As much fun as barnacle bombers and fish in a barrel of gunships is.....

[Sir-steve]

Bombers finding some ridiculous nook to camp in and sit out matches spamming bombs virtually afk and a fleet of snipers is simply not the fast paced and star warsy fighter combat we've come to know and love from the movies.

 

While yes, I get in the star wars universe, there is repulsorlift technology so that a ship could just sit there and defy gravity, I propose a new IG mechanic.......

 

All ships MUST maintain some degree of forward momentum to stay aloft. Period. Even a gunship in snipe mode. Make them have some sort of minimal drift that they must content with...and the potential for collision damage....in order to count as contributing.

 

I've mastered most ships and, while I'm not great at GSF, I'm not foreign to it or complaining from a L2P experience....I just simply find the current construct to be unfun and non-starwarsy.

[Ramalina]

Well, both gunships and bombers are highly effective in noob v noob battles, and they stack multiplicatively a bit better than scouts do, so they also often represent the best shot the noobs have in noob vs ace situation, or for that matter in an ace vs more aces situation. They're good ships for trying to control the fight on your terms.

 

On the up side, tick bombers are easily farmable if you go about it right, and if you systematically destroy them enough, they tend to either stop queuing, switch ships, or learn to become good bomber pilots that are difficult to kill.

 

Gunships are a bit trickier, because in large numbers you need a higher average team skill to take them on. It also helps to have several scouts harassing them at the same time with gunship backup. It's much harder for gunships to deal with close enemies and far enemies at the same time than it is to deal with only one category at a time. If you have more than one scout (forcing the gunships to split their attention and their fire) and the scouts have aggressive support from friendly gunships (forcing the target gunships to split their attention and fire even more), a mixed team can rapidly cause a pure gunship team to collapse.

 

I have to say though, that the early days of massive swirling swarms of BLC battlescouts weren't all that much better in terms of the feel of gameplay.

 

At the high end of skill the ship class balance is acceptable if you ignore strikes. At lower levels though, the mechanics tend to favor stacking a single type of ship. Bomber balls, gunship walls, and scout swarms are all sort of degenerate play in a balance sense, but it happens because with the right conditions stacking a ship class can be much more effective than a balanced mix.

 

At the lower skill level server basis, the solo groupfinder populations tend to settle on a ship class to stack because it's working for them on that server. Different servers stack different ships.

 

At the high level group queue level, people tend to start with a mix, and as the individual match evolves they will alter that mix to suit that particular match. It's much more effective than stacking, but everyone on the team needs to be at least competent with each ship class on an individual basis and to understand how to pick and use the right ship to support their team best. That's what you don't see a lot of in the solo queue, and that lack of experience is what allows stacking to work in many cases.

 

Help people learn to be better pilots is the best advice I can give. When enough skilled players are on both sides things tend to be dynamic and action packed rather than static groups huddled in fear.

[Ornithopoda]

All ships MUST maintain some degree of forward momentum to stay aloft. Period. Even a gunship in snipe mode. Make them have some sort of minimal drift that they must content with...and the potential for collision damage....in order to count as contributing.

 

If the ships in question were in an atmosphere, you would be absolutely correct. But they are not in an atmosphere. There are in space, where there is no air or gravity. Nothing to stay aloft in, nothing to fall out of. Motionless ships and objects are just floating in a vacuum when they are not moving. There is nothing unrealistic about this.

[Storm-Cutter]

Personally I find Tick bombers a PITA especially with 2nd bomber team-mate scooting round a sat as well. That's a tough nut to crack - especially in the Mesas at the middle.

 

I'm not in favour of continuous movement - but if the satellite turned on its axis, then the tick pilot would have to match the turn rate or be crushed by the sat- which would solve OPs frustrations somewhat.

 

But in the meantime coordinated attacks with other ship types and bombers of one's own can usually dislodge the ticks. - as a previous reply said, stacking 1 or 2 ship types is an easy noob route against non-ace teams.

