Ardaneb]

One of the nice things about stingfires is that there are so many good components. Multiple combinations work. This is achievable for strikes. Buff the components. Add some components. Buff the strike platform. Are we there yet? Buff some more. I really do not think anyone is going to protest mild to moderate buffs to this ship.

 

The folowing buff is NOT an actual suggestion. It is meant to illustrate a point: If ion missile had a 30 degree firing arc, a 1.7 second lock on, 20 ammo, and a 6 second cooldown, would people use it? Of course they would. No need to worry about not having bursts or mines or railguns. You have ion missiles, followed by heavy lasers and clusters on a slowed target. The developers can buff the strikes into relevance with simple numbers. The only question is which numbers and how much.

[Ramalina]

For a Strike to be more useful than any other existing non-Strike variants, it really needs three things in my view:

1) Exclusive access to BLC's (Why use a Strike with BLC's when you could have a Scout or Gunship with them?)

2) Exclusive access to HLC's (Why use a Strike with HLC's when you could have a Gunship or Bomber with them)

3) A way to survive Ion Railgun

 

The Strike may have a decent frame (best shields, good turning, decent hull), but none of those are good enough give up Scout evasion/mobility, a Gunship's railgun, or a Bomber's mines/drones. I believe the only way a Strike becomes better is if it has exclusive access to the best primary weapons.

 

If every other ship were limited to Rapids, Lights, and Medium Laser Cannons, then the Strike would have a defined role and unique capability--to carry the most "extreme" primary weapons: BLC's (extreme burst) and HLC's (extreme range). You could also count Quads as an "extreme" weapon of sorts, as they take the base of Medium Laser Cannons and increase damage at the cost of extreme energy draw.

 

Though ultimately, I'd be fine with the "dogfighter" variants of Scouts, Gunships, and Bombers still getting access to Quads. But not BLC's or HLC's. Those are best-in-game primary weapons, and the Strike should have owned them exclusively.

 

Being faster and more maneuverable is really a pretty big deal for primary weapons use. So in terms of gunships and bombers having good primaries, that's ok because using the good primaries isn't their job. The primaries are fallback weapons for them. Even if you choose to fly them as if the primaries are "primary" for them, they still aren't going to be as good at it as if you mount the same weapon on a strike frame.

 

What strikes would really benefit from in that proposal is having BLCs taken away from scouts, because BLCs on scouts are a significant and almost un-counterable damage source for strikes. At least with Quads and Pods you can maneuver and use tracking penalties to cut down the burst, but with BLCs you pretty much just have to hope a gunship gets the scout.

 

Even with exclusive BIS primaries strikes would have a set of significant game-mechanic issues, that would likely still cripple the class in the high end meta.

 

Missile ineffectiveness as a secondary weapon system. I've gone on at length about this in other places, so I won't repeat it all here, but every other ship class either uses a single weapon type good enough that they don't need a secondary source of DPS, or has highly effective secondary weapons that work well with the fighting styles that come naturally to that class. The strikes have neither of those traits, so are behind the game in offensive power right from the start.

 

 

Mechanical weakness of defenses. Strikes have raw health similar to bombers, and since that is biased towards easy to regenerate shields, it looks fairly decent from a baseline math standpoint. The problem comes when you factor in how strike defenses mesh with the options that strikes have as viable flying styles.

 

Bombers, scouts, and gunships all have defenses that operate on the principle of the ship not getting hit while it does its primary job. Bombers mostly LOS while still being able to fight targets on the other side of the barrier; scouts dogfight out in the open but between evasion, missile breaks, and the ability to boost out and disengage don't have a problem surviving when lots of ships are shooting at them; gunships mostly stay out of the range of hostile ships, but have evasion and extra missile breaks to fall back on if pressured and use that to reestablish favorable distance. Strikes as dogfighters (guns, missile, or both) tend to need to spend some time out in the open, but instead of defenses organized around not getting hit by many shots, they have enough extra shield strength to take one or two more shots. You can pilot around this to an extent by disengaging to regen shields, but that means a significant pause in doing your primary job of dogfighting, and only works if you can find a spot where you're not being pressured by other ships. If there were something else going for strike defenses, say an insanely high regeneration rate, it might work, but as things stand in general a strike will die sooner and spend more time on the defensive than any other ship class.

