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

[caederon]

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.

To me, Elite's additional complexity makes it a significantly different experience than GSF. One of the other appealing things to me is that GSF comes in compact, ten-or-so minute chunks of gameplay. I don't know what the new Elite arena fighting module has in terms of discrete blocks of action, but open world PvP didn't appeal to me as much as the structure GSF has. I'm not bashing Elite, I just think it is a different enough game that direct comparisons aren't very useful.

 

Gunships are stationary and out of range. You don't dogfight with them.

Maybe you don't, but I do! With Feedback Shield, BLC, and the +10% turning rate from Barrel Roll, a T1 gs can be lethal up close as much as it is at range. You'll probably lose to ace scouts, but you have a good chance of taking someone out with well timed Feedback and some BLC hits. T1 gs is also quite capable of getting under a satellite and fighting in close quarters there. If you prefer to take a more active role fighting in the thick of things, you can certainly do it. My build sacrifices survivability against other gs for more offensive output. It's worked well for me.

 

If you're not moving around in a gs, you're either not being challenged by the other team or you're going to die soon. One of the #1 differentiators between mediocre (or worse) gs pilots and good ones is the bad ones don't recognize when it's time to either get out of Dodge or defend themselves. They just keep on charging up their railgun, sitting like a duck until their goose is cooked. I really tried to think of another waterfowl reference to work in there.

 

Anyway, the point is that a good gs pilot is taking an active role in repositioning to the maximum benefit of their team, and can certainly get in close to take care of business when necessary.

 

Do gunship players fly a lot of T3 these days? I'm used to seeing a lot of T1.

I see T3 gs pretty frequently, and know several players that run them as their main ship and use them to good effect. The T3 is basically like a scout with a railgun. Not having ion railgun robs it of significant utility, but it has mobility benefits and encourages a more active style of flying by default. I know I would rather face enemies in T3 than in T1 because ion drain is so damaging.

 

It's not a perfect analogy to reduce the gs / scout / bomber triumvirate to rock / paper / scissors, but it's close enough. If everyone's picking rocks, you know there's a way to beat that. All of them are important, except for GSF's plastic spork, the strike fighter.

 

Despon

[Laiov]

Maybe you don't, but I do!

If I'm playing at all, it's probably in a T2 scout.

 

I am less concerned with whether floating in space makes the gunship "bad". For every floating scope in the match, there is one less moving ship. From my perspective there seems to be a tipping point where the number of maneuvering ships in the match is low, because the number of gunships is high, and the play at all objectives becomes characterized by standing off at 15k, los in closer, and occasionally alpha striking into the shielding of fleeing T1s. Doing this to avoid being assist walled from beyond missile range might be considered responding to tactical value that gunships bring to the match. But it also suppresses GSF's flight value in my view.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Laiov

[caederon]

If I'm playing at all, it's probably in a T2 scout.

 

I am less concerned with whether floating in space makes the gunship "bad". For every floating scope in the match, there is one less moving ship. From my perspective there seems to be a tipping point where the number of maneuvering ships in the match is low, because the number of gunships is high, and the play at all objectives becomes characterized by standing off at 15k, los in closer, and occasionally alpha striking into the shielding of fleeing T1s. Doing this to avoid being assist walled from beyond missile range might be considered responding to tactical value that gunships bring to the match. But it also suppresses GSF's flight value in my view.

When you play on and against teams of people who know what they are doing, you don't often see masses of gunships. What you do see is one or two T1 gs (and/or sometimes T3) supported by bombers and scouts, because that is a far, far more effective configuration than massing gunships.

 

Most gunship pilots who are not top tier are hilariously bad at holding a satellite. They are also usually very bad at taking satellites, preferring to sit at range and plink away even when the objective is sitting there unclaimed or lightly contested. I have seen this countless times. If your teams are falling prey to massed gunships, you are probably not on a good team. If your teammates show little tactical awareness, can't focus their efforts, can't land shots... you will lose to gunships. You will also lose to massed scouts, or massed bombers.

