Star Wars is dogfighting not sniping.

[arkanone]

It would be like a sniper with an extended 35M range being able to one-shot a gap closing Jugg.

 

Isn't it interesting that there are no classes that can one-shot kill in a PVP match under any circumstances? I'm pretty sure that's not by accident.

 

I was in a game a few hours ago where there may have been at most, 4 ships that were not gunships or bombers. Both sides literally spent the entire match sitting behind asteroids waiting for a strike/scout dumb enough to fly into their range.

[Archonitek]

Isn't it interesting that there are no classes that can one-shot kill in a PVP match under any circumstances? I'm pretty sure that's not by accident.

 

Its a huge stretch to compare gsf to ground game pvp since it's blatantly obvious that they are two completely different game modes. I would equate gsf to a 3rd person shooter than anything else.

 

I was in a game a few hours ago where there may have been at most, 4 ships that were not gunships or bombers. Both sides literally spent the entire match sitting behind asteroids waiting for a strike/scout dumb enough to fly into their range.

 

As the title says, many people trying to get into gsf have this idea of space battles from previous star wars media, be it the films or games, or even regular flight combat scenarios seen in other films and games. So when they come up against a ship that doesn't fit into this preconception that they have, not to mention that the ship has a relatively low skill floor, they immediately hate it and think that it isn't 'true to Star Wars'.

[Asbetos]

By the way... few weeks ago I was put on igorelist because I dared to switch to T1 GS in domination match... and I (according to that person) shouldn't since I don't like GS-heavy matches.

Funny thing? Thar person was flying T1 GS during the whole match

 

The difference between you and that person (I'm pretty sure I know who it is) is that he doesn't whine about how GSs are OP in every single post he makes on the forums.

[Vulta]

Would be nice if GSF was more about dog fighting, but it never has been and most likely never will be for the simple reason of there being Domination. Objective capping promotes camping and the gunship/bomber combo are best for that. The other issue is simply the gameplay style which doesn't really promote dog fighting, Battlefront may end up being better for that.

 

As for the old and eternal gunships being overpowered, they aren't, the issue with gunships comes about when there's a group of them or the opposing team is competent enough to keep you off them. Another issue is if you end up going against a premade with multiple Gunships toss in some bombers and you either have to play the same style, accept the loss or have a premade of your own. Though premades in general in any kind of pvp situation tends to screw the solo players.

 

Personal opinion: Gunships are a point and click adventure ship, haven't touched one since the beginning of GSF.

 

Interestingly since coming back to the game Bastion matches tend to not be too bad with the Gunship/bomber combos. It does happen but not as much as it used to, not as many premades if any that I've run across either which is always nice.

[Bolo_Yeung]

The difference between you and that person (I'm pretty sure I know who it is)

Nice that you admit it

 

is that he doesn't whine about how GSs are OP in every single post he makes on the forums.

Well, not 'whine' - unlilke someone and not 'every' (do you even know what this word means?...) He is saying that GS are ballanced, right?

 

Also, I really can't understand that thought process. Why complaining about OPed GS makes this class forbidden to me ( especially since two people GS were constantly shooting me with ion rail)?. Should I continue being a sniper target in this match?...

Quite the contrary - I have proven my point (that in GS - heavy matches the only way to play is to get into GS as well), by switching to T1 GS as well and frustrating those persons so heavily that one of them put me on ignore later

When I switched to GS, did that person got into 'a GS counter' ship and beat the *** out of me? Nope... still flying gunship. That says something as well.

 

Maybe on 'real ace' level the battlescout is more powerful. However, I have NEVER seen a team that switched to 'scout swarm' tactic, while GS walls are pretty common in TDM matches, and good GS pilots will dominate the Domination as well.

