Let's talk about the Comet Breaker/Dustmaker

[Lavaar]

This ship needs a little love, and we all know it.

 

While it can be useful under certain circumstances, the reality is that it is inferior to both of the other gunships in both the types of weapons it can bring to battle, the strategies it can execute, as well as its survivability in both long range as well as close quarter battles.

 

How can it be fixed?

 

My suggestion is to turn this ship into something unique, and allow it to carve out its own niche in the meta. Give it something new and different, such as a teleportation option (think phase walk) or give it access to mines to enable it to hold its ground in short range fights and help secure nodes. Even a simple buff to the way plasma railgun performs could allow it to be competitive.

 

I hope to see this ship, along with the strikes, become competitive and allow for more diverse strategies to form moving forward.

[ALaggyGrunt]

The phase walk sounds a lot more interesting than plasma rail.

 

The other thing the Comet Breaker doesn't have are BLC and distortion field. Broken Laser Cannon are nice, but the one which really lets things survive under pressure is distortion field. The lack of BLC is what makes this gunship not-META: once any scout is under its guns, it's even more helpless than the T1 because both of its primaries have serious tracking penalty issues.

 

Buffing plasma rail (or putting a hard choice at slug rail tier 4) is good because we would actually see the component used more, but the T1 also has this weapon.

Edited September 8, 2015 by ALaggyGrunt

[Gavin_Kelvar]

This ship needs a little love, and we all know it.

 

While it can be useful under certain circumstances, the reality is that it is inferior to both of the other gunships in both the types of weapons it can bring to battle, the strategies it can execute, as well as its survivability in both long range as well as close quarter battles.

 

How can it be fixed?

 

My suggestion is to turn this ship into something unique, and allow it to carve out its own niche in the meta. Give it something new and different, such as a teleportation option (think phase walk) or give it access to mines to enable it to hold its ground in short range fights and help secure nodes. Even a simple buff to the way plasma railgun performs could allow it to be competitive.

 

I hope to see this ship, along with the strikes, become competitive and allow for more diverse strategies to form moving forward.

 

Well part of its problems certainly overlap with strikes. Namely, torps are too unreliable. So for both ships sakes torps need buffs to lock-on, reload, and fire arc (arc primarily to overcome ninja lock loss).

 

As for railguns I've pondered the idea making slug the AP weapon and plasma the anti-evasion weapon (or visa versa). Either way I think if you shook it up so each had their specific ideal target to use against it'd make each railgun have a clear purpose. I kinda get the feeling that plasma never carved out it's own place because slug has both superior AP (100% on first shot to 0% on the first shot and 20% on the second shot with plasma) and against evasive targets (T4 buff to accuracy and tracking on first shot to T4 10% evasion debuff for the second shot). Overall maybe a good direction would be to give plasma superior base accuracy and tracking compared to slug using the T4 T4 upgrade (if it's to be the anti-evasion weapon) where you could keep the two T4 debuffs as benefits (either to make it even more useful against evasion stacking targets or have some AP ability). You're not nerfing slug to allow plasma to have a place, just buffing plasma so it's clearly a better choice for taking on evasive targets. That'd both make the T2's railgun options appealing as well as actually presenting T1s with a meaningful railgun choice which might shake up the meta.

 

It'd probably be best to make plasma function like ion so far as damage and debuffs are concerned too.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Gavin_Kelvar

[Ardaneb]

There is a low chance that we get anything more than component buffs or possibly a rearrangement of a tree.

 

Proposal:

Plasma Rail:

1. nerf damage to 1000

2. reduce base tracking penalty to 2%

3. increase evasion debuff to 40%

4. increase armor debuff to 50% (charged plating now susceptible to mines)

5. switch crit boost with armor debuff, so that the armor debuff is always in the tree

 

Fortress shield:

1. nerf duration to 5 seconds (10 seconds with tier 3 upgrade)

2. change cooldown to 10 seconds (5 seconds after tier one upgrade)

 

Good gunships tend to behave one of two ways under pressure. Either they turn and shoot you (bursts), or they start stop and keep supporting their teammates. I think that having this build with a short Fortress shield would support the start/stop/support much better, in a way that has not been possible since the barrel roll nerf.

[caederon]

I can already hear the cries of NERF TELEPORTING GUNSHIPS ringing in my head.

 

The T2 gs is lousy at close range, has bad shield options, and little utility. Torpedoes as secondary weapons are pretty poor overall and don't really have any synergy with railguns. In fact, none of the T2 gs components really work well with any of the other ones.