 

Let's talk about massed bombers for a moment. How do all of you anti-gunship folks plan to deal with massed bombers if gs were not available? I have seen many, many teams of inexperienced pilots be so flummoxed by even one bomber on a node that they just give up and fly around out in open space. When the enemy stacks bombers, and your side hasn't got the sense to field T1 gs with ion AoE to clear the mines and weaken the bombers, you will lose.

 

How do bombers fit into your desire to have ships primarily dogfighting? If they don't, and you're going to remove gunships and bombers, maybe you want a whole different game?

 

Despon

[Sorrai]

I rarely post to the forums, mainly because I haven't gotten into the practice of doing so, but since I'm here I'd like to share my thoughts on some of the previous posts and GSF in general.

 

Despon's posts on the matter express my thoughts almost to the letter. As a veteran pilot who has been enjoying GSF since launch I couldn't articulate it any better. Thank you, Despon.

 

It has become very fashionable for a lot of self-proclaimed "aces" to disregard Strike Fighters, citing their inability to "compete with the meta". While there are some valid arguments out there Strike Fighters can be quite devastating in the hands of a skilled pilot. They are rugged, versatile ships with an impressive range of weapon capabilities. When the devs put out the question about what can be done to improve the strike fighter I came to the realization that there was never anything wrong with them in the first place. They are the median ship--the balance--in GSF, upon which all other ship classes are based from.

 

To all the players who have decried gunships, bombers and T2 scouts in all their incarnations as having broken the game it sounds to me like what you're really looking for out of Galactic Star Fighter is something more akin to Galactic STRIKE Fighter--the one ship class that so many arrogant braggarts swear is "useless".

 

The genius and beauty of GSF is that, despite its complicated and oftentimes painful learning curve, it is a remarkably well-designed and thought-out mini game. The more a new player delves into its intricacies the more they will realize that and appreciate its design, and further appreciate the role each ship class plays within that design. It is complex in its simplicity. It is great fun, fast-paced and engages the player in a way that is completely unique from the rest of SWTOR.

 

In regards to the common complaints concerning gunships and burst scouts I highly recommend simply learning to fly them and incorporating them into your line up. Regard each star fighter as a specialized tool there to help you best counter whatever the opposition has in its ranks. If you are flustered because you see 4 or 5 gunships, jump into one of your own and help even out the odds. Some people choose to exclusively fly certain types of ships based on their philosophical belief. I'm not one of them. I may have my preferences but I keep a variety of ships in my arsenal to adapt to whatever is needed for the situation at hand. I think adaptability is an integral part to playing the game.

 

 

Elaeis

Edited August 4, 2015 by Sorrai

[AgentRobP]

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

 

One was so focused on charging up its main gun that it got one-shot by a proton torpedo fired by a Strike?

 

While there are some valid arguments out there Strike Fighters can be quite devastating in the hands of a skilled pilot.

 

While true, the matches where a Strike is devastating are typically the same matches where the same pilot could be devastating in any ship.

 

They are the median ship--the balance--in GSF, upon which all other ship classes are based from.

 

Which is also the problem. The special abilities the other classes get are too good (compared to the Strike), without enough limitations.

 

Some of it is component choice. Simply giving the T1 BLC (or making RFLs actually useful) and the T2 Retros would make them much more viable. The other classes have builds with amazing synergy, why can't the Strikes?

 

Edit: the T3 Strike is pretty good. Ironically, it's also the least Strike-like: it's not as generalized as the T1 and T2 are supposed to be, and it has deliberately reduced offensive capability.

Edited August 5, 2015 by AgentRobP
Include T3

[caederon]

It has become very fashionable for a lot of self-proclaimed "aces" to disregard Strike Fighters, citing their inability to "compete with the meta".

