If the top 3 meta ships were deleted, what would happen?

[Nemarus]

Imagine BioWare came in here and said, "We've got 12 ships variants, but we feel that 3 are dominating play. We're going to remove those 3: Flashfire/Sting, Quarrel/Mangler, Rampart/Razorwire. All requisition invested in these ships will be refunded as Fleet requisition."

 

What would happen? Could a healthy, multi-ship meta develop? Would one ship rise up to become dominant?

 

My first instinct is to think, "All hail our new Condor/Jurgoran overlords." After all, it'd be the only ship with BLC, and it doesn't really have any weaknesses (especially in a world with no Minelayers).

 

For the purposes of this thought experiment, it might be necessary to remove Condors and Jurgorans as well.

 

But then you might have NovaDive/Blackbolt being too strong. Or would Comet-breakers/Dustmakers keep the Scouts in check?

 

One outcome that I certainly think you'd get is that Strikes would be slightly more viable. Ion Railgun would no longer be a threat, and no more Battlescout to be outmaneuvered by. And once you got on a node, you wouldn't have to worry about Seismic Mines ignoring your shields, which are a Strike's greatest feature.

 

At this point, I almost wish BioWare would do something like this. I think they could spin up an interesting new meta purely by removing the most-played ships.

 

I think we had a similar discussion a few months ago, where we talked about an interesting meta made up only of the Bloodmark, Legion, Dustmaker, and one of the Strikes (really any of them would work against those three non-Strikes).

Edited January 26, 2016 by Nemarus

[Lendul]

Imagine BioWare came in here and said, "We've got 12 ships variants, but we feel that 3 are dominating play. We're going to remove those 3: Flashfire/Sting, Quarrel/Mangler, Rampart/Razorwire. All requisition invested in these ships will be refunded as Fleet requisition."

 

What would happen? Could a healthy, multi-ship meta develop? Would one ship rise up to become dominant?

 

My first instinct is to think, "All hail our new Condor/Jurgoran overlords." After all, it'd be the only ship with BLC, and it doesn't really have any weaknesses (especially in a world with no Minelayers).

 

For the purposes of this thought experiment, it might be necessary to remove Condors and Jurgorans as well.

 

But then you might have NovaDive/Blackbolt being too strong. Or would Comet-breakers/Dustmakers keep the Scouts in check?

 

One outcome that I certainly think you'd get is that Strikes would be slightly more viable. Ion Railgun would no longer be a threat, and no more Battlescout to be outmaneuvered by. And once you got on a node, you wouldn't have to worry about Seismic Mines ignoring your shields, which are a Strike's greatest feature.

 

At this point, I almost wish BioWare would do something like this. I think they could spin up an interesting new meta purely by removing the most-played ships.

 

I think we had a similar discussion a few months ago, where we talked about an interesting meta made up only of the Bloodmark, Legion, Dustmaker, and one of the Strikes (really any of them would work against those three non-Strikes).

I believe the Warcarrier/Legion and Sledgehammer/Decimus would commonly have a loadout to specifically deal with scout. I think the long range missiles would then rise to deroost gunships.

 

In this meta you could still build a sophisticated defense network. It would just take 6-8 man coordination rather than 4.

 

You know the devs would never do this, but I believe we have a tight enough community that we could pull this off if we wanted to. Between SRW and the rest of the nomad fliers. We could choose the most dead server on the list and have people create characters with a tag in it like we do with stock night. And only fly the ships approved in this experiment.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Lendul

[Danalon]

If the T2 Scout, T1 Gunship and T1 Bomber were removed, my hangar would consist of the following ships:

 

1. T3 Gunship - BLC, CLusters, Retro - high damage output, barely any weakness

2. T2 Bomber - Interdiction Drones - node defense

3. T1 Scout - Pods, TT - hit and run

4. T3 Scout - EMP Missiles, Tensor Field - support

5. T3 Strike - EMP Missiles, Charged Plating - node support

Edited January 26, 2016 by Danalon

[Toraak]

If the T2 Scout, T1 Gunship and T1 Bomber were removed, my hangar would consist of the following ships:

 

1. T3 Gunship - BLC, CLusters, Retro - high damage output, barely any weakness

2. T2 Bomber - Interdiction Drones - node defense

3. T1 Scout - Pods, TT - hit and run

4. T3 Scout - EMP Missiles, Tensor Field - support

5. T3 Strike - EMP Missiles, Charged Plating - node support

 

Umm based on what the OP said your number 2, is unavailable. T2 bomber is the razorwire. you'd have to make it a T1 if you wanted a bomber on the bar or T3.