 

Well... to conclude. Since we can't expect changes in GSF, our discussion does not mater that much... the Galactic Starsniper will be GS-dominated. Either level up your own GS or train really hard with T1 and T2 scout and hunt'em. No guarantees you will succeed, but it will be a dynamic game for sude.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Bolo_Yeung

[Ardaneb]

Awesomely fun things to do in a scout:

Chase an ace through a substructure at full speed (faster than in the movies)

Be chased by a good pilot through a substructure at full speed

Get the drop on a group of four strikes/scouts that is focusing another player

Predict a top opponent's next target to gain superior position

Spot, intercept and attack on incoming bomber

Chase a scout/strike/bomber around a satellite while staying close enough to maintain cap and dodging/shooting mines

Escape a group of attackers while hugging cliffs/asteroids to LOS a gunship

Dropping in to kill a gunship in the middle of another dogfight (power dive special)

Using combinations of fake/real attacks and LOS to take out 2-3 gunships who are trying to protect each other

 

Less fun things to do in a scout:

Circle around other ships (especially when they circle you to enable a teammate)

Joust

Chase back and forth with a group of four scouts/strikes

Be shot by a gunship that you missed

Eliminate a gunship that is ignoring you

Face a stack of bombers with mines deployed

Remove a tick bomber

 

I think a lot of people would share my opinion of the fun list, though many are not yet at the level to do some of those things. Some people may like things on the bottom list (e.g. jousting). Anyway, bombers put down obstacles and gunships require fast transit to LOS, which add a lot to the challenge and make the dogfights with other ships much more interesting.

 

The real problem is that there are a lot of players who are at the beginner/intermediate skill level. At that skill level, the gunship and the bomber are clearly more powerful. Those players do not have access to all the fun on the top list. They feel forced to fly a ship that is less fun for them. I am not sure what the solution is. Clearly strikes and the starter scout should be buffed, but that is only likely to help, not solve, the problem. It takes a long time to be able to start doing the more advanced maneuvers. The most fun stuff is really hard.

 

I do encourage players to stick with it, though, because it is truly awesome. You will not fear random gunships. I promise. Stacked bombers, on the other hand .... that's why we need the gunships.

[caederon]

I've seen scout swarms, and if I solo queue into a mediocre team, that is the last thing I want to see against me because it guarantees that if I'm in T1gs, I'll be running around way too much to keep my team in the match. Two competent / good scout pilots can nullify an elite gunship.

 

I had a TDM match on Shadowlands a couple days ago where the other team looked like they were in for some trouble, so despite the fact that they were running three or four gunships and a bomber, I went with T2 scout (about halfway mastered). I wanted to see if the inexperienced gunship pilots could deal with it. Here's the scoreboard. I can name a bunch of other scout pilots that would have produced similar or better results. The other team's gunship & bomber configuration did not enable them to rack up an easy win.

 

Against good players, you need good teammates and teamwork, or you will probably lose regardless of strategy.

 

Despon

Edited August 19, 2015 by caederon

[Bolo_Yeung]

Looking by the scoreboard, the enemy team wasn't too good... and looks also like you had ion rail GS support as well. Sure, good scout pilot will rip the mediocre GS apart, but I am talking about games with same pilot skill level...

 

Checked my TDM from last week - 40 games, didnt see any 50%+battlescouts, 17 games with one team that had 50%+ GS (and 11 with 1 team had 3/8 or 5/12 GS; didn't count my T3 because it's a double missile build). Dunno, maybe on Red Eclipse it looks different, what server areyou playing on?

[caederon]

Looking by the scoreboard, the enemy team wasn't too good... and looks also like you had ion rail GS support as well. Sure, good scout pilot will rip the mediocre GS apart, but I am talking about games with same pilot skill level...

(stuff)

Dunno, maybe on Red Eclipse it looks different, what server areyou playing on?

I play Shadowlands and Harbinger most of the time lately, though I've played extensively on a lot of servers. Different servers do tend to have different flavors.

 

In that particular match, Xmar was T2 bomber and Blanqui might have been a gs on my team. My point is more that the other team had fielded many gunships, and yet they did not automatically win because of that. Well piloted scouts are very hard for gunships to handle.

 

I'm sure that if we graphed the curves of pilot effectiveness vs. games played for all ships, it doesn't all map to straight lines, so some classes will have advantages at different points on the graph. I don't think that is reflective of any overall class balance issue. Finding ways to help inexperienced players is always good, though.