 

Giving Plasma Railgun a viable place in competitive play could be the defining thing that the T2 gs lacks. If, somehow, plasma rail and Fortress Shield were both better, and both were removed from the T1 gs, it might give the T2 gs a niche. Plasma Railgun would need more intense debuffs and more accuracy, or maybe an AoE effect, to be worthwhile. Fortress Shield probably needs to be stronger in all ways to be competitive.

 

* I like Paloga's idea for Plasma Rail to have a heavy Evasion debuff.

 

Despon

 

Despon

Edited September 8, 2015 by caederon

[Lendul]

Comet Breaker = what Gunships should have been from the beginning.

 

Imagine this meta and tell me it would not be better. With only these 4 ships.

 

Gunship = Comet Breaker

 

Bomber = War Carrier

 

Scout = Spear Point

 

Strike Fighter = Clarion with TT and BO as systems and clusters

Edited September 8, 2015 by Lendul

[Ardaneb]

Imagine this meta and tell me it would not be better. With only these 4 ships.

 

Uhhh, this would be a gunship/bomber ball, for sure. Only top players can solo kill a decent player with type 3 scout or type 3 strike. Everyone can use a drone carrier and almost everyone can use a slug railgun. At least 15 seeker mines in a great big pile of drones would be present in every match. Ion railgun AOE is the best way to clear a TDM minefield and keep premades from flying in too close of formation. It is needed. Plus, TTK for a bomber would be too slow in domination. Satellites would be so hard to turn. The game would be much worse off. I think that buffing weak components is the best answer for the weaker ships and could probably alter the meta dramatically.

 

Back on topic: no amount of buffing the torpedos is going to make them competitive on a gunship. However, if you buff the plasma rail and the non-distortion shields enough, it might be worth having two gunships on the bar.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Ardaneb

[RAZIM]

Change it into a support/resupply ship. It wouldn't be a heavy combat role but it'd be useful when deploying a force and keeping it mobile.

 

Example : Instead of an additional weapon and torpedoes, it could have a systems slot with an energy transfer array (weapon power transfer) or an automated resupply probe bay (ammo resupply). Maybe it'd require the pilot to divert engine power into replenishing its stockpiles so there's a bit more gameplay than it just being a drone.

 

It could be a consistent weapon resupply option (without the hull healing of a repair drone)....or a battery for a gunship nest.

Edited September 8, 2015 by RAZIM

[Nemarus]

While I fully agree that the Dustmaker is sub-optimal, the fact that it has a Slug Railgun already puts it ahead of the entire Strike class.

 

Honestly, I think the Dustmaker should just be ignored for the time being. Strikes have to be the focus of any meager development time GSF gets. Besides, depending on how the devs approach buffing Strikes, some of those buffs may carry over to the Dustmaker by default.

 

For (completely hypothetical) example, what if Proton Torpedoes were buffed to be undodgeable? As in, once locked and fired, that lock cannot be broken. Such a change would immediately provide a compelling reason to consider a Dustmaker over either other Gunship.

 

The Dustmaker is indeed a black eye on the design of the game, because it feels like it was designed by a random number generator instead of anyone who had actually played the game. But in terms of how much it actually detracts from GSF? I don't think it does very much. It's not a starter ship, so not many newbs stumble into it by accident. It has a price of entry of either real money or 5000 fleet requisition. That alone keeps many players away from it.

 

And even those few who do wander into it still end up with a Slug Railgun, which gives them a base level of damaging power.

 

Compare this with a Star Guard, which everyone starts with and which is supposed to represent the popular and iconic X-wing fighter, yet which comes with a completely inept starter build and has only one or two possible competent (but not competitive) builds.

 

I hate to derail a conversation, but talking about the Dustmaker while Strikes are busted seems like a wasteful distraction.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Nemarus

[caederon]

I hate to derail a conversation, but talking about the Dustmaker while Strikes are busted seems like a wasteful distraction.

I'm pretty sure that the strike issue has been soundly saturated from any and all angles during the 636 replies to the strike thread. And that the devs probably read roughly the first ten of those and went back to having pina coladas on the deck of the starship SWTitanicOR. And that the devs will not be distracted by by something there is zero chance of them reading.

 

Any efforts to apply imaginary de-crapification measures to the T2 gunship, which has been and will continue to be ignored, aren't going to hurt anyone aside from the sad kittens who cry every time an ion bolt splashes.

