Let's talk about Strike Fighters

[caederon]

The entire meta has an issue.

I disagree, but that is neither here nor there. What is here, currently, is a singular chance to improve strike fighters.

 

Here's what is NOT going to happen:

-- BW suddenly dedicates significant manpower to scrap GSF and rebuild it from the ground up with a thorough redesign that redefines ship class roles and rebalances all the components and weapons.

 

Here's what seems like it MIGHT happen:

-- BW pulls a dev or two away from things that make them more money and lets them perform some small, surgical edits to the spreadsheet that governs the DNA of strike fighters.

 

Think of the scope of your 'nerf em all' approach, vs the scope of improving an existing class by tweaking some of its numerical constants to make it into something competitive. Now remember that for about a year, GSF has had no development budget allocated to it. Finally, re-evaluate your argument to fit a real world scenario and not a blue-sky pipedream.

 

The game's not in a bad state, strike buffs will make it better yet. The problem you cited, the 'new player experience' is a whole different issue that has nothing to do with class balance and everything to do with server population and tutorial quality, and that's for another thread.

 

Despon

[Verain]

Ok, lets pretend something. It is a thing about the 12 ships in this game.

 

You log on, and your type 2 scouts are under maintenance for two weeks. So are the type 1 gunships. So there are 10 ships in GSF for this time period.

 

The first thing you'll notice is that other ships will be playable. Hooray! Except, "other ships" means that the type 3 gunships step in for the type 1 gunships, because those are both playable and good, and that the type 1 scout steps in for the type 2 scout, because it is playable and good.

 

But those bombers, wow. The charged plating type 1 bombers don't have ions to clear their mines ever, and they are mostly immune to the type 1 scouts. But they aren't any more vulnerable to strikes than before.

 

The strikes still have no job! Rats, lets keep nerfing.

 

Ok, the type 1 and type 2 bomber are in maintenance. Maybe the issue was really just that bombers are in the game! So now there are 8 ships in GSF for this time period.

 

The type 3 bomber steps in. He's not the best at a node... except now he is, because the other ships are gone. He'll lose in a dogfight to a strike, but does not need to do that. But, ok, that's fine. Strikes are dogfighters now, right?

 

Wait, no. The type 1 scout still outmaneuvers him. His long lockon missile isn't very good, but he can still get behind any strike, and he can still rocket pod. The type 3 gunship still outdogfights AND outranges them.

 

The strikes still have no job. Rats! Lets keep nerfing.

 

Ok, now the type 1 scouts and type 3 gunships are in maintenance. So there are 6 ships in GSF for this time period.

 

Now the type 3 scout has to step up. He has good utility, but he can't use rocket pods. Maybe those were the issue all along! And the type 3 bomber is still not losing many dogfights. And even the type 2 gunship is still destroying the strikes from range. He can't face tank strikes like the other two gunships, but he doesn't really need to. He can take a few shots, fly to a couple concussion mines, and the strikes can't compete.

 

And this is with only six ships in GSF: the "worst at dogfighting" scout, the "worst" bomber, and the actually worst gunship.

 

 

At all these points, the strikes will still be crying, because they can't do their job.

 

 

 

Because.

 

They.

 

Have.

 

Never.

 

Had.

 

A.

 

Job.

 

 

 

Seriously, screw any of these nerf ideas. Yea, those components should be tuned. Lets have that discussion SOMEWHERE ELSE. Or, really, we already have. There is a big meta in this game, and the problem with strikes is that they will always be bad in their current form, as long as there is even a single non-strike in the meta.

 

That's why you need buffs. And when the devs show up after a year and are like "we might be able to help, suggest buffs for strikes", and you start a rant about non-strikes, that's insane.

[CommanderKiko]

I may be wrong, I probably am, I am after all only human. But I see the same thing over and over in every game.

 

"I need to kill a bomber."

-> uses a scout/gs

"I need to kill a scout"

->uses scout/Dronebomber**

"I need to kill a GS"

->Uses a scout/GS

"I need to support my team"

-> Uses scout/bomber.

"Lol look at that striker"

->Uses scout/anything.

 

The only constant threat to a t2 scout is either another scout, or a bomber that they can legit avoid. As thus, they fill the entire striker role on their own. They aren't to blame, they are unbalanced.

 

Maybe, instead of nerfing scouts, you could make strikers the anti-scout. But I don't see any way to do that without suddenly making strikers the most overpowered class in the game. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just can't see it.

 

Edit: ** i put the wrong class down.

Edited May 30, 2015 by CommanderKiko

[tunewalker]

 

Ok so been reading more, and I wanted to note something else the devs asked for in the oppening post Specifically "Any match by Any skill level" So I feel talking about STOCK ships where we have new players jumping into them is a reasonable place to talk about as well, and may shed some insight.

 

 

Strong Stock Ships

T1 Bomber (Decent Primary, Best Secondary, Good Engine (for a bomber), Good Shield, Good System) All decent to good components to start makes for a strong Stock ship.

T3 Gunship (Decent Primary, Best Railgun, Best DPS Missile, Best Engine, Decent Shield) Second verse same as the first

 

Good Stock Ships

T2 Bomber (Decent Primary, Bad Secondary, Good engine (For a bomber), Decent System, Best Shield.) only its secondary is not good.

T2 Scout (Bad Laser, Good- best Secondary, Bad engine, Best system, Best Shield) It could be better (obviously) but the T2 scout starts out pretty strong and just goes way up from there.

T3 Bomber (Decent Primary, Good Secondary vs Stock Bad vs top meta, Bad Engine, Good system, Decent shields) This thing does surprisingly well stock vs stock, but that's largely do to how much health bombers have.

 

As many may have noticed all Good and Strong stock ships are bombers and then 1 gunship and 1 scout, and its largely do to their starting equipment ALSO being some of the BEST equipment they can through on, but still there is to more level bellow to go.