 

Despon

[Lavaar]

I played a game a few days ago and piklez was also in the match and did very poorly. I talked to him/her a little bit after and said to keep at it, I can't remember what I said to be honest, may have suggested joining the gsf channel as well. All I am saying from looking at your screenshot despon is that I am glad to see a newer player improving so quickly on the shadowlands, it warms my heart.

[Bolo_Yeung]

Still, a GS pilots of good skill would spread a little and snipe down your scout as a main danger. Also, if a T2 bomber got so many assists, that says something about their skill as well.

 

Sigh... too bad that with 350+ latency playing scout is a pain, there are some ace pilots on harb that I love jousting with...

[sartt]

Star Wars was all about dog fighting, not sniping. So why are gunships so overpowered?

I agree with you, gunships need to be removed, or nerfed to 8000km range on the rail guns and need to have their engine ability removed

[sartt]

Hi Reghas I just wanted to clear up a few things you wrote that were incorrect.

 

 

 

 

Many players that post often here agree with Despons even while they don't main Gunships.

I mean there's a perfect example in this thread. Tommsunb posted he agrees with him and he plays like 99% only Scout. I myself also agree with him and play every single ship in the game.

 

 

 

 

While your statement is kind of correct that a Scout can get one shot by a Gunship it does take some real effort on the part of the Scout to make that happen.

 

Here is the math I posted on One shots from another thread.

 

A Gunship can do a maximum of 2400 Damage with one shot, it is a 16% chance critical hit with Slug Railgun.

 

Minimum health values on all Ships are as follows:

 

Blackbolt and Sting: 910 Shield + 950 Hull = 1860

Bloodmark: 1040 Shield + 950 Hull = 1990

Mangler and Jurgoran: 1360 Shield + 1250 Hull = 2610

Dustmaker: 1700 Shield + 1250 Hull = 2950

Rycer and Quell: 1260 Shield + 1450 Hull = 2710

Imperium: 1440 Shield + 1450 Hull = 2890

Razorwire and Legion: 1200 Shield + 2000 Hull = 3200

Decimus: 1500 Shield + 2000 Hull = 3500

 

These are the absolute minimum amounts of health you can have on one side of each ship. All these numbers are with no upgrades and without using crew to help bolster them. In no way can you get lower health totals then these.

 

As you can see only Scouts can be one shot by a Gunship and only on a 16% chance critical hit.

 

Incase anyone out there is interested here are the maximum totals of health each ship can get.

 

Blackbolt: 1755 Shield + 1140 Hull = 2895

Sting: 1820 Shield + 1140 Hull = 2960

Bloodmark: 1690 Shield + 1140 Hull = 2830

Mangler: 2210 Shield + 1500 Hull = 3710

Dustmaker and Jurgoran: 2380 Shield + 1250 Hull = 3630

Rycer: 3060 Shield + 1450 Hull = 4510

Quell: 2700 Shield + 1740 Hull = 4440

Imperium: 3060 Shield + 1740 Hull = 4800

Razorwire and Legion: 2925 Shield + 2400 Hull = 5325

Decimus: 2925 Shield + 2000 Hull = 4925

 

With proper upgrades if one wanted no ship in the game can be one shot by a Gunship ever, even the paper thin scouts. The Bombers can even take 2 full critical shots on the same arc and still survive.

 

 

 

 

 

So again you are right Evasion is indeed the best defense vs Railguns and is it ever good vs them. However you go on to talk about how when a Gunships isn't targeting you specifically there is no way to tell that he is going to shoot you. This is false, there is a great way to be able to tell that just look at the direction the Gunship is facing in your targeting computer, if he is facing you it's time to get out of range or line of sight or use defensive cooldowns.

 

As for getting past a team of Gunships that is using Voice communication no single player should ever be able to beat multiple coordinated players that's just common sense. 4 Coordinated Evasion Scouts vs 4 Coordinated Gunships absolutely murder the Gunships.

