I got it Galactic Star Fighters New Name is....

[sartt]

GALACTIC STAR SNIPER!

 

 

HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE.

 

Learn to play something other than A gunship/ Sting.Flash fire. Bads.

 

 

 

 

[MaximilianPower]

GALACTIC STAR SNIPER!

 

 

HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE.

 

Learn to play something other than A gunship/ Sting.Flash fire. Bads.

 

 

 

 

 

Personally I prefer "Sniper Wars".

 

Of course, I'm exactly the kind of player you're complaining about, so I'll just see myself out of this thread.

[Laiov]

GSF was different before gunships became common. For a moment there it was pure dogfighting.

 

I still think the total number of gunships should be capped per team, maybe to three each, to ensure that dogfights always have ample room to happen. The change in gameplay caused by large numbers of gunships in a match was noticeable enough in domination, but it is eyeroll inducing in deathmatch.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Laiov

[tunewalker]

And this thread right here, is why any suggestion to fix strike that doesnt involve them competing against the Scout and the Gunship in some fashion. Gunships and scouts are hte meta, if you cant compete against them you are not in the meta (Bombers can compete against scouts, and are pretty tough against gunships as long as they LoS so that's why they are in the meta)

[DakhathKilrathi]

For a moment there it was pure dogfighting.

 

In my experience, people who say things like this are bad at the game. At the very least, they don't actually understand the rules of the game they're playing. Gunships fill an important role, and, like it or not, you should never be in an extended 1 vs 1 situation, even if you're in a scout or a strike. Your job is to engage and kill someone who is busy with someone else... or to kill gunships so they can't kill the idiots who want to play Circle Wars for minutes at a time.

Edited August 3, 2015 by DakhathKilrathi

[Laiov]

In my experience, people who say things like this are bad at the game. At the very least, they don't actually understand the rules of the game they're playing. Gunships fill an important role

Sniper is not a typical role in air combat simulators. Sniping is more of a ground role. So if by "important" you mean you like FPS mechanics, that's one thing, but if you mean the role is essential to air pvp, that is evidently not true.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Laiov

[caederon]

Sniper is not a typical role in air combat simulators. Sniping is more of a ground role. So if by "important" you mean you like FPS mechanics, that's one thing, but if you mean the role is essential to air pvp, that is evidently not true.

GSF is not a simulator, and you are not engaged in air combat when playing it. GSF is an arcade battle arena shooter. It has a set of abstractions, rules, and gameplay dynamics that are in no way like a sim, so don't treat it like one.

 

Gunships are important , "important," and Important. This is so because they fulfill essential support roles that are not easily handled by other ship classes. For example, other classes are ill equipped to deal with bombers and their ordnance. Gunships (notably the T1) are important for weakening formations of enemies that are clustered together. If gunships are themselves unsupported by scouts or bombers, they will fall victim quickly to enemy attacks. They are not invincible, they require that you know their limitations to destroy them.

 

If you find yourself frequently being blown up by gunships, do not lament that gunships are OP, spammy, hackers or whatever other stupid excuse you might concoct. Adjust your tactics, and get better teammates, and you'll find that in a match against players of equal skill, gunships are just one part of a varied and dynamic fighting force made up of bombers, scouts, and gunships (and maybe someday strikes, too),

 

Despon

[Laiov]

GSF is not a simulator, and you are not engaged in air combat when playing it. GSF is an arcade battle arena shooter. It has a set of abstractions, rules, and gameplay dynamics that are in no way like a sim, so don't treat it like one.

The fact that GSF has arcade rules instead of sim rules for stuff like targeting, acceleration, damage and aerodynamics is a separate matter. In fact some flight sim games have control modes that you can toggle between. One being arcade and the other more realistic. That is not what I was talking about. I'm talking about pvp. I don't see that the role of a stationary scope sniper is "important" to pvp in free 3D movement / flight environments. This role is more common in ground pvp gameplay. You might personally enjoy the effects that the role has on gameplay in GSF, the sort of tactical flavor they bring, but that's about it. Some do not.