 

Decent Stock Ships

T1 Strike (Bad Primary, Best Primary, Good secondary that becomes bad (Concussion missiles are AMAZING against targets with only 1 missile break, unfortunately no ship in the Current meta has 1 missile break, they have either 2 or 0) Bad Engine, Bad Shield (its only good for its help in maneuverability that pilots feel the need for because of wanting to use those short range lasers and missiles and needing to get close enough to do it, but there is a reason its only reliably played in the T1) As you can see the Strike here starts with 3 bad items (primary, Engine, and shield) so its kind of amazing that it made it to "decent" its unfortunate but 1 of its "good" ones becomes bad.

T1 Scout (Bad Primary, Best Secondary, Bad System, Bad Shield, Bad engine that becomes good) whats even more amazing is a T1 scout has so many bad components to start and still keeps up, its no wonder once they swap to some of the best stuff they do REALLY well. Barrel roll IS a good engine maneuver once you get the first 2 upgrades, until then its pretty bad stock vs stock.

T2 Strike (Decent Primary, Good Secondary (that becomes bad), Bad Secondary, Bad engine that becomes good, Bad shield) The Ironic thing with this ship, is its ability to swap missiles against these 1 missile break stock ships is TERRIFYING because protons are actually capable of being landed on ships I really dont think were designed to eat protons. Top that off with a decent to good Primary and you can excuse its lack luster defenses at this level of play.

T1 Gunship (Bad Primary, Best Secondaries (both of them), Bad engine that becomes good, Bad shield) This one is no surprise to be here, basically only its Rail guns are good and even then with out the accuracy buff to these weapons they have a rough time, but still pretty decent in stock vs stock level.

 

Bad Stock ships

T3 Scout (Bad Primary, Bad Secondary, Bad System, Bad shield, Good to best Engine) It moves good.....

T3 Strike (Bad Primary, Bad Secondary, Decent System, Bad Shield, Good to best engine) It moves... slightly worse....

T2 Gunship (Decent Primary.... not for a gunship, Best secondary, BAD secondary, Bad engine that becomes good, Bad Shields) Moves even worse... its got a railgun..... that it cant seem to hit with in stock.....

 

 

 

The difference between stock and later seems that the stock ships that are bad that become good can swap out their bad components for components that make them good at what they do. In addition some of the good components become even better with upgrades, while the bad ones just remain bad.

 

For Example, QCS vs Distortion field. QCS first upgrade increases the actives strength by 6% vs Disto's 8%, disto's active is already better AND now on the first upgrade it SCALES better to..... the second upgrade for Quick charge is a lack luster + 15% to regen rate...for those that dont know thats around 14 shields per second on a strike..... that's a lot of seconds we are going to need to regen ANYTHING useful vs again Disto..... 33% reduction in CD time again disto MASSIVELY outscaling QCS here, and this isnt even the reason we take QCS we take it for the engine regen and so far NONE of the upgrades have helped that AT ALL. Finally Disto gets the choice between helping the ship become immune to all but Cluster missiles.... OR a 50% duration increase vs QCS getting 60% of your regen while under fire (effectively Direction regen speeds all the time... which again is laughably low) OR.... the same upgrade disto got on the LAST upgrade. To top it off Disto ALSO has less of a detrement on base shields for its strengths. Its basically like this for all Bad components vs Good components.

 

 

 

TL : DR

 

Stock ship yada yada talk about low req meta

 

Strong Stock

T1 Bomber, T3 Gunship

 

Good Stock

T2 Bomber, T2 Scout, T3 Bomber

 

Decent Stock

T1 Strike, T2 Strike, T1 Scout, T1 Gunship

 

Bad Stock

T3 Strike, T3 Scout, T2 gunship

 

Stock strength depends on number of good components and how some "good components" become bad, and how some bad become good and how Good components start good and ALSO scale better then bad components.

Edited May 30, 2015 by tunewalker

[Verain]

I may be wrong, I probably am, I am after all only human. But I see the same thing over and over in every game.

 

"I need to kill a bomber."

-> uses a scout/gs

 

No, use a gunship or a different bomber. You can use a certain build of scout (burst lasers, pods) versus a certain build of bomber (charged plating), but outside of pretty much that one exception, the scouts will get consumed in fire. If the bomber has overcharged shields, that scout won't solo him. If the scout doesn't have bursts and pods, the scout won't solo him.

 

And you don't "need to kill a bomber". Your TEAM needs to TAKE A NODE. You can SUPPORT this as a gunship, DO it as a bomber (and probably need support), or ATTACK the node with a gunship or scout. Is that bomber plating? You'll need to slug it out, or burst it out as a scout. Is it overcharged? The gunship is still okish, but what will really own him is a charged plating bomber.

 

"I need to kill a scout"

->uses scout/GS

 

When do you need to kill a scout? Is that the game, that you win by killing a scout? Which scout? Why?

No, you need to PEEL a scout. If he dies, great. But if he isn't in melee, he may as well be back at fleet. That's your job, PEEL the scout, kill him if you can, but all you need is to turn him off, and the longer, the better. Do you need to get him off a node? Then you need to ATTACK THE NODE or DEFEND THE NODE, and your best bet is a bomber, or, better yet, use a team to attack their team at the node. Your counter for scouts is most assuredly not a gunship. The gunship can support the team if the scout is distracted by peeling or destroying him.

 

"I need to kill a GS"

->Uses a scout/GS

 

More correct. You still mostly just need to DEROOST a gunship, but you often will have to kill him, because he can become effective again rather quickly. In this case, your best bet is a scout, but a gunship approaching unseen can absolutely do this.

 

"I need to support my team"

-> Uses scout/bomber.

 

Or gunship, yes. Yes, correct, use one of the three out of four classes that are good, to play the game. Then come to the forums and complain about those three classes, because clearly the left over class that doesn't work is the model of successful design. As witnessed by its abject uselessness.

 

 

The only constant threat to a t2 scout is either another scout, or a bomber that they can legit avoid.