 

- but for the most part, prevention is better than cure- if you can race to a sat and cap first, or indeed intercept bombers before they arrive you're half way there. Also be aware that the other team could do the same. If you go 1 point up in the first few seconds you can bet its either a rookie being dumb or a Tensor-cide.

[Verain]

Well, there's not really any "aloft" on three of the five maps, and while it would have been interesting for Kuat to have had gravity while the others did not, that would definitely have been a, err, bold design decision. It is interesting that your go-to is to add "realism" in this fashion, despite everything in the Star Wars universe hovering, and despite the fact that the strategy you are decrying actually involves a bomber planting a bunch of mines co-located with himself, literally lying on his face, secure in the knowledge that the explosions will harm his enemies, but not himself, or even his friends. That's the most video game part of the whole thing, and no one questions that.

 

I have some sympathy for your arguments, but not much for your proposed solution. I'll also add that "barnacle bomber" would have been a much better name for that playstyle than "tick", so I wish you had added that poetry awhile ago, it may have stuck in the lexicon.

 

If there is an issue with ticking (and I'm not sure that there is), the issue is that it is a low effort, medium reward strategy. Those get selected for because often a medium reward strategy is enough to win the game, unless both your team and the enemy team is composed of top pilots. It is also unique in that it forces enemy pilots to hold almost stationary as they dislodge the tick, making them able to be picked off by the allies of the tick when normally their evasive flying would make them difficult to be eliminated in this fashion. I feel if you had devs, you could make an argument that it is an overrewarding strategy at the middle and low tiers of play. I also feel that if any of the forums ideas regarding EMP blast and EMP missile had ever been listened to, it would totally fall over to that, but whatever.

 

Ultimately, it has counters, and the counters are straightforward. You shoot the stationary ship in the face. If you have a lockon weapon, you lock it on and fire it. The fact that it takes less effort to crawl into that space and squat than it does to shoot it down means that many players will avoid you, putting the burden on your opponents good pilots, who already have a bunch of jobs. I'm not sure if that really needs dev attention, even if it is a little bit annoying- and that assumes we have any dev hours, which, at this point, it should be obvious that we don't, especially for such an esoteric game balance point.

[HeatRacer]

, and despite the fact that the strategy you are decrying actually involves a bomber planting a bunch of mines co-located with himself, literally lying on his face, secure in the knowledge that the explosions will harm his enemies, but not himself, or even his friends. That's the most video game part of the whole thing, and no one questions that.

.

 

Lol, now that you've brought it up, I WILL question that now! Mines should damage yourself/allies, just like how your own bombs in Bomberman can kill you. That'd certainly make things interesting as a ship drops a mine and races to get out of the area (or that they arm after the bomber gets a certain distance away).

[Bolo_Yeung]

Lol, now that you've brought it up, I WILL question that now! Mines should damage yourself/allies, just like how your own bombs in Bomberman can kill you. That'd certainly make things interesting as a ship drops a mine and races to get out of the area (or that they arm after the bomber gets a certain distance away).

 

Can you imagine that ragestorm in each match?

[DennisJD]

Lol, now that you've brought it up, I WILL question that now! Mines should damage yourself/allies, just like how your own bombs in Bomberman can kill you. That'd certainly make things interesting as a ship drops a mine and races to get out of the area (or that they arm after the bomber gets a certain distance away).

 

I think the best option would be that mines aren't triggered by allies/yourself, but can damage you and your allies if enemy ships come too close.

 

Be ready for kamikaze T1 scouts clearing nodes by themselves.

 

But I like the idea of Storm-Cutter, satellites turning on their axis, because right now bombers on domination matches bombers are too well protected : two of them on one satellite is really hard to counter (since not everyone has ion railgun upgraded, and if enemy scouts are smart they'll target your gunships and kill you before you do enough damage), and the best option for them to not getting killed is to "glue" the satellite and don't move for the rest of the game (fortunately a lot of new bomber pilots on TRE don't know that yet)

 

I'd like to add that I'm mostly playing as scout, so....I may have a bias against bombers....