 

 

If you find yourself frequently being blown up by gunships, do not lament that gunships are OP, spammy, hackers or whatever other stupid excuse you might concoct.

I have never done this.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Laiov

[Lowfrequenzy]

GSF was different before gunships became common. For a moment there it was pure dogfighting.

 

Gunships were there from the start. What time are you talking about?

[caederon]

I'm talking about pvp. I don't see that the role of a stationary scope sniper is "important" to pvp in free 3D movement / flight environments. This role is more common in ground pvp gameplay.

What other 'free 3D movement/flight environment' PvP games are you comparing GSF to when you assess the commonality of a stationary scope sniper role?

 

The entire current meta is balanced around gunship / scout / bomber interaction. When you have teams of equal skill, particularly at the high end of the curve, you don't see gunship walls because it would get that team rolled, hard. You see a good mix of the three viable ship classes with some variation in which species of each gets play. A swarm of quality scouts is really, really hard for even the best gunships to deal with. If they are coordinated and intent on killing the gs, they probably will unless there is high quality bomber area denial going on or some good scouts to counter them.

 

Are you saying that a long-range attack role is not important in a space PvP game? If it wasn't a stationary scope sniper, but some other long range attack, people could still just as easily mass them and wreck teams of inexperienced pilots who don't know what hit them. That's really the only area where gunships are an issue, versus teams of unskilled pilots who don't know what to do. And they'd get wiped by pretty much any ship, they'd just see it coming.

 

Despon

[Archonitek]

Dat troll face at the end.

[Laiov]

Gunships were there from the start. What time are you talking about?

If I recall correctly, gunships were provided free (the Mangler I think?) only to subscribers during the GSF prerelease. So when GSF went live for everyone a week later, or whatever it was, there was an influx of players to the queue who either did not have the gunships or did not yet have upgrades put into them. I remember it being rare to see more than three gunships on a team at the time. Which soon changed.

 

 

What other 'free 3D movement/flight environment' PvP games are you comparing GSF to when you assess the commonality of a stationary scope sniper role?

I can't think of a game I've played with flight pvp that had a stationary scope sniper role other than GSF. But if you want a specific example of one without, Elite: Dangerous is a recent game that has some arcadey flight pvp and lacks this role. I think the comparison with GSF is fair, but see for yourself:

 

 

Fun game, too.

 

 

That's really the only area where gunships are an issue, versus teams of unskilled pilots who don't know what to do. And they'd get wiped by pretty much any ship, they'd just see it coming.

My gripe isn't that gunships are OP or that the stacked gunships are not possible to deal with, just that gameplay gets boring in my opinion when you start getting a lot of them in the match.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Laiov

[Danalon]

I wouldn't compare GSF (an arcade third person shooter) to Elite: Dangerous (a newtonian space flight sim).

 

In a shooter it's perfectly ok to have a sniper role. Flight sims, generally more realistic than shooters, usually don't have a sniper role because they're slower than shooters and snipers wouldn't fit in.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Danalon

[Llama-Eight]

Sniper is not a typical role in air combat simulators. Sniping is more of a ground role. So if by "important" you mean you like FPS mechanics, that's one thing, but if you mean the role is essential to air pvp, that is evidently not true.

 

Given that GSF is space not air, why couldn't you have a long range sniper-type role? What makes you think that short-ranged fighters would be practical in space combat, compared to nuking the **** out of each other from the other side of the system/etc?

[phalczen]

If I recall correctly, gunships were provided free (the Mangler I think?) only to subscribers during the GSF prerelease. So when GSF went live for everyone a week later, or whatever it was, there was an influx of players to the queue who either did not have the gunships or did not yet have upgrades put into them. I remember it being rare to see more than three gunships on a team at the time. Which soon changed.

 

 

 

I can't think of a game I've played with flight pvp that had a stationary scope sniper role other than GSF. But if you want a specific example of one without, Elite: Dangerous is a recent game that has some arcadey flight pvp and lacks this role. I think the comparison with GSF is fair, but see for yourself:

 

 

Fun game, too.