[caederon]

At this point, I almost wish BioWare would do something like this. I think they could spin up an interesting new meta purely by removing the most-played ships.

Let us assume you were running a restaurant that had a twelve-dish menu. Four of your dishes sell really well, and everyone likes them. Four dishes seem to find their niche, and are acquired tastes but people still request them fairly often. Four dishes never get ordered, except by that ONE guy. You want to please your customers. Do you:

 

1. Eliminate your four best sellers, reasoning that if they were gone, surely people would buy the other ones!

 

OR

2. Examine what people like about your best sellers, and use that knowledge to change the recipes for the ones nobody orders.

 

This would not be a case of addition by subtraction. Removing a third of your available choices would diminish the game, make its depth more shallow, and flat out hurt it.

 

Make the bad ships better. There is a hundred page strike fighter thread with more ideas than you'd find at a Mensa convention. Make what's not working better. Don't gut the game.

 

In an ideal world, we'd have a custom game lobby where we could set up matches which restrict the available ships. It can be fun to play with limitations, but gouging out all of the effective ships from the lineup isn't something I'd be interested in seeing happen, ever. I want more interesting choices, not fewer.

 

Despon

[RickDagles]

I don't like to toot my own horn but I think it's absolutely baffling that people still have such a hard time including the Condor/Jurgoran in the list of top 4 ships after myself and Vexxial have proven time and time again that they are just as good if not better than the Quarrel/Mangler in TDM. We've been maining that ship for 2 years now and there's a reason for it. It's not a niche thing or a flyby night strategy.

 

That aside, I think it would be tons of fun to have a super serious night of Novadive/Blackbolt, Spearpoint/Bloodmark, Warcarrier/Legion, Sledgehammer/Decimus, Clarion/Imperium, Pike/Quell, Starguard/Rycer, and Cometbreaker/Dustmaker. The only downfall is that I hear there's a T2 gunship ace that would smoke all of us. But think of the cool new meta where charged plated strikes could counter scouts! Everything else would remain somewhat similar to the current meta.

 

I love Despon's analogy and I agree it would be super ridiculous for the devs to actually remove the 6 meta ships from the game. But there's no reason we can't organize a fun night of lower tier ships.

Edited January 27, 2016 by RickDagles

[Nemarus]

Despon's analogy is cute, but I don't quite agree with it.

 

I don't think the big four ships are favored because they are fun. They are favored because they dominate.

 

Strikes are very fun to play if your opponents don't have ion railgun or BLC. As are many other non-meta ships. The problem is that the meta ships shut them down with such ease that they become frustrating.

 

As for restaurants, eventually eating the same four meals gets old. At this point I'll take any change that shakes things up. And while I would prefer a comprehensive balance pass, BioWare will never do it.

 

They would never do the premise of this post, either--though it would be super cheap to execute, and would (I suspect) create a deeper, more flavorful meta. I mean, everyone on this board would still excel. The bottom 8 ships are all capable and interesting once the top 4 are gone. I think we would see a broadening of strategic play. But that's just my opinion.

 

Even some misfit components start to make sense once the top four are gone. EMP Field and Missile, LLC's, maybe even Fortress Shield and Ion Missile are more valuable, because suddenly Shields matter.

 

Much of the game's components, ships, and mechanics just "click" without the top 4 present to slap them down or make them irrelevant.

 

At the end of the day, Despon, I just respectfully disagree. I think it would be addition through subtraction. I think a meta of 8 viable ships (many of them hybrids, each with multiple viable builds) would be deeper than four ships (with perhaps 6 viable variations of build between them). The top 4 close down the playable space of the game.