Good to see you here! I'm actually guilty of that btw : ) But, that said, unlike the people who want to pluck away pieces of the meta and distill it down to some quintessence of dogfighting nirvana, I'd love to see strikes buffed up and given a more prominent role so that you have four competitive ship classes. The T1 strike in the right hands can be dangerous, though I'd argue that same pilot would be better off and more effective in a T2 scout. That's all kind of beside the point, though and the the point (which you got at) is that more viable options = deeper gameplay = more dynamic interactions between players = better game.

 

If people had more chances to compete against players of like-skill (or at least like-experience) instead of the highly variable buffet of experience levels that often creates hopeless slaughters, there would be less whining about this or that being OP.

 

Imagine chess if your forces consisted only of pawns and a King. Having the Rook, Bishop, Knight and Queen make it a lot more interesting.

 

Despon

Edited August 5, 2015 by caederon

[tunewalker]

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'

 

 

The reason Bomber/ Gunship is so effective is Bombers counter scouts pretty heavily when in a group. so the proper response to Bomber/Gunship is all Gunship, which no one seems to like to do, so the Bomber/gunship wins. Its effective because people are to stubborn to switch to the counter.

 

Again I feel this goes back to Strike vulnerabilities though, if strikes were more effective at just about anything then maybe the proper response would be 4 strikes 4 Gunships (strikes able to tank the Bombers stuff and move the gunships maybe) and less people would be frustrated by this. The issue is no game is truly an 8v8 and because of Gunships easily taking out strikes (which a lot of hte newer players fly) the gunships are able to easier and faster farm the newer pilots. The bombers then just keep the good scout pilots at bay, and with the scout pilots to stubborn to switch to gunships, and the fact that since its likely 5v5 with 3 noobs on both sides so even if they did swap the team running 2 bombers 3 gunships and 3 noobs is still going to be more effective then the team running 5 Gunships because the 3 noobs can sometimes play with enough of a brain to get the gunships to move, and only having 2 men up on gunships if they enemy team is better in them isnt going to do the team with out the bombers much good. Also bombers end up being good at killing the noobs that get in close to.

 

So when it comes down to it yes, Bombers/gunships are one of hte harder things to counter, but I blame it all on strikes non-existant place in the meta. (and yes I am one of those people who plays a lot of strike when I play so I know full well how to push that ship to the limit, its both far off, and not far off, if any one gets my drift )

Edited August 5, 2015 by tunewalker

[Laiov]

The genius and beauty of GSF is that, despite its complicated and oftentimes painful learning curve, it is a remarkably well-designed and thought-out mini game. The more a new player delves into its intricacies the more they will realize that and appreciate its design, and further appreciate the role each ship class plays within that design. It is complex in its simplicity. It is great fun, fast-paced and engages the player in a way that is completely unique from the rest of SWTOR.

But how do we reconcile this with the cratered population in the queue? Agreed, I think GSF game design is remarkable, differences on the roles aside. Yet it seems that its population has declined anyway.

 

Not enough maps?

 

X-server queues for GSF would probably help the current version, but it seems like that only alleviates problems caused by low population. What led to pilot loss in the first place? GSF had a strong release.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Laiov

[RatPoison]

A staggered release, a high learning curve, an ineffective tutorial, lack of new content and/or tweaking... to name a couple of (subjective) issues with GSF aided in the decline in the community. And of course a diminished population renders any real form of matchmaking ineffective too which has only added to the woes for newer pilots.

 

Any way you cut it, the nature of PVP is to complain about some aspect of it regardless. I'm of the mind that with a better tutorial, and changing the stock load out of ships to eliminate ineffective components, and/or further decreasing requisition costs that GSF would have benefited. I don't know that at this point, that these changes alone would turn the tide for GSF participation, but working on these aspects plus adding in some new content would better the odds of growing the GSF population in that moment and if we're lucky maintaining a portion of that growth for the long term.

Edited August 5, 2015 by RatPoison

[caederon]

X-server queues for GSF would probably help the current version, but it seems like that only alleviates problems caused by low population. What led to pilot loss in the first place? GSF had a strong release.

