GSF Discussion: Ship Balance

Greezt · July 14, 2017

If part of any new re-balancing effort is directed at improving missiles, doesn't it make sense to wait and see how a whole boatload of improved missiles impact the state of the game before you go removing a defense against missiles (and also implementing some unspecified nerf to seeker mines).

In general I agree that any changes should be careful and gradual. In this case, it makes sense to first remove disto break (of course putting some other T3 upgrade instead) and then see how missile fare before buffing them. I have a sneaking suspicion that concussions might be slightly better (stull underpowered), and every other missile will still be junk except clusters.

Since this would necessitate a nerf to Cluster Missiles, too (wihich Ramalina suggests as +1s to reload time, which I am not sure would be enough in a 1-missile-break world) you're essentially breaking two things that are most definitely not broken (clusters and seeker mines) to remove the DF missile break.

I don't think clusters would require a nerf. Cluster DPS is abysmal (219 under optimal conditions, compared to the 481 pods have, 441 stock slugs have, etc.). Their damage per hit is only just over half the a slug shot, only they're way harder to land, do not ignore armor, have shorter range, less shield piercing, are less spammable and have more counters (CP, disto, engine maneuvers, even EMP field are all hard counters to clusters currently). The only reason I think seekers would require a nerf is that they're the only reason scouts really need disto break. The nerf by the way could be a simple damage one -- say, reduce base seeker damage to 650. There's really nothing wrong with ships that rely on evasion having trouble with missiles, except that we're used to it and don't want it to change.

Why are seekers good? Mainly because they force breaks, and can kill scouts without breaks. Why do scouts need two breaks? Mainly because seekers are abundant and are hard to deal with as a scout. Not because of clusters -- you could deal with them effectively with powerdive alone, even with retros you can force cluster ships to flee.

Let's say you do that, concurrent with other buffs to various ships. Maybe the T3S, T2G and all the Strike Fighters are made viable choices by improving their components (namely missiles, which everyone wants buffed). Suddenly there are now a whole lot more missile-packing ships floating around, looking to use them... and you've basically just limited nearly all ships to one missile break.

And then what? I don't get this fear of missiles. Slugs, ions, even plasmas all deal more DPS, more damage, have better range, and all have exactly 0 hard counters. Yet without the two breaks ships currently fly missiles would end the game? I mean, you need 3 concussions to kill a scout, compared to a maximum of two slugs. Protorps can potentially kill a scout in one shot (less likely than a slug still!), but the only way that's happening (even in a single-break world) is if that scout went to sleep. And scouts are the squishiest ships in the game hull and shields-wise. So scouts and gunships get hit by some missiles, they'll still be plenty viable.

Feedback Shield builds (which I have run extensively) suffer badly in missile-heavy environments, and suffer in Gunship-gunship combat... so you've basically invalidated that build, which was fringe to begin with.

I fly that build a lot too, and I can't say I fear missiles on it. The only way I'm dying to missiles that aren't clusters is if I have a bunch of people locking on to me -- wouldn't you agree that it's fair that I lose to more than one player all things equal? In any case, it seems as if you're saying that feedbacks are only good because people don't run missiles, and that they don't run missiles because of disto. I take from that two things: feedbacks actually rely on missiles being weak in order to be viable, and disto plays a significant role in making missiles weak. But instead of fixing one component (disto) to make a lot of components (missiles) better, you want to fix a lot of components to make them better.

If feedbacks aren't good enough currently, if the only reason they can be fielded is the lack of missiles (due to disto), then they deserve a buff.

Improve the stuff that is demonstrably bad first, see what that does, then look at the state of the game before you go tossing stuff on the chopping block.

They go together. Just as you don't know what will happen when things get nerfed, you don't know what happens when things get buffed. It's more than likely that some components are weak because they're badly designed, but also more than likely that some components are never given a chance to shine because other components are better in too many ways. You cannot say that there is no relationship between how well a certain option performs and how badly the other options seem to be.

As the game currently stands, it has a select few components that work on a select few ships. Slug, BLC, disto, and in very certain situations CP are the apex components, they shape the meta. Consider that you had any of these components on ships that don't have them, would you not take them? Even on meta ships -- a T1 bomber would take BLC if it could, as would the T1 scout.

In order to create more diversity, weakening some overly-dominant components is just as necessary as improving the overly-weak ones. There is such a thing as OP.

Ramalina · July 14, 2017

If part of any new re-balancing effort is directed at improving missiles, doesn't it make sense to wait and see how a whole boatload of improved missiles impact the state of the game before you go removing a defense against missiles (and also implementing some unspecified nerf to seeker mines).

No it doesn't, not unless you're radically re-engineering the mechanics of missiles and missile breaks in a way no one that I know of has proposed.

That feeling that running feedback on a gunship is stressful with respect to missiles is the have/have not divide on double breaks.

On single break targets missiles aren't ok, but they're not that far from ok in terms of landing on targets, and very minor lock time improvements and modest improvements to either per hit effects or to reload times would be able to adjust the DPS fairly easily. So you can do that, but what you've done is make missiles effective against strikes, the T2 gunship, and the Decimus. This does not do an awful lot to help balance the meta. Unless it's some sort of un--subtle hint from the devs along the lines of, "hey non-meta ships, here are the tools you'll need to kill yourselves."

Missiles changes to the meta that make a difference in helping the non-meta ships are ones that allow missiles to be effective against the meta ships. The ones you need spammy missiles in order to hit. At this point every missile feels a bit like cluster on the receiving end. So if you're a meta ship that wasn't worried much at all about missiles, now you have to worry about as much as say a strike or T2 gunship does now, or even a feedback build gunship. If you're on a ship that, yay, finally has secondaries that work, you're probably somewhat wishing that the ships that got most badly punished in the meta by your acquisition of working secondaries wasn't the ships that finally got working secondaries in the form of missiles.