 

It's one of the big reasons I play on TEH--because I like an environment where I can enjoy all 12 ships, and much larger number of possible builds, at times.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Nemarus

[caederon]

At the end of the day, Despon, I just respectfully disagree. I think it would be addition through subtraction. I think a meta of 8 viable ships (many of them hybrids, each with multiple viable builds) would be deeper than four ships (with perhaps 6 viable variations of build between them). The top 4 close down the playable space of the game.

So, the developers, or a developer, or some rogue dude who can post in yellow text, started a thread you may have seen and indeed contributed to. It is about strike fighters, and solicited ideas for how to make them better. Hard to miss, it has something like 900+ replies. There was, at that moment, intent to expand the pool of useful ships to include strikes not by removing all good ships, but by making strikes good. I want that to happen, you want that to happen (in a roundabout way), pretty much everyone who likes Star Wars wants good strike fighters.

 

If they followed through on the thing they specifically intended to do, it would make the meta more interesting by suddenly giving three whole ship designs a reason to exist and a reason to be played. Then, suddenly even if nothing else was touched, we would have more choices. And it would have impact that would not be fully realized for some time, not until the depths of their changes to the strike fighters were thoroughly explored.

 

There is no reason to remove whole ship classes from the game when it wouldn't be particularly difficult to fix what's wrong with the weak ships. The reason they haven't been fixed isn't that it is some grand mystery as to why they're deficient. The reason is _______ (money, poor management, bad decisions, business things).

 

Btw, I see plenty of T2 bombers in the meta, so that makes five of twelve ships currently used extensively in competitive matches. T1 & T3 gs, T1 & T2 bomber, T2 scout.

 

The T1 scout is right on the edge of being competitive, and in the right hands (Willie, for example) already is. If it was very slightly tweaked it'd be right in there.

 

The T3 scout with some adjustments to the secondary weapons could be lifted out of its one-trick-then-boom role.

 

The T3 bomber is a weird thing that does weird things and could probably do something interesting with a little tweak here and there.

 

The only really bad ship (and I know at least one person will disagree) that is a fail in terms of its design and offers nothing unique (other than it can run directional shields, there, I beat you to it) is the T2 gs.

 

Make the bad things good. They don't even have to come up with ideas for how, we've all theorycrafted the solutions for them. It doesn't even require inventing new stuff, just shifting some values in an XML file and changing a number here and there.

 

More > Less.

 

Despon

Edited January 27, 2016 by caederon

[RickDagles]

 

The T1 scout is right on the edge of being competitive, and in the right hands (Willie, for example) already is. If it was very slightly tweaked it'd be right in there.

 

Despon

 

 

I think it's definitely a meta ship in TDM because who wants to waste their Sting/Flashfire slot to be a Quad/Pod/Barrel/PDdive/Running Interference scout? You'd want to do either BLC/cluster, BLC/pod, or at least Quad/Pod/Retro.

 

But yea it doesn't offer anything above a similarly equipped T2.

Edited January 27, 2016 by RickDagles

[Danalon]

Umm based on what the OP said your number 2, is unavailable. T2 bomber is the razorwire. you'd have to make it a T1 if you wanted a bomber on the bar or T3.

 

T1 Bomber = Rampart/Razorwire

T2 Bomber = Warcarrier/Legion/Firehauler/Onslaught

[Greezt]

Why would you want to remove ships? Taking out the top ships won't create room for ALL the other ships. It will create room for new meta ships. Maybe you'll find a clarion, novadive and warcarrier suddenly in the meta, but that doesn't mean suddenly people will fly all the ships...

 

The problem right now is that the top ships cover all the aspects of the game in the best available way, and the other ships can't compete. Give the rest of the ships a different angle instead, and you'll get much more interesting results.

 

If people felt that they could be as effective as a flashfire in a starguard, I'm pretty sure you'd see a bunch more starguards than you see now.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Greezt

[catsi]

Sticking strictly to the question asked rather then debating why remove them which was not the point of the post in the first place.

 

with out minelayers the drone carriers would take a more prominent role in sat defense. and interestingly enough the much maligned Ion missile and EMP field would take higher precedence in sat fights.

 

Without the flashfire the nova/BB would take the lead in fast scouting and sat harassment,

 

Also without the flash the Rycer/Starguard and surprisingly enough the Quell/Pike would become much more prominent. most especially imo the T1 Strike. its durability and firepower would push it to the top tier of damage dealers I think.