 

 

 

My gripe isn't that gunships are OP or that the stacked gunships are not possible to deal with, just that gameplay gets boring in my opinion when you start getting a lot of them in the match.

 

If you must find an analogue to them, to justify their existence in this game, consider them analogous to a capital ship or corvette equipped with a turbolaser. I won't pretend to know the "canon" stats on a turbolaser, but I would imagine it would be capable of one shotting a scout at 15 km, which (given a lucky crit and DO) is possible with a slug. The gunship isn't very mobile (it has to be stationary for its alpha strike), just like a capital ship. It does have some defensive features like evasion stacking, boosters and BLCs which are meant to give it some dogfighting survival skills given that it is not, canonically, a capital ship, but rather a two person starfighter. I wish we had POB ships like SWG Jump to Lightspeed had, but this is the closest thing we have to a cap ship. I will agree that, in general, a stationary target in space is a sitting duck so the nature of a "sniper in space" isn't perfect, but this is sci fi fantasy anyway so I'd be hard pressed to say it isn't plausible, especially in areas of space where there are lots of obstacles and the ducks carry dampening sensors and distortion fields.

[Archonitek]

The great thing about flanking in space is that not only can you do it from the left or right, but top and bottom aswell!

[Ramalina]

Given that GSF is space not air, why couldn't you have a long range sniper-type role? What makes you think that short-ranged fighters would be practical in space combat, compared to nuking the **** out of each other from the other side of the system/etc?

 

That's a very easy one.

 

If it's not a directed energy weapon, a missile that still has reaction mass in the terminal flight phase, or some sort of faster-than-light projectile, then by the time whatever was fired gets to the target the target has had ample time to get out of the way. If you're being sim-ish 2-4 km is the maximum practical range for a railgun that's trying to hit a maneuverable target that is making an effort not to get hit. Railguns as far as is currently known, are only practical to a few times faster projectile speed than conventional nitrate based cannons. At 10 km if you're firing something at 5 km/s you have to know exactly where the target is going to be 2 seconds after you fire. That's not very practical. Ideally you want less than 0.25 seconds of lead, though of course it depends on how rapidly and erratically the target is moving.

 

As a practical matter, even for a turbolaser that fired a bolt travelling at about 0.99 * c, your ideal engagement range against a maneuvering starfighter sized target is likely to be less than 60 000 km, which is not very far at all when it comes to space flight on an interplanetary scale. For reference of scale, the average distance from the surface of Earth to our Moon is roughly 380 000 km.

 

In essence, due to weapon flight times, unless you have some sort of faster-than-light weapons or are willing to have making a single shot take anywhere from minutes to decades, all practical space combat is forced to be close range space combat by simple physics.

[caederon]

I can't think of a game I've played with flight pvp that had a stationary scope sniper role other than GSF. But if you want a specific example of one without, Elite: Dangerous is a recent game that has some arcadey flight pvp and lacks this role. I think the comparison with GSF is fair, but see for yourself:

I have seen for myself, as I played Elite from its launch for a few weeks before drifting away from it. It has plenty to recommend in a general sense, but PvP is probably on the bottom of that list. Their flight model is much more sim-like and is generally a good bit slower. They also have different ship sizes, roles, and weapon loadouts that are not as cleanly abstracted as GSF's but nonetheless exist. An Eagle (pretty close to a GSF scout conceptually) does not fly like an Anaconda (big, slow moving, heavily armed, carries distance weapons). Some ships are highly mobile, some are not. Some weapons are gimballed on turrrets, some are fixed, like the... Railgun, yeah Elite has railguns, too. They even charge up before firing rather like the GSF counterpart.

 

Elite's initial PvP incarnation was neither team based or objective based, existing mainly as a 'fly around and kill people for bounties'. At some point, Elite is getting a more dogfight-y add-on to PvP called Close Quarters Champonships, in which "Players pick from the Sidewinder, Eagle or new Federal Fighter, fine-tune their loadouts, and fight in custom-built arenas - where they can earn XP to unlock new weapons, modules and abilities." Sounds like GSF, without the tactical depth or team play, but if all you want is dogfighting, go knock yourself out... after its window of X-Box exclusivity ends, anyway.

