Questionable weapon power.. is it fair for each ship !.. or is cheating involved !

[wasteroiujhhb]

as an example ! i have a fully upgraded gunship and have to put full power to guns and with a full charge 3 times to hit a ship and take it down. when a scout can kill me fresh out of the spawn with no damage on my ship. with 1 0r 2 shots from primary weapons as i have power to shields and reverse damage shiels on. can someone explain !.. also i have a fully upgraded scout with full power to guns plus weapon overcharge yet it can not take down a ship easily at all ! .. can things stack . are players cheating somehow ! im stumped ..

[caederon]

as an example ! i have a fully upgraded gunship and have to put full power to guns and with a full charge 3 times to hit a ship and take it down. when a scout can kill me fresh out of the spawn with no damage on my ship. with 1 0r 2 shots from primary weapons as i have power to shields and reverse damage shiels on. can someone explain !.. also i have a fully upgraded scout with full power to guns plus weapon overcharge yet it can not take down a ship easily at all ! .. can things stack . are players cheating somehow ! im stumped ..

So, I assume you're talking about a deathmatch in which your team is pushed back, probably to the center spawn point. The first thing to remember about such a situation is that you have two other spawn points to choose from, and should probably do so if the enemy team has pushed within range of your center spawn.

 

Scouts, particularly the Type 2 Scout (Flashfire or Sting, or the Cartel version, the Skybolt / Ocula) can be equipped to hit hard and fast, and are very good at taking down gunships. They will not one-shot or two-shot you unless they have Damage Overcharge, which doubles their damage, or they get lucky with a critical hit. T2 Scouts also can equip powerful System abilities like Targeting Telemetry or Blaster Overcharge, which give them a brief period of increased damage potential. Between their cannon of choice (usually Burst Laser Cannon or Quad Laser Cannon) and rocket pods, they can destroy a gunship quickly.

 

It is likely that in such a situation you are also taking fire simultaneously from enemy gunships. Even if you are only being hit by splash damage from their ion railgun, your shields will be weakened as the scout comes in for the kill. This can happen very quickly. It is often the case that you will take a hit from slug railgun at the same time the scout is unleashing its barrage, and your end is swift, happening in a second or so. It seems like you're being one-shot but in reality it is a very quick, simultaneous application of damage from multiple sources.

 

You mention 'reverse damage shield' which I am assuming is Feedback Shield on your gunship. This won't really do any better of a job protecting you, it just damages the attacker if they are hitting you with their cannons. It can land a kill on a damaged enemy who isn't careful, but it's not really going to save you from trouble otherwise.

 

You state you are set for full power to weapons (F1) which in addition to its good properties also decreases your shield pool, making you easier to kill in that circumstance.

 

Here are things you could try to be more survivable:

• Choose Distortion Field as your shield, and use it when under attack to give your ship more Evasion, making you harder to hit.
  
• Choose Running Interference as your copilot ability, also increasing your Evasion when under attack.
  
• When you are in scope mode, be aware when your shields start to go down and get out of the area ASAP. Use Barrel Roll to get some distance between you and the attackers.
  
• When you are safe for a moment, use F2 to give power to shields so they regenerate faster.
  
• Choose Large Reactor in your minor components to give you a larger shield pool.
  
• Choose the Defensive crewman that increases your Shield Pool and Evasion as passives.
  

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This will help you to survive tough encounters with dangerous scouts!

 

- Despon

Edited February 18, 2017 by caederon

[Verain]

Everything Despon said is correct. A scout is totally incapable of one shotting a gunship (a one shot involves some edge case, like damage overcharge, or a lucky crit plus cooldowns, and can really only happen with torpedoes or railguns). Scouts do, however, have the highest dps in the game by quite a large margin. If a scout is flying right at your face, you can take a rail shot, maybe one burst laser shot, and get out- but you can absolutely die for that, if the scout is both good and lucky.

 

If you're a new gunship, I would suggest trying to practice tabbing around to see if there are scouts nearby, and to flee when one is coming at you. Flee towards an object, or friends, or a nest (a group of mines laid by a bomber, and usually populated by at least one or two allies). In domination, you can even flee back to the capital ship if you need to, but a smart scout will simply ignore you and you'll have wasted a lot of time and now the scout is hunting a friend of yours.

 

Scouts will normally be equipped with either cluster missiles, a short lockon, short range, low cooldown, low damage move that will work through your shields over a few cycles, and is pretty hard to escape from (usually you need an object to break line of sight to cancel the lock, and you'll need to do it a whole lot)- or they will be equipped with rocket pods. Rocket pods fire in the same way that the cannons do, but require you to be lined up perfectly with the nose of the scout to hit you much. Mobility and dodging will save you from this, but if you are snuck up on, you could easily die very quickly.

 

In general, scouts are meant to be very good against gunships, most especially in melee range.