Lack of population is what makes the game unfriendly to new players. It makes queue times unpredictable on most servers, and makes the chances of beginners facing veterans much higher. The poorly designed tutorial (which some people still can't even find, I ran into someone like that yesterday) doesn't help either.

 

The developers abandoning the game is what led to pilot loss. People like new things. Whatever earning metric they expected GSF to achieve must not have been met quickly enough, and like a bad TV executive they cancelled the show instead of letting it find its audience and grow.

 

The have done a spectacularly bad job of monetizing GSF or presenting attractive options for people to spend money on. The cosmetic items that they offer have too limited a range of colors and design styles (and boring art decisions on most of the paintjobs) to entice purchases. The cartel ships are largely a joke, and don't go far enough. It is not hard to make a low poly 3d model of a spaceship. There aren't even any animations to deal with, it's a static object. In a single solid afternoon of work they could likely have their art team bash out enough new models to stock the cartel market with variants on the ships that currently lack alternates. Instead they just regurgitated models from other parts of the game.

 

They have a chance to do that again and give GSF a little shot in the arm with the upcoming big storyline. I am sure that the new factions will have their own ship designs for cinematics, so there's no reason they shouldn't offer those as cartel re-skins of various ship types or whatever.

 

GSF's development was not treated very seriously and has been handled in a thoroughly incompetent and negligent manner after the point where bombers were introduced. The initial design remains great, and it wouldn't take much work to reinvigorate it.

 

Despon

[AlrikFassbauer]

Lack of population is what makes the game unfriendly to new players.

 

There must be a reason for this - and personally I still believe that the players themselvces are in part responsible for this as well.

 

There are always discussions going on the the ground PvP forum about "goods" vs. "bads", and both sides do not like each other at all.

 

Whereas some of the "goods" believe that "bads" just cannot be taught and will instead remain "bads",

to me this rather sounds like impacience on the "goods" side, a result from people who are so much faster in learning everything - and therefore are much faster in climbing any steep learning curve - not being able to understand and even see the problems of those who are not that fast in learning - but have probably even equal skill.

 

People often assume that skill = ability to learn fast, but to me that sounds like nonsense.

In my opinion, both skill and the ability to learn fast are completely unconnected with one another.

[Danalon]

Whereas some of the "goods" believe that "bads" just cannot be taught and will instead remain "bads", [...]

 

Unwillingness to learn is what defines a bad player for me. A player can only become good if he actively works on getting good. He needs to analyze his mistakes, willing to improve himself and he needs to be willing to learn, be it via direct conversation or indirectly via guides. Some people prefer to be autodidacts, usually helpful in new games but definitely a slower approach when there are already guides in existence.

It doesn't matter if someone learns fast or slow because there isn't much to be learned in most games to be a useful player. Sure, a new good player will probably not get much kills, probably will not do huge amounts of damage but he also will not let others farm him and he will help defend satellites even if he only will do so by being close to a sat and not die for as long as possible.

 

A good player also has the ability to use his brain. He is able to analyze situations and adapt to them. Analyzing situations willg et easier the more experience a player has but even a new player should be intelligent enough to see that it doesn't need seven defenders on B while there is only one attacker there and A is unguarded. There are so many players tunnelvisioning on their current target and completely ignoring the game around them. Those players tend to be lured away from satellites and they also are likely to get killed while chasing a target that's running back to its teammates.

 

I could go on and on about this. Just some weeks ago I offered to give advice to another pilot and got told he "doesn't need help, he has 400 games played". I saw him in the next game and he didn't look like someone who "doesn't need help". He will very likely not become a good player because he refuses to learn.

I played DOM games with teams of mostly pilots in starting ships that I expected to lose but actually won because they stayed focused on defending the satellites. They were willing to listen to what I said and they were able to adapt to the flow of the match. They have a chance to become good players.

 

As I like to say: Everyone starts as newbie, but some stay noobs forever.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Danalon

[MiaowZedong]

They are rugged, versatile ships with an impressive range of weapon capabilities.

