Let's talk about Strike Fighters

[Danalon]

Okay fair point that it would create some redundancy...but why say they wouldn't be strike anymore? I mean I wasn't suggesting to change the chassis for them and Strikes are generally more mobile than gunships and certainly more mobile than bombers.

 

Also, thank you for taking time to respond. Much appreciated.

 

I may be oversimplyfing this, but in my eyes the main difference between a Bomber, a Gunship and a Strike is one has railguns, one has deployables and one has neither of those. Their difference in mobility is secondary because it isn't a deciding factor when it comes to a fight between two of those three classes.

Edited August 21, 2015 by Danalon

[Gavin_Kelvar]

You know...there was a multi-colored post in here, many hundreds of pages ago, where someone was talking about how Strikes can't do a multi-role position because it doesn't have access to the other classes special abilities.

 

So that got me thinking? What if you just added some of those weapon components to some of the strikes. They wouldn't be as effective with them as the actual ship class (presumably, I'm not an actual theory crafter) but they would be much more of a multi-role/support ship.

 

I mean let's look at the Scouts, bombers and gunships. Scouts have a systems component, bombers have mines/drones, and gunships have railguns. So what would it be like if you gave one strike, access to one of those special components? For example, what if you gave the Rycer the ability to swap to a railgun and the Quell the ability to swap to a mine? The rycer could use its railgun to support a GS and would be able to mix it up in a dogfight a little bit better than the GS could. The quell could use its mine to support a bomber on defense, but then mix it up a little bit better in a dogfight than a bomber could/can.

 

I've no idea if this idea has already been discussed or what it would actually do to game balance but I feel like this would definitely make strikes more of a dedicated support/multi-role than they currently are. Just my opinion though. And if anyone wants to poke hole in the idea, please do. As I said, I'm not a theorycrafter, if this is a bad idea, please explain it to me.

 

It certainly would be interesting but I would feel kinda sad if they did this. Basically it'd be the devs conceding that strikers are so horribly underpowered that the only way to fix them is to basically make them T4/T5/T6 versions of the GS or bomber class (by conceding that there's no possible way to carve out a role for strikers with only their existing primary/secondary weapon types). Granted there's the possibility of a buff just making them T4/T5/T6 scouts but I'd like to think with some buffing strikers to have an offensive strength such as jousting (granted such a direction likely means nerfing scouts in some way since currently scouts perform very very well in a joust).

[ALaggyGrunt]

It certainly would be interesting but I would feel kinda sad if they did this. Basically it'd be the devs conceding that strikers are so horribly underpowered that the only way to fix them is to basically make them T4/T5/T6 versions of the GS or bomber class (by conceding that there's no possible way to carve out a role for strikers with only their existing primary/secondary weapon types). Granted there's the possibility of a buff just making them T4/T5/T6 scouts but I'd like to think with some buffing strikers to have an offensive strength such as jousting (granted such a direction likely means nerfing scouts in some way since currently scouts perform very very well in a joust).

 

Nerfing scouts in a gunship messes up the scout/bomber/gunship balance. The scout would have to become much more difficult to shoot down with any of a gunship's favorite weapons if that happened.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Nerfing scouts in a gunship messes up the scout/bomber/gunship balance. The scout would have to become much more difficult to shoot down with any of a gunship's favorite weapons if that happened.

 

Granted nerfing scouts alters the meta's current balance. But nerf or not I think something will have to be shaken up to give strikers a competitive role in the meta, especially since scouts currently have the tools to basically perform every role a striker could with equal or better proficiency. You're not really going to give strikers a role in the meta if strikers are just buffed to have scout performance (and strikers will still not have a place in the meta if a buff just makes them less weak than they used to be alternatives to scouts). Whether it's directly through a nerf or indirectly through a striker buff I think scouts will have to loose some of their dominance.

 

Nem's suggestions earlier in the thread are probably the best for buffing the striker without direct nerfs to scouts but I do think they'd still be indirect nerfs since scouts would likely feel much more squishy, vulnerable, and thus not always the obvious choice when you want a dogfighter (assuming the striker gets a good buff and not a not-quite-as-bad-as-they-used-to-be-but-still-bad buff).