[CmorganBG]

I can imagine the rage, and would welcome it. "Tick" bomber tactics have become widespread on TEH; enough that I challenge the notion that it is now mediocre strategy. Don't get me wrong - a player that uses this exploit is a piece of garbage and is destroying the game for those of us who want to fly instead of play Missile Command. Unfortunately, the cxp grind has enticed good pilots into protecting ticks.

I am not sure what can be done. I know folks will say "ltp". I do know that I am an average player, and as an average player I can do little to stop a tick unless I have a relatively well equipped and coordinated team, AND the opposition does not have an ace scout or a brace of GS protecting the node. The only tactic I can come up with is to quit a game where my team is ticking. That strategy has not worked at all; it has simply denied me play time.

[FlavivsAetivs]

Tick Bombing isn't an exploit, it's just target practice.

 

~ Eudoxia

Edited March 4, 2017 by FlavivsAetivs

[Verain]

I can imagine the rage, and would welcome it. "Tick" bomber tactics have become widespread on TEH; enough that I challenge the notion that it is now mediocre strategy.

 

I think if you are seeing it happen, and work against you, your team isn't doing what is necessary to stop it, or the ticks are defended by their allies to a degree that no one is able to line up shots against them from out of range. Either way, if you are losing to this strategy, there's a skill issue on your team.

 

Don't get me wrong - a player that uses this exploit is a piece of garbage and is destroying the game for those of us who want to fly instead of play Missile Command.

 

I 100% do not support this attitude. If tick bombing works against you and your team, then it's a good strategy for that game. It's certainly no exploit. The bomber literally holds still. I could name some good pilots who sometimes fly the tick strategy to laugh about it, even though they can do actually good bomber play when pressed.

 

If we had active devs, I do feel that they might decide that the strategy is a bit overrewarding, and make a couple changes. But I definitely don't feel that is necessary in any way.

 

Unfortunately, the cxp grind has enticed good pilots into protecting ticks.

 

You should always protect your team. That's why it's your team. You should attack the enemy team. That's why their ships are red.

 

I am not sure what can be done. I know folks will say "ltp".

 

Well, it seems you sorta know what can be done.

 

 

I do know that I am an average player, and as an average player I can do little to stop a tick unless I have a relatively well equipped and coordinated team

 

I mean, you shoot the tick bomber, and then he dies. You can do this from out of his laser range if you are on a gunship (I think there are two nodes where the bomber gets some licks on you at max range), and you can use distortion on a gunship or a scout to ignore the laser part of it. If this strategy results in you getting eaten by an enemy dogfighter or gunship, then you were trying to win against two players and lost.

 

 

The only tactic I can come up with is to quit a game where my team is ticking.

 

That is totally ludicrous. Do not do this.

 

 

Why not play as a tick bomber and see what your foes do to defeat you? If no one can on your server, then enjoy your invincibility, and also try it on other servers. I promise you will eventually see pilots that totally destroy you for holding still, and then you can emulate what worked on you.

[lwiggles]

Hang on .. doesn't Han Solo tick? or barnacle .. or whatever it is That's pretty fn star wars

[Purgamentorum]

If the ships in question were in an atmosphere, you would be absolutely correct. But they are not in an atmosphere. There are in space, where there is no air or gravity. Nothing to stay aloft in, nothing to fall out of. Motionless ships and objects are just floating in a vacuum when they are not moving. There is nothing unrealistic about this.

 

Any large mass gives off gravity, and the objectives are huge, so would the asteroids. Also none would remain still everything that floats would have a degree of movement that would make a stationary ship be moving relative to the reference of a static object.

 

And yes GSF became boring when bombers were added that;s why there are no new cartel items added since. Bioware realised they killed that part of the game within months and now try to ignore it. Why else would it have the best cxp return and be on near permanent bonus?

[caederon]

And yes GSF became boring when bombers were added

They were added quite a while ago, now, and I suspect at the time they were added you would not find many people asserting that the game suddenly had become boring. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but from my perspective the game only gets boring when people who know what they're doing fly against people who don't know what they're doing, regardless of the ship types being flown.