 

Well, when "hunt Nemarus ceaselessly" pops instead of Team Deathmatch or Domination, maybe I'll agree. If a scout isn't killing ur doodz or takin ur nodez, he's being controlled. If the scout has to avoid the bomber- again, an area denial specialist, denying an area to primary melee- then that's WHAT HE IS DOING. It doesn't matter that your railgun drone won't chase him around the map.

 

 

Maybe, instead of nerfing scouts, you could make strikers the anti-scout.

 

Well, the game has a rock-paper-scissors quality, and four classes, with one designed as a generalist. It doesn't generalize well. But there are hybrids that do, such as the type 3 gunship, and (to a smaller extent) the type 3 bomber.

 

Scouts are almost unpeelable. Strikes are trivial to peel. If left unpeeled, a scout will raze the city, a striker will normally not. In a dog fight, the scout wins. On a node, the scout wins. Crossing the map, the scout wins. You don't need to make strikes into gods to fix this. But nether do you need to crap all over scouts, and gunships, and bombers.

[CommanderKiko]

I think the worst part of the problem is we are all seeing it from different angles and different bias's. I can tell that my suggestions are largely only pissing people off, as my suggestions are based on feedback I get from brand new pilots.

 

As thus, I return to keeping my opinion to myself as I have for months before now, and let you guys have the serious discussion without me. I wish you luck, and hope you can keep new players in mind while trying to find a proper solution to buffing strikers without making them far too OP.

[caederon]

We want to talk about how Strike Fighters can be made into a good option to bring in any match, by any skill level.

Since this was just brought up, it is worth noting that the difference in skill level between 'aces' who have been flying since GSF was launched and new pilots just stepping in is so vast that the only way to even that playing field is to make new pilots literally invulnerable, with perpetual 2x Damage Overcharge. And even then, given the number of single-digit accuracy totals I see at the end of matches, you'd have to make the computer aim their guns and pull the trigger for them.

 

Skill level differential is only solvable through increased GSF player population, which will lead to better matchmaking. Then it won't matter what the new pilots are flying because their opposition will be closer to them in relative skill level. It's in no way a strike issue.

 

BUT specific to stock strikes, don't jam up new pilots with RFL as the stock primary on T1 strike. Make it ion cannon, the signature weapon of that ship. Maybe stock T1 strike could have barrel roll, too, the simplest engine maneuver to understand (go forward, fast, in the direction you're pointing) and large reactor.

 

Despon

[Etrii]

Thanks again Alax for adresing the community, you coused some panties hiting the floor with mach 7...and not only ladies ones

 

So few of us sat down and we started to think about strikes(we liked it, so we did it again)

 

First, our think tank loves strikes, but we fly other ships in hard games, no suprise there right?

 

So here is our little proposal(keep in mind that we were sticking to KISS rule, so no new comoponets)(But all gods now that T2 needs some)

 

Chasis:

 

1)10% Critical chance flat bonus to all lasers

2)15% Critical chance flat bonus to missiles

3)-2,5 sec shild regen deley

4)25% Engine power pool increse

5)15% Incressed engine regen

6)15% Incresed range of all lasers

 

Componets

(We all now that RFL need the boost, or pack their bags on home, and even crit and range boosts will not help them)

 

1)Kaiogan turn cooldown reduced to 12 seconds

2))Kaiogan turn cost reduced to 1/2 cost of retro thrusters

 

I will adress all points in a second but to avoid flying tomatos i`d like to give my reasoning.

- K-turn is horrible, strictly defensive engine manouver, with only one thing to offer staying on sat Sats B(mesas) and C (Lost)

-all live and dead gods know that t2 Strike needs any defensive manouver

-All other ships that can use K-turn have better options(powerdive, retro, and for scouts barrer roll, which does not work good for strikes)

 

 

Ad 1. Critical chance flat bonus to all lasers

 

The discussion was harsh between flat dmg boost and crit boost, but in the end crit won.

 

-Heavy lasers on strike would get 10-13% which joined with CF would give a nice 46-49% buff with shild penetration. With incresed range avery interesting choice

-Quad lasers would have 18% crit chance , that would make the significantly stronger then t2 scouts ones and Laser Canons

-T3 strike might consider an over 60% crit build but still it wouldent change the fact that rep probes are to good to swap them out

-T2 LLC using incresed range and crit bonus would be a viable choice with more punishing power

 

Ad 2. 15% Critical chance flat bonus to missiles

 

Missiles are crap, and 15 % dosent change much...So KISS rule

 

-It would give protons 25% crit chance, a bit more rewarding vs bombers and insta kill ona scout/gs/strike that missplayed and allwed himself to be hit by a torp

-15 Ctit on clusters would put them in similar league that TT bosted clusters of scout. No crit magnitude, but 100% uptime

-Thermites would get a crit and every DOT tick as well

-Concs would be able to hit for 1700 with 20% of dmg going to hull(340 dmg ,1/3 of scouts hull points)

-Emp and ion will still be crap

 

I know it`s not a perfect solution but i gives a chance to have rewarding missile hits. I think we all agree that i massive chnages missiles need be easier to land

 

Ad 3. )-2,5 sec shild regen deley

 

It`s a small defensive buff, it will not help very much vs Burst dmg (BLC and Slug) and it wont help vs Quads/pods, but with regen rate lower then BLC rate:

-it restores 90 shilds between BLC shots,

-It adds a bit of surviviablity in close qouters fights

-It decresess (waiting till shilds are good-ish time) before going back to combat

-If you will be able to survive ion hit you get back to fight faster

-you can clear a minefield lossing some ships and return to fight in a decent shape faster

-it buffs strike fighters cp builds

 

 

Ad 4. 15% incresed range

 

-Heavy lasers would reach almoest 8k range a bit over half of GS range andvantage

-Quads on strike would get 6610 advantage and still have 18% crit chance

-LLC and ION would be in 6,5+ k range still able to deliver punishment outside of even pod range

-Incressed range means that GS`s safe zone is at least 2k smaller now

-Increesed range means that strike dont have spend so much time "going places"

-Incressed range means that a strike can pop mines form a safe distance

-15% incressed range means that he can ,with no problem kill missile drones(i know that they are not the problem)

-They can take out out rail drones with only 1,1 k in its range, so they prolly wont be able to shoot even once(no need of burning enigine to get much closer)

-Mid range combat for strike vs scout jumps from 6-4 km to 8-4k

 

 

Ad 5.