[JasonSzeremi]

It certainly would be interesting but I would feel kinda sad if they did this. Basically it'd be the devs conceding that strikers are so horribly underpowered that the only way to fix them is to basically make them T4/T5/T6 versions of the GS or bomber class (by conceding that there's no possible way to carve out a role for strikers with only their existing primary/secondary weapon types). Granted there's the possibility of a buff just making them T4/T5/T6 scouts but I'd like to think with some buffing strikers to have an offensive strength such as jousting (granted such a direction likely means nerfing scouts in some way since currently scouts perform very very well in a joust).

 

Other then plausably taking armor piercing down on burst lasers, I don't think it would be fair to nerf scouts, although boosting strikes enough would have a similar effect.... scouts are an important part of the game balance especially against gunships. I see a role for all four craft types although when it comes to face to face engagements, I think it is the strike that needs the most kick in it's dps, but that means strikes that are hardly any faster, and most likely no more agile. Strikes you would call in to strike a bomber nest, because their defenses against such would be strongest.

my view of the GSF 'Rock Paper Scissors':

strike fighter defeats bomber... (fighters shooting down bombers, it's old school)

Bomber defeats scout (well the MINES and the DRONES mostly.... scouts hate being pegged by bomber deployables which are actually worse for someone dodging madly into exploding objects.... think a motorcycle in a mine field)

Scout defeats gunship (Motorcycle vs howitzer... get close enough to take out the artillery piece)

so gunships..... well gunships are the bomb.... they hurt everybody they hit, but gunships wasting strike fighters adds up too.

Strikes are already half way to being dedicated bomber killers.... bombers can't missile break (unless it's a strike fighter+bomber). Strikes are better shielded then scouts and have more hull hit-points. But 'dedicated bomber killer' would be quite a bit of forward pointing dps, and honestly, they should out dps most anything else flying head to head. That's why gunships would be targeting them from afar. Scouts would be sneaking up on them from behind (it's scout, not super ninja tank) and bombers would be trying to set their nests with as many mines as they could.... perhaps using more mines that slow their enemies so they could flee around the borders of their nest, perhaps into another strike fighter....

strike fighters should have fire power the T2 scout would envy... but not the agility, sensors, or other features of the recon role. The T2 would still be an awesome flying machine.... just use that agility to avoid being in-front of the large slow well armed target.... I mean strikes

[JasonSzeremi]

Nem's suggestions earlier in the thread are probably the best for buffing the striker without direct nerfs to scouts but I do think they'd still be indirect nerfs since scouts would likely feel much more squishy, vulnerable, and thus not always the obvious choice when you want a dogfighter (assuming the striker gets a good buff and not a not-quite-as-bad-as-they-used-to-be-but-still-bad buff).

 

That is part of the idea.... for strikes to be a choice good pilots might make for a good reason. The consequences would affect mostly, how often the fighters that have been pressed into the role they will take are used.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Other then plausably taking armor piercing down on burst lasers, I don't think it would be fair to nerf scouts, although boosting strikes enough would have a similar effect.... scouts are an important part of the game balance especially against gunships. I see a role for all four craft types although when it comes to face to face engagements, I think it is the strike that needs the most kick in it's dps, but that means strikes that are hardly any faster, and most likely no more agile. Strikes you would call in to strike a bomber nest, because their defenses against such would be strongest.

my view of the GSF 'Rock Paper Scissors':

strike fighter defeats bomber... (fighters shooting down bombers, it's old school)

Bomber defeats scout (well the MINES and the DRONES mostly.... scouts hate being pegged by bomber deployables which are actually worse for someone dodging madly into exploding objects.... think a motorcycle in a mine field)

Scout defeats gunship (Motorcycle vs howitzer... get close enough to take out the artillery piece)

so gunships..... well gunships are the bomb.... they hurt everybody they hit, but gunships wasting strike fighters adds up too.

Strikes are already half way to being dedicated bomber killers.... bombers can't missile break (unless it's a strike fighter+bomber). Strikes are better shielded then scouts and have more hull hit-points. But 'dedicated bomber killer' would be quite a bit of forward pointing dps, and honestly, they should out dps most anything else flying head to head. That's why gunships would be targeting them from afar. Scouts would be sneaking up on them from behind (it's scout, not super ninja tank) and bombers would be trying to set their nests with as many mines as they could.... perhaps using more mines that slow their enemies so they could flee around the borders of their nest, perhaps into another strike fighter....

strike fighters should have fire power the T2 scout would envy... but not the agility, sensors, or other features of the recon role. The T2 would still be an awesome flying machine.... just use that agility to avoid being in-front of the large slow well armed target.... I mean strikes

 

I agree overall but especially you're last paragraph. I guess I'm just skeptical that a buff that gives a strike significant enough damage to punch through the scout's evasion + double missile breaks before the strike takes significant damage to the scout's very powerful burst cycle wouldn't be crazy powerful against all non-scout targets. Now maybe it's a good thing to have strikers with that kind of power. Certainly I'd love it if my striker could basically melt anything that made the mistake of getting under my guns (and it would compensate strikers for the low mobility).

