Star Wars is dogfighting not sniping.

[Archonitek]

Sigh ... and yet again I will repeat: , how often do tou see a scout swarm (>4 scouts, excluding 2-shippers) ? And how often gunship walls, (combined with bombers using failgun drones on TDM / mine bombers in dom)? So, with all the respect I have for you - you're wrong with 'everything is ballanced' statement.

If you want to say 'often', then let's check the movies

 

The basic problem with T1 GS - ion railgun, applying full scale debuff at minimum charge. Add pretty good evasion to the mix, combined with the best short range weapon - and you have 'the most OP ship'

T3 is a different thing - won't work well for dedicated sniper - but can survive pretty long in dogfight - and if the enemy breaks off, he's getting a rail right into his behind. Yes, it isn;t ballanced too. However it is pretty dfunny to fly as a double missile ship

 

I guess different servers have different play styles that crop up more than usual. On EH the gs wall/bomber nests aren't that prevalent, or at least they seem to be easily broken. That might be a reason why different people react differently to requests for game balancing.

[Danalon]

Fact is, GSF has a huge skill gap which can lead to the same situation being perceived completely different depending on the experience level of a pilot. When facing a gunship wall, some pilots may not know what to do, or be demoralized. Some will just counter with gunships themselves. Others may just don't care at all because they have superior skill to the pilots in the wall.

Now imagine if the game got balanced around the pilots not knowing what to do. There would be a gunship nerf to prevent gunship walls forming and probably a bomber nerf to make satellites easier to attack. Now to the pilots with high skill. They will probabably play scout more because if they had a huge impact on the game before they will have an even bigger impact in a scout now that two of the main threats to a scout (getting surprised by a gunship and having to take a risk when attacking a satellite) will not be as threatening due to the nerf.

 

The only thing we can do, to make gunship walls and bomber nests less threatening is to teach how to deal with them.

I remember a time (before the meta shifted towards more gunships/bombers) where scouts were dominating the skies and this forum couldn't go a week without someone complaining about that.

Looking at the topic of this thread, I think dogfighting just got lost in the meta shift. The majority of players probably goes what is easiest to do while being effective. And building a gunship wall or bomber nest is very easy to do compared to coordinate a group of scouts - especially for the majority of average players. For very good pilots, a scout group is still one of the most effective setups for every game but, as said, it requires good pilots.

[RickDagles]

Sigh ... and yet again I will repeat: , how often do tou see a scout swarm (>4 scouts, excluding 2-shippers) ? And how often gunship walls, (combined with bombers using failgun drones on TDM / mine bombers in dom)? So, with all the respect I have for you - you're wrong with 'everything is ballanced' statement.

If you want to say 'often', then let's check the movies

 

The basic problem with T1 GS - ion railgun, applying full scale debuff at minimum charge. Add pretty good evasion to the mix, combined with the best short range weapon - and you have 'the most OP ship'

T3 is a different thing - won't work well for dedicated sniper - but can survive pretty long in dogfight - and if the enemy breaks off, he's getting a rail right into his behind. Yes, it isn;t ballanced too. However it is pretty dfunny to fly as a double missile ship

 

PS. And Tensor scout is not a suicide one - much better run and cap a node; rep drone with ammo - and everyone loves you (especially pod scouts), fast reaction capability... it is really good team suppport even in late phase.

 

I would say the hardest 4 man premade to defeat is 2 gunships, 1 bomber, and 1 scout. I see that very often. 1 gunship, 1 bomber, and 2 scouts is also super effective and common. And that's for TDM.

 

For Dom I think the most effective combo is 2 beacon bombers, 1 ion gunship, and 1 scout.

 

Ion railgun is super powerful but there are several good counters available so it's not OP. Booster recharge and powerdive allow you to stay in the battle and fight. DF, TT, and running interference allow you to escape LoS. Honestly I don't fear Gunships at all in my scout. It's the railgun drone that I fear. And if you're working as a team, the gunship player on your side should be shooting those down for you. DF even gives you a counter to seeker mines. I think that missile break function was actually included so that gs/bomber ball could be more easily countered. All that being said, I think running interference and TT is very necessary when fighting a gunship wall. Otherwise a centered railgun shot with wingman will hit you a majority of the time. I would also highly recommend getting an orb before attacking. Purple 10% evasion helps a lot against GS, blue helps a lot against railgun drone, and red obviously lets you deliver a killing blow a lot easier without relying on crits. Yellow isn't super useful in this case imo.