 

Despon

Edited September 8, 2015 by caederon

[RickDagles]

Comet Breaker = what Gunships should have been from the beginning.

 

Imagine this meta and tell me it would not be better. With only these 4 ships.

 

Gunship = Comet Breaker

 

Bomber = War Carrier

 

Scout = Spear Point

 

Strike Fighter = Clarion with TT and BO as systems and clusters

 

 

This would be really cool with the exception of 1 major problem -- Warcarrier seeker mine/drone spam would likely dominate without the availability of ion AoE splash. I think you'd have to ditch the Warcarrier and allow the Sledgehammer instead.

[ALaggyGrunt]

This would be really cool with the exception of 1 major problem -- Warcarrier seeker mine/drone spam would likely dominate without the availability of ion AoE splash. I think you'd have to ditch the Warcarrier and allow the Sledgehammer instead.

 

We get back to the strikes issues with torpedoes and pdie, and how a bomber can just LoS every big missile you want to hit it with.

[SWCNT]

If the dustmaker/comet breaker had access to mines as a secondary weapon that would be unique. Imagine a Slug Railgun GS that can lay it's own seeker mines or seismic mines. I'd like to play that kind of ship, especially if it had seismic mines because those are rough to kill for a burst scout. It would be nice to have for matches when your teammates aren't giving you peels. Like the condor's ability to dogfight scouts reasonably well, the Dustmaker would be able to provide it's own peels, thus making it a useful addition to the game.

 

And that the devs probably read roughly the first ten of those and went back to having pina coladas on the deck of the starship SWTitanicOR. And that the devs will not be distracted by by something there is zero chance of them reading.

Despon

 

Pina coladas? I'm not sure about that, they strike me more like those kinds of guys that love microbreweries. Not necessarily because the beer is good, but more because they are suppose to like it because it's trendy and cool. I imagine them trying out different kinds and saying things like "oak with earthy overtones," and at the end of the day everything is compared to the beer meter stick that is Rogue Brewery--that was their first taste of handcrafted beers that one night in college when someone went to the "good" beer store.

Edited September 9, 2015 by SWCNT

[RickDagles]

I like the idea of the T2 GS being able to drop a mine, but I think this might be too annoying for Scouts to fight. GS/bomber ball with no team support would be super annoying to fight. How about giving the T2 a different version of Combat Command that only works on secondaries? Maybe just a 10% accuracy boost to any ship within 5000m. It might be a little OP when combined with Wingman though.

 

I think if you're going to give gunships any sort of boost (whether it be mines or new team buffs or plasma actually being anti evasion), you'll probably need to give Scouts something new too (+3% passive evasion buff or +10% hp...etc).

Edited September 9, 2015 by RickDagles

[SWCNT]

I like the idea of the T2 GS being able to drop a mine, but I think this might be too annoying for Scouts to fight. GS/bomber ball with no team support would be super annoying to fight. How about giving the T2 a different version of Combat Command that only works on secondaries? Maybe just a 10% accuracy boost to any ship within 5000m. It might be a little OP when combined with Wingman though.

 

I think if you're going to give gunships any sort of boost (whether it be mines or new team buffs or plasma actually being anti evasion), you'll probably need to give Scouts something new too (+3% passive evasion buff or +10% hp...etc).

 

It would only be annoying for burst scouts, a quads and pods scout would have an easier time dealing with mines esp if using range capacitor. It's not that much different to what you can do with a t3 bomber if you run HLC, concussion mines and protons. I think you're right that a modified CC with WM would be OP. What if there was a systems ability called combat defense that boosts evasion along with a range boost on primary? I like the idea of a railgun temporarily having something like 15500 meters, that would add some spice to the typical sniper wars.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I think if you're going to give gunships any sort of boost (whether it be mines or new team buffs or plasma actually being anti evasion), you'll probably need to give Scouts something new too (+3% passive evasion buff or +10% hp...etc).

 

Honestly they definitely shouldn't get more evasion regardless of whether any GS gets buffed. It had to be nerfed for a reason. And I kinda like the idea of there being an anti-scout GS. It might make things interesting when combined with a strike buff where you might want to pull out a strike because it's better equipped to handle that model of GS (no ion rail or DField). This assumes of course that the strike buff will come with a badly needed mobility boost but it'd be a real interesting meta change if scouts were only counters to some GS but other GS were better countered by strikers.