 

What I'm mainly asking though is, in order to achieve such performance through buffs alone, would a strike have to be buffed to the point where it'd basically melt anything not a scout faster than a scout's burst cycle can currently melt targets? I don't think it'll be wise to leave strikers in a state where they basically can't threaten scouts that are gunning for them but piercing a scout's defenses requires fairly sizable buff that might have significant impacts against targets without those defenses (for example an accuracy buff that mitigates a scout's evasion would basically mean HLC/QLC without tracking penalties against everything else).

[Ramalina]

I agree overall but especially you're last paragraph. I guess I'm just skeptical that a buff that gives a strike significant enough damage to punch through the scout's evasion + double missile breaks before the strike takes significant damage to the scout's very powerful burst cycle wouldn't be crazy powerful against all non-scout targets. Now maybe it's a good thing to have strikers with that kind of power. Certainly I'd love it if my striker could basically melt anything that made the mistake of getting under my guns (and it would compensate strikers for the low mobility).

 

What I'm mainly asking though is, in order to achieve such performance through buffs alone, would a strike have to be buffed to the point where it'd basically melt anything not a scout faster than a scout's burst cycle can currently melt targets? I don't think it'll be wise to leave strikers in a state where they basically can't threaten scouts that are gunning for them but piercing a scout's defenses requires fairly sizable buff that might have significant impacts against targets without those defenses (for example an accuracy buff that mitigates a scout's evasion would basically mean HLC/QLC without tracking penalties against everything else).

 

It depends on how you went about buffing the strikes. If you load on damage until what slips through missile immunity and very high stacks of evasion is enough to reliably kill, then anything without that sort of protection gets flash vaporized if a strike so much as glances in its direction. If you do it by giving a way to ignore/counter the missile break and evasion, then a strike could be fairly dangerous even with small or modest increases to maximum potential DPS, and any build not using DF is pretty much unaffected and also potentially much more competitive in the meta than at present.

 

I don't really like, "ignores all effects of Distortion Field," as a chassis buff for strikes from a design standpoint, but if you want to move the needle on balance without changing other things that much, getting more or less that effect is probably what you want. I'd much rather that be achieved by nerfing DF to the point where Directionals and Feedback are competitive shields for scouts and gunships, though due to evasion stacking well with itself DF would still be slightly better for evasive ships even if things got to a point where I considered the shields well balanced against each other on the meta or meta-ish ship builds. If rebalancing in that vein is off the table though, applying giant amounts of accuracy to strikes and really ramping up the spammability of all non-cluster missiles until they start to near cluster-level spammability would have a fairly similar effect.

 

As long as scouts can out run and out turn strikes, they have an out, though they'll complain hugely if forced to run for it instead of ignoring strike dps while they kill strikes.

 

As long as railguns outrange strike primaries and Ion Railgun drains significant amounts of energy gunships will still do ok against strikes.

 

Bombers are a bit more sensitive. Really high increases in raw DPS and in the spammability of heavier missiles would hurt bombers. Strikes can get bombers under their guns briefly without trouble, they just can't burst enough to take a bomber down without doing that quite a few times if the bomber flies defensively. So an increase in heavy missile/torpedo spammability might be manageable for bombers given that it takes 2-3 hits to kill them. Increase accuracy on the other hand, or reduce missile breaks on other ships, and bombers are pretty much unaffected.

 

Strikes would suffer somewhat from missile spammability on the defensive front. Shooting first would become very important and people might start to really favor the Pike/Quell as an anti-strike ship for an ability to have a second missile ready to go after a single break ship has blown its engine maneuver. Accuracy wouldn't be all that punishing for strikes on the defensive end as they're mostly built around just soaking incoming damage with shields, and except against people with really bad aim the difference wouldn't be all that great in a lot of strike vs strike situations.

[LordRaeth]

Perhaps make them tougher tankers? Bigger energy pools so they can stay in prolonged fights longer?

[WiseStranger]

Here is a random thought...