 

Strikes have the same power pool as scouts but lower base speed, scouts still will be mobilty kings(especialy with booster overcharge(

 

. But strikes problem is that he is always "going places" and ion hit or GS chase make him "dead in the water" far to oftern.

 

Bigger power pool would alow:

 

-with proper energy menagment tank an ion hit

-get to sats faster

-go places and still have some fight in them

-have a chance to run if the fight is going badly

 

Ad 6.

Strikes regen rate sgould be better. pouses to regain breath afact both thier utility and thier dps

 

all of the ad 5 points +

 

-If you manage to tank ion and LOS get out of range you will be abl to participate faster

 

COMPONENT

 

Ad 1 and 2

 

In my personal opinion t2 strike needs an idvidual apraoch but in keeping it simple that could be a good start:

 

Kaiogan turn offers only:

-Defensive m-break

-Staying power on satelite B mesas and C(lost)

 

with buffs to it other monovers would still be a better option(thou it could be interesting for t3 scout)

 

-Lowering the engine cost and cooldown to 12 seconds gives a valid missile break for a T2 strike

- It incresess it`s "staving power" on satelites

-alows a faster" from the top and from the bottom" atacks on bombers on nodes

-If hit by ion at max range(with good engine menagment) it can easily out range the shooter

 

Regards

 

Etrii

(And some other pilots from pregonitor, hwich i`ll not list, to not be percived as a cheap trick to boost my opinion)

 

I know the quing yourself might be considered e-pening

 

but all of my sugestion afcct stock strikes.

 

Would it make them compatible vs good pilots?NO couse the skill gap

Edited May 30, 2015 by Etrii

[Verain]

Ok so been reading more, and I wanted to note something else the devs asked for in the oppening post Specifically "Any match by Any skill level" So I feel talking about STOCK ships where we have new players jumping into them is a reasonable place to talk about as well, and may shed some insight.

 

I think stock ships are a trap to talk about. No one is playing stock ships, except some streaming ace showing stock play to garner interest. It costs 150,000 req to master a ship. For 15,000 req- 10% of the way- you can have all your components and a huge number of upgrades, because the first upgrades cost like 1000 req.

 

The exception is mostly when the initial components are likely to be used by a new player to draw conclusions about the game, which is a huge part of why rapid fire lasers needs to change. But the terrible awfulness of the type 3 strike stock barely matters- they could fix that, and should, but it doesn't affect ANYONE, ever.

 

No one plays stock. A decent portion plays fully mastered ships. The bulk play low req or medium req ships. Stock ships are a rounding error.

[caederon]

I think the worst part of the problem is we are all seeing it from different angles and different bias's. I can tell that my suggestions are largely only pissing people off, as my suggestions are based on feedback I get from brand new pilots.

The problem of acclimating new pilots to the game is an important one to address, just not here, as it's largely unrelated to strike things. Start a new thread about new pilot experience or look up one of the existing ones. There's lots to be said on the issue, lots that has been said, many efforts made by many people to provide training materials (like Drakolich's videos, the stickied Stasiepedia in this very forum). I understand your frustration, but conflating new pilot issues with strike fighter balance isn't really productive.

 

Despon

[tunewalker]

I think stock ships are a trap to talk about. No one is playing stock ships, except some streaming ace showing stock play to garner interest. It costs 150,000 req to master a ship. For 15,000 req- 10% of the way- you can have all your components and a huge number of upgrades, because the first upgrades cost like 1000 req.

 

The exception is mostly when the initial components are likely to be used by a new player to draw conclusions about the game, which is a huge part of why rapid fire lasers needs to change. But the terrible awfulness of the type 3 strike stock barely matters- they could fix that, and should, but it doesn't affect ANYONE, ever.

 

No one plays stock. A decent portion plays fully mastered ships. The bulk play low req or medium req ships. Stock ships are a rounding error.

 

Then we can try talking about Low req and Medium req, the overall still applies, The Good ships scale better with requisition then the strikes, that to me says there may be an upgrades issue on some of strikes equipment/ inability to swap components to something good and usable.

[tunewalker]

Also on this whole nerf other ships... this is asling about strike buffs, not "other ship nerfs" kind of a waste of time, you want a missile that works good against scouts... try clusters, they have a short enough lock time and a short enough reload time to push past the scouts disto, the scouts dont have any weapons that go beyond the clusters range so if they want to hurt you they have to be in range of it, it does enough damage to scare a scout even if a strike or bomber can kind of shrug it off. what we lack is a primary that counters the scouts evasion to go along with it.

 

You want a Missile to Counter gunships.... good so do I, but you dont need to take away their disto to give strikes a missile good against gunships, same goes for a laser good against them.

 

Want to counter Strikes? Concussion missile, one upgrade comes with armor pierce, the other comes with engine reduction, if the strike is running CP run armor pierce, if its running QCS for better speed run Engine reduction, the damage is good enough to hurt strikes though may be to low compared to clusters, the Reload is short enough to get past their engine break, maybe needs slightly reduced lock time, but other then that its good, it does its job well, I can think of a few primaries that are good for it to.

 

Want to counter Bomber? Proton Torp, It bypasses their shields AND their armor, so its running CP... Proton Torp, its running Overcharge, second verse same as the first. You dont need to worry about getting past an engine maneuver so the Reload isnt a problem, again it could use a damage boost to bring it more in line with Clusters, and it could definately use a Lock reduction to make it more reliable, but other then that its a thing... and it exists. We again are just missing primaries to help out once on the node.