 

However they would have some strong competition with the condor.jurogan which would become a beast in any match type thanks to its mobility and up close firepower.

 

Without the mangler/quarrel the above mentioned emp field and ion missles become more useful in combatting the drones as well as hitting the shields of rcyer stargaurds who favor hard shielding.

 

Interestingly the mailoc and its redeemer counterpart both have Ion rail so they would start popping up more. but with them costing ccs I'm not sure how many people would invest in them. theyd become a rare anomaly I think and heavily focused in matches.

 

for TDMs with the above 3 missing Id see a return to prominence of the strike lots of heavy dogfighting combined with a few lancers hitting and running. bomberballs would be much more difficult to pull off as the drones are more vulnerable to long range snipes or in close damage. Fights would be pretty nasty as fighters engage in dogfights with the occasional straggler picked off by a slug shot.

 

for Doms. the matches wouldn't change that much I think. a fast rush using tensor to get scouts to the 3 sats followed by slower strikes and a drone carrier or 2. An initial furball around the sats would ensue and once cleared the team that could take and hold 2 would win. Sats would be much more hotly contested though as strikes coming in would engage in some nasty knife fights in the fins, while scouts fire in and out attempting to pick off weakened fighters.

 

all told I think the meta would shift to a more dog fight oriented game where maneuvering and accurate fire becomes more instrumental to success. the matches would become much more exiting free for alls as pilots would have to throw themselves into the fray much more aggressively then they have to now.

 

right now dom matches come down to who can stack mines and drones on one sat while overwhelming a second one, and harassing mangler/quarrels to keep them from ion aoeing the mined sat.

 

tdms can degenerate into mass bomber lines, or 5-7 gunship fire lines. while the occasional match where a game of gunship chess can be surprisingly fun as one I had with Inazuma recently was. some of them get absurdly boring.

[caederon]

Since I already said my piece on the evils of nerfing vs. improving bad things, I'll play along a bit.

 

with out minelayers the drone carriers would take a more prominent role in sat defense. and interestingly enough the much maligned Ion missile and EMP field would take higher precedence in sat fights.

I don't think Ion Missile would be any more useful. It is a poorly designed weapon. EMP Missile would be more useful, though. The biggest drawback to each of those is the extremely long reload time, and the effects each generates would still need improvement even in the restricted environment.

 

Without the flashfire the nova/BB would take the lead in fast scouting and sat harassment,

I think it would take the lead in almost everything, actually. It can be configured for powerful offense (TT, pods, MLC), has up to three missile breaks (greatly hurting the chances of a strike fighter killing one) and can be configured for utility builds as well.

 

Also without the flash the Rycer/Starguard and surprisingly enough the Quell/Pike would become much more prominent. most especially imo the T1 Strike. its durability and firepower would push it to the top tier of damage dealers I think.

Strikes would still suffer from lack of mobility and an inability to quickly react to changes in the tactical situation at hand. T1 scouts would have a big edge there. With as much evasion and as many missile breaks as the T1 scouts can load up on, I think they would be very effective at knocking out strikes... particularly with support from one or two of either T2 gs, Railgun Drones, or Interdiction Drones.

 

The T2 strike would still be pretty useless against scouts. It could do ok against bombers if it lived long enough to get in range. It could probably combat enemy T2 strikes, though!

 

However they would have some strong competition with the condor.jurogan which would become a beast in any match type thanks to its mobility and up close firepower.

Pretty sure Nemarus would remove the T3 gs from the scene, too. It'd be dominant if it was left in.

 

Interestingly the mailoc and its redeemer counterpart both have Ion rail so they would start popping up more. but with them costing ccs I'm not sure how many people would invest in them. theyd become a rare anomaly I think and heavily focused in matches.

Also pretty sure Nemarus wouldn't let the technicality of the cartel name allow these to slip into the meta. They are T1 gunships, and as such aren't part of his new world order.

 

I think things would eventually boil down to a whole lot of T1 scouts buzzing around, unable to hit each other, quickly dispatching anything that isn't a T1 scout. Maybe toss in a T3 scout... Ooh! Maybe they would try using Combat Command! ... ... ... ok, probably not.