 

What if firing arc was tied to the frame and weapons just gave it a fixed buff. (i.e. strikes have X and scouts have Y and if they equip let's say quads they would add Z to the total of X+Z for strike and Y+Z for a scout)

 

You could make firing arc for strikes larger which will make it easier for them to land shots while dogfighting.

 

In order to move scouts away from dominating strikes in dogfights, make scouts firing arc significantly smaller forcing them into hit & run or ambush tactic where their engine efficiency will allow them to get in and get out.

 

By balancing turning rates vs firing arc scouts and strikes can still be more or less equal, but scout will require more centered shots meaning more skill in a dogfight and strikes will be threatening to them since they will have an opportunity to land a shot much sooner when they turn. At the same time, strikes will be unable to perform hit & run tactics and won't be able to chase down a scout.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Here is a random thought...

 

What if firing arc was tied to the frame and weapons just gave it a fixed buff. (i.e. strikes have X and scouts have Y and if they equip let's say quads they would add Z to the total of X+Z for strike and Y+Z for a scout)

 

You could make firing arc for strikes larger which will make it easier for them to land shots while dogfighting.

 

In order to move scouts away from dominating strikes in dogfights, make scouts firing arc significantly smaller forcing them into hit & run or ambush tactic where their engine efficiency will allow them to get in and get out.

 

By balancing turning rates vs firing arc scouts and strikes can still be more or less equal, but scout will require more centered shots meaning more skill in a dogfight and strikes will be threatening to them since they will have an opportunity to land a shot much sooner when they turn. At the same time, strikes will be unable to perform hit & run tactics and won't be able to chase down a scout.

 

You'd have to tie in an accuracy buff or else most of those deflection shots would miss due to the combination of tracking penalties and evasion. It would also encourage scouts to be jousters (since they'd have to get centered shots) so you'd still be effectively inverting the two ship class's supposed strengths (strikers, whose weapons largely require being centered to hit, in theory are the jousters and scouts with their superior deflection shot weapons and turning are in theory turn fighters).

 

It depends on how you went about buffing the strikes. If you load on damage until what slips through missile immunity and very high stacks of evasion is enough to reliably kill, then anything without that sort of protection gets flash vaporized if a strike so much as glances in its direction. If you do it by giving a way to ignore/counter the missile break and evasion, then a strike could be fairly dangerous even with small or modest increases to maximum potential DPS, and any build not using DF is pretty much unaffected and also potentially much more competitive in the meta than at present.

 

wouldn't the only way to ignore DField's evasion be to give an inherent 45% accuracy buff at all ranges (nullifying both the passive and active evasion of DField)? While I don't think it would necessarily be bad if strikers became the hard counter to evasion builds wouldn't that basically mean that against all non-scout targets strikers would effectively have no tracking penalty? I guess I'm just curious what no tracking penalty HLC/QLC would look like balance wise.

 

As for missiles the only way I can think of countering the missile break is by making missiles spammable like clusters. Which would obviously hurt the ships without double missile breaks most. On the plus side I guess torpedoes would become very, very powerful and worth taking over clusters/concs.

Edited August 26, 2015 by Gavin_Kelvar

[WiseStranger]

You'd have to tie in an accuracy buff or else most of those deflection shots would miss due to the combination of tracking penalties and evasion. It would also encourage scouts to be jousters (since they'd have to get centered shots) so you'd still be effectively inverting the two ship class's supposed strengths (strikers, whose weapons largely require being centered to hit, in theory are the jousters and scouts with their superior deflection shot weapons and turning are in theory turn fighters).

 

You see... the problem is that scouts should be light ships that are efficient with engines and unrivaled in speed. The fact that the scouts are on top of that are good as dogfighters leaves strikes without a real role. Based on the scout frame features (engine efficiency, turn rates and speed) they should be able to get in, do some damage and get out before they are crushed. Unfortunately strikes have nothing on scout's ability to dogfight. If scouts are limited with firing arc it doesn't mean they can joust. They should be flankers, opportunity fighters. Should they try to engage a strike in a dogfight or head on they should be crushed.