 

Fix those issues, and I think strikes would have a place as, "simple, reliable, dogfight DPS," with a modest advantage at the 4-7 km range zone. They'd still lag behind scouts as, "overall best dogfighters," due to the lack of systems fueled burst DPS, but at least they'd finally have the tools to do their job at an adequate level in a meta where the current assortment of scouts, gunships, and bombers exist.

 

Strikes don't need gimmicks for unique flavor nearly as much as they need to just work at what they do. They need the basic tools first. That means reliable DPS sources at mid range in both primary and secondary slots and defenses good enough to sustain more time on target (given their inherent mobility and dps limitations even "fixed" strikes should probably be competing with unmolested gunships for the ability to stay on a target [assuming the strike can keep up with it] for long periods of time).

 

If you look at the respective class designs the intent seems to be for strikes and scouts to be dogfighters, but with different areas of specialization.

Scouts: unparalleled short range DPS, decent-good medium range DPS, bursty, needs to disengage or fly brilliantly while evasion cooldowns aren't available.

Strikes: decent-good short range DPS, excellent medium range DPS, sustained damage, tough enough to hang in there and do sustained damage.

 

Scouts have everything they need to fit that idea, strikes have the primaries they need but the mid to long range missiles are too weak (or missile defenses are too strong, or both) and strike defenses (and to a lesser extent their boost endurance) aren't enough for them to stick around and sustain damage for enough time to start catching up to other classes.

 

Edit: re: Ion Railgun. Currently Ion Railgun is using the lower numbers for both the regen block and the slow, and can be managed relatively well with a combination of LOS and hoarding engine power. It's also being underutilized in the current meta, even on super serious nights. At present I feel it's close to a crippling weakness for strikes, but not quite there.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Ramalina

[RickDagles]

I mean, I like the effort. I especially like the suppression to escape some scout fire. But you present this as a serious ship. Would you want to fly it on serious night? Is it meant to be a real ship in the meta, or just better at some things than prior type 2 strikes?

 

Heh, nice. That is all how it's supposed to work- I just think the pieces don't come together tightly enough.

 

It's definitely still a terrible ship, but it's nice not being bursted to hell by BLC scouts. Ion railgun still owns it hard, it's barely average against bombers, and it can't hold nodes. Ouch.

[aakrea]

For a Strike to be more useful than any other existing non-Strike variants, it really needs three things in my view:

1) Exclusive access to BLC's (Why use a Strike with BLC's when you could have a Scout or Gunship with them?)

2) Exclusive access to HLC's (Why use a Strike with HLC's when you could have a Gunship or Bomber with them)

3) A way to survive Ion Railgun

 

The Strike may have a decent frame (best shields, good turning, decent hull), but none of those are good enough give up Scout evasion/mobility, a Gunship's railgun, or a Bomber's mines/drones. I believe the only way a Strike becomes better is if it has exclusive access to the best primary weapons.

 

If every other ship were limited to Rapids, Lights, and Medium Laser Cannons, then the Strike would have a defined role and unique capability--to carry the most "extreme" primary weapons: BLC's (extreme burst) and HLC's (extreme range). You could also count Quads as an "extreme" weapon of sorts, as they take the base of Medium Laser Cannons and increase damage at the cost of extreme energy draw.

 

Though ultimately, I'd be fine with the "dogfighter" variants of Scouts, Gunships, and Bombers still getting access to Quads. But not BLC's or HLC's. Those are best-in-game primary weapons, and the Strike should have owned them exclusively.

 

The strike could take over the roll of GS killer, if the burst was reduced for the scouts and the ion rail was changed so the power drain didn't occur until the shields are gone.