 

 

 

As a final thought I found it really funny that in your post saying that Gunships were too powerful you also mention you want to nerf all 3 of the top meta classes. I know you wanted to nerf key components I just found it funny.

Only you ignore how there are always 4+ gunships on the enemy team. all stacked next to each other.

[caederon]

Only you ignore how there are always 4+ gunships on the enemy team. all stacked next to each other.

That's really awesome how you respond to detailed, in-depth posts with anecdotal one liners. Really helps prove the point!

 

If they are stacking 4+ gunships, you are on a bad (or charitably, 'inexperienced' ) team. You are on a team that would lose to anything flown by the players that are destroying you. The problem is not with the gunships, the problem is with your team's skill level. You should not be playing against people capable of laying waste to you with that configuration.

 

Here is my very serious suggestion: go play on a server where there are fewer veterans. POT5 seems like a good choice for this, or possibly Begeren Colony. You will encounter fewer situations where the enemy team is skilled enough to overwhelm inexperienced teams based solely on ship choice.

 

Despon

[Drakkolich]

Only you ignore how there are always 4+ gunships on the enemy team. all stacked next to each other.

 

How exactly did I ignore that? The math is on if a ship is one shotable. If they have 4 Gunships you have 4 times the health. Last time I checked other then fringe cases both sides had the same amount of players.

 

If you mean 4 players firing at the same time on one player that still isn't a one shot. That's good team coordination and is how you play team games effectively.

[DakhathKilrathi]

I agree with you, gunships need to be removed, or nerfed to 8000km range on the rail guns and need to have their engine ability removed

 

Yes, let's remove the one thing a gunship is good for: range. They don't need a nerf. Try playing one for a couple days and see how easy it is for you to die. It really only takes one or two scouts (depending on how good they are) to shut you down as it is. Nerfing them would only make them useless.

 

But that's probably what you want.

[Ardaneb]

It always seems to me that the gunship banning proponents are referencing TDM Lost Shipyards. That is the map that favors gunships. No one good would clump 4 gunships on a satellite instead of putting at least some bombers there. Good teams will often clump 4 gunships in TDM Kuat Mesas but there is plenty of LOS to work with, allowing all kinds of possibilities (i.e. fun). Really it is the TDM Lost Shipyards map that is favorable to gunships. I would argue that optimal starting composition might even be 5 gunships, 2 bombers, 1 scout on that map.

 

Let's ban the TDM shipyards map. No, I have a better idea. Why don't we let the gunships have their map? It really is not that big of a problem for gunships to have one map out of five.

[JediBoadicea]

Here is my very serious suggestion: go play on a server where there are fewer veterans. POT5 seems like a good choice for this, or possibly Begeren Colony. You will encounter fewer situations where the enemy team is skilled enough to overwhelm inexperienced teams based solely on ship choice.

 

I can't speak to POT5, but Begeren Colony these days might not be the best choice. We have a fairly large crop of intermediate skill level pilots on Begeren who have taken to heavily favoring 4-5 gunships in a match, so a player who is having a difficult time learning gunship hunting might be equally frustrated there.

 

Like many others who have posted here, I also agree that gunships don't need to be nerfed. I am usually extremely leery of phrasing things in a way that could come across as condescending, so I will preface the following statement by saying I mean it with only positive vibes and good intentions: If you feel very passionately that gunships are OP and cannot be countered, then what is needed to improve your experience of the game is more practice, and perhaps some key tips from players who have been at it longer. This has been repeated countless times here on the forum; I promise it's true, and we're not just saying it to hear ourselves talk.

 

As an example, one of my guildies who only started playing GSF in the last couple months was beginning to feel the Gunship Hate very strongly. But one night in voice chat a couple of us who were more experienced gave him some key gunship hunting tips (watch their facing in the HUD; approach from a flank; don't warn them with a missile lock) and very quickly he came to realize how easy gunships are to destroy. Rather than coming around to Gunship Love he has come around to Love Killing Gunships - but the important thing is that he realized they were not an undefeatable super class of ship, and his love of the game was able to continue.