 

I can't comment on Star Citizen, having not yet played it.

My gripe isn't that gunships are OP or that the stacked gunships are not possible to deal with, just that gameplay gets boring in my opinion when you start getting a lot of them in the match.

Stack any ship type against a team full of inexperienced pilots and see how fun it is. Even stacks of scouts are not all that fun. With as much Evasion as they can muster, it basically turns into 'who gets unlucky on their cooldowns'.

 

GSF is its own thing. It has a lot of tactical and strategic depth. Gunships are part of that, and it would diminish the game if they were stripped away.

 

The number one problem with GSF is that it's hard to match up two teams of equal skill. If cross-server queuing existed, and the pool of players the matchmaker was drawing from was larger, it would erase a lot of these complaints because the conditions under which they occur would be rare.

 

Despon

[Lavaar]

Sniper is not a typical role in air combat simulators. Sniping is more of a ground role. So if by "important" you mean you like FPS mechanics, that's one thing, but if you mean the role is essential to air pvp, that is evidently not true.

 

I understand where you are coming from with this statement, but GSF is not the game you are thinking about. It is not a flight simulator, and it is actually even more space-like than the star wars fighters in the movies (since you're allowed to stop moving, which introduces its own set of physics problems, but I digress). Gunships exist in hard SF literature quite often as the primary means of deep space combat. Long range spine mounted weapons that exchange fire over great distances is a common theme in these stories, since the short range fighters would no longer be viable in deep space. GSF is striking a balance in order to entertain us, and in doing so they get to make the rules.

[tunewalker]

That's a very easy one.

 

If it's not a directed energy weapon, a missile that still has reaction mass in the terminal flight phase, or some sort of faster-than-light projectile, then by the time whatever was fired gets to the target the target has had ample time to get out of the way. If you're being sim-ish 2-4 km is the maximum practical range for a railgun that's trying to hit a maneuverable target that is making an effort not to get hit. Railguns as far as is currently known, are only practical to a few times faster projectile speed than conventional nitrate based cannons. At 10 km if you're firing something at 5 km/s you have to know exactly where the target is going to be 2 seconds after you fire. That's not very practical. Ideally you want less than 0.25 seconds of lead, though of course it depends on how rapidly and erratically the target is moving.

 

As a practical matter, even for a turbolaser that fired a bolt travelling at about 0.99 * c, your ideal engagement range against a maneuvering starfighter sized target is likely to be less than 60 000 km, which is not very far at all when it comes to space flight on an interplanetary scale. For reference of scale, the average distance from the surface of Earth to our Moon is roughly 380 000 km.

 

In essence, due to weapon flight times, unless you have some sort of faster-than-light weapons or are willing to have making a single shot take anywhere from minutes to decades, all practical space combat is forced to be close range space combat by simple physics.

 

Interesting thing with this is that is the reason that when firing at fighters from longer ranges with turbo lasers the Capital ships lay down a basically wall of fire, making it much more difficult to dodge as the entire area around the fighter is lit up, though skilled pilots still find themselves able to avoid the shots, but ya this is actually kind of shown most of the time in Star Wars.

[Bolo_Yeung]

In every PvP (mini)game , people most of the time will stick to the most effective tactic. Despite people on forums saying that "t2 scouts are most OPed" , the most effective mix is GS+bomber combo, especially in TDM (though 2 sat defending bombers and 4 gunships between 2 nodes are devastating as well).

Amount of coordination needed to break this tactic using so cheerfully advised battlescouts is much greater than amount of coordination needed to sustain formation, so in pugs, and no-voice premades it will be a dominating style of playing (unless the enemy team is clearly weaker, and "it is time to level my still stock Rycer").

 

The easiest solution is using own GS/bomber combo. Some people enjoy the game of chess.

You can also make a premade and get it to Teamspeak or different voice communicator - you can have a chance in breaking the "pure" GS wall.