 

Despon

[Nemarus]

I think TDM would be mostly Blackbolts, with some Warcarriers and Comet-breakers.

 

In Dom, I think you'd see things mixed up a little bit more.

 

If we wanted to take things to the extreme subtraction, I think the really interesting inflection point is when the only ships are the Bloodmark, Dustmaker, Legion, and the Strikes.

 

In that world, Scouts are much more focused on utility, and the lack of a dogfighting Secondary Weapon really opens up a window for Strikes with Cluster Missiles to do most of the anti-ship dog fighting. A their own mobility deficiency would be aided by the higher likelihood of an ally having Tensor Field.

 

I wouldn't include the Sledgehammer because its combination of Cluster Missiles and mine/drone, plus Power Dive, make it outclass the Strikes.

[caederon]

If we wanted to take things to the extreme subtraction, I think the really interesting inflection point is when the only ships are the Bloodmark, Dustmaker, Legion, and the Strikes.

 

In that world, Scouts are much more focused on utility, and the lack of a dogfighting Secondary Weapon really opens up a window for Strikes with Cluster Missiles to do most of the anti-ship dog fighting. A their own mobility deficiency would be aided by the higher likelihood of an ally having Tensor Field.

Thinking about that configuration of ships playing matches on Denon gives me a headache. I mean, a bigger one than playing on Denon gives me to begin with. No beacons, no speed... I'd almost be tempted to say the entire team should run T3 scouts with two bombers, one for each sat. People might die from boredom. You could run a match like that via play-by-email.

 

So, since you're boiling off all the fat (and flavor) of GSF, maybe Denon gets tossed in the pot and left to melt away.

 

Perhaps ironically, if I was designing GSF from the ground up, I'd end up with ship classes more in line with your vision. The main place I feel they screwed up the initial design of GSF was in making scouts more offensively capable than strikes. That cat's out of the bag, though, and unless they started from scratch it would be hard to undo. Not impossible, but hard.

 

Despon

[Ramalina]

I don't know about dropping Denon from a pared down GSF world. It's actually my favorite map for flying a T2 strike. There's enough cover that cover is available if you plan well, but there's enough open space around objectives that landing the medium lock time missiles is a lot easier than on any of the other maps. Or more accurately, the map design encourages pilots to make comparatively long flights that may take them away from cover.

 

RE: scout offensive power, it's not purely offensive power that's the problem. The combination of offensive power with mobility (turn, speed, and endurance), and extremely strong defenses (Distortion Field) is what really causes the problem. If the only shield option available to scouts was Quick Charge, that'd be a fairly radical shift in the meta, and the only thing that would be reducing for scouts would be their ability to tank incoming fire. Similarly, if you took away both thrusters and Tensor, it would be a significant reduction in scout power, though I think not nearly to the extent that loosing their ability to evasion tank would.

[caederon]

RE: scout offensive power, it's not purely offensive power that's the problem.

Sure, it's not, but it is what makes them seem rather unlike a 'scout.' In any traditional understanding of what a 'scout' does militarily, it is a light unit tasked with spotting the enemy. Offensively, it's not toothless, but it mainly used as a harasser or skirmisher. You don't mount heavy weapons on a 'scout.' Burst lasers and arguably rocket pods (given that they are armor penetrating) could rightly be classed as heavy weapons.

 

If GSF Scouts had no anti-armor capacity, there would be a lot more of a reason to fly Strike Fighters. There would be less of a reason to fly scouts, but certainly not no reason. Scouts would still be fast, maneuverable, able to cap sats early or get to an off-sat. They'd still be able to mess with Gunships.

 

If you're going by any traditional notion of what a 'scout' does, should you be able to take a T2 scout to a fully armed enemy satellite, strip 3 armored turrets in about five seconds, and potentially even blow up a defender there before capping the satellite? No, of course not, because you're essentially flying a hyperspeed tank that is very hard to hit at that point. In no way does that conform to any historical notion of what a 'scout' is conceptually, and it largely eliminates the need for Strike Fighters.