 

A while ago there was a thread somewhere on here where someone made an interesting post about the skill floor and skill ceilings of the various ships. I really liked that analysis, and thought it was pretty spot on. In their opinion gunships had a fairly low skill floor, which was why they can be so popular with less experienced players. (A high skill ceiling as well, if memory serves, and which I would agree with, but for this point it's the skill floor I'm thinking of.) I think that's very true. I know that when I first started playing, right in the first hours and days of early access, I couldn't feel comfortable in scouts because they were "too sensitive," I didn't feel competent in strikes because missile locks were "too hard," and so it ended up being the gunship that I felt competent in and on which I learned the piloting basics because it was more friendly to the learning curve. With more experience I branched out, and now consider myself more than competent with all ship classes, with the scout (high skill floor, high skill ceiling) finally becoming my favorite ship to fly once my skill level had caught up.

 

But I've noticed an interesting trend lately, wherein a lot of intermediate level pilots who should have more than enough experience to have branched out by now still seem to be sticking pretty exclusively to gunships. I don't subscribe to the Gunship Hate, but if there were a Gunship Annoyance spectrum I think that's where I would fall these days, only because the gunship stacking does seem to have become much more prevalent... at least on Begeren Colony, where I predominately fly. (Although I've seen it other servers as well.) I can't quite figure out why you would stick to gunships so religiously. Veteran pilots will stomp you, but maybe it's because veteran pilots are a shrinking number? Perhaps it really is just the thrill of decimating newbie teams.

 

But maybe they're sticking to gunships because more and more people seem to be throwing their hands up in disgust without learning how to counter them, and as a consequence they are going unchallenged? Because I am pretty surprised by how many players don't seem to have figured out how to counter gunship stacking. I can't help feeling that Gunship Hate is a little like a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more people stew in the hate and the thought that gunships are OP, the less likely they are to tackle learning the tactics that can actually take gunships down. I've seen whole teams self-defeat just by starting a match by expressing: "Oh noes look at all those gunships! Guys, don't go out there, stay on our side of the map and make them come to us! It's not safe out there!!!!" I'm usually too busy hurling myself repeatedly into unsupported certain death in those matches to type a reply in Ops chat, but I wish anxious players could be more easily convinced that you are 100% more likely to be sniped as soon as you peek your ship's nose around an asteroid if the whole team has hung back and just let the enemy gunships set up a firing line.

 

Aside from taking advice on gunship hunting tactics, I would actually suggest that those players who really hate gunships devote some time to flying gunships for a while. Flying a gunship will be the best possible lesson in learning their vulnerabilities; just looking at their components does not give you the full picture of how they operate in the field. I think most gunship pilots would point out that a gunship has a lot of vulnerabilities and can be pretty easily neutralized if not outright destroyed. I've seen very, very few gunship pilots who can regularly evade a determined (and otherwise unharried by teammates) hunter, and those pilots are likely to be skilled in every ship they fly so it isn't in any way tied to the nature of the gunship.

 

But don't try learning gunship vulnerabilities by flying a gunship on a team that's already stacking gunships against a two-shipper enemy. You won't learn anything joining the invincible firing line. Unless maybe you see some veteran names on the opposing team. One or two matches where you let yourself get pummeled in a gunship by veteran pilots may teach you quite a lot about the ways to destroy gunships.

 

I'll close this already rambling post with an anecdote of a funny (at least to me) match that popped up a week or two ago. I was flying with a friend, both of us with a lot of GSF experience. We got into a TDM match where the opposing team was comprised mostly of the usual suspects who lean heavily on gunships; right at the start they queued up five gunships. I was also in a gunship, trying to get the last req for my last Pub side ship mastery (gunships having been at the bottom of that list since I don't fly them as much these days). Soon it became obvious, as our teammates started dropping around us, that many of them were respawning in gunships of their own. Very quickly my wingman and I decided it would be humorous to try to point out how absurd a match could become if the game's inherent ship balance were upended and the only thing everyone flew was "OP" gunships. He spawned in his gunship, I stuck in mine, and by the end of the 8v8 match the team makeup was 6 GS on one side vs 7 GS on the other.