 

I'll give you an example... what if you give 10 degrees of base firing arc to scout frame and 20 to strike frame. Make Quads give extra 4. Now you have 14 vs 24. (All I did here is removing 20 from firing arc of a weapon and whatever is the left over becomes the weapon bonus). Yes a strike will have more tracking penalties, but a scout will be less threatening to a strike in a turn fight. If a scout picks BLC for instance... make it give +12 so it's 22 vs 24. Closer, but not overwhelming such as current 32 vs 24. Now strikes can have a distinct role of core dogfighter and scout's focus shifts to opportunity attacks and flanking. Can scouts joust? Yes. Can they do turn fights? Yes. Will they outperform strikes by such a huge margin? Not anymore.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I'll give you an example... what if you give 10 degrees of base firing arc to scout frame and 20 to strike frame. Make Quads give extra 4. Now you have 14 vs 24. (All I did here is removing 20 from firing arc of a weapon and whatever is the left over becomes the weapon bonus). Yes a strike will have more tracking penalties, but a scout will be less threatening to a strike in a turn fight. If a scout picks BLC for instance... make it give +12 so it's 22 vs 24. Closer, but not overwhelming such as current 32 vs 24. Now strikes can have a distinct role of core dogfighter and scout's focus shifts to opportunity attacks and flanking. Can scouts joust? Yes. Can they do turn fights? Yes. Will they outperform strikes by such a huge margin? Not anymore.

 

So basically what you're talking about is nerfing the firing arc for scouts and leaving the firing arc for strikers at their current levels (24 being QLC's firing arc right now). I don't think you're idea is bad but in my experience against a scout the tracking penalty with the current firing arc largely means those shots have a good chance of missing (a very good chance if they've just burned their defensive CDs). So without an accuracy buff you'd still have a situation where the effective firing arc is much smaller if a striker wants a good chance of hitting the scout. Given how tracking + evasion makes deflection shots inadvisable for strikers unless there's no other option in the current meta tweaking the striker's firing arc size isn't really going to have much of an effect. Since scouts already beat strikers in a joust a smaller firing arc isn't really going to put an end to their power there.

 

On the other hand giving strikers an accuracy boost that allows them to basically ignore DField's evasion + a modest damage buff would be more likely to achieve that. Personally I hate evasion as a mechanic (I'm fine with tracking penalties where the miss/hit is under my control but not RNG defenses where I can do everything right and still miss) so I'd be fine if an accuracy buff nullified more than just DField's evasion and made strikers a hard counter to evasion builds. Evasion would still have a place as the best defense against railguns (and other scouts) so I don't think such a buff would make stacking evasion useless but it would liven up the meta (IMO) by not making evasion the be-all-end-all defense.

[WiseStranger]

So basically what you're talking about is nerfing the firing arc for scouts and leaving the firing arc for strikers at their current levels (24 being QLC's firing arc right now). I don't think you're idea is bad but in my experience against a scout the tracking penalty with the current firing arc largely means those shots have a good chance of missing (a very good chance if they've just burned their defensive CDs). So without an accuracy buff you'd still have a situation where the effective firing arc is much smaller if a striker wants a good chance of hitting the scout. Given how tracking + evasion makes deflection shots inadvisable for strikers unless there's no other option in the current meta tweaking the striker's firing arc size isn't really going to have much of an effect. Since scouts already beat strikers in a joust a smaller firing arc isn't really going to put an end to their power there.

 

On the other hand giving strikers an accuracy boost that allows them to basically ignore DField's evasion + a modest damage buff would be more likely to achieve that. Personally I hate evasion as a mechanic (I'm fine with tracking penalties where the miss/hit is under my control but not RNG defenses where I can do everything right and still miss) so I'd be fine if an accuracy buff nullified more than just DField's evasion and made strikers a hard counter to evasion builds. Evasion would still have a place as the best defense against railguns (and other scouts) so I don't think such a buff would make stacking evasion useless but it would liven up the meta (IMO) by not making evasion the be-all-end-all defense.

 

I gave you just an example. I don't say that scouts should be nerfed in terms of firing arc and strikes stay the same. It's just an example that is easy to understand since those who pilot strikes right now understand their firing arc well and scouts can imagine having it smaller (since it's easier to more realistically imagine having less firing arc as opposed to more). For all I care both scouts and strikes and all other ships can have firing arcs reduced compared to now, or have them enlarged.

 

Unfortunately current meta is very accuracy centered and if strikes get accuracy buff it will be the end of all other ships. Nobody will be able to win a turning fight against a strike (maybe BLC builds will have some chance).

 

Ideally I would want to see tracking penalty to accuracy replaced by tracking penalty to damage where the more you're off center the less damage you deal and passive evasion replaced with active evasion where you would have to time it well, but if you did you would avoid damage with 100% certainty (kind of like a missile break where if you time it well you avoid all damage and if you don't... well you know what happens when you don't) obviously nothing more than 1-2 seconds in duration and relatively short CD.