 

that;s why there are no new cartel items added since. Bioware realised they killed that part of the game within months and now try to ignore it.

This is flat out nonsense. They had done extensive development on a fifth ship class, Infiltrators, that would have altered the game dynamic immensely. This would have had considerable impact on bomber play, gunship play, everything play. Nothing was 'ignored,' the dev team had a vision they were not able to fully implement because they got the rug pulled out from under them.

 

It is interesting to speculate why they stopped adding Cartel items for GSF when they did, but it seems very unlikely to have anything to do with bombers, general gameplay concerns, or anything other than financial metrics. Personally I find the Cartel offerings (and lack thereof) to be one of the most confusing and ill-managed aspects of GSF, in that they could create more profitable items with very little dev effort. There is a knotty, largely obscured history of GSF development that would be very interesting to learn about. No company ever would 'release new gameplay element, throw up their hands in bewilderment, cease development because of that gameplay element.'

 

...and for a 'dead' game, there are plenty of people playing lately.

 

Why else would it have the best cxp return and be on near permanent bonus?

Because it is sensible and beneficial to tie parts of the same overall game together with incentives and rewards that encourage people to play... or, moreso, to not discourage play by leaving part of a game sequestered in its own corner with few ties to the rest of the experience.

 

It was a long overdue change, bringing GSF into the continuum of 'stuff people do in SWTOR to advance their characters.'

 

- Despon

Edited March 6, 2017 by caederon

[Purgamentorum]

The financial aspect that pulled the rug as you stated was the fact that nobody played. Bombers were added and overused, the only counter was the very ineffective emp pulses and still to this day people hide in tunnels or on objectives loaded with mines so they are unapproachable. The fast paced combat was over. Gunships sat in minefields and the WW I esc trench warfare started. So everyone left ques stopped popping and they abandoned what could have been a great add on to the game. It's been 3 years now I think and I have never seen an infiltrator ship. Since the CXP ques pop because of the high cxp drop.

 

I was there at launch and loved the speed of the game and played for many months. But every person I know stopped when it became still on on side of the map and bomb the hell out of it while gunships shoot the scout that tries to lure a noob into the centre. But to tone bombers down they would be affecting the Cartel Market items so they abandoned it.

[Ramalina]

Any large mass gives off gravity, and the objectives are huge, so would the asteroids. Also none would remain still everything that floats would have a degree of movement that would make a stationary ship be moving relative to the reference of a static object.

 

And yes GSF became boring when bombers were added that;s why there are no new cartel items added since. Bioware realised they killed that part of the game within months and now try to ignore it. Why else would it have the best cxp return and be on near permanent bonus?

 

I encourage you to look up the gravitational constant, the density of rock or of nickel-iron meteors, and calculate a ballpark figure for the force a large asteroid would exert on a ship that masses in the range of 10 - 20 metric tonnes, which is about what a Starfighter class ship would be.

 

Or you could just skip to someone else's answer, which is quicker but not as fun or educational.

 

 

On the planetary gravitational scale, all of the objects in the GSF space maps are basically insignificant specks of dust.

 

I did some calculations, and based on the largest asteroids in Lost Shipyards, the total force exerted on your entire 10 to 20 ton starship would be about 0.031 Newtons, assuming that the asteroid is a pure nickel-iron asteroid (and thus about 2 1/3 times as dense as your average asteroid). Or to put it another way, if you pick up a penny, and hold it, the amount of weight the penny presses against your hand is about the same as the total force that the largest and densest object in the GSF space maps would be exerting on your entire spacecraft if you landed on the surface of the asteroid, which would give the maximum possible gravitational force. Or in other words, if you parked your gunship 1.5 meters above the most massive possible object on the Lost Shipyards map, you would not have enough time to fall to its surface during a 15 minute match. You'd still have another 25 centimeters to go.

 

This is based on the asteroid being modelled as a 400 x 400 x 800 meter prism with a specific gravity of 8 g/cm^3 with a 20 ton ship parked 210 meters away from the center of the asteroid.