[Nemarus]

I don't think giving it real mines or drones is the way to go. The only thing that keeps Bombergunballs from being ridiculous is that you at least need two different ships to do it. It's one of the few places in the game where a formation of two different classes is superior to a formation of the same class stacked.

 

If Dustmakers could perform both roles, they would stack way too well with themselves.

 

I do like the idea of making the Dustmaker a support ship though. Perhaps give it only one Secondary Weapon and make its #1 a System slot with choice of:

 

Repair Probes

Booster Recharge

Ion Mine

 

Changing nothing else but that would make for a very interesting ship, which could spin any of three different ways depending on your System choice. Repair Probes let you support allies while fulfilling sentry/defense duties. Booster Recharge gives you superior range to all the other Gunships, allowing you to get to advantageous positions quickly, or to outrun pursuers. Ion Mine lets you set up a defensive field to protect yourself, but of only limited effectiveness. Mainly it drains the shield, weapon and engine power of Scouts who want to chase you--plus if you Barrel Roll away and turn, they might be highly susceptible to a killing Slug shot. At the very least, your allies will be able to capitalize. Plus the red spheres of the Ion Mine will at least be a deterrent to many Scouts.

 

On any other Gunship, these System abilities would be grossly overpowered. But because the Dustmaker is so gimp in every other respect, the build is overall kept in check.

 

I even think you could give the Dustmaker access to the Ion Railgun--with only one secondary weapon, it couldn't combine it with Slug Railgun.

 

I've always thought that having to choose between Ion Railgun and Slug Railgun would create really interesting gameplay and team makeups. Forcing the Quarrel to make such a choice might be too hardcore a nerf. But if you forced Dustmaker to make the choice between Slug and Ion ... but in consolation gave it one of the three above Systems, I think there would certainly be a contingent of players who made the Dustmaker their own.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Nemarus

[Lavaar]

I like the Nem's idea of giving it many types of systems abilities by trading away it's (useless) secondary weapon slot. Ion mine could be very useful, however, I think we all agree that ion mine may need a slight buff in order to make it a viable choice over repairs and booster recharge. I envision this gunship fitting into a role that is reminiscent of the clarion in the strike fighter lineup. Any thoughts on giving this gunship charged plating as a shield option, along with a minor component armor slot? Edited September 10, 2015 by Lavaar

[btbarrett]

I feel like giving a GS charged playing would just reinforce the current meta. T2 scouts with BLCs would be the only viable scout choice and it would further emphasize the uselessness of Plasma Railgun. Strikes would be even less competent against GS's. No, I think we want to keep charged plating off of GSs.

 

Edit: I think the T2 is just a lost cause. It is the only GS w/o a Thruster component AND it lacks Power Dive making it the least mobile GS. It is the most undergunned, with its lack of Ion Rail or viable missile options AND its stupid choice of primary weapons. To top it all off it lacks DF. That is a lot of problems to have and why the ship utterly sucks. I am not sure that it is fixable with a tweak here or there (although I do like the Booster Recharge/Repair Probe idea).

Edited September 10, 2015 by btbarrett

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I feel like giving a GS charged playing would just reinforce the current meta. T2 scouts with BLCs would be the only viable scout choice and it would further emphasize the uselessness of Plasma Railgun. Strikes would be even less competent against GS's. No, I think we want to keep charged plating off of GSs

 

arguably strikers would be even more competent against a charged plating GS (especially if it wasn't running ion railguns). There wouldn't be DField to provide two missile breaks so a strike would be able to pressure the GS with missiles better. With HLC and/or thermites strikers would be able to cope with the CP just fine. Strikers are pretty well equipped to deal with CP on paper, their tools just need some tweaking to meet their true potential (namely HLCs being more bursty and torps being more user friendly with a firing arc increase, lock-on decrease, and reload decrease). If you gave me the option as a strike pilot between fighting an ion rail, DField GS or a no-ion-rail CP GS I'd take the CP GS every single time.

 

It might make the T2 scout the only viable scout option against that GS but, assuming the strike buff is done right, it would make strikers are more compelling option for GS hunting. Personally, I'd like to see a meta where the T2 GS has CP, strikers have gotten a buff to be meta competitive, and a nerf (or removal) of BLC AP. You'd have some real interesting dynamics where you might choose the CP GS to counter a scout heavy team in turn leading to more fielding of strikers to counter the CP GS.