 

Despon

[Lavaar]

While I am firmly of the opinion that the scout in the current meta is a SUPPORT ship to begin with, I don't think reducing the capabilities of the scout at this point would help much, especially for the scores of scout only players who would be leaving the game shortly after such changes are announced.

 

Honestly, if the T1 gunship, T1 bomber, T2 Scout & T3 gunship were removed from the game for some whacky reason, it would probably destroy the game. However, if that were the case I would, believe it or not, primarily fly the comet breaker/dustmaker. It can be built in a way that is extremely similar to the condor build I currently fly (which is unique), with a few trade off's.

[Nemarus]

If you're going by any traditional notion of what a 'scout' does, should you be able to take a T2 scout to a fully armed enemy satellite, strip 3 armored turrets in about five seconds, and potentially even blow up a defender there before capping the satellite? No, of course not, because you're essentially flying a hyperspeed tank that is very hard to hit at that point. In no way does that conform to any historical notion of what a 'scout' is conceptually, and it largely eliminates the need for Strike Fighters.

 

Despon

 

Yeah. This is why the Bloodmark is actually a brilliant design (though if it were the only Scout, I'd swap its Reactor for Thrusters and give it S2E as an option). The only armor piercing it has is slow to use. It is nimble and hard to hit, but has trouble against heavily armored targets. It can be built for any mix of group utility and enemy harassment, but it will never have the pure offensive utility of a Strike. It really is a *Scout*.

 

Honestly I feel like the Dustmaker was designed decently also. It is a Strike that trades agility and short range weaponry for a railgun. It can have all sorts of armor piercing weapons, but is has a tough time escaping pursuers or fighting in melee.

 

These ships are good because they have well defined strengths *and* weaknesses. They are not the Mary Sues that the Sting, Jurgoran, and (to a lesser extent) Mangler are--all of which have almost optimal components for every situation.

[DakhathKilrathi]

Scouts in Star Wars are supposed to be both fast and lethal.

 

Sure, it's not a "traditional" scout, but I feel that the Flashfire and Sting are both very much in line with what that type of ship can offer in Star Wars, especially when you remember that evasion is an RNG defense that, at least in part, is in place to make up for engine limitations.

 

What would happen if you removed the top 3 meta ships? The game would get very boring, that's what. Call me crazy, but I like the rock-paper-scissors dynamic. I like that there is always a counter to what I can pick. I like that I have a role; that any given ship type has a set of responsibilities and things it's good at. The non-meta ships aren't played because they have lots of weaknesses and no actual roles. Removing the top 3 ships wouldn't give them roles, but it would mean you'd have to try to do a job with a ship that isn't designed to do that job.

 

I'd quit, and I wouldn't be the only one. Removing the part of the game that actually works isn't the answer.

 

 

Edit:

I wanted to address this specifically:

They are not the Mary Sues that the Sting, Jurgoran, and (to a lesser extent) Mangler are--all of which have almost optimal components for every situation.

 

Are we playing the same game? They don't have optimal components for every situation. They have specific roles that they can fill, and that's a good thing. The Sting can be a damage dealer or a peel scout, but it isn't going to be ideal for both. The Jurgoran lacks a way to clear mines, so its job is purely to kill things. It's very survivable but to get that quality it had to give up one of the most useful support weapons in the game, and in domination a Jurg player should always be asking himself if ion might be more useful to his team. The Mangler can kill stuff and play support really well, but it takes just one person to shut it down. It's pretty easy to kill.

 

Like I said above, we need more ships with defined, specific roles, not fewer.

Edited January 30, 2016 by DakhathKilrathi

[caederon]

Sure, it's not a "traditional" scout, but I feel that the Flashfire and Sting are both very much in line with what that type of ship can offer in Star Wars

Two things would make GSF scouts more like a traditional 'scout' while still allowing them to be quite dangerous:

 

1. Remove anti-armor weapons

2. Make Sensors something that actually matter.

 

So, in Star Wars lore, would you find your starfighter commander sending a bunch of A-Wings to take out the turbolasers on a capital ship? No, that's a job for X-wings and Y-wings.

 

Unless I'm way off the mark, you'd see the A-Wings operating as their designation suggests, Interceptors dealing with incoming ships. If you like using Wookiepedia as a reference (and who doesn't) there is a long passage about how awesome the A-Wing's sensors are for recon, too. Reconnaissance and intercepting enemy fighters (or even bombers) seem like pretty uncontroversial roles for a scout.