Basically as long as there's a have/have not divide in missile defenses on the ships that want to spend some of their time not glued to cover, then balancing missiles vs breaks is going to be rough. Either they're useless against most targets, or they're fine against most targets and excessively punishing to a few targets, who granted, ought to be very accustomed to being excessively punished by combat mechanics in GSF by now.

Maybe you can boost defenses enough so that it equalizes out despite the difference, but then you're talking about absorbing on the order of 3000 damage per minute and still having full shields on your non-distortion options, plus enough additional strength to make up for the various snares, drains, disables, and piercing that you experience by tanking the missile instead of breaking it.

If you equalize missile breaks around a single break on the order of a 15 to 25 second cooldown, then it makes it a lot easier to make missiles good enough without being excessively spammy.

It's sort of like righting a listing boat before getting started bailing. Sure if you bail fast enough you can empty it out, but the job is a lot easier if you stop the inflow and then bail.

In terms of feel, I'd like things like concussion missiles to feel like slightly faster to lock concussion missile (0.1 to 0.25 sec or so) and for torps to feel like slightly slow concussion missiles in terms of lock and reload. That's a level that feels fine to me on the receiving end in a Starguard. It's a level that causes grumbles if you subject customarily double break pilots to it, but it's a level where one can suck it up and learn to deal. That's not enough to make missiles worthwhile in a double break world though. The other option is Cluster to Interdiction like lock and slow cluster level reload for all missiles except torps, which would probably land more around quick concussion missile levels. It'll drive missile effectiveness through that double break barrier, but it'll also be messy and painful. Especially if they don't get things really well dialed in trying to balance out all of the non-distortion defenses to account for all the extra missile hits that will happen.

Of the two likely solutions to making missiles work, as much as I do want missiles to work and be feared, I'd actually prefer the one that has fewer missiles flying around.

It is this attitude I have a problem with. GSF is a good game, and is mostly well balanced. You'd like players who have existing strategies to suffer for it, because it ultimately justifies a preconceived notion that these strategies and components are degenerate or OP. I don't feel that's good for anyone. Interestingly, we both generally agree on which components should be buffed and nerfed. But I think the goal should be a rich meta, not proving some point about how "gunships and scouts were OP all along, SEE I TOLD U".

We have a good game. Ideally, it will become a better game.

I indulged myself a bit on crankiness in a few of the most recent posts. I think a large part of the agreement stems from ultimately, that we both want GSF to reach it's full potential as a game. If I were really just out to prosecute a strike vendetta against the rest of the GSF world asking for buffs to the T1 Gunship because I think that Plasma Ion builds need to be a thing in the meta wouldn't be a very sensible thing to do.

Playstyle is important and valuable, and certainly has worth for preservation, but I take issue with the idea that it can't touched at all just because some OP things happen to be fun to have for the players using them.

Nerfs are a tool in the development toolbox, and it's stupid not to use them in cases where they're likely to be the best tool for the job.

The ridiculous examples were chiefly for illustrating the extent to which the meta can take a hit before it's really crippled. It's not invincible, but it's not a delicate little flower either.

In any event, the explosion of crankiness was more directed at you than you deserved (you didn't deserve it at all). My apologies. Apologies to Despon too, the crankiness was really more about resenting, "save my FOTM," attitudes against balance changes that are long overdue, and not about any person or any person's individual take on how best to get to balance.

@ Verain. Also thanks for calling me out on being a jerk in those posts. I get annoyed at myself when I indulge in incivil behavior, so I actually appreciate when someone notices and heads me off before whatever foul mood was the underlying cause dissipates on its own.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Ramalina

caederon · July 14, 2017

"save my FOTM,"

The FOTM is 'bombers stuck like a barnacle in whatever crevasse has the cheapest rent.'

I'll reiterate that I am not in any way suggesting 'never nerf anything.'

I want to see the bad stuff made good, look at how it works, then see if nerfs are necessary.

How's this for an alternate way to 'remove' the break from at least some Distortion Field users:

Make the talent on the other side of the talent tree a viable and desirable choice that gives you pause when considering which one you equip.

_

What if the other side granted 10s of increased Evasion? That would make it superior by far for Gunship dueling.
What if it gave some kind of partial immunity to Ion effects?
What if it prevented any mines from being triggered by your ship for 5s?

_

There are better ways to go about things than just stripping away that ability. And if you -did- what goes there in its place?

- Despon

Edited July 14, 2017 by caederon

caederon · July 14, 2017

Let's look at a few things regarding the DF missile break.

First off, who gets it:

T1S - can have three missile breaks: engine, DF, EMP Field
T2S - can have two missile breaks: engine, DF
T3S - can have two missile breaks: engine, DF
T1G - can have two missile breaks: Barrel Roll, DF
T3G - can have two missile breaks: engine, DF

Now let's consider each of those ship by ship, in the current meta.

T1S

The Type 1 Scout is really hard to hit with missiles, if you set it up it that way. Nobody cares, because it's the T1S and a strong breeze will blow it apart. In its hardest-to-hit-with-missiles build, it has EMP Field (which currently is underpowered at the very least due to presumably a bug affecting its range), Distortion Field, and engine components highlighted by Power Dive and Barrel Roll. Usually, you see this ship in the hands of new players who have Booster Recharge, Quick Charge Shield and Barrel Roll. Hitting them with missiles is not an issue. There are probably fewer than five high-level pilots currently active in the whole game who run this ship in difficult matches. Maybe that changes if EMP Field is improved, maybe not, but right now, it's not something you need to worry about shooting with missiles.