 

Bloodmark/spearpoint isn't entirely useless of course. The issue is that it can't do anything better than the other scouts. If you want to refill pods, you can do a lot more for your team by flying a Warcarrier. Or if your team doesn't already have a Rampart (in domination) then fly one of those and your pod teammate can just suicide and take your beacon with 50 new pods.

Edited August 30, 2015 by RickDagles

[ReyCielo]

8 gunships one match. Not broken?

[Bolo_Yeung]

8 gunships in same team? If so, I wonder why weren't there 8 battlescouts that would (according to all forum experts) wipe'em all

 

Bloodmark/spearpoint isn't entirely useless of course. The issue is that it can't do anything better than the other scouts.

EMP missile. The 'underpowered' weapon that, fired at turret, cleanse the sat totally... And if you say 'Ion rail' then please notice that it doesn't disable system and shield (or engine) abilities, nor it disable the drones.

Suicide for refill, while on attacked sat, can cause losing that sat...

Edited August 30, 2015 by Bolo_Yeung

[Archonitek]

emp missile. The 'underpowered' weapon that, fired at turret, cleanse the sat totally... And if you say 'ion rail' then please notice that it doesn't disable system and shield (or engine) abilities, nor it disable the drones.

Suicide for refill, while on attacked sat, can cause losing that sat...

 

yyeeessssss!!!!!

[Danalon]

8 gunships in same team? If so, I wonder why weren't there 8 battlescouts that would (according to all forum experts) wipe'em all

 

I said it before and I say it again. It's easier to form a gunship wall than to coordinate scouts. Also most of the average pilots don't pay attention to what is going on which means two things. If someone doesn't analyze the situation in a scout he will not look for threats; he will not actively try attacking gunships and he will get hit by a railgun because he is tunnel visioning whatever other target was closer than the gunship. If someone doesn't care about what is going on in a gunship he still can achieve better by just hitting tab and moving towards that target until it's in range; as said above, he's unlikely to get attacked because no one cares. If you now kook at a group of scouts in which no one pays attention they'll probably attack whatever is closest to them and get railed down by a gunship. If you have a group of gunships in which everyone just hits tab and attacks the nearest target they automatically will give each other covering fire if they just stay within railgun range. Their covering fire will be so good that they basically can defend against any uncoordinated attack..

Which brings us back to my point. Gunships aren't op. Most pilots simply don't know how to beat them.

Edited August 30, 2015 by Danalon

[RickDagles]

EMP missile. The 'underpowered' weapon that, fired at turret, cleanse the sat totally... And if you say 'Ion rail' then please notice that it doesn't disable system and shield (or engine) abilities, nor it disable the drones.

Suicide for refill, while on attacked sat, can cause losing that sat...

 

 

I agree that EMP missile sounds great on paper, but in practice it is only ever a very mild nuisance. I think its usefulness may be a bit higher against a Warcarrier because it can disable the railgun or interdiction drone. But the meta ship to fly in Domination is Rampart. The EMP disables the system ability for 15 seconds. However, the system ability mine normally has a cooldown of 15 seconds. So you're really not disabling anything, you're just killing the mine and then it comes back like it normally would. Shield ability charged plating is usually used immediately on cooldown which means there is only ever an 11 second downtime. Therefore, best case scenario is that you land the EMP missile right before the CP is ready to be used. This will give you about 15 seconds of CP downtime, which is barely more than the innate downtime. Alternatively you could disable the hyperspace beacon, but that's probably even less useful. Even if the EMP debuff time was longer, a Spearpoint's lasers are still only going to do 61% of their normal damage due to deflection armor. If we round that to a generous 170 damage per shot, it's going to take over 25 shots to bring the bomber down. This is impossible against a bomber that uses boost properly, and you'll certainly eat a seismic mine for your troubles since that ability is untouched by EMP.

 

 

So here's the typical scenario: you land an EMP and kill the interdiction mine and seismic mine. Perhaps you also luckily caught a scout in the blast and disabled his TT and DF. So great, the turrets are down and the enemy scout is less deadly (although a battlescout without TT is still >> than a spearpoint). Now you have 15 seconds to land 25 laser shots at a bomber with full engines. You land 4-5 shots, he boosts to LoS and drops a seismic mine. You eat the mine and now you have a red hull. You land another 4-5 shots but now your 15 seconds are up. The bomber drops an interdiction mine and now you're snared. The turrets start shooting at you and you blow DF. That keeps you alive for another 6 seconds but you now must power dive to safety or die.