No just no. That's a newbie trap way of presenting them—they are easier to kill (so not rugged in any sense that matters) and while they can mount a huge range of weapons, only a handful of them are actually worth using. Fixing some of the underpowered weapons (RFL come to mind) would go some ways towards making strikes better, because at least they'd have the impressive range of weapon capabilities you talk about (but in a game where you can't just switch weapons on the fly, it's not so big an advantage).

 

They are the median ship--the balance--in GSF, upon which all other ship classes are based from.

Median would suggest half the ships are better and the other half worse. A rough comparison to ground PvP right now would be to say the Operatives are the median there. Strike fighters aren't the median—as a class, they're at the bottom. As individual ships, all of them are below the median. T1 and T3 GS, T1 and T2 scout, T1 and T2 bomber—those are the ships above the median, the other six ships (including all three strikes) are below the median.

 

In regards to the common complaints concerning gunships and burst scouts

Gunships will always draw complaints, even if they become completely unjustified. They share the "Surprise! You're dead!" factor with snipers in FPS games and those always draw complaints as well. Even in games that go out of their way to offer counterplay.

 

As for T2 scouts, a lot of it stems from the fact they seem to be a total developper's pet. It's why they have more competitive, "meta", builds than any other ship: they've been (intentionally or otherwise) minmaxed to the hilt. Even the mighty T1 GS has components that could be swapped in which would clearly improve it, while that isn't clearly the case for the T2 scout. Scouts are generically better than strikes, but the T2 scout is basically what we'd design if we wanted the strongest possible scout.

[Ardaneb]

Gunships and bombers are easier for new players to fly than scouts or strikes. There are new players in almost every match. That is how they contribute to balance problems. Match-making will not solve this problem for the new players. Eight new players with gunships and bombers versus eight new players with scouts and strikes will almost always be won by the bombers and gunships. Everyone in the match will come away with the same conclusion: bombers and gunships are overpowered. This already happens to a great degree with only the ace scouts keeping this idea in check for the new players.

 

Nerfing the mastered top ships is unlikely to help this problem. The experienced players will always decimate the new players and there will be no re-balancing between the new players. One possible solution is to buff all strikes and buff unupgraded scouts in a manner that does not make fully upgraded T2 scouts more powerful (e.g. rapid fire laser mega-accuracy buff). Another possible solution would be to just give everyone a mastered ship as was suggested in another thread (and buff strikes/broken components). Hopefully, this would make matches less dependent on how many new players go bomber/gunship. How are they supposed to learn scout/strike if they cause their team to lose by choosing scout/strike?

Edited August 7, 2015 by Ardaneb

[AlrikFassbauer]

Unwillingness to learn is what defines a bad player for me.

 

Might be, but the term "[a] bad [one]" has already become some kind of insult, some kind of rant-word, a word used by people to trash-talk others down so that they - the trash-talkers seem to hope - never appear again.

 

The word "bad" regarding a certain kind of player has evolved quite a lot from what it might - or might not - have originally supposed to mean. It already has had its own evolution.

 

It's a bit like the word "scrub", which was perhaps originally meant to be relatively neutral - but has become some kind of insult, trash-talking.

[caederon]

Whereas some of the "goods" believe that "bads" just cannot be taught and will instead remain "bads",

I can only speak for myself, and others that I've observed directly, but with that in mind I think the majority of GSF veterans are very willing to go out of their way to offer instruction to new pilots. We've had endless discussions on this board about trying to get people into the GSF chat channel, trying to help them one on one, and other methods of teaching the game to those who are willing to listen. Anyone can learn to be competent and help their team. Anyone can learn simple practices and techniques that will keep them from being an easy kill who accomplishes nothing. I've met most of the veteran pilots that fly North American servers at one point or another, and I really don't recall any who are unwilling to help inexperienced pilots learn the game.

Gunships and bombers are easier for new players to fly than scouts or strikes. There are new players in almost every match. That is how they contribute to balance problems. Match-making will not solve this problem for the new players.