 

 

 

Edit: you want Utility missiles that counter these things.... Ok

 

Scouts meet interdiction missile, does nearly as much damage as Clusters (so ouch time for scout) and takes away their 1 advantage, utility missile done... just give it to the right strikes, and if its meant to be used solo maybe reduce reload times...... but considering the only ship its on right now has 2 missile option.... dont really need it to work solo if only one that gets it is the pike.

 

Gunship: I to would like... really any weapon that strikes can be like... this is for Gunship hunting.....

 

Strike: Hey look Ion, slows has great shield damage, strikes have good shields, perfect.... except you know..... long lock and reload.....

 

Bomber: Thermite.... EMP.... take your pick..... (EMP needs range help.... and damage help though.... and Thermite has the same issue as Proton)

 

Everything is there, it just needs a little help with other components or slight buffs to them to do their jobs, you know... kind of like strikes themselves.

Edited May 30, 2015 by tunewalker

[Etrii]

The problem of acclimating new pilots to the game is an important one to address, just not here, as it's largely unrelated to strike things. Start a new thread about new pilot experience or look up one of the existing ones. There's lots to be said on the issue, lots that has been said, many efforts made by many people to provide training materials (like Drakolich's videos, the stickied Stasiepedia in this very forum). I understand your frustration, but conflating new pilot issues with strike fighter balance isn't really productive.

 

Despon

 

^ This

 

New plyers now jack crap about balance or even what the frq is going on. I`m not getting into "kill them as fast/keep it easy" discussion but a new pilot on stock shipeven with best effort can`t do jack crap

 

Why do aces perform well in sotcks?couse they understand the limitations of their own ship and know the weaknesess of other classes.Also new pilots don`t have "home turf advantege" couse mostly they are to green to even know that GSF chat exisists.

 

Buffing strike chassis would help that problem but it will not solve it. And to be sure,I`m notevensure if it is problem that should be solved

[blade_mercurial]

I am excited to hear that Strikes might actually get an improvement. That is such good news and long overdue!

 

If the idea is to give a simple boost to strike effectiveness, then IMO, it would be best to improve the two areas where it tends to fall down relative to other classes: survivability and damage output. It particularly suffers in terms of engine power/speed/turning (manoeuvring) but not so much in durability (having highest base shields and 2nd highest base hull). Since so many feel that evasion is a 'counter' to strikes, perhaps giving it a significant increase in accuracy plus slight in base damage with all of its weapons would be helpful too.

 

However, at the end of the day, strikes with shiny new buffs would still be without a 'role'. The problem with giving it a role is that all of them are taken already. Gunships are long-range fire support, scouts are the dogfighters and bombers are area denial/objective holders. The clarion/imperium has somewhat of a role at least - it can heal/buff allies with its special slot. So what could be done for the remaining strikes? Perhaps giving them means to be hunter-killers? By that I mean abilities that enhance their effectiveness versus specific enemy ships. For example, being able to 'kill' evasion would make a strike effective against both scouts and gunships (or at least DF ones). Or being able to 'kill' armour would make a strike good at dealing with turrets and bombers. Yes I know, heavy laser already does this, so perhaps these could be area effects that buff allies as well?

[Ramalina]

A strike left alone begins the Interpretive Dance Of The Strike, a ritualistic and slow process involving a lot of beeping noises that are traditional among the Strike Fighter Peoples, but not exactly suited to space warfare.

 

My new favorite Verain quote.

 

I'm not entirely sure it's true though. If the entire opposing team ignores you to focus on a well known name a strike can do a pretty impressive amount of useful damage. Of course a scout or gunship could do more, and with the right conditions so could a bomber, but if a strike is effectively invisible for the entire match it's not that bad. I've definitely had games like that. Still, "not bad, provided the entire opposing team adopts a foolish strategy," isn't a resounding endorsement of the current state of strike balance.

 

 

So a bit on why I'm so adamant on killing off the DF missile break.

 

Mostly it's a matter of game mechanic issues.

 

What the design intent of DF looks like to me is this: The active CD shield. Provides the best protection in game when active, but pays for this by being the weakest shield in game if the CD is not available.

 

They got the first part right, but massively screwed up the second part by not making it weak enough when off CD and by putting it on the wrong ship builds.

 

 

First your recurring complaint that DF is the weakest shield against missiles without a break. No, it is not unless very specific conditions are met. DF is not the worst shield against a missile. That honor goes to the regen shields of QCS and Shield projector. They don't do any better than DF until after tanking at least one hit.

 

For the second and subsequent hits DF without the break is almost always the worst shield against missiles, but this is only in isolation. Depending on your assumptions about frequency of successful missile hits it may or may not actually be worse in play. It clearly is the shield that most dislikes multiple survivable missile hits in a short period of time. Cluster spam is pretty much what it hates most. On the other hand, cluster spam is what every shield other than charged plating hates most when it comes to missiles (technically torpedoes would be more hated, but torpedoes would have to hit for that to matter).

 

 

In fact if you crunch the numbers, DF is just generally a pretty good shield baseline, and only becomes better with respect to other shields if you build intelligently with other evasion components. The evasion protects both the shield and the hull, and that is a massively powerful effect even before the on cooldown bonus evasion is added. A bit of a problem if downtime weakness is supposed to be the tradeoff for great power when the CD is up.

 

DF's power interacts with a ship's ability to control range. DF is present on the two ship classes best able to be in an enemy's firing range only when they wish to be in that firing range. If you can arrange for the weakness of the CD being down to occur primarily when it's not a drawback, then the balancing aspect of that weakness is lost.

 

The next big issue is CD timer. Against guns DF is extremely strong, but against missiles its extra missile break becomes wildly excessive if the ship also has an engine maneuver. It basically renders every missile except clusters ineffective as a weapon system. Combine that with missiles being the only available secondary for more than a quarter of the ships in GSF, and this becomes flat out broken game design. In theory this is a CD timer issue for the break more than a break existing issue, but if you adjust the timer for missiles then DF is likely considerably weaker than it should be against guns.