 

In GSF, the closest thing we have to turbolasers are... well, the capship turrets which are nigh-indestructible. So they don't count. The next closest thing we have are the satellite turrets. In GSF, the best tool for blowing up satellite turrets in a blazing hurry is a T2 scout. It's even better than a slug railgun for that, given that line of sight will always prohibit the gunship from blowing up all three turrets as quickly as a T2 scout with BLC/pods.

 

Even without the anti-armor BLC and pods, your T2 scout could run Quad/Clusters and be pretty darn good at taking out enemy ships. It would still have lots of firepower, but lacking the capacity to deal with armored enemies would open that role back up for Strike Fighters.

 

In GSF, nobody even wants the Sensors component, since it is much less useful than anything else. Why? Because in Dom we all know pretty much where people are going, and the native sensor radius for all the ships is big enough that you don't find yourself cursing too often that you can't spot the incoming enemy ships. In TDM, more often than not people just kind of drift middle-wards and eventually you spot someone to shoot.

 

What if all non-scouts had drastically reduced sensor capabilities and actually needed scouts to spot for them and find the enemy?

 

Strike Fighters, on the other hand, lack anything to strike. When you look at the usage of the term 'strike' attached to modern aircraft, you see it applied to planes used to hit ground targets. Installations, mobile weapons, tanks. Well, we don't really have any of that in GSF exactly, so what are the Strike Fighters supposed to be striking? Turrets. Maybe at one point the devs envisioned an 'attack the capship' scenario where there would be tougher (but not invincible) turrets to attack or structures (like shield generators) to blow up that would require the heavier ordnance a Strike Fighter could carry.

 

Anti-armor duties seem like a pretty uncontroversial and necessary role for a Strike Fighter to occupy itself with. In current GSF there is no reason for them to since the T2 scout does the job better (and/or it gets shifted onto gunships).

 

SW lore is a convoluted and self-contradictory mess of ideas from dozens of people, all based off initial designs that were made by a guy who didn't want anything more complicated than 'this should look like a WWII film' for his space combat. I love that people have gone back in after the fact and made all the crazy technical manuals, cutaway diagrams, and tried to make it all look like plausible stuff, but it was never designed from the ground up as a coherent, consistent, well grounded block of world-building... because it didn't have to be, and who knew if the thing would make any money?

 

My point as it relates to GSF is that we have 12 ships, 4 classes, and one class with 3 ships has no place at the table. So somewhere in there, other classes are going to have to move over a little to give Strike Fighters a seat. Nothing in GSF would please me more than having all 12 ships be viable and interesting choices.

 

Despon

[DakhathKilrathi]

Would you feel better if they called it an interceptor instead of a scout? Because that's the role it actually fills.

[Toraak]

T1 Bomber = Rampart/Razorwire

T2 Bomber = Warcarrier/Legion/Firehauler/Onslaught

 

T1 bomber has always been warcarrier/legon

 

T2 Bomber Rampart/Razorwire.

[DakhathKilrathi]

T1 bomber has always been warcarrier/legon

 

T2 Bomber Rampart/Razorwire.

 

Uh. No. The T1 is the Rampart/Razorwire.

 

 

From a very helpful shorthand guide that Drakolich wrote:

T1 or Type 1 Bomber = M-7 Razorwire and Rampart Mark Four

 

T2 or Type 2 Bomber = B-4D Legion, G-X1 Onslaught, Warcarrier and G-X1 Firehauler

 

This has always been the case, at least with the players who use the forums.

Edited January 30, 2016 by DakhathKilrathi

[tunewalker]

T1 bomber has always been warcarrier/legon

 

T2 Bomber Rampart/Razorwire.

 

Its the other way around, T1 costs 2500 fleet requisition, T2 and T3 costs 5,000. The Mine layers (Rampart/Razor) cost 2,500 while the Drone Carrier costs 5,000. Thus the Rampart Razor is T1, and the Warcarrior Legion is T2, at least that's the way every one I talk to has handled it since release, and its the same way the other ships are handled as well.