If we had cross-server queuing, or a whole lot more players on any given server, it would be possible to have a Beginners Tier of some sort that players could opt into. Maybe they could have 100 games in a Strikes Only environment where they could learn basic skills and tactics. It's debatable whether they would have the tools after graduating from that to figure out how to deal with the deeper tactical concerns of the full meta, but it might be a debate worth having (though also pretty pointless since the devs are unlikely to implement anything we suggest here).

 

Your other point is completely right, though... buffing awful starter components (like RFL and Quick Charge Shield) and making strikes better in general would give new pilots more chances to contribute and survive even in full matches of inexperienced players.

 

Despon

Edited August 9, 2015 by caederon

[sartt]

Lack of population is what makes the game unfriendly to new players. It makes queue times unpredictable on most servers, and makes the chances of beginners facing veterans much higher. The poorly designed tutorial (which some people still can't even find, I ran into someone like that yesterday) doesn't help either.

 

The developers abandoning the game is what led to pilot loss. People like new things. Whatever earning metric they expected GSF to achieve must not have been met quickly enough, and like a bad TV executive they cancelled the show instead of letting it find its audience and grow.

 

The have done a spectacularly bad job of monetizing GSF or presenting attractive options for people to spend money on. The cosmetic items that they offer have too limited a range of colors and design styles (and boring art decisions on most of the paintjobs) to entice purchases. The cartel ships are largely a joke, and don't go far enough. It is not hard to make a low poly 3d model of a spaceship. There aren't even any animations to deal with, it's a static object. In a single solid afternoon of work they could likely have their art team bash out enough new models to stock the cartel market with variants on the ships that currently lack alternates. Instead they just regurgitated models from other parts of the game.

 

They have a chance to do that again and give GSF a little shot in the arm with the upcoming big storyline. I am sure that the new factions will have their own ship designs for cinematics, so there's no reason they shouldn't offer those as cartel re-skins of various ship types or whatever.

 

GSF's development was not treated very seriously and has been handled in a thoroughly incompetent and negligent manner after the point where bombers were introduced. The initial design remains great, and it wouldn't take much work to reinvigorate it.

 

Despon

Do you have any idea how many times i've gone to dromund kaas to try and get new people to play GSF? Only to see them type mid game " this game mode is stupid i die in 1 shot " and they leave because of gunships you cant get a population increase with people spamming scrubships. I actually let new players kill me if i know all they have is the standard scout or strike fighter.

[caederon]

Do you have any idea how many times i've gone to dromund kaas to try and get new people to play GSF? Only to see them type mid game " this game mode is stupid i die in 1 shot " and they leave because of gunships you cant get a population increase with people spamming scrubships. I actually let new players kill me if i know all they have is the standard scout or strike fighter.

Do you know how many times I've helped new players adjust to the game and learn how to avoid getting killed so easily? Do you know how long I've spent sitting in the GSF channel on various servers teaching ship builds to people so they can compete? Do you know how many times I've called for my team not to 3-cap so a raw team can get some points and accomplish something? Do you know how often the veterans (cheating scrubship pilots, the lot of them) on this very board try to come up with ways to improve the new player experience and teach them how to play?

 

Do you know how many times I was blown up by battlescouts and gunships (and strike fighters, which were somewhat better then) when I started playing GSF?

 

Do you know how many players in a largely PvE MMO are going to casually dismiss a PvP space shooter that has little reward in the rest of the game and takes some effort to learn and get into?

 

If there were no gunships, bombers would blow up those people and they would cry about how OP bombers are (we've had that phase here, too). If there were no bombers OR gunships, people would cry about how OP unhittable battlescouts are and how they should be removed from the game. News: those can 'one-shot' you too! Or is getting killed in .6 seconds by quads & pods really preferable to getting railgunned?

 

Gutting the ship classes out of the game would not help anything. There are far better solutions.