 

Agency and Immunity. DF lets you break my weapons. By pressing it you can force me to have a substantial portion of my offensive power be completly useless for what in GSF play, is a substantial amount of time. It's significantly worse than the situation of DF vs. guns even at a full stack of evasion cooldowns on a max evasion build. With blasters, railguns, or rocket pods while the chance of a hit may be very low, if the attacker is doing everything right it is still greater than zero, and while the average DPS is very low the attacks that make it through the evasion can do moderate to very large amounts of damage. Against missiles though, the break gives full bore immunity.

 

Strike specific unfairness. Against scouts or GS, DF's fairly outrageous mechanical advantages aren't a huge deal. Ok, so they make a lot of scout and GS builds non-competitive, but if you can't beat them with directional or feedback, at least you can join them in equipping DF (unless you're on a T2 gunship). Against bombers, well against bombers DF isn't really a stellar defense against their most important tools, and if they do a good job of fighting from cover they can fight pretty effectively against a DF build ship without giving much up in terms of their own defense. For a strike though, DF pretty much means an invincible target, that's probably going to be able to flee succesfully when that invincibility wears off. Not only that, but the DF equipped ship can do peak DPS to the strike while invincible without any problems. If you're the strike and doing everything right your set of options is pretty much: run until they kill you, get help from a teammate, or hope that the other guy makes a massive screwup. That makes for a very distasteful play experience.

 

As far as Verain's lock time increase suggestion:

It does remove the break, and at the theoretical level at least solves the missile immunity issues. It does also fit with the DF theme of, "gives protection by making ship harder to hit."

It also has the virute of allowing further tuning of missile DPS on a missile by missile basis without a double break vs. single break divide mucking up the works.

 

Lastly, after more than 3 months of trying, I haven't come up with anything that's amazingly better as an option. After more than a year and a half of frustration with missiles as secondary weapons, I'm inclined to detest any mechanic that interferes with their lock and launch beyond the basic engine maneuvers, but that's a fundamental part of the historical, "strike experience," so maybe retaining a bit of that just for flavor isn't an entirely bad thing.

 

 

 

As far as how badly the DF missile break needs nerfing, well I don't think anyone has done a better job of justifying the desirability of a nerf from a balance perspective than Tommm does in this attempt to defend the extra missile break.

 

. A lot of people are posting about removing the 2nd missile break on dfield for example. They're not realizing how vitally important that is for the upper bracket names because when you're a name the other team says "Dog-pile that guy" dfield just barely makes that dog-pile situation bearable. They really don't understand the ramifications of such a change whatsoever because they don't know the spectrum.

 

If a component is good enough to make having the other team dogpile you become bearable, then that's pretty d@mning evidence in the, "massively OP and needs to be harshly nerfed column." If you're in a 12 v 1, 8 v1, or even in a 2-3 v 1 situation, you should be in a world of pain if you're the 1 unless the opponents are pretty far out on the noob end of the skill spectrum. Your team should also be having easy sailing on the way to victory if a large fraction of the opposing team is concentrating on you. A component that's key to being able to carry against an entire team worth of opponents should have a massive set of red flags waving in terms of balance. Unlike Nem with a StE build, Tommm isn't running away to get a breathing space, which is about what a first look at DF suggests you're supposed to be doing with it. Tommm is using the ability to DPS with no fear of retaliation to become an incredibly efficient killing machine (which is his default state in a GSF game no matter what he flys, but it's definitely worse when he can exploit DF as an offensive cooldown).

 

Now no balance change is going to prevent a single high skill player from rolling a full team of noobs. We have enough screenshots of people cleaning house in the stock starter ships to prove that. From a balance perspective though, making it much more difficult to roll an entire team of mediocre pilots is a good thing. If your ability to solo win a GSF match is no greater in a scout than it is in a Strike, that's not a tragedy, that's better class balance. In Tommm's case it's also still a pretty impressive ability to take on a whole team and win.

 

I've been dogpiled, I know it sucks. It's not really a balance problem though. Being able to say to the rest of your team, "Yeah, they're focusing me, but I've got a battlescout so it's not going to do them any good," that's a balance problem, and a very big one at that.

 

Like I said give strikes DF! Everyone HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!

 

Uh, no. If I get DF my secondary weapons other than cluster missile are still a waste of a component slot. If I get a good secondary against other peoples' great secondaries or great secondaries plus systems I'm ok with that, but getting an extra missile break is not enough to make up for being behind by one to two component slots worth of offensive output.

 

I'll cater to Verain for a moment, in terms of approach, and look at what strikes want instead of going into the minutae of what causes the focused and fairly well justified hate toward DF.

 

What strikes want is either medium and medium-long range secondary weapons that work reasonably well against skilled opponents in all ship classes, or for their medium and medium-long primary weapons to be so disgustingly powerful that even against a high evasion target it doesn't matter that their secondary weapons are mostly useless for all practical intents and purposes. Modest, reliable, medium range burst damage. A 100% increase to primary weapon damage, or say a 50% increase to primary damage and a 20% increase to primary accuracy would probably do the trick. Those seem a bit cheesy though compared to making missiles work, and it's hard to see a clear way to make missiles both workable and balanced with DF existing in its current form.

 

Sure a permanent DO would mostly cure the problem, but it's also less interesting play than trying to combine good mid range primary weapons with good mid range secondary weapons, or combining good mid range secondaries with good short range primaries (If strikes get any good short range primaries that you'd want to shoot at a target that has already taken a hit from a missile).

 

Getting shield component balance to the point where it's no longer a certainty that every competent pilot seriously trying to compete will take DF with the missile break upgrade on any ship that can equip it would also be a refreshing change.

 

 

 

 

Shield Projector: I have NO IDEA, what this shield is meant to be for, your armor component is reinforced so that gives more health and your Reactor is large again seemingly for more health. which is good, but unlike the other begginning shieds this one provides no mobility bonus, AND its on use is even worse some how. I honestly dont know what this shield is for other then dieing. I guess it provides shields for nearby targets, but Its so little that I dont know why you would want it.

 

Best guessed intent:.... Death Trap???