 

Of course, Star Wars physics in general, and SWTOR and GSF physics even moreso, are completely ridiculous and unrealistic. So kind of a pointless exercise on my part.

 

 

 

 

Before bombers appeared everyone was busy complaining about BLC battlescouts. Bombers put a stop to that, which is pretty much their intended function.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Ramalina

[phalczen]

But to tone bombers down they would be affecting the Cartel Market items so they abandoned it.

 

There is zero evidence to support this conclusion. There are more gunship paint jobs than there are bomber paint jobs. In fact, the bomber is the only starfighter with a decoration that can be bought with tokens from in game activities (KDY construction kits from the flashpoint of the same name.) There are four total bomber skins only one of which is a cartel reskin, which is identical to strikes and scouts, FYI. In fact, there are five gunships per faction with two cartel reskins. So there is more cartel money to be made off gunships than off bombers.

 

Every aspect of the game that has been well monetized does well... case in point, just look at strongholds, appearance designer, outfit designer, superior command boosts, legacy perks purchaseable with CC instead of in game credits, and most importantly, character slots and character server transfers. The reality is that they stand to make money if they monetize more of GSF.

 

I would also submit to you for consideration that balancing strike fighters, since they represent an iconic Star Wars experience (see Rogue One) and are one of the starter ships, would be extremely well received and would likely prompt people to spend more money on cartel-provided cosmetics. The notion that the devs haven't made any balance adjustments because it cuts into their cartel market sales is one of the most ridiculous statements I've read in this forum.

[caederon]

The financial aspect that pulled the rug as you stated was the fact that nobody played.

Well after bombers were introduced the game was as populated as it ever was. At the time of the patches that brought in the T3 ships, even Begeren Colony had two or three concurrent matches running all night, every night. Whether that population level met what Bioware expected for GSF or not is one thing, but the peak of GSF's popularity extended well after bombers were introduced. You can project your opinion of bombers all you like, but it doesn't change that they have nothing to do with when or why the game's development ceased.

 

Bombers were added and overused, the only counter was the very ineffective emp pulses and still to this day people hide in tunnels or on objectives loaded with mines so they are unapproachable.

The primary counter to bomber junk is and always has been Ion Railgun. EMP pulses / missiles are in no way an effective counter to bombers. If your teammates or you aren't using Ion Rail with the AoE talent to clear mines, you're making life needlessly hard on yourself. If you have a gunship or two clearing mines, the bombers suddenly become much more approachable.

 

The fast paced combat was over. Gunships sat in minefields and the WW I esc trench warfare started. So everyone left ques stopped popping and they abandoned what could have been a great add on to the game. It's been 3 years now I think and I have never seen an infiltrator ship. Since the CXP ques pop because of the high cxp drop.

Yes, they stopped developing GSF before releasing the Infiltrators, but if you follow the link I posted above you'll see that most of the work (or at least a considerable amount) had been done on them.

 

People stopped flying for lots of reasons, but certainly high on the list were

1. No new content added for years, and

2. No ties into the main game that helped advance their characters.

 

When they recently addressed #2 there, suddenly people were interested in spending their time on GSF again. Funny how that worked.

 

I was there at launch and loved the speed of the game and played for many months. But every person I know stopped when it became still on on side of the map and bomb the hell out of it while gunships shoot the scout that tries to lure a noob into the centre. But to tone bombers down they would be affecting the Cartel Market items so they abandoned it.

Your logic here is hard to follow. The Cartel items have nothing to do with game balance and bombers have no effect on them whatsoever.

 

Again, if your gunship pilots are not using Ion Railgun on bombers to clear their mines and drones, you're missing out on the primary, key counter to them. If a team relies too heavily on bombers, they are easy to beat by those who know how to counter that kind of play. Bombers have strengths and weaknesses, they are in no way impossible to counter or even really hard to if people take the right approach. They have key roles they play (like dropping Hyperspace Beacon) and are important to the balance between scout/gunship/bomber.