T2S

The Type 2 Scout is the one everyone will likely cite as 'the problem.' Particularly when equipping Power Dive (which is more and more common, lately, since people have gradually become good enough at 'not aiming it into rocks') it can be very hard to hit with missiles, as it is in all likelihood also running DF. It gains its perceived 'problem' status from the offensive output its systems and weapon choices afford it.

T3S

Nobody cares. When was the last time you needed to shoot a missile at one of these? It is an insult to the missile to task it with blowing one of these up. You are better off leaving the pilot in this alive, so they do not choose a better ship.

T1G

If so outfitted, this ship gets Barrel Roll and DF. That's pretty common. Barrel Roll is decidedly inferior to Power Dive. It costs a lot of engine power and the cooldown is slow. It gains you more distance than PD, but in its current state it would be hard to argue it is 'better' than PD (or even as good). Its primary defense against missiles is often DF, and when running Feedback Shield is quite vulnerable to missiles. Barrel Roll alone is a poor defense vs. missiles. If ion'd or caught in motion, the T1G will not always have sufficient engine pool to activate BR.

T3G

This is a very slippery ship if so outfitted. There are a lot of builds with this one, some of which only have one missile break. That one break can be Power Dive, which has a minuscule 10s cooldown and costs zero engine energy to activate. Not everyone uses PD, some use retros, which still leave you better off than Barrel Roll when trying to dodge missiles.

___

So, then, when looking at the missile-break afforded by DF, and considering the ships which run DF that are most likely to be shot at by missiles, we are left with the T2S, T1G, and T3G. Let's look at what currently is likely to be shooting at these ships.

T2S

I hope that we can agree that the T2S usually needs to be within close proximity to its target to be effective and dealing damage. Yeah, Quads builds have some range, but not a ton. Scouts are often in a position where they have to deal with bombers on a node, or enemy gunships. This means that when the scout is in its optimal firing range, these are the things that several of which can and will likely be simultaneously shooting at it, in rough order of likelihood:

_

Slug Railgun
Ion Railgun
Various Lasers
Railgun Drone
Interdiction Drone
Non-lock-on mines
Seeker Mines
Rockets
Cluster Missiles
Concussion Missiles
Missile Drone

_

This is true when the scout is engaging bombers and gunships, as when engaging gunships they will often be in proximity of a nest or at the very least behind enemy lines where they have more support than the attacking scout.

How well will T2 scouts fare without the protection of a second break if missiles are improved and more prevalent?

How many active pilots -right now- are dangerous enough in a T2 Scout that you feel the need to pretty drastically affect the ship's survivability to compensate for it? Maybe a dozen. In the game. How would the rest of people (the ones that aren't just parking a bomber in a hole, anyway) fare if one of their prime defenses was removed and the thing it was defending against is empowered?

T1G

So, what spends its time shooting at a T1G in typical scenarios?

_

BLC/pod T2S
BLC/Clusters T2S
Q/P T2S
Slug Railgun
Ion Railgun
HLC (from bombers or occasionally strikes)

_

Usually, the T1G will have both a scout and/or more than one opposing gunship(s) shooting at it simultaneously. Oh, you say, that list doesn't include many missile-shooting things. No, it doesn't because offensive missiles other than Clusters are bad currently. If they are empowered and made desirable weapons (which would increase diversity and variety in ship class/build choice) that second break is going to be necessary or the T1G is a pincushion and the lock-tone is going to ring in the ears of every GS pilot so long they will hear it when they sleep. That may appeal to some people, but it would be a pretty large blow to the ship and would certainly affect its ability to hang in and ion a node or nest to help its team clear out bomber junk.

T3G

In a missile-rich environment, this ship would be better equipped than the T1G to deal with having only one break since it has PD. It'd be rather vulnerable in its other configurations.

__

Which missiles actually are commonly shot at the ships which have 2x breaks?

_

Cluster Missile
Concussion Missile
Ion Missile (would be if it wasn't useless)
Torpedoes (at GS, by the foolhardy or desperate)
Sabotage Probe

_

Sabo probe is a weird one. It has a very, very short flight-time, and thus is hard to break post-launch. It's bugged, so not many people use it currently, but who knows. Worth mentioning, at least.

Nobody shoots torpedoes at scouts seriously hoping to hit them, particularly if the target is known to be skilled.

Cluster Missiles are in a good place. They aren't meant to kill something, they are meant to add to attrition and keep people moving. They land reasonably well, and only the PD/DF T2S really does well at avoiding them, due to PD's 10s cooldown and 0 energy cost. A comparable T3G build can negate them too, but isn't quite as nimble as the scout to fly evasively during the windows when both breaks are unavailable.

So, we're at Concussion Missile.

Make it lock a good bit quicker, travel faster (like Sabo Probe), reload slower, and hit slightly harder. This would make it playable even against ships running 2x break.

Give strikes access to Interdiction Missile, which has a good chance of landing due to its relatively quick lock time.

Ion Missile is currently a disaster, but put it in the same class as Concussion and Interdiction, and it could be fine as well.

You don't need to remove the break from DF to make offensive missiles playable.

- Despon

Greezt · July 14, 2017

The FOTM is 'bombers stuck like a barnacle in whatever crevasse has the cheapest rent.'

How's this for an alternate way to 'remove' the break from at least some Distortion Field users:

Make the talent on the other side of the talent tree a viable and desirable choice that gives you pause when considering which one you equip.
_

What if the other side granted 10s of increased Evasion? That would make it superior by far for Gunship dueling.
What if it gave some kind of partial immunity to Ion effects?
What if it prevented any mines from being triggered by your ship for 5s?
_

These statements don't go well together. On one hand, you state that bombers set the meta. On the other hand, you suggest buffing the best evasion cooldown in the game while keeping the only non-bomber evasion counters weak against it. If players had a stronger disto, bombers would be the most reliable way of killing them. Mines and railgun drone are the only way of enforcing damage through evasion even in a world with one break -- missiles would still be broken by both engine and manual maneuvers, and if disto had no break seekers would be even more effective against scouts.