[RAZIM]

Another crazy support idea. Create a new hybrid healing/DoT rail option for that model. The rail could be used to HoT or DoT long range targets, based on their friend or foe status. The damage falloff could be harsher for partial charges, to incentivize repairs.

 

Rail Example:

Czerka Nano-mech Railgun Deployment System

After recovering some of their research on Rakata technology from Tatooine, Czerka has finally perfected a long-range delivery system for programmable nano-droids. The droids can be set to repair or damage space vessels in the fiercest battles. **Warning** Enable friend or foe electro-kinetic dampening systems before trying to repair friendly targets.

 

An active mechanic/healer could be interesting and help new squads. Just an idea anyway.

[btbarrett]

Unfortunately, you can target friendlies so this would probably require more work than they will dedicate to GSF (ie SOME).

[Crazy-Wolf]

Hm...why not make the plasma railgun shieldignoring?

 

Hear me out....

 

 

You take away the DOT component, make it exclusive for the said gunship.

 

Possible T1 upgrade: 10% reduced charge time

Possible T2 upgrade: lesser weaponenergy drain

Possible T3 upgrade: crit chance increased by 8%

Possible T4 and T5 upgrades: Range increase, increased hulldamage, maybe a dot component but not as strong as currently, melted armor for 6 seconds.....

 

 

Defenses agaiinst it:

 

Scouts still have their evasion and since it lacks an accuracy buff, not much would change. Except, IF they hit, it's bad news.....like with every other railgun.

 

Bombers and strikes have armored plating, since it lacks an armor penetration skill.

 

Gunships: They have to rely on their passives, yet every gs would have the offensive potential to contest the Dustmaker/Cometbbreaker. Mangler and Jurgoran have BLCs and Slug, both with 100% armor penetration and the opposing dustmaker would have a plasma with shield ignorance.

 

 

And on the pro side for the gunship, plasma and proton combo would make sense.

 

The main problem I see, is when you take those up against new players, but then, you can rolfstomp new players with about every ship out there.

 

Ah hell...just thinking loudly ^^

 

Don't mind me.

 

Crazy

Edited September 13, 2015 by Crazy-Wolf

[Ramalina]

The Dustmaker is indeed a black eye on the design of the game, because it feels like it was designed by a random number generator instead of anyone who had actually played the game. But in terms of how much it actually detracts from GSF? I don't think it does very much. It's not a starter ship, so not many newbs stumble into it by accident. It has a price of entry of either real money or 5000 fleet requisition. That alone keeps many players away from it.

 

 

The design makes perfect sense if you assume that the designer was told that turrets would be tough and highly armored, bombers would be tough and highly armored, that scouts would only have AP on rocket pods, and that gunships would only have AP on Plasma Railgun, HLCs, and Torpedoes.

 

It's a significant feature in GSF design that AP was to be a core mechanic, and it still is (that's why it's practically always taken if available as an option), At some point though, they moved away from the model that AP is so important that AP alone is enough to make a ship viable. Unfortunately they didn't bother to update any of the ship types designed around the assumption that AP by itself is enough for viability. For reference: see practically every non-meta ship type in the game.

 

On the whole evasion sort of became the new armor. Make a T2 gunship as effective against a fast moving evasive target as it was meant to be against a slow moving armored target and you're pretty much where the original design was meant to be, well, provided it can run about as fast and as far as most scout builds. I.e, counter the most dominant defensive mechanic.

 

Countering turrets and bombers is a fine thing if you're the only one that can do it, not so fine if it's the only thing you can do when others can counter them and counter everything else too.

[havokhead]

The T2 gunship has some good weapons, there's nothing wrong with HLCs, slug railgun and protons are all good. I think protorps are a good mix because they give the ship a good, hard-hitting, long range option that's not power reliant.

 

The main black-eye of the T2 gs is the same as that of the strike fighters. They cannot survive focus. A long cool down for engine ability and no safety net ala distortion field means you get a narrow window to pull off some defensive maneuvers.

 

I realize that the ships' description alludes to heavy offence while sacrificing defence but that is the main reason the T2 gunship (and strikes) aren't played, especially by players that know they'll become focused within the match. Everything being equal, a pilot is gonna take a better chance to survive. If the T2 had power dive and/or disto field I think a lot more people would use it or even if Feedback Shield provided a missile break then I think it would be more popular.

 

That being said, I do think that interdiction mine or drone or even repair drone would be fun additions, creating a "support gunship"