 

- Despon

[Ramalina]

Maybe it's time for a, "how to kill bombers with your battlescout," video. Hint, hint.

 

If you don't feel like it I guess I could write a guide but it's so complex that it would not be short. I'm also not a scout expert so it might need peer review editing too.

 

Once a pilot knows the limit of what they can handle and what's too much though, a battlescout is absolutely the fastest and most effective way to remove small numbers of bombers from a sat.

 

I feel semi-comfortable taking on 2 bombers, 3 turrets, and a single supporting gunship as a reasonably fair fight for a battlescout. It's not easy, but I feel like a loss in that situation is more attributable to me screwing up than to the ship being deficient. For someone like Scrab, and my assessment of how viable scouts are against bombers is heavily influenced by things I've seen him do, you could add another bomber and another gunship.

 

This is for a BLC-Pods-TT build, but Quads and Pods is also viable as a more standoff technique if you're not too worried about gunships and turret respawns.

 

Of course the fun thing about anti-bomber battlescout builds is that they're also very good against gunships.

 

 

 

Mostly though, this is a matter of CXP drawing people to the game who work out the gunship-bomber standoff technique early on, but don't progress beyond laying mines and Slug (or sometimes Plasma) sniping.

 

Ion Railgun works wonders for disruption of course, but the problem is that typically the person who knows about using Ion AOE to disrupt the nest is also the only person who has any idea how to take advantage of that disruption.

 

I am seeing more communication in GSF these days. It's usually on the lines of, "pick a gunship and stay close," but it's sort of encouraging to see people understanding mechanics at some level and trying to communicate to others about strategy. I even got a whisper today asking about what the best sniping ship is.

 

I probably should have said Flashfire instead of Quarrel.

 

You can't expect good advice from someone flying a Pike in TDM can you?

[Purgamentorum]

Bombers are boring and the combination of bomber and gunship rendered the strike fighter useless and scouts into hide and seek machines. How can you all deny this? Pop times fell as soon as 8 people in any faction got high up the upgrade chain bombers, again how on Earth can you deny it? Which brings me on to the point I missed and one that is becoming more and more relevant in ground pvp, people want PVP not player v gear, and Starfighter is massively gear orientated.

 

Oh and on the subject of gravity are you kidding me? An EU lorry weighs 40 tons. How does a starship weigh 10? that makes it much smaller than the average tank. An 400 x 400 x 800 meters? the kill cam shows your starship as a dot. Some of these asteroids like many in space are kilometres in diameter. SO lets say the starship is the size of 3 lorries, but the starships are also shown to be packed full of metal with very small single person cockpits. That is 3 ton bags could fit in the cab and another 12 between the cab and trailer. Let's forget between the axles. So 47 tons of rock, metal and fluid. but metal is heavier than most rocks, so we can happily round the figure to 50 tons and still be in error on the side of caution. Each ship is given to weigh 150 tons. The Math maybe correct but do not look down and start estimating length please. Also to work out gravitational pull would be a nightmare as these rocks are scattered and fragmented with the object flying through the middle. But a significant force would need to be applied to correct a straight flight pattern enough to make the insta stop of a gunship sighting to be impossible.

[DennisJD]

Bombers are boring and the combination of bomber and gunship rendered the strike fighter useless.

 

Strikes are always a poor choice, don't blame the bombers. The first thing I've been taught is that for every situation imaginable, there will always be a better alternative than a Strike.

 

and scouts into hide and seek machines.

 

Well, yes. When you attack a Gunship you're supposed to fly erratically, right? Loosing LOS, trying to flank them (preferably with another player, don't do it alone like I do), all that is part of the game. If you fly right into a minefield with your scout, you're playing wrong and you deserve your death.

Whenever I see Gunships with a minefield around them, and if I'm in a scout, I don't engage. I pick the ships that fly alone, or I fly around my teammates in Gunships and engage the enemy scouts that try to attack them. AND when I die, I switch to my Gunship.