The only suggestion of yours that I do not disagree with on principle is the second one. The first one is not necessary because disto is already very good and can get 9 seconds with the duration upgrade, and the third one is just asking for another immunity to what is meant to be an evasion hard counter. What's the point if evasion can counter both accuracy weapons and non-accuracy ones?

Also, if you make the other upgrade as good, you'll simply be making other components as weak as missiles -- blasters or railguns in this case. That doesn't solve anything, it shifts the problem.

I'd also like to say that on the two QnP recordings I posted above (as well as the SRW vs. TRE matches, and any time I've flown that QnP build solo or grouped). I had only one break -- I had long disto as my upgrade. It is not weak, it is good enough as it is. It may be less desirable because the other upgrade is so good, but it's viable in its current state.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Greezt

Greezt · July 14, 2017

Mitigation methods and their effectiveness:

Shields:

Hard counter -- nothing.

Good at mitigating -- weapons withouth SP that are non-ion -- all blasters but HLC commonly, plasmas, interdiction mines, interdiction missiles, turret/drone lasers and clusters (due to the extremely low SP).

Bad at mitigating -- anything with SP or ion-based: slug, ion, HLC, railgun drone, any missile and mine but interdictions, missile drone missiles,

Damage reduction (CP):

Hard counter -- any non-AP weapons -- unupgraded components (save torpedoes and EMP missiles), any blaster but HLC and BLC commonly, mines, missile sentry/interdiction drones, turrets, missiles (except concussions).

Good at mitigating -- basically everything it mitigates it hard counters the way the meta is currently shaped, with the exception of plasmas. Plasmas with the AP upgrade are soft-countered by DR.

Bad at mitigating -- armor ignore weapons -- HLC and BLC commonly, slug, railgun drone, concussion missiles, torps and EMP missiles.

Evasion (disto):

Hard counters -- missiles, seeker mines.

Good at mitigating -- any accuracy-based weapons -- all blasters, all railguns, drones and turrets (except railgun drone).

Bad at countering -- non-accuracy based weapons -- railgun drone, non-seeker mines.

You're suggesting to shift disto immunity from missiles to mines, while ignoring the fact that in either case it's better against more weapons than CP (which you think needs a rework) and way more weapons than shields.

It is possible that by enabling missiles mines would also be less of an issue, because strikes are not as susceptible to them as scouts are. I can't guarantee that will happen, but neither can you guarantee that taking disto break will reinforce a bomber meta.

Greezt · July 14, 2017

The likelihood of landing any non-cluster missile on even a disto/BR gunships is very small.

Concussions have a 2.6 lock-on time, and a 5.5 reload time (with upgrades and rapid reload). So 8.1 seconds for a "cycle". A gunship facing a single concussion missile platform of any kind that is not a completely new player will wait until they release the missile and then break. Now the gunship has 8.1 seconds until they need to break again. Fortunately, they have a second break, so they use that too. Now, once again, they have 8.1 seconds until they need to break. This leaves us with 3.8 seconds out of 20 in which the concussion might land, assuming the strike/bomber are capable of sticking to the gunship. Basically, the only way of beating even the two-breaks ship with the slowest breaks in the game on a ship with non-clusters is either by an insane attrition war (considering blasters will also be less effective against evasion, and considering the ship does not benefit from TT as scouts do), or by ganging up on them -- a strategy that works regardless of components.

If you do the same exercise with any ship with two breaks, you'll see that they're even weaker in these situations. On a retro/K-turn/snap turn scout, only the 4th concussion will land. On a PD ship even without two breaks, you only get 1.9 seconds window to land a concussion.

I'm curious which numbers would make missiles good against any of these ships (without making them murder machines against strike fighters and bombers).

Also, people do not avoid sabo probes because they're bugged, they avoid them because they're impossible to land. It's easy to take the regen debuff instead of the speed one, and if the rest of the sabo was good they'd take it. But it's not, it's a horrible option with a long lock on and cooldown.

Vospir · July 14, 2017

How about Lendul’s idea to fix Quick-Charge Shield and overpowered Distortion Field at once?

If I can specify:

Swap places of T4 Reduced Cooldown /Quick-Charge Shield/ and T4 Disable Enemy Missile Lock / Distortion Field /.

Will be very interesting choice for player to spend 30% recharges or not to spend, or when - for breaking lock!

Avoid lasers or missiles and mines – 2 separate basic defense options for scouts. Directional Shield is at the middle of this with a little buff of capacity, may be…

Edited July 18, 2017 by Vospir

caederon · July 14, 2017

So, again, my basic premise in the suggestions I make is this:

_

GSF is a playable game, right now
Out of 12 total ships...
- 5 are unquestionably playable: T2S, T1G, T3G, T1B, T2B
- 1 is just on the edge of that: T1S
- 1 has a single trick it does, and is otherwise a poor choice: T3S
- 1 is a weird thing that... whatever: T3B
- 4 have no real purpose and/or are bad choices: T1F, T2F, T3F, T2G
[*]Many components that are poor choices were meant to interact with a ship class that was intended to be introduced into the game but never was (Infiltrators).
[*]It is smart to avoid breaking the aspects of the game that do mostly work
[*]It is less resource-intensive to improve some things than to make wholesale changes
[*]The dev team probably does not have the resources to accomplish a ground-up reworking of GSF.