 

Still... if the way scouts and strikes operate won't change, strikes will be outclassed by scouts because of the better engine efficiency, better speed and better turning rates (and better accuracy since most good scouts take TT) There must be a disadvantage to piloting a scout and there must be an advantage to piloting a strike.

Edited August 27, 2015 by WiseStranger

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I gave you just an example. I don't say that scouts should be nerfed in terms of firing arc and strikes stay the same. It's just an example that is easy to understand since those who pilot strikes right now understand their firing arc well and scouts can imagine having it smaller (since it's easier to more realistically imagine having less firing arc as opposed to more). For all I care both scouts and strikes and all other ships can have firing arcs reduced compared to now, or have them enlarged.

 

Gotcha. I still think though that a larger firing arc won't really help strikers much without an accuracy buff for previously mentioned reasons.

 

Unfortunately current meta is very accuracy centered and if strikes get accuracy buff it will be the end of all other ships. Nobody will be able to win a turning fight against a strike (maybe BLC builds will have some chance).

 

To a degree I agree and it is one of my concerns about an accuracy buff. Although I don't think there'd be an inherent problem if strikers had the accuracy to basically be a hard counter to a scout's evasion since it would force scouts to focus more on a hit and run style of fighting rather than their current style of getting into the thick of it. I'm just undecided as to whether such an accuracy buff would impact GS/bombers in an overly harsh way.

 

 

Ideally I would want to see tracking penalty to accuracy replaced by tracking penalty to damage where the more you're off center the less damage you deal and passive evasion replaced with active evasion where you would have to time it well, but if you did you would avoid damage with 100% certainty (kind of like a missile break where if you time it well you avoid all damage and if you don't... well you know what happens when you don't) obviously nothing more than 1-2 seconds in duration and relatively short CD.

 

Honestly I wish they'd done something like that from the get go. It'd be much more straight forward and less likely to annoy/confuse people.

[Linuxizer]

...

I'd much rather that be achieved by nerfing DF to the point where Directionals and Feedback are competitive shields for scouts and gunships...

 

Nerfing DF was already discussed about 50 pages ago. It's not a good idea because 1) it doesn't help Strikes, and 2) it messes up the balance between the other classes. There are lots of good Gunship pilots using Feedback and Directional Shield already.

 

...

In order to move scouts away from dominating strikes in dogfights, make scouts firing arc significantly smaller forcing them into hit & run or ambush tactic where their engine efficiency will allow them to get in and get out...

 

Reducing the firing arc on Scouts may actually improve the Scout, especially when using Quad Laser, Laser Cannon or Rocket Pod, because it would be easier to center your shots for minimum tracking penalty.

[Ramalina]

Unfortunately current meta is very accuracy centered and if strikes get accuracy buff it will be the end of all other ships. Nobody will be able to win a turning fight against a strike (maybe BLC builds will have some chance).

 

 

Strikes and bombers don't rely on evasion for defense, and Wingman can already completely negate tracking penalty or get it to 4% depending on whether or not you have firing arc increase as a crew passive. You could stack strike accuracy to 5000% and strikes and bombers would only experience a very small weakening of defenses vs strikes.

 

Gunships have a modest reliance on evasion against strikes, but really railgun range and double breaks are what they have going for them. They'd be more likely to take damage from a strike that got close, but they'd still be able to run for it before being destroyed in most cases.

 

Scouts would feel a significant impact. Jousting would become a risky proposition, especially if an accuracy boost were big enough so that a strike would always prefer Bypass to Wingman. Turing fights would still be owned by scouts as turn rate is what wins those, accuracy just affects how long it takes to win.

 

If a strike accuracy buff lands I'd expect it to be along the lines of 25% or so at most. Something that if you stacked it with Wingman and the crew passive would still leave a Scout with DF, TT (evasion T4), and Wingman with pretty much baseline effective evasion after the strike's accuracy is taken into account. Scouts running RI would still have around 60-65% effective evasion against a strike with Wingman up in that case, and would still be winning jousts.

 

Even if they got crazy and upped a strike chassis accuracy buff to 45%, it still pretty much boils down to: Strikes might win jousts against scouts and are more likely to wound gunships before they run.

 

Accuracy is really powerful when it turns burst damage that misses because of evasion into burst damage that hits despite evasion.