 

 

Alternatively you could shoot the bomber with ion railgun from a safe distance, drain his engines completely, and then follow up with a slug railgun to put him into red hull. If he's good he can LoS to safety after that, but it's only a matter of time until someone finishes him off. A bomber without engines is a dead bomber.

Edited August 30, 2015 by RickDagles

[Lavaar]

EMP missile. The 'underpowered' weapon that, fired at turret, cleanse the sat totally... And if you say 'Ion rail' then please notice that it doesn't disable system and shield (or engine) abilities, nor it disable the drones. Suicide for refill, while on attacked sat, can cause losing that sat...

 

I have never seen the EMP missile used in, and let alone determine the outcome of a serious match. It seems like it makes sense, but in practice it simply isn't. The only time it is useful is when you are outnumbering the enemy, in which case, you should win no matter what ships are being flown.

Edited August 30, 2015 by Lavaar

[Bolo_Yeung]

And how can you determine if EMP missile influenced the match? How can you tell "I would't be blown up anyway if that battlescout turned on his Blaster Overcharge"? or "that Interdiction mine/drone wouldn't stop me from destroying that bomber?"...

[Drakkolich]

And how can you determine if EMP missile influenced the match? How can you tell "I would't be blown up anyway if that battlescout turned on his Blaster Overcharge"? or "that Interdiction mine/drone wouldn't stop me from destroying that bomber?"...

 

In a really close game when was the last time you were about to do something meaningful (Like capture a satellite for instance) and then suddenly you get EMP'ed and it stopped you. Because I myself cannot ever remember this happening. Even on my Bomber someone EMP's the node and I start laughing because I just put out another Siesmic.

[Bolo_Yeung]

Yawn... ok, ok, I will use EMP anyway and against a T3 GS with EMP+ interdiction... well, one seismic mine can be not enough; bomber with interdiction effect is in pretty bad situation.

 

Anyway, if you have little time tomorrow (or at other date), we can check the scenario "EMP missile ship vs bomber/2 bombers on node".

[Drakkolich]

Yawn... ok, ok, I will use EMP anyway and against a T3 GS with EMP+ interdiction... well, one seismic mine can be not enough; bomber with interdiction effect is in pretty bad situation.

 

Anyway, if you have little time tomorrow (or at other date), we can check the scenario "EMP missile ship vs bomber/2 bombers on node".

 

I stream every night from midnight-3am Eastern, we've been playing on Harbinger mostly feel free to drop by anytime.

[Danalon]

Yawn... ok, ok, I will use EMP anyway and against a T3 GS with EMP+ interdiction... well, one seismic mine can be not enough; bomber with interdiction effect is in pretty bad situation.

 

Anyway, if you have little time tomorrow (or at other date), we can check the scenario "EMP missile ship vs bomber/2 bombers on node".

 

I've played a T3 strike with charged plating and EMP missiles for some time and wanted it to be a node-cleaner and bomber-killer. There are some reasons I don't use that build anymore. The main reasons I chose EMP were the ability of cleaning mines and the ability to disable the use of shields because the T3 strike doesn't have any armor-ignoring primary weapons. It seemed to work fine at first but after some matches against different bomber pilots I noticed a lot of flaws.

The lockon time is too long, a good bomber pilot usually has plenty of time to hide behind some part of a satellite.

The ability does only "disable the use of shields", but doesn't deactivate shields effects that are already active. When the missile hits a bomber while is charged plating is up it doesn't help anything.

15 seconds debuff duration with 11 seconds reload time sounds like you could completely disable everything as long as you want. But adding 2.6 seconds lockon time leaves you with just 1.4 seconds for errors. In other words. It's impossible to get a missile launched against any bomber who has basic skills in evasive flying. You can lock on to a turret or a deployable but the first requires you to not kill the turrets which means you'll get damage constantly and the second is almost impossible as soon as you're close to the satellite and both require you to change target for the duration of the lockon.