_

If I was designing the game from scratch, I would definitely make different choices regarding ship roles, counters, etc. than were made with GSF. Indeed, the people who designed GSF almost certainly did not intend the spot where development ended to be the endpoint for their game. Just as an exercise in wild speculation, I am betting they originally might have wanted a game mode where strike fighters had something to strike.

So what we are dealing with is an incomplete game with a bunch of oddly shaped puzzle pieces where the edges don't fit against anything because at least 1/5 of the puzzle was never even printed. And yet... we have managed to play it for more than two whole years in the state it exists now. Its chief problem is not that the systems governing it are so bad as to be unplayable.

The chief problems are that nobody knows what they are doing when they first start playing, and the player base is drawn exclusively from within a F2P MMORPG with game mechanics wildly different from GSF. These are not issues that ship balance theory can fix, outside of 'make all the ships very simple, and time to kill much longer, so people who expect simple, forgiving gameplay are not alienated.' That kind of fix would end GSF as we have known it, and so I hope it is not the path they take.

The meta right now is bomber-driven because people find it more appealing to park their ship in a hole and go fool around on Instagram than to bother learning how to play. They get their CXP regardless of the quality of their participation in a match, and they clearly have decided that the rewards gained through meaningful participation are not great enough to justify the time and practice necessary to reach that level.

That said, the mechanics of the game (in conjunction with the quality of the player-base) make bomber stacking a very easy path to victory. This is not really a problem with bombers, mechanically. This is a problem driven by the phenomena described above. If Rock Paper Scissors was dominated by players too lazy to ball their hand up into a fist to throw Rock, Paper starts to look really bad to a lot of people, and those who can be bothered to curl their fingers into a stony sphere look like OP game-breaking destroyers.

As much as this is going in circles, as all internet debates tend to, I will again make the case that the smartest move possible regarding the reality of GSF development is:

Before you look at making things worse, make the obviously bad things better.

In the worst case scenario, under that plan, you end up with fewer 'trap' choices and outright useless components, and you bring more ships into the 'meta' as viable choices that will not constrict players' performance in the game.

IMPROVING EMP

I've stated in a few places that my first priority in improving GSF's ship diversity is to make EMP Field work as intended (and maybe slightly buff it) and make EMP Missile fulfill its concept by buffing it. Let's assume that is the first step taken in a rebalancing effort, and those two components live up to their potential. What does that do to the meta in the absence of any other changes?

_

T1S now can fulfill a nest-buster role, mess with people's ships, and be pretty strong offensively.
T3S now has a viable secondary weapon and role in nest-busting/node assault
T2F now has a utility missile that works to pair with an offensive choice (likely Clusters)
T3F now has a viable secondary weapon, which combined with its other traits solidify its support role into a versatile attacker.

_

Just addressing those two components brings at least one ship fully into the meta (T1S), gives a one-trick-pony a second trick (T3S) that may in itself justify its use for whole matches, really rounds out the support capacity for T3F particularly in Domination matches, and helps the T2F even if it doesn't solve all that ship's problems.

EMP Missile, incidentally, is not likely to be shot at any of the ships that sport multiple missile-breaks, so the second break on Distortion Field being there or not is irrelevant as regards this change.

Now your 'meta' roster looks like: T1S, T2S, T3S, T1G, T3G, T1B, T2B, T3F

___

THE PROBLEMS WITH STRIKES

So, our fictional dev team has made just two changes so far, and they have already increased the diversity you will see in matches and the 'meta' roster. We want more, though, and lots of people love Strike Fighters for their look and their concept. We'll assume that we are not going to get a new game mode that has stuff for them to strike (ie hardened stationary targets that would be sensibly torpedoed and/or HLC'd from range) because it's too much of an expense. We then have to make these ships desirable to play somehow.

The EMP buff already improved the T2F's arsenal, and definitely increased the T3F's utility.

The T1F isn't as bad off as one might expect, but has issues.

_

Its special ability, Primary Weapon swap, depends on having good choices to swap between.
Ion Cannon, its unique component, is pretty cool. A slight range buff would make it great.
It lacks a second capable close-range weapon beyond Ion Cannon
Its long-range cannons are good. Quads and HLC are both pretty strong.
It has one very good Secondary Weapon choice, Cluster Missiles, and an ok-ish one, Concussion Missiles.
It has one strong shield choice, Directional Shields
It lacks mobility, as its one good engine maneuver (Retro Thrusters) doesn't get you out of trouble.
It has trouble getting in range of its targets and staying there long enough to deliver its damage.

_

The T2F has problems.

_

Its special ability, Secondary Weapon swap, depends on having good choices to swap between.
It has no unique Secondary Weapon choice.
It has one very good Secondary Weapon choice, Cluster Missiles, and an ok-ish one, Concussion Missiles.
Assuming EMP Missile is improved, it gains one solid utility missile choice.
The rest are not viable.
It inexplicably does not have Interdiction Missile as an option.
Its long-range cannons are good. Quads and HLC are both pretty strong.
It has one strong shield choice, Directional Shields
It severely lacks mobility, with no really good engine maneuvers.
It has trouble getting in range of its targets and staying there long enough to deliver its damage.

_

The T3F is already in pretty good shape, except for a few sticking points.

_

It's pretty useful on a node in Domination, when using Repair Probes and CP+Damage Reduction.
Power Dive is a very strong engine maneuver.
It lacks capable close-combat Primary Weapons, which hurts in node defense/assault.
Quads, while good, don't really fit with this ship's best-use scenario
It now has one capable Secondary Weapon (EMP Missile) but more would be better for diversity's sake

FIXING THE PROBLEMS

So... what is the simplest path requiring the fewest changes and shortest dev time to get these ships to a state where they are viable choices?

I am going to assume that swapping one existing component for another one is pretty easy for them to do. I'd suppose that adding an existing component to the menu can't be all that hard, either.