 

In Domination games, it's hard to kill bombers in a scout, but it's doable. It's boring, you'll die a lot, but you can do it. I recommend you to stay >5000 meters away if they are hidden in a sat, use your rockets to clear the mines. Also remember that this is a 3D game : if the bombers is "glued" to the sat, fly below. You'll have a better chance to kill them since they turn very slowly and won't expect that. When they approach a satellite, fly close to them (<1000m), that way you'll be able to destroy the mines they drop or outrun them (hopefully), and you'll do considerable damage at close range.

 

Pop times fell as soon as 8 people in any faction got high up the upgrade chain bombers, again how on Earth can you deny it?

 

I don't know where you are playing, but in TRE it's not the case. In fact, when I see 3/4 Bombers on the opposite team that makes me want to kill them more and play more

 

Which brings me on to the point I missed and one that is becoming more and more relevant in ground pvp, people want PVP not player v gear, and Starfighter is massively gear orientated.

 

I don't remember who said it or even where I saw it, but basically there isn't that much of a "gear gap" between new and old players. The only upgrades that really matter and the ones you really need to spend your requisition points are : Distortion Field (2nd missile break), Ion Railgun T4 (AOE damage) and Lightweight Armor (+9% evasion).

 

Of course, if you fly right into a minefield, all the upgrades you can have won't serve you at all.

[Ornithopoda]

Bombers are boring and the combination of bomber and gunship rendered the strike fighter useless and scouts into hide and seek machines. How can you all deny this? Pop times fell as soon as 8 people in any faction got high up the upgrade chain bombers, again how on Earth can you deny it? Which brings me on to the point I missed and one that is becoming more and more relevant in ground pvp, people want PVP not player v gear, and Starfighter is massively gear orientated.

 

Oh and on the subject of gravity are you kidding me? An EU lorry weighs 40 tons. How does a starship weigh 10? that makes it much smaller than the average tank. An 400 x 400 x 800 meters? the kill cam shows your starship as a dot. Some of these asteroids like many in space are kilometres in diameter. SO lets say the starship is the size of 3 lorries, but the starships are also shown to be packed full of metal with very small single person cockpits. That is 3 ton bags could fit in the cab and another 12 between the cab and trailer. Let's forget between the axles. So 47 tons of rock, metal and fluid. but metal is heavier than most rocks, so we can happily round the figure to 50 tons and still be in error on the side of caution. Each ship is given to weigh 150 tons. The Math maybe correct but do not look down and start estimating length please. Also to work out gravitational pull would be a nightmare as these rocks are scattered and fragmented with the object flying through the middle. But a significant force would need to be applied to correct a straight flight pattern enough to make the insta stop of a gunship sighting to be impossible.

 

First of all, the inherent flaws in strikes have nothing to do with bombers being added to the game. You may find bombers boring, but flying a bomber well takes as much skill as any other ship class, and can be very challenging.

 

As far as your attempt to refute physics with flawed math, I'll just point out that one of the largest fighter planes of recent times, the F-14 Tomcat, weighs approximately 20 US tons. Most other fighters weigh much less. This is quite a fair analogue for fighters is Star Wars. You cannot compare fighter planes/ships to big rig trucks. That's like comparing an eagle to an elephant.

[Purgamentorum]

First of all, the inherent flaws in strikes have nothing to do with bombers being added to the game. You may find bombers boring, but flying a bomber well takes as much skill as any other ship class, and can be very challenging.

 

As far as your attempt to refute physics with flawed math, I'll just point out that one of the largest fighter planes of recent times, the F-14 Tomcat, weighs approximately 20 US tons. Most other fighters weigh much less. This is quite a fair analogue for fighters is Star Wars. You cannot compare fighter planes/ships to big rig trucks. That's like comparing an eagle to an elephant.

 

Have you ever seen an F 14? I have and I can say they do not resemble the size and mass of the pictured ships in GSF. Also on a physics level that is 2 jet engines strapped to an aluminium body. A field generator to move such an object would be huge think of a magnet used in a scrap yard. The F 14 was also 20 tons unladen but max capacity over 30 tons. Just wrong on so many levels.