 

Despon

[DarthScruffy]

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

 

Agreed. The funny thing is that if you turn the crazy dial up to 11, even bombers can be insane in death matches (and not in the "chase me through the canyon or to the irrelevant part of the map" kind of way).

[Llama-Eight]

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.

True, but this is Star Wars we're talking about, not real world physics so you need to use some suspension of disbelief (ie, that they can have a railgun that accelerates a round up to some-form-of-very-fast speed in a reasonable barrel length & energy usage). And the engagement range in the films appears to be of the order of units/tens/hundreds of kilometers for capital ships & probably hundreds of meters to a kilometer or two for fighters 'cause it makes for better cinema than the occasional flash of a cap ship exploding on a black background.

 

One was so focused on charging up its main gun that it got one-shot by a proton torpedo fired by a Strike?

Probably the same one that fired up it's fortress shield without realising that upgraded protons ignore shields as well as armour & got one-shot...

Edited August 11, 2015 by Llama-Eight

[hiloes]

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.

 

agreed, in my experience the only time a team full of gunships really dominate is when the other side is full of new people and/or everyones just doing their own thing trying to get the most kills, working together even if its just 3 or 4 people can put an end to a bunch of gunships. in my mastered Star Guard with quads and clusters and reverse thrusters i can charge a gunship head on and take em out 9/10 times i'd say. anyways my point is I don't think gunships are as big a problem as people make it out to be, match making is!! haha

[DewyMossEmpire]

I don't let the Gunship & Bomber pilots get to me....if they'd rather play the game with no skill, just stay away from them. Easy.

[caederon]

I don't let the Gunship & Bomber pilots get to me....if they'd rather play the game with no skill, just stay away from them. Easy.

Congratulations on befouling two threads with more anti-gunship nonsese! Bonus points for also throwing bombers in. Do they have you people on shifts, so there is always someone available to deploy more worthless one-liner posts and further lower the level of discourse here? I can picture you punching in at a timeclock, ready to get to work in your official Forum Troll dungeon.

 

It takes skill to fly at a high level in any ship. There is no easy-mode, there are no invincible OP ships, there are some ships that are legitimately underpowered, and there are real discussions to be had about those. Maybe try participating legitimately in those discussions instead of slinging mud.

 

Despon

[DewyMossEmpire]

Congratulations on befouling two threads with more anti-gunship nonsese! Bonus points for also throwing bombers in. Do they have you people on shifts, so there is always someone available to deploy more worthless one-liner posts and further lower the level of discourse here? I can picture you punching in at a timeclock, ready to get to work in your official Forum Troll dungeon.

 

It takes skill to fly at a high level in any ship. There is no easy-mode, there are no invincible OP ships, there are some ships that are legitimately underpowered, and there are real discussions to be had about those. Maybe try participating legitimately in those discussions instead of slinging mud.

 

Despon

 

Well hey, that's what Forums are for eh? Subjectivity, & dealing with it. Sure it takes skill to fly some ships, but it certainly takes more to fly some than others. GS's being at the lowest on the list.

[MaximilianPower]

Congratulations on befouling two threads with more anti-gunship nonsese! Bonus points for also throwing bombers in. Do they have you people on shifts, so there is always someone available to deploy more worthless one-liner posts and further lower the level of discourse here? I can picture you punching in at a timeclock, ready to get to work in your official Forum Troll dungeon.

 

It takes skill to fly at a high level in any ship. There is no easy-mode, there are no invincible OP ships, there are some ships that are legitimately underpowered, and there are real discussions to be had about those. Maybe try participating legitimately in those discussions instead of slinging mud.

 

Despon

 

I admire your tenacity, Despon. You're right, of course, and those of us who play a LOT all realize this. But it must get tiresome to counter/debunk each one of these anti-GS posts as they appear. I usually consider responding too, but typically I end up shaking my head and moving on. Ultimately I just don't have the time/inclination.

 

Maybe you can streamline the process and copy/paste from a boilerplate response.