_

T1F, T2F: add/swap in Power Dive as an engine component choice.
T2F: add Interdiction Missile to Secondary Weapons choices.
T3F: add Heavy Laser Cannon to Primary Weapons choices.
Enact the following changes directly to the Strike Fighter frame:
- +15% Primary Weapon damage
- +10% Accuracy
- +10% Shield Pool
- +10% Engine Pool
- +10% Hull points (or some fixed amount)
- -10% Missile lock duration
- -10 engine power expense for using maneuvers

_

The numbers in the frame adjusments are debatable, whatever. The point is to address the whole class in an easily modified, easily adjusted manner.

*while adding HLC to the T3F's options doesn't give it a useful close-range blaster, it does give it some ability to de-roost gunships, combat bombers, and take out turrets in a node-assault role.

These changes would solidly bring the T1F and T3F into the meta, and would make the T2F an edge case rather than an outright poor choice...

Now your 'meta' roster looks like: T1S, T2S, T3S, T1G, T3G, T1B, T2B, T1F, T3F

...and after that you have a much stronger T2F, a still-junky T2G, and the weirdo platypus T3B

___

Does this fix everything?

No.

Does this offer maximum improvement to the game for minimum dev effort?

Yes, I believe so.

My next step beyond those above would be making RFL and LLC useful. This would be a large boost to the T1S, T3S, T1F, T3F, and even a bit for bombers who might choose LLC for close-quarters fighting if it was reasonably good.

Many more things could be addressed, to improve diversity and make useless components viable. I don't know how much energy and capital the dev team is going to expend on improving GSF. I'm assuming 'not much.' If that is the scenario, I think that this would do the most while incurring the least chance of some disastrous unintended consequences. Were I in charge, carte-blanche, it'd be the first pass of rebalancing and more components would be changed, some things even would likely get nerfed in the process.

- Despon

Ramalina · July 14, 2017

There are better ways to go about things than just stripping away that ability. And if you -did- what goes there in its place?

What if it prevented any mines from being triggered by your ship for 5s?

That's a really neat and even thematically appropriate idea. I like it as a potential replacement for the break.

Let's look at a few things regarding the DF missile break.

Now let's consider each of those ship by ship, in the current meta.

T1S
The Type 1 Scout is really hard to hit with missiles, if you set it up it that way. Nobody cares, because it's the T1S and a strong breeze will blow it apart. In its hardest-to-hit-with-missiles build, it has EMP Field (which currently is underpowered at the very least due to presumably a bug affecting its range), Distortion Field, and engine components highlighted by Power Dive and Barrel Roll. Usually, you see this ship in the hands of new players who have Booster Recharge, Quick Charge Shield and Barrel Roll. Hitting them with missiles is not an issue. There are probably fewer than five high-level pilots currently active in the whole game who run this ship in difficult matches. Maybe that changes if EMP Field is improved, maybe not, but right now, it's not something you need to worry about shooting with missiles.

From a balance perspective I'm not going to worry that a lot of new pilots are flying T1s. I'm not going to worry that T2Ss are overwhelming picked for pods builds because they have 1 RFL shot worth of additional health pool.

I most definitely am going to worry if a secondary weapon is almost entirely ineffective against one of it's probable targets.

T2S
The Type 2 Scout is the one everyone will likely cite as 'the problem.' Particularly when equipping Power Dive (which is more and more common, lately, since people have gradually become good enough at 'not aiming it into rocks') it can be very hard to hit with missiles, as it is in all likelihood also running DF. It gains its perceived 'problem' status from the offensive output its systems and weapon choices afford it.

The source of problem status depends on the skill level of whoever the T2S is shooting. For low skill players it's definitely the burst damage because they can't anticipate it and even if they do see it coming can't react fast enough to make a passable attempt at countering it. At a higher level I'm not so sure.

If Quick Charge were the only shield available to them I think I wouldn't have much in the way of balance concerns for them other than being too weak against gunships. It's less the burst, which even in the case of a BLC - Cluster - TT build can be blunted somewhat purely through maneuvering, it's the burst combined with the inability to hit back with anything very effectively. They're too tank like in the sense of a modern main battle tank. Fast, extremely high firepower, and practically invulnerable except to very specialized weapons. If it were more like a technical with a large recoilless rifle, fast, high firepower, but inclined to turn into a fireball if you so much as sneeze at it, the firepower wouldn't be a problem. For that matter I'm pretty sure I'm ok with Directional builds of the T2 as well. Even Distortion builds if they haven't gotten the third level of upgrade yet.

T3S
Nobody cares. When was the last time you needed to shoot a missile at one of these? It is an insult to the missile to task it with blowing one of these up. You are better off leaving the pilot in this alive, so they do not choose a better ship.

Well, I can think of times when it might be worth a better ship appearing in 30 seconds in order to turn a sat now, but alright. As an act of mercy we'll hold off trying to shoot missiles at the T3S until after it has been buffed into the meta for more than a few seconds per domination match.

T1G
If so outfitted, this ship gets Barrel Roll and DF. That's pretty common. Barrel Roll is decidedly inferior to Power Dive. It costs a lot of engine power and the cooldown is slow. It gains you more distance than PD, but in its current state it would be hard to argue it is 'better' than PD (or even as good). Its primary defense against missiles is often DF, and when running Feedback Shield is quite vulnerable to missiles. Barrel Roll alone is a poor defense vs. missiles. If ion'd or caught in motion, the T1G will not always have sufficient engine pool to activate BR.

If ionned or caught in motion any ship that's not running Power Dive may not have sufficient engine power to perform an engine maneuver. Managing engine power and LOS against gunships that are glowing blue are a thing in GSF. I don't see any particular reason the T1G is deserving of exemptions from that, particularly since they're the ones blasting ion shots all over the place. Ion the other ship first.