 

Next up I am quite aware of how to deal with bombers. The hide and seek I was referring to was the wait for a straggler to appear. Bombers make the whole game rather dull. As a previous post suggested TRE is the mecca of GSF. Well at launch on that server the que popped instantly. After a few weeks within 5 minutes. About 1 month after bombers and before cxp maybe every 20 minutes if you were lucky to play 90% the same people. I am not here just to dis GSF it was a great concept. But saying it was lack of story that killed it, and it's as busy as ever, well that's just ridiculous. Bomber gunship combos are as boring as Sin tank Sorc heal combos. It's just with a lot of new players involved they are flying different ships now and it is a lot more fun because of it. But give it 6 months and watch the dreaded return.

Edited March 7, 2017 by Purgamentorum

[caederon]

Starfighter is massively gear orientated.

There is so much requisition flowing right now that in a relative sense it has never been easier to get a ship's most important upgrades and master it, and in a more subjective sense it is very, very easy to get a ship upgraded with its most important upgrades. If you're a subscriber, you can fully master a ship in around 30 matches, these days.

 

Additionally, I have made a series of videos specifically addressing how one can compete in a purely stock, unupgraded ship. These Stock Ship videos (the

and

) show very clearly that if you know the game, you need literally NO GEAR to help your team and be competitive. Again, given the amount of req being doled out right now, you need spend barely any time at all in stock ships... but if you chose to, knowledge can be a mighty weapon.

 

Bombers are boring and the combination of bomber and gunship rendered the strike fighter useless and scouts into hide and seek machines. How can you all deny this?

I can deny it because you are wrong, and I can back my stance up with facts. Ok, I can't deny that you find bombers boring, that's a 'you' thing. But the rest... strike fighters are useless because they lack mobility, they lack burst damage, their secondary weapons (missiles) are weak with the exception of Cluster Missiles, and they are very susceptible to Ion Railgun's slow and/or power drain. None of those problems are related to bombers. The developers (or at least the ones around about two years ago) knew this when they made a rare visit to this forum to solicit advice on improving Strike Fighters. None of the discussion revolved around 'get rid of bombers and all's well!'

 

Scouts are not 'hide and seek' machines. They are and should be kind of fragile if you stick them in the middle of open space and don't try to get out of the way of threats... but even then with all the Evasion you can stack, they are very hard to hit in a statistical sense and pack a lot of firepower.

 

Pop times fell as soon as 8 people in any faction got high up the upgrade chain bombers, again how on Earth can you deny it?

I can deny it because you are making a blanket statement that may not be accurate even on whatever server you played on, but in the wider scope of the game, conditions vary greatly from server to server.

 

Look, I get that bombers can be frustrating to fly against when you have a team on your side that does not know that 1.bombers have to be dealt with or 2.how to do it. When those two conditions are met, though, bombers become another tool in the box that a team needs a couple of to fulfill their particular role, but will get beaten badly if they over-commit to them.

 

Take a look at

where we analyze specific matches in depth. I fly a scout for the whole thing, there are bombers that get dealt with, many situations arise. It is 'fast paced,' and involves a lot more seeking than hiding. This is what happens when two teams with players who know what they're doing face each other.

 

The skill/knowledge gap in GSF is what makes for bad matches. Blaming it on ship classes or gear or whatever is like trying to grab ahold of smoke. You're never going to catch a solution doing that.

 

- Despon

[Purgamentorum]

I still get ok win ratios. I never score the highest dps but get plenty of kills and can kite a couple players nearly indefinitely. I have played very little GSF over the past 2 years and came here for inspiration of things are going to get better. Instead I found people so overjoyed by the present situation, your right it's me that finds siting on the edge of range dull. Wanting to attack objectives were 2 bombers are spamming drones is a stupid idea and all the failings that I see of GSF are actually what make it exciting for some. My bad, enjoy that part of the game. I guess I don't, and I was looking for a replacement for ground pvp and the endless sorc healer and engineer sniper combos. Cheers and gone.