 

I had the worst experience with that build when I ran into a satellite with two T1 bombers guarding it. It's impossible to not eat an interdiction effect at some point (especially if one of them uses interdicting seismic mines) and as soon as that happens it's impossible to lock another EMP missile. The bombers then simply outmaneuvered me. I could have fled, but what's the point. As soon as I would have come back the same thing would have happened again.

 

If they gave EMP missiles a shorter lock on time, so it was possible to continually disable a ship, then they might be useful. In my experience they just aren't good enough at what they're supposed to do.

I still use them on my T3 strikes because I like the looks of the missiles and I mainly use my T3 strikes against newer players, because I'm almost immortal against unupgraded ships and they have more time to react when I attack them.

 

That's for the T3 strike obviously. I can imagine EMP missiles synergizing well with interdiction missiles and BLC on a T3 gunship. Please, if you check your scenarios, post the results here.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Danalon

[Cyanothis]

Gunship walls are just frustrating, they're easy to put together and require a majority of players on the opposite team to know what they're doing in order to break them down.

The stupid thing is that, normally, people know its a dull way to play the game and yet they'll still do it and then whine that the match was boring - had this happen in a rep/rep match the other night.

 

The tactic is used because its easy to do and often means a win because its a good tactic to use against new pilots. Against a good opposition they're not as successful.

 

Personally I think GS has its place in the game as do bombers, though I loathe bombers beyond belief. I honestly think there is nothing worse for the game than a group of bombers, even worse laggy bombers that can't be killed because they hop around constantly making targeting in anything thats not a GS almost impossible.

 

EMP scouts - they're amusing but mostly just a fun ship to fly when its an easy match or for the Tensor start. That said we do have some success using them as a tag team for capping bomber heavy sats.

[Ardaneb]

I always use EMP on my T3 scout, because in most scenarios where I would lock one of the other missiles the ship is stripped of shields and/or one shot away from dead. When they first came out, I would use them in competitive matches and the disable ability did help kill intercepted bombers. However, there is no question that I am more effective in the T2 and T1 S2E scout than that build. In a competitive match, I have caused my team to lose by staying alive too long in that ship.

 

A charged plating bomber or ion rail gunship have so many uses beyond clearing the minefield. This is why EMP builds are not competitive. You can clear a satellite with an EMP missile, but these other weapons/ships have so much else to offer. I think you would have to be on Denon, on voice, running some sort of Tensor-fueled bomber blitz between satellites to make it worth while.

 

What we really need to talk about is how to buff the missile to make it much better at clearing mines than the other solutions. I would suggest 2 second lock and 10000 meter radius of effect. I am still not sure it would be worth giving up all those goodies in the other ships.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I always use EMP on my T3 scout, because in most scenarios where I would lock one of the other missiles the ship is stripped of shields and/or one shot away from dead. When they first came out, I would use them in competitive matches and the disable ability did help kill intercepted bombers. However, there is no question that I am more effective in the T2 and T1 S2E scout than that build. In a competitive match, I have caused my team to lose by staying alive too long in that ship.

 

A charged plating bomber or ion rail gunship have so many uses beyond clearing the minefield. This is why EMP builds are not competitive. You can clear a satellite with an EMP missile, but these other weapons/ships have so much else to offer. I think you would have to be on Denon, on voice, running some sort of Tensor-fueled bomber blitz between satellites to make it worth while.

 

What we really need to talk about is how to buff the missile to make it much better at clearing mines than the other solutions. I would suggest 2 second lock and 10000 meter radius of effect. I am still not sure it would be worth giving up all those goodies in the other ships.

 

I'd always felt they should've made EMP and Ion missile one thing. Now granted both are currently pretty weak but it might make them more powerful and have better utility if they had their effects combined. Those individual effects might need to be buffed further to achieve ion railgun like utility but overall I think the missiles would be in a better position.

[Bolo_Yeung]

I stream every night from midnight-3am Eastern, we've been playing on Harbinger mostly feel free to drop by anytime.

 

EST or EDT? Sorry, but timezones are confusing (By the way, please read my post (3rd one) in SSN thread about timezones ... would be really nice to add UTC time to all announcements ).

Edited August 31, 2015 by Bolo_Yeung

[Drakkolich]

EST or EDT? Sorry, but timezones are confusing (By the way, please read my post (3rd one) in SSN thread about timezones ... would be really nice to add UTC time to all announcements ).

 

I stream from 4am-7am Cordinated Universal Time (UTC)

 

Added the change in SSN thread.