 

For example (I'm not using the real numbers)

The strike has 1500 shields, it is hit by an ion shot for 1000, no engine or weapon loss, the second shot would finish off the shields and start to reduce power for weapons and engines (double front shields would take even more)

A scout with 900 shields gets hit by the same ion (1000) but the shields are gone and it starts reducing power.

 

The strike could then take on a GS head on and fill that roll while the reduced burst from the scouts would take them out. Also stop the bomber GS ball.

[Verain]

For a Strike to be more useful than any other existing non-Strike variants, it really needs three things in my view:

1) Exclusive access to BLC's (Why use a Strike with BLC's when you could have a Scout or Gunship with them?)

2) Exclusive access to HLC's (Why use a Strike with HLC's when you could have a Gunship or Bomber with them)

3) A way to survive Ion Railgun

 

This is all pretty silly. We could have a meta that is good, with strikes, without your constant and unceasing efforts to get burst laser cannon removed from the battle scout, rail sniper, and type 3 gunships.

 

A strange crusade which now has added a massive nerf to type 2 gunships and all bombers.

 

Strikes need buffs. Stop trying to get the working parts of the game nerfed. I'm VERY puzzled that your take on charged plating is "take away the weapons that hold this in check". Charged plating is an outright invincibility button.

 

There's so many buffs proposed that would give strikes a solid spot in the meta, and you are consistently and annoyingly focused on destroying the working ships in the game, in the hopes that somehow you'd end up with a functional meta after all that crap.

 

Your obsession with this spans threads and months. I seriously hope the devs never take your advice on this topic under consideration.

 

 

The time to kill on a strike is normally poor because the strike lacks the ability to chase, lacks the ability to deal burst damage, and lacks the ability to opt out of being controlled, and lacks the ability to use their secondary weapons. Against a set of stationary targets, the strike class (excepting perhaps the Clarion) would do extraordinary. Against some periodically recurring damage of moderate amounts, the strike chassis would hold up very well. The issue is that, in practice, the strike "pays too much" for this stuff. These abilities aren't worthwhile. Much like if your ground game guy was amazing dps if he could stand directly in front of a boss, stationary, and did the highest dps if that was true for a solid minute, but was poor outside of that, he would be a poor character.

 

When the devs and testers were testing this, they had to consider a set of skills and playstyles. Their decisions on strike fighters have proved really frustrating, and their apparent lack of understanding how good a slow rate of fire seems to also have both left BLC a bit too strong and RFL a lot too weak. But, given their formula, you can see how this is mostly an issue of not assigning the proper weight. RFL gets some compensation for its bad rate of fire, so they knew it was a weakness, but they didn't understand how bad of one. BLC pays for its slow rate of fire, but they didn't understand that it was getting a great deal. The multiplier on "cost for a slower rate of fire" is not high enough. Similarly, the cost for accuracy is lower than it should be, the cost for evasion started out too low, the cost for static defenses is too high, etc.

 

In several places I suggest that when they get to crewmembers, some of the passives should reduce the duration of debuffs or the effects of drains. This would allow a pilot to choose between "I will be shot at by these things" and "I'm probably going to just go for damage and boost". That's a pretty direct suggestion that I never figured would be implemented, but a common problem with a strike ("can't deal with ion railgun") is really "strikes can't handle being controlled". This may actually be an intended weakness of the class (it's hard to tell- we can assume that crappy sensor range is intended, but the strike class has so many weaknesses it is hard to tell which are in kit for "this ships trades away that for better shields and weapons" and which are just a result of a bad formula that hasn't been updated to reflect reality). But intended or not, it's generally too frustrating. Strikes get owned by ion railgun, sabotage probe, interdiction drone, interdiction mine, and servo jammer. These weapons make the strike undriveable. Ion is the most common, not because it is good against strikes, but because it's actually worth using. But if the others were, strikes would complain about them too.