 

Strike burst comes in missile or torpedo shaped packages, and unless that changes no amount of accuracy is going to be enough make them overpowered unless it's combined with other changes that increase DPS output.

 

Now if your accuracy percentage gave a chance of the same magnitude to let strike missiles "pierce" missile breaks, then accuracy buffs could get out of hand for strikes, though really, they'd still need a lock time reduction of a second or so on torpedoes to make that truly scary.

 

Nerfing DF was already discussed about 50 pages ago. It's not a good idea because 1) it doesn't help Strikes, and 2) it messes up the balance between the other classes. There are lots of good Gunship pilots using Feedback and Directional Shield already.

 

More like 36 pages ago or something like that, it's in the early 20's page count wise.

 

re:1 Both math models and personal experience during the 3.0 bugs strongly indicate that it does help strikes quite a bit, but not enough in isolation to make them competitive in the meta. Secondary weapons that work reliably are a lot better than ones that don't.

 

re:2 No, it really doesn't that much. It's a minor increase to the amount of cluster missile damage battlescouts can land on gunships and scouts, and it motivates scouts to actually pay a bit of attention to missile drones instead of blithely ignoring a dedicated anti-scout weapon. The volume of whining it produces is completely out of proportion to the actual balance effects. It's very much the same sort of, "boo hoo I don't want missiles in my WWII dogfighting style game," that you see in the, "boo hoo I don't want Gunships sniping at me in my WWII dogfighting style game," threads. The dominant meta builds during 3.0 bugs were the exact same builds that were dominant before and after. None of them lost their place, they just complained more if they weren't a bomber.

 

The skilled gunship pilots not running DF are much, much easier for a strike to pressure or kill than they are when they do run DF.

 

Missile breaks really do hurt strikes that much.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Ramalina

[ALaggyGrunt]

Making distortion field into that other-damage-reduction type would make short/medium-range gunfights a lot less hit/miss binary, but when you throw in debuff guns (ion and plasma rail), it gets messy really fast. For one, gunships won't care if they make a high-deflection shot with a debuff railgun against a scout-it will still be snared or even evasion debuffed (plasma) and have to go hide.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

Making distortion field into that other-damage-reduction type would make short/medium-range gunfights a lot less hit/miss binary, but when you throw in debuff guns (ion and plasma rail), it gets messy really fast. For one, gunships won't care if they make a high-deflection shot with a debuff railgun against a scout-it will still be snared or even evasion debuffed (plasma) and have to go hide.

 

It would potentially have the benefit though of encouraging scouts to take booster recharge for the instra regen instead of taking the system abilities focused on offense. And scouts having to actually face a hard choice between TT/BO for offense or booster recharge for emergency escape might make for an interesting deeper meta. Unlike strikes, scouts at least have the tools to have an emergency escape so if they got snared and lacked an emergency engine boost due to using TT/BO it'd be the weakness of their build, a weakness they chose to have by selecting that build.

[Bull_Five_Golf]

Tier 1 and 2 strikes don't have access to a system ability. It's not likely they'll ever get one because that would take more development time than Bioware is going to provide. Tier 1 and 2 strikes get their only offensive cool down from copilot abilities.

 

Swap concentrated fire on one of the copilots and replace lingering effect with a new copilot ability that says:

 

"When used the next missile fired will not have it's missile lock broken by engine maneuvers or system abilities. Can not occur more than once every <insert cool down time here>"

 

Put a 20 or 30 second cool down timer on it and this would give tier 1 and 2 strikes that manage to get a successful missile lock a guaranteed hit. Enemies running DF or with an engine ability available will still have the opportunity to evade the lock-on but once the lock happens and the missile leaves the tube it'll hit.

 

A battle scout pilot in pursuit of a target that hears the lock on tone - and for the most part ignores it - actually has to make a decision: stay in pursuit of that target and risk a potential protorp hit from a Pike 10Km away or break off and run.

 

Editied: Changed my "tool tip".

Edited August 28, 2015 by Bull_Five_Golf

[Drakkolich]

Tier 1 and 2 strikes don't have access to a system ability. It's not likely they'll ever get one because that would take more development time than Bioware is going to provide. Tier 1 and 2 strikes get their offensive cool down from copilot abilities.

 

Add a copilot ability that says "When used any missile fired within 10 seconds will not have it's missile lock broken by engine maneuvers or system abilities."