 

It looks like it's meant to be a, "Regeneration while under fire," shield and mastered it can do that better than any other shield if the ship survives long enough for the full effect to finish. A logical choice for the strike that is least able to run, and tanky enough so that it might survive long enough for the full effect. Whether it's enough depends on how bursty the incoming damage is. Not the greatest against a BLC scout, but not bad against a Quads and Pods scout that you see coming and lead on a merry chase through tight cover.

Edited May 31, 2015 by Ramalina

[nyghtrunner]

@Verain - I will only say this on the topic of disto and the 3-dot changes and the meta that created. Losing disto was one of the more noticeable issues with the meta at the time, but that was far from the reason the meta turned largely into bombers. Almost every possibly option on most T4/5 components was broken. The list of broken components was something like 23 deep, iirc. I agree that disto is not the issue at hand, and I agree that changing it alone wouldn't do anything to fix strikes, but it isn't fair to say "removing disto was sort of tried" (Forgive me if I misinterpreted what you meant when you were talking about that). I just wanted to point that out.

 

@CaptainKiko - I also don't think it's fair to say that the T2 scout "replaced" the Strikes. By dev intent (as stated at the beginning here), the Strike, by definition, has no real role. Jack of all trades generalist is just kind of doomed to failure in GSF kind of by nature. If the T2 Scout was intended to be the CQB superiority fighter, it is that. The Strike suffers here not because the T2 simply trumps it at the dogfighting role, but because the Strike inherently has no real role. By admission, it was never meant to be king dogfighter.

---

 

Personally, I would like to see the Strike's role defined as a mid/long range fighter, and provide the tools to do it. Greater weapon range in the case of the T1 and T2, more booster power, as I think they should largely be able to outrun a Scout (endurance running, where the scout is the sprinter), and maybe play around with some of the chassis statistics a bit. I'd be a bit wary of tinkering too much with non-unique components if they can't be done specifically for the Strikes, though.

 

Extending Ion Cannon's range out to 8k or something should be fine.

Doing the same with Quads, for instance, would probably not be fine because of the T2 Scout and the T3 Bomber.

Edited May 31, 2015 by nyghtrunner

[ALaggyGrunt]

The ship which should be able to survive dog-piling is a T1 scout with EMP field with lock break talent and pdie. It isn't too bad at this, at the moment: if you poof the team which is dog-piling you and disable either their engine or shield abilities, it becomes much easier for your team to clean house, because they:

A: Lost a lot of lock breaks. This could be their own EMP field, engine abilities, and whatever shield we might put dfield on. Without their engine cooldowns, throwing a missile at them would actually mean something.

B: The ability to pop their favorite battlescout offensive cooldown, and

C: 20% accuracy for about 20 seconds.

[Ramalina]

The most encouraging thing about this thread to my mind is that it answers the question, "after over a year of not being very competitive in GSF, is there still much interest in making strikes a competitive ship choice," with a resounding

 

 

 

YES!

 

I hope the devs find that encouraging.

[tunewalker]

To ramalina's explination of Shield Projector..... If that's its intent.... its GOD AWEFUL at it, The Quick Charge shield with the 60% regen while under fire is better then it. The on use of the 2 heal for about the same amount, except quick charge does it all at once and Shield Projector does it over 6 seconds they are both such a small heal TOTAL that it can be laughed off by a single laser hit (from a good laser). It falls under the catagory first of "Why the hell would you even want to do that" and then Second "it fails at its job any way so its not making a compelling reason for me to want to run this any way either" to Third "What ship even does damage that I would want to regen in this manner for this to be my go to against that ship?" to which the answer to that last one is none. Edited May 31, 2015 by tunewalker

[CommanderKiko]

To ramalina's explination of Shield Projector.....

I'm going to hold true to my not giving suggestions, but maybe I can help clarify some confusion in a strangly on-topic kind of way.

 

I tend to mess around with odd and off-the-wall builds all the time, and outright ignore the math on many of them. Something I've noticed is when it comes to these components and crew buffs that everyone thinks are terribad (because they are) seem to have been made with the intent of granting "just that half a second" more time to stay alive so that you might finish off a target, or somehow finish capping a sat. Hydrospanner is another good example of this.

 

Is the above in any way practical in the current meta? No. But i see how their original design could be looked at through new eyes. "Yes, all i need is that extra half a second!" The love and intent is there, but the math fails them. Projector + hydro = a minor boost to survivability in very niche situations that are not in any way common in the meta - although these situations do <<<rarely>>> happen.

 

I hope that clears things up on the front of shield projector, and gives a little more insight into the world of newbs and strikers.

 

By the way. It is m opinion that we should be focusing on ways to make GSF more inclusive as well. Dismissing the so called "trap" of stock builds and only catering to already loyal pilots won't help to fix anything. We should keep new players in mind if we ever hope to improve the meta, and that includes in this Striker improvement thread. Not a suggestion, just an opinion.

Edited May 31, 2015 by CommanderKiko

[tunewalker]

I'm going to hold true to my not giving suggestions, but maybe I can help clarify some confusion in a strangly on-topic kind of way.

 

I tend to mess around with odd and off-the-wall builds all the time, and outright ignore the math on many of them. Something I've noticed is when it comes to these components and crew buffs that everyone thinks are terribad (because they are) seem to have been made with the intent of granting "just that half a second" more time to stay alive so that you might finish off a target, or somehow finish capping a sat. Hydrospanner is another good example of this.

 

Is the above in any way practical in the current meta? No. But i see how their original design could be looked at through new eyes. "Yes, all i need is that extra half a second!" The love and intent is there, but the math fails them. Projector + hydro = a minor boost to survivability in very niche situations that are not in any way common in the meta - although these situations do <<<rarely>>> happen.

 

I hope that clears things up on the front of shield projector, and gives a little more insight into the world of newbs and strikers.