T3G
This is a very slippery ship if so outfitted. There are a lot of builds with this one, some of which only have one missile break. That one break can be Power Dive, which has a minuscule 10s cooldown and costs zero engine energy to activate. Not everyone uses PD, some use retros, which still leave you better off than Barrel Roll when trying to dodge missiles.

Yeah, another 5-9 missile break per minute ship. Meaning that worst case you have to fit the cycle of Lock, fire, missile broken, reload, lock, fire into 7 seconds or less. Same as for battlescout.

___

So, then, when looking at the missile-break afforded by DF, and considering the ships which run DF that are most likely to be shot at by missiles, we are left with the T2S, T1G, and T3G. Let's look at what currently is likely to be shooting at these ships.

Trivially easy answer in TDM, every ship that can manage to get an opportunity to shoot at them without undue risk.

T2S
I hope that we can agree that the T2S usually needs to be within close proximity to its target to be effective and dealing damage. Yeah, Quads builds have some range, but not a ton. Scouts are often in a position where they have to deal with bombers on a node, or enemy gunships. This means that when the scout is in its optimal firing range, these are the things that several of which can and will likely be simultaneously shooting at it, in rough order of likelihood:
_

Slug Railgun
Ion Railgun
Various Lasers
Railgun Drone
Interdiction Drone
Non-lock-on mines
Seeker Mines
Rockets
Cluster Missiles
Concussion Missiles
Missile Drone
_
This is true when the scout is engaging bombers and gunships, as when engaging gunships they will often be in proximity of a nest or at the very least behind enemy lines where they have more support than the attacking scout.

How well will T2 scouts fare without the protection of a second break if missiles are improved and more prevalent?

How many active pilots -right now- are dangerous enough in a T2 Scout that you feel the need to pretty drastically affect the ship's survivability to compensate for it? Maybe a dozen. In the game. How would the rest of people (the ones that aren't just parking a bomber in a hole, anyway) fare if one of their prime defenses was removed and the thing it was defending against is empowered?

Yes we can agree that scouts are close range fighters. We can even agree 100%.

Of course in terms of getting shot at while doing their job and venturing out of relatively safe territory with potentially limited support, that's a reasonable description of all of the non-meta ships aside from the T2G. The just have defenses that aren't nearly as strong against most of the incoming fire you expect.

Going by your list missiles are going to have to be much, much more common and much, much more deadly, before the scouts need to worry about having a missile break at all. The leading threats basically all being things that are countered very effectively by evasion, or by not flying into them. With the exception of the railgun drone, but a missile break doesn't really do much against that.

My thought is that the battle scouts will probably fare about as well or better against the non-meta ships using missiles against them as the non-meta ships fare against the battlescouts. Are we really buffing the defenses of non-meta ships enough so that a Battlescout with distortion active is in serious danger of losing a DPS race of Blaster + System+ Secondary vs Blaster missing a lot of shots to evasion + Secondary? While still probably having as many or more missile breaks than the formerly non-meta ship?

If we are, then that's actually pretty cool and I'm ok with that. Just, keep in mind that the TTK range on Drakko during his birthday events is something like 3-20 minutes when it's a 12 v 1 of veteran pilots willing to loose the game for the sake of hunting his scout down. If survivability really gets evened out, that's a heck of a lot of survivability, at least at the high end.

T1G
So, what spends its time shooting at a T1G in typical scenarios?
_

BLC/pod T2S
BLC/Clusters T2S
Q/P T2S
Slug Railgun
Ion Railgun
HLC (from bombers or occasionally strikes)
_
Usually, the T1G will have both a scout and/or more than one opposing gunship(s) shooting at it simultaneously. Oh, you say, that list doesn't include many missile-shooting things. No, it doesn't because offensive missiles other than Clusters are bad currently. If they are empowered and made desirable weapons (which would increase diversity and variety in ship class/build choice) that second break is going to be necessary or the T1G is a pincushion and the lock-tone is going to ring in the ears of every GS pilot so long they will hear it when they sleep. That may appeal to some people, but it would be a pretty large blow to the ship and would certainly affect its ability to hang in and ion a node or nest to help its team clear out bomber junk.

The beeping is not that bad, fly a single break ship enough and you get used to it. It sort of fades into the subconscious background.

Given the extent to which the non-meta ships rule the pincushion role I don't think the existence of working missiles is going to give the T1 a decent chance of challenging them there. The non-meta ships after all (except the T2G), have to cross no-man's land to get to the gunship, getting sniped at or pursued by scouts unless the other team is very bomber heavy, shoot at the gunship enough to kill, significantly damage, or at least force it to move to the nearest minefield, and then make it back to friendly territory in one piece, again likely under fire the whole way.

I'm not saying there's no way it could work, but the gunship is hardly at a horrible disadvantage here. One to two free shots that incoming ship can't return, probably a full or nearly full engine pool, probably more cooldowns ready to go. By virtue of it's preferred positioning it should be less exposed and exposed for less duration than the short or medium range ships coming over to pester it. It may not be a pincushion yet, but that's why the ships that are pincushions are coming over. They're kind and wish to share the wealth of pins with the poor deprived gunships.

T3G
In a missile-rich environment, this ship would be better equipped than the T1G to deal with having only one break since it has PD. It'd be rather vulnerable in its other configurations.

__

Which missiles actually are commonly shot at the ships which have 2x breaks?
_

Cluster Missile
Concussion Missile
Ion Missile (would be if it wasn't useless)
Torpedoes (at GS, by the foolhardy or desperate)
Sabotage Probe
_
Sabo probe is a weird one. It has a very, very short flight-time, and thus is hard to break post-launch. It's bugged, so not many people use it currently, but who knows. Worth mentioning, at least.