 

And it ended up being the slowest, most static, most ridiculously tedious match I've ever played. It went to time, with the winning score hovering only somewhere in the late thirties if memory serves.

 

My wingman and I had a good chuckle, but I can only hope that some of the other players in that match came to realize how ludicrous things look if you assume that "OP" gunships are all you need to win a match.

Edited August 20, 2015 by JediBoadicea

[sartt]

Yes, let's remove the one thing a gunship is good for: range. They don't need a nerf. Try playing one for a couple days and see how easy it is for you to die. It really only takes one or two scouts (depending on how good they are) to shut you down as it is. Nerfing them would only make them useless.

 

But that's probably what you want.

 

YAH BrUh CUZ 15 KM+ RANGE IS BALANCED.

 

****

[Archonitek]

YAH BrUh CUZ 15 KM+ RANGE IS BALANCED.

 

****

 

Well, how is 8km range balanced then? Is it just an arbitrary number you whipped out or is there actual reasoning behind it?

[Danalon]

YAH BrUh CUZ 15 KM+ RANGE IS BALANCED.

 

****

 

It is. Railguns need to be charged which uses an high amount of energy per damage before shooting, forces the gunship to stand still and also marks the gunship with a huge glowing cloud.

 

Please stop trolling now.

[ShallowHal]

Star Wars was all about dog fighting, not sniping. So why are gunships so overpowered?

 

What was the Death Star if not the ultimate gunship?

[Bolo_Yeung]

How much Death Stars existed in SW universe? 2 in movies, 3 (+1 superlaser) in EU... thats roughly the amount of gunships in average match...

[Crazy-Wolf]

YAH BrUh CUZ 15 KM+ RANGE IS BALANCED.

 

****

 

To be honest, I am more scared of an approaching Sting/Flash with BLCs than a gunship sitting still 15km away.

 

It has been repeated countless times on these forums, so I'll keep my response a little short.

 

A gunship is dangerous, IF...hear me out...IF it is left alone. As soon as you charge it, he has to bail. When he bails, he can't use his main weapon. You helped your team by occupying a dangerous opponent. And now the kicker: You can do that in a stock Novadive or Blackbolt. You probably won't kill him, but you will prevent him from climbing up the killboard....mission accomplished.

 

If you die, and you will, respawn, find him and chase him again. Make it your personal goal of your matches to chase a gs and survive as long as you can. The more experienced you get, the longer you will survive, the more you will be able to kill him. Promise.

 

Now to the 4 gs scenario: If you are the only scout to chase a gs and you get killed by the other 3 constantly while your team mates are trying to figure out how to retract their landing gear, than this is not a balance issue, this is a case of lack of teamplay and/or lack of experience. And everyone has been down that road, believe me.

 

And finally: If you are flying against 4 scouts with BLCs, you will be dead as fast as if targeted by 4 slugs simultanously.

 

That is coming from someone who rode the "F***-all-GS-nobrain00rz"-Train when he started GSF a year ago. Until I made it my personal goal to focus them down. I still die a lot, but every kill is satisfying and not nearly as impossible to achieve, as a lot of mostly new players want to make everyone believe.

 

Well...not as short as I wanted but maybe it helps to lower your frustration level.

 

 

Crazy

[OKonst]

YAH BrUh CUZ 15 KM+ RANGE IS BALANCED.****

 

Just ignore this helpless troll. He's apparently been going on raging against gunships for over a year now, yet hasn't improved himself enough in all that time so he just continues raging.

Looking at his post history, he also likes complaining about how his beloved class s****s at ground pvp.

 

Interestingly enough, he posted some time ago in another thread that he plays GSF because he likes "blowing up gunship noobs".

So the question now really is: CAN he beat gunships or CAN'T he? Seems kinda contradictory here, but honestly who cares.

 

Back to normality, gunships can be beaten - just don't think you can beat an entire enemy team on your own.

Edited August 21, 2015 by OKonst