 

By the way. It is m opinion that we should be focusing on ways to make GSF more inclusive as well. Dismissing the so called "trap" of stock builds and only catering to already loyal pilots won't help to fix anything. We should keep new players in mind if we ever hope to improve the meta, and that includes in this Striker improvement thread. Not a suggestion, just an opinion.

 

Fix the components that are bad that strikes start with will go at least a LITTLE in that direction

 

Also Tool Tip Idea:

 

The Simple tool tip is turned ON for new players unless they turn it to the complex one. If you are going to have a "simple Tool tip" make sure it says what the components GENERAL PURPOSE is supposed to be like if rapids became good....

"short range anti evasion weapon, use it against enemy scouts" obviously still show its range and the like but that goes a LONG way to telling both Veterans who are trying to help with balancing feedback AND new players who are trying to figure out what the heck they are doing.

Edited May 31, 2015 by tunewalker

[SithAceI]

We used an acronym in the military called : K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid)

 

First eliminate rapid fire lasers from the game, they are trash can and nobody uses them. Make ions the default first weapon on the Tier one strike fighters. (And whatever the scouts have next in line hehe.)

 

Starguard/Rycer : With what was said above make Ions range 8k, so they mesh with quads and heavies.

Give all strikes a component that makes Ion weapons in-effective (even other strike fighters ions)

Give ALL strike fighter's DF as an option.

 

Pike/Quell : Make all (non-cluster) missile reticules 50% larger so as to make it easier to keep targets in lock.

And what is stated above for tier one strikes. Maybe a little less lock on time on protons.

 

Tier three strike's are pretty good so maybe just the extra options listed above also.

 

I tried to keep this simple and I hope you all will like my suggestions.

 

The ion's will help eliminate all other ship types pretty equally well.

 

Giving strikes the DF option should help the QQing about DF etc. Then everyone has two missile breaks, everybody happy happy happy!

 

The only thing I did not address was mobility, but with ion weapons being in-effective loosing all your engine pool should be a thing of the past. Hell with the ions in-effective and an extra missile break plus larger missile reticules should, even the playing field a bit.

 

There Stike's are fixed lol!

 

Here once again is my suggestions to overall strike boosts. So everyone can see how all the suggestions can come together. I do not think that DF would fix them only but all my suggestions together would. The DF thing was just to put off all the people crying about T2 scouts being OP. LOL

[tommmsunb]

As far as how badly the DF missile break needs nerfing, well I don't think anyone has done a better job of justifying the desirability of a nerf from a balance perspective than Tommm does in this attempt to defend the extra missile break.

 

 

 

If a component is good enough to make having the other team dogpile you become bearable, then that's pretty d@mning evidence in the, "massively OP and needs to be harshly nerfed column." If you're in a 12 v 1, 8 v1, or even in a 2-3 v 1 situation, you should be in a world of pain if you're the 1 unless the opponents are pretty far out on the noob end of the skill spectrum. Your team should also be having easy sailing on the way to victory if a large fraction of the opposing team is concentrating on you. A component that's key to being able to carry against an entire team worth of opponents should have a massive set of red flags waving in terms of balance. Unlike Nem with a StE build, Tommm isn't running away to get a breathing space, which is about what a first look at DF suggests you're supposed to be doing with it. Tommm is using the ability to DPS with no fear of retaliation to become an incredibly efficient killing machine (which is his default state in a GSF game no matter what he flys, but it's definitely worse when he can exploit DF as an offensive cooldown).

 

Now no balance change is going to prevent a single high skill player from rolling a full team of noobs. We have enough screenshots of people cleaning house in the stock starter ships to prove that. From a balance perspective though, making it much more difficult to roll an entire team of mediocre pilots is a good thing. If your ability to solo win a GSF match is no greater in a scout than it is in a Strike, that's not a tragedy, that's better class balance. In Tommm's case it's also still a pretty impressive ability to take on a whole team and win.

 

I've been dogpiled, I know it sucks. It's not really a balance problem though. Being able to say to the rest of your team, "Yeah, they're focusing me, but I've got a battlescout so it's not going to do them any good," that's a balance problem, and a very big one at that.

 

 

 

Uh, no. If I get DF my secondary weapons other than cluster missile are still a waste of a component slot. If I get a good secondary against other peoples' great secondaries or great secondaries plus systems I'm ok with that, but getting an extra missile break is not enough to make up for being behind by one to two component slots worth of offensive output.

 

.

 

I sincerely doubt you know what level to which the focus is like Ramalina if you still have that opinion. Also it's not like "I can just sit still and DPS." that really shows me that you have no semblance of a clue of what you're talking about. I've had games where I've gone 34/19 because of being focussed absurdly by the entire enemy team and the only reason I'm able to stay alive for longer than 10 seconds is the second missile break. This is why I think people who put stock in their KDR are generally idiots because they really don't know what its like to be considered a threat until somebody puts you through that.

 

You really offended me by assuming that I fly that way and I lost a lot of respect for you. I most certainly do search for cover even when dfield is up. All dfield is for me is a way to dodge missiles because of the sheer enormous output you have coming in at you from drones or cluster spam.

 

Side-note, if you're complaining about not being able to hit with concussion missiles even on scouts with 2 missile breaks I've got some words for you.

 

USE YOUR BRAIN DON'T JUST GO ON AUTO-PILOT AND ASSUME ITS GOING TO HIT.

 

 

Good lord you've made me angry Ramalina, when I'm back from Japan I'm only going to focus you and you're going to understand where I'm coming from. Even if it means losing games.

Edited May 31, 2015 by tommmsunb

[tunewalker]

Edit: this was in no way helpful to any one. Edited May 31, 2015 by tunewalker

[zaskar]

Reading over all this has shown us the #1 issue. The gamemode has been let stagnate too long and everyone is passionately flummoxed causing emotional responses to a topic that requires data to drive suggestions. Something none of us have, only BioWare.

 

As for anyone that has griped about the suggestions of many to reel back some of the other ships to balance play and encourage the use of a middle-of-the-road class, look at everything the combat team did for 3.0 and after of THIS TITLE. It worked.