Nobody shoots torpedoes at scouts seriously hoping to hit them, particularly if the target is known to be skilled.

Cluster Missiles are in a good place. They aren't meant to kill something, they are meant to add to attrition and keep people moving. They land reasonably well, and only the PD/DF T2S really does well at avoiding them, due to PD's 10s cooldown and 0 energy cost. A comparable T3G build can negate them too, but isn't quite as nimble as the scout to fly evasively during the windows when both breaks are unavailable.

So, we're at Concussion Missile.

Make it lock a good bit quicker, travel faster (like Sabo Probe), reload slower, and hit slightly harder. This would make it playable even against ships running 2x break.

Give strikes access to Interdiction Missile, which has a good chance of landing due to its relatively quick lock time.

Ion Missile is currently a disaster, but put it in the same class as Concussion and Interdiction, and it could be fine as well.

You don't need to remove the break from DF to make offensive missiles playable.

- Despon

You don't shoot torps at scouts, but you do lock to fish for breaks or try to force them to LOS. It's ok that they're not more than a pressure tool on double break ships though.

I disagree on Concussion. At least assuming we're shooting at people who use breaks after launch to maximize the effectiveness. A lock reduction is nice, but very little of one is needed. It's on the verge of viable as it is. Reload time is the real Achilles Heel of missiles. That's the window of time that allows missile break CDs to cycle and get back up after trashing one missile before the next missile is ready to be fired. Concussion as it is, is barely fast enough to manage a ship with 6 breaks per minute. That's PD or Disto + BR, and the missile launcher has less than a second worth of leeway in timing shots. Realistically, it's pretty usable on a 4 break per minute ship, while PD and double break ships are fairly close to immune.

Making Ion missile work, and spreading Interdiction missile around a bit are both good ideas.

In the end, you could come up with solutions that left both missiles and distortion alone that I would agree are balanced.

What it boils down to is that meta ships can hit non-meta ships easily and hard, but non-meta ships can only hit back weakly if they manage to hit back at all. A disto nerf aims chiefly at the non-meta ships hitting back more easily. There's a skew in how hard the impact feels though, because you're going from nonfunctional to functional on something that should have been functional all along. What's live now isn't what correct missile pressure feels like, it's what missile pressure feels like when missiles don't work. From a balance perspective though, making it so that non-meta ships can shrug of attacks from scouts and gunships as easily as scouts and gunships shrug off attacks from non-meta ships and that should work.

Greezt · July 14, 2017

Posting for Tunewalker:

The only fundemental change I am making is to both Ion effects and Armor pen. The first is that Ion's only drain when they hit the persons hull since the system is already in place to tell when a weapon hits hull vs shields since it does different levels of damage they would presumably be able to do this, but I am not a programmer so this is minor and completely unneccissary for the rest of the changes. It would of course drain for a precentage of its total drain for how much it hit (like if half hit shields and half hit hull half of the total drain listed on the weapon would take effect) to a minimum number of like 5 if ANY of it hit hull. The other fundemental change is to remove armor form Turrets increase their health by 200 and changing all armor pen weapons to only pen 50% of targets current DR changes will be made accordingly if this change is not doable then no change to DR components needed and can be ignored.

So starting with primaries Heavy lasers, increase accuracy at all ranges by 5% (needs to be more reliable) increase range to 7000 meters, increase dps at all ranges by 5%, decrease traking penalty by .5%. Quad Laser canons decrease tracking penalty by .3% increase range by 500 meters (bigger difference between knife primaries and others). Laser canon decrease tracking penalty by .2% increase range by 500 meters, Ion cannon increase range by 1500m, Light laser canon increase accuracy at all ranges by 10%, decrease tracking penalty by .5 decrease rate of fire by 30 rounds per minute decrease dps by 5%. Rapid fires Increase dps by 75% increase energy consumption by 50% (they were intended to by energy efficient weapons but we dont need energy efficient weapons we need painful weapons) decrease rate of fire by 60 Rounds per minute. yes in this case most blasters are improved I think TTK with Bursts are ok, but the rest of the lasers need a little better and to have a bit more of a defined roll I think this gives it to them.

Secondaries, Increase lock time of Clusters to 2 seconds increase reload time to 4 seconds. Decrease lock time of concussion missiles to 2 seconds, decrease lock time and reload time of all utiltity missiles to match Concussion missiles, Reduce lock time and reload time of Torpedoes to 3 seconds and 9 seconds. Increase damage of Proton topedoes to 1000 damage. Increase Radius of EMP missile by 1000 meters, Increase drain by ion missile by 15 points to (40 weapon and engine drain). Increase damage of plasma railgun by 200 damage increase the effect of melt armor upgrade to 50%, if prior ion effects changed increase drain on ion rail by additional 10.

systems changes. Sensor beacon Increase the range of its evasion debuff by an additional 5000 meters (prefreable if can increase it by 1000 metters and then increase it for every point the player puts into sensor dampenor) also increase its detection radius. Increase Radius of effect of EMP field by 1000 Meters. Make Combat Command Radius = communcations radius. Increase Range of Remote slicing by the amount of increased sensor range the Clarion takes. Increase range of Missile drones blasters by 1000 meters. Increase shield damage by Ion mines to 1600 and increase drain effect by 5.

Shield changes. Distortion field increase CD by 15 seconds increase duration by 2 seconds increase duration buff option by 2 seconds. Quick charge shield change max power capacity to -10% increase regen effect by 50%. change shield projector max power capacity to -10% increase passive regen by 50%. Make Feedback shield trigger on the next 3 shots it gets hit by rather then only affecting the attacking target once (charges exist in the ground game...) increase max capacity of fortress shield (before active) by 10%. Reduce charged