 

PS. And when you will have T1 GS, don't forget what was ticking you off earlier and try to keep the amount of GS in yoyr team similar to enemy teams'

[Ramalina]

Interesting thing with this is that is the reason that when firing at fighters from longer ranges with turbo lasers the Capital ships lay down a basically wall of fire, making it much more difficult to dodge as the entire area around the fighter is lit up, though skilled pilots still find themselves able to avoid the shots, but ya this is actually kind of shown most of the time in Star Wars.

 

Alas, it's not consideration of physics that one sees in Star Wars content, but consideration of aesthetic effects in filmmaking.

 

The depicted speeds of projectiles are wildly inconsistent in Star Wars, even from the same laser cannon. What they're doing is basically ignoring perspective and drawing the blaster bolts across the screen at a rate that's almost, but not quite, as fast as the human eye can easily follow. It makes it look very good, and it makes it extremely clear who is shooting at what, and with which weapon. It's a wonderful visual storytelling technique in terms of enhancing the delivery of the story, but at times it really drives the scientist and engineer in me a bit nuts.

[GinnoTaki]

Yep. it's a shame that mighty Gunships form TF/XW mutated into the filthy campers with AWP from CS.

[Danalon]

[...] "t2 scouts are most OPed" , the most effective mix is GS+bomber combo [...]

A T2 scout will win every 1v1 situation except he makes a mistake, but GSF is a team game and therefore a mix of all classes (except strikes) can be more effective at doing its job. It's easier to attack a satellite with a scout when a gunship supports the scout. It's easier to defend a satellite when there is a somber helping with it.

 

Another thing is that the T2 scout needs a very good pilot to be devastating to the other team. In a lot of games there is no "ace" present. There may be some good or average pilots but none of them usually is good enough to dominate a game. That's the point where gunship walls (or bomber nests) get to shine because their nature makes them incredibly strong against a bunch of uncoordinated, mediocre pilots.

 

Bombers, gunships and scouts may be relatively well balanced for the ace-tier of pilots, but a big part of the playerbase will not see that balance because they aren't playing at a high skill level.

There are pilots so inexperienced they can't even deal with one good gunship on the other team. If those pilots don't run into one good gunship but instead they run into a bunch of four to five mediocre gunships they also will get farmed. They either can't adapt to the situation or they fail to do so, but to them it seems like gunships are completely overpowered.

 

 

 

Yep. it's a shame that mighty Gunships form TF/XW mutated into the filthy campers with AWP from CS.

They tried to make gunships mightier and bigger twice. They called them Death Stars. You know what happened.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Danalon

[Laiov]

Sounds like GSF, without the tactical depth or team play, but if all you want is dogfighting, go knock yourself out... after its window of X-Box exclusivity ends, anyway.

The inputs that GSF wants from pilots in a dogfight are a lot like the ones the latest Elite wants. Banking improves turn speed, you have limited sublight boost, leading reticles that you orient the entire ship to (turrets aside), there's a tight perspective lock to your ship so you do some flying by radar, weapon and shield regeneration rates are limits and this drives the engine-shield-weapon gear shifting associated with that. It's interesting to me that in your comparison of the two, you don't mention this at all. The inputs Elite wants are more numerous, in that you have more thrust vectors and you can lock target to engines, FSD, etc, but some of that has to do with interface limitations. In that game you can fly with a stick.

 

I think the illusion of speed and the sense of actiony craft flying that BioWare achieves in GSF is masterful. They hit a lot of these standards and this demonstrates GSF was designed with the understanding that part of the fun of a good flying game, for a lot of players, is getting good at the flying.

 

Gunships are stationary and out of range. You don't dogfight with them. Do gunship players fly a lot of T3 these days? I'm used to seeing T1. If there are four gunships and they stack on A, then there aren't any at C and there's probably a dogfight there. If there are eight gunships, two sats may have walls and the game becomes hide n strike. What I see in this deep tactical forest of depth is a hole in the shape of a stealth fighter.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Laiov