Hypothetical: what if Gunships only got one railgun?

[Nemarus]

I'm not proposing this as a serious suggestion to implement at this point.

 

But I am curious how the meta would've developed if every Gunship had only one railgun slot and one missile slot.

 

Ultimately, this discussion really boils down to the T1 Gunship, since it's the only ship that benefits from having two railguns (since Slug is always preferable to Plasma).

 

Would you fly a Quarrel that had Ion Railgun only? What missiles would you want access to?

 

Would you ever fly a Quarrel with Slug only, or would that be straight up inferior to a Condor?

 

It's interesting that, of all the Ion Weapons, Ion Railgun is the only one that can be paired with a suitable non-Ion mate (Slug). The StarGuard gets Ion Cannons, but has no short-range killing weapon. Ion Mine and Concussion Mine are mutually exclusive.

 

Ion Missile (were it not crippled by its reload and unfavorable upgrades), might actually be worth using with Concussion Missiles or Cluster Missiles on a Quell. But on all other ships, it is the exclusive secondary weapon. That being said, it could synergize well with just any primary weapon besides Quads, were it not crippled by its reload.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Nemarus

[Drakkolich]

I've actually been playing quite a few games on stream lately as what I refer to as "Ion Hero". Basically just a regular Mangler but I only use the Ion Railgun. The interesting part is it feels really really good because you just double tap most players and then move on to the next one. It's way more fun then I thought it would be.

 

If I had to pick a missile to pair it with it would be Clusters, I really like them on the Jurgoran.

 

I would also still use a Slug only Mangler as well, as I think the extra armor minor component is much better in Gunship duels then the thrusters of the Jurgoran.

 

 

I think in coordinated team play you would see way more 4 man teams use 2 Gunship in their line ups with this change. So they could still bring both Ion and Slug to their games.

[Ramalina]

I would fly a Quarrel with only an Ion railgun, though that would take it from a general purpose ship to a special purpose team-oriented ship.

 

With a slug only Quarrel, I'd probably just fly the Condor instead. It's a lot more survivable against scouts and strikes, and unlike Drako, in a gunship duel I'd much rather reposition and try to get a full shot worth of drop on the other gunship instead of trusting to armor and both shooting at about the same time.

 

For a missile probably cluster or interdiction. A skilled gunner (doesn't really include me at this point) can keep shooting rails down to 6 or 7 km and still be effective, and with the delay from switching weapons that means the short lock time missiles are the only ones you're likely to be able to land reliably.

 

Which short range missile would be a question of choosing a BLC+Clusters dogfight or an Interdicition, Barrel, boost, turn to railgun style of fighting.

 

I chiefly fly the T1 as a single gun Ion Rail platform and let others worry about killing stuff, but in the case of newb heavy teams things like popping the turrets and bomber(s) on the sat are things you may need to do with slug, that you wouldn't really be able to do on a GS without slug. So support would be just as strong, but you'd loose pretty much ALL of your ability to carry and to kill, and those can be important even in a dedicated support role. In a T3 scout or strike you're in a pretty dedicated support role, but you can still do things like thermite + lasers to effectively kill bombers. A GS with Ion + short range weapons would have a very difficult time of achieving a similar level of DPS in cases where pure support is not getting the job done. In a hypothetical Ion Railgun single rail build the skill of the rest of the team would make or break the ship in pretty much every game.

[Verain]

Hypothetical: what if Nemarus's hypotheticals didn't crap all over the type 1 gunship?

 

 

I find the phrasing odd. Gunships really only do get one railgun, with one exception.

 

The type 3 gunship only has slug. The type 2 gunship can run slug and plasma (and sometimes will), but it is not really relevant. For most purposes, it has one slug.

 

Only the type 1 gunships enjoys the tactical advantage of having two separate and interesting railguns. This makes for very deep gameplay, especially because slug and ion both become pretty different rails based on talent choices. In exchange, of course, the type 1 gunship gives up the class standard capacitor for the armor component.

 

 

So would it be playable? I mean, sure. A lot of bad crap is technically playable.

 

 

 

Would wreck the meta though, and destroy a great playstyle.

 

 

 

 

Here's a better hypothetical: what if we had two more railguns, that did other cool things, and plasma was also worth using?

[zvbm]

:: DISCLAIMER ::

The below is purely theory crafting and should in no way be construed as a balance suggestion. I claim no responsibility for any (unlikely) dev decisions this may influence.

:: ENDDISCLAIMER ::

 

I was actually thinking about something similar yesterday while in one of those 'meetings' at work.

 

What if the T1 gunship had no access to the ion railgun, the T2 instead had plasma and ion and the T3 had plasma only?

 

The T2 would then be the king of ranged debuffs and be THE priority target owing to it's weak defenses. The T1 would be the only GS with a slug and still be deadly, while losing quite a bit of it's team utility. The T3 would be severely weakened though.

 

Thoughts?

 

~Zen

[tommmsunb]

I think it would make gunships too weak honestly. I already feel like they buckle under pressure pretty easily. The primary issue in the communities perspective on gunships is that most people aren't attentive enough to be able to kill gunships reliably, or they don't have a good kill ethic towards them. Therein they achieve a similar perspective that stealth classes tend to get from new players that they're too overpowered, but gunships, like most other stealth classes fail if they can't get their alpha strikes off.

 

Now the key difference between gunships and stealth classes is that even if the gunship does get it's from-stealth-alpha strike off, the margin of success-loss is not greater than 70-75% in all cases at top skill level. For example, I can get hit with a full ion charge form 15k in a battle scout and still have a good likelihood of killing the gunship, despite my lack of engine power, the same is held true for most ships except for (I'm imagining, I don't play these ships typically so I could be wrong.) The imperium/clarion, the spearpoint/bloodmark, any bomber and the pike/quell.

 

Of course I did just name a lot of ships, but these ships are not exactly in the majority for most play, often the ships I see the most of are ion/heavy starguards and burst/cluster battlescouts (not counting gunships.)

 

Quite simply the follow-up for killing these ships solo is too slow and these ships are able to react to the second shot even in a perfect scenario (15km, from stealth, not counting crit.)

 

The converse to this argument is that majority of gameplay takes place in a lower skill bracket and balancing to the lower skill bracket is ideal for the games progression. I feel that this is a philosophical question more than a game balance one. I will wear my bias on my sleeve and say that I'd rather they balanced for top bracket and I realize that that is an uncommon opinion.

 

I'm honestly being pretty generous with the 70-75% number though, in a solo situation it's probably higher than that.

I would say that in the ground game there is a near 95% chance of victory against most classes in a solo setting for shadows and scoundrels if the alpha strike is perfect. (Keyword is perfect, please remember that most alpha strikes that you will see are not because of various things like cooldowns, player skill and RNG.)

 

I'd like to see that number raised a little bit for gunships. I don't play the class enough (though I flew one for a week and I think I can hold my own.) to really have an opinion as to how to do that.

 

 

TL;DR I'm a scout pilot who thinks gunships need a buff, at least on the solo side, right now on a team perspective I'd say that they're fine, maybe a neat change would be to give them some kind of damage boosting passive when they don't have a teammate within 10KM, this would discourage bomber fortresses at the same time as making gunships more interesting to fly solo.