 

Put a 30 second cool down timer on it and this would give tier 1 and 2 strikes that manage to get a successful missile lock a guaranteed hit. Enemies running DF or with an engine ability available will still have the opportunity to evade the lock but once the lock happens and the missile leaves the tube it'll hit.

 

This will force scouts that hear the lock on tone to actually make a decision: stay and fight and risk a missile hit or break off and run away.

 

 

This is a pretty neat idea for a co-pilot ability the only important part I think you would have to add is counterplay to it.

 

Either the buff would have to show up so the enemy players could see that it's going to be an unevadable missile and/or the game could play a different missile tone to let you know you can't break it.

 

 

If you had both of these options I think it could create some awesome gameplay for missile users. I'm not sure on the durations/cooldowns but that's just tweaking numbers at the end of the day.

 

Very cool idea.

[Danalon]

I think the best part of making unbreakable missiles a copilot ability is that it doesn't have the side effect of buffing any of the currently strong builds and for missile/torpedo users it's a good choice instead of wingman. Also it doesn't need to be baked into the chassis this way, which would probably be more complicated than making it an ability. Edited August 28, 2015 by Danalon

[Bull_Five_Golf]

This is a pretty neat idea for a co-pilot ability the only important part I think you would have to add is counterplay to it.

 

Either the buff would have to show up so the enemy players could see that it's going to be an unevadable missile and/or the game could play a different missile tone to let you know you can't break it.

 

 

If you had both of these options I think it could create some awesome gameplay for missile users. I'm not sure on the durations/cooldowns but that's just tweaking numbers at the end of the day.

 

Very cool idea.

 

Thanks. I just got to thinking that the only way strikes ( and GSF in general ) is going to get any love from the devs is if the suggestions are based on systems that already exist. We already have copilots with redundant abilities so let's add a little variety.

 

A buff icon should show up if the strike is targeted, I agree with that. I disagree though that a strike with this ability needs to display a warning to a target. I think a "Cannot Evade" warning should tell the target why they took a missile hit after they pop DF or an engine ability though.

 

For example: If a gunship has the ability to cripple and then destroy a strike at 14.9K Meters with no warning at all it's not fair a strike should have to broadcast his intent to the gunship pilot. The gunship pilot already gets the lock-on tone now he just has to wonder if it's a strike or not and act accordingly. I think a certain level of fear should exist when anybody hears the lock-on tone and right now with all the missile breaks there isn't any fear at all.

[JasonSzeremi]

I agree overall but especially you're last paragraph. I guess I'm just skeptical that a buff that gives a strike significant enough damage to punch through the scout's evasion + double missile breaks before the strike takes significant damage to the scout's very powerful burst cycle wouldn't be crazy powerful against all non-scout targets. Now maybe it's a good thing to have strikers with that kind of power. Certainly I'd love it if my striker could basically melt anything that made the mistake of getting under my guns (and it would compensate strikers for the low mobility).

 

What I'm mainly asking though is, in order to achieve such performance through buffs alone, would a strike have to be buffed to the point where it'd basically melt anything not a scout faster than a scout's burst cycle can currently melt targets? I don't think it'll be wise to leave strikers in a state where they basically can't threaten scouts that are gunning for them but piercing a scout's defenses requires fairly sizable buff that might have significant impacts against targets without those defenses (for example an accuracy buff that mitigates a scout's evasion would basically mean HLC/QLC without tracking penalties against everything else).

 

Honestly, a strike fighter that could destroy anything _except_ scouts would have a role. It would be the bomb, and scouts would be the scissors.

[JasonSzeremi]

Thanks. I just got to thinking that the only way strikes ( and GSF in general ) is going to get any love from the devs is if the suggestions are based on systems that already exist. We already have copilots with redundant abilities so let's add a little variety.

 

A buff icon should show up if the strike is targeted, I agree with that. I disagree though that a strike with this ability needs to display a warning to a target. I think a "Cannot Evade" warning should tell the target why they took a missile hit after they pop DF or an engine ability though.

 

For example: If a gunship has the ability to cripple and then destroy a strike at 14.9K Meters with no warning at all it's not fair a strike should have to broadcast his intent to the gunship pilot. The gunship pilot already gets the lock-on tone now he just has to wonder if it's a strike or not and act accordingly. I think a certain level of fear should exist when anybody hears the lock-on tone and right now with all the missile breaks there isn't any fear at all.

 

As opposed to say: new weapon systems, or giving strikes the ability to toggle three weapons instead of two? or the ability to toggle between weapons and a system ability...