 

I'd be happy to hear that the type 1 strike was getting burst laser cannon. It would be inappropriate for the type 3 strike, and I would have mixed feelings on the type 2 strike. It would be absurd to see it stripped from gunships, and bad at this point to take it from the battlescouts. Likely, the gun could use a small rate of fire nerf- at 80 shots per minute, its closest weapon is the heavy at 120, and then we go all the way up to 150 on the laser and quad. It's no coincidence that these slow firing weapons are considered the best in the game, and the armor pen on them just seals the deal. But bursts would still be bursty at 90 or 100, but they wouldn't be as beat-stick as they are now.

 

 

Lest you think that my interpretation of strike's position is rosier than yours, let me list a few ideas that I think would be fine, in some combination or individually (in combination you'd obviously get less of them, as all together would be too much by far):

 

 

1)- Strikes have +30% to hit.

2)- Strikes take half weapon tracking penalty.

3)- Strikes deal 20% more damage with all weapons.

4)- Strikes get their engine cooldowns back 25% faster.

5)- Strikes reload missiles THREE TIMES as fast as other ship type.

6)- Strikes have a passive hull heal of 20 every 10 seconds.

7)- Strikes have "shield hardness" that grants "negative bleedthrough" of 10% (less impactful than the rest of list, would need more than just this)

8)- Debuffs last only 2/3rds as long on strikes.

9)- Strikes lock on missiles 20% faster

10)- Strikes have an excellent turning radius, slighty better than the scout baseline.

11)- Strikes have triple the engine capacity that they do now.

 

 

Each of these would be game altering, and a few of them partially present and patched together would be as well. I believe the game would be better if you saw some of these in play. These are all massive buffs. They would result in strikes being in the meta and having SOME role. I'm not particularly partial as to what that role is.

 

 

 

But I will tell you what role I don't want strikes to have: Crying on the forums to have all the other ships deleted. The strike fighter is not balanced. Strike night even proves that, with ships with unreasonable time to kill resetting fights at will, and some scrub nonparticipant suddenly changing the game entirely on a quarter reqqed ship of one of the three real types blazing in, changing the landscape entirely, and wondering why everyone is on strikes.

 

Address the problem!

Edited April 25, 2015 by Verain

[caederon]

This is all pretty silly. ... [many fine points] ... Address the problem!

If the game were being designed again from scratch, I'd absolutely want to see BLC and probably QLC removed from scouts, and would certainly consider HLC and BLC as possibly exclusive strike weapons.

 

But of course, the game's not being redesigned from scratch (and who knows when it will even see changes). So I guess if I had to pick immediate, simple to implement changes that would make strikes viable and popular in the meta we have right now:

 

T1 Strike:

- add BLC to available guns

 

T2 Strike:

- add Interdiction Missile to available secondary weapons

- passive 20% faster lock-on time bonus

- passive 10% extra ammo bonus

 

T3 Strike:

- passive 20% extra engine pool bonus

 

None of that would be game breaking, it would make strikes more useful, and while it wouldn't give them a truly unique role in the meta, it would give more people cause to choose them over other available ships. It would also take a dev all of 5 minutes to do that, I suspect. Numbers could be tweaked if they prove too high or low.

 

There's also the thought of designing any future maps to give strikes a role that other ships can't easily fulfill. If there was a map with a lot of hardened stationary objectives which had LoS issues preventing easy gunship sniping, strikes would be great at dealing with those. As you pointed out they excel at surviving when under continuous non-bursty fire. So add maps where there are batteries of turbolasers that fire like that which strikes have to take out. The trick would be setting it up so it's not easier to just do it in a gunship.

 

Example:

Capital Ship Fight: both sides have capship objectives that project a shield wall 7k out that negates slug rail. Strikes have to go in and take out the turrets and shield generators, which would prove too hard for scouts to engage.

 

In a dreamland where we got new maps, something like that could be pretty interesting.

 

- Despon

Edited April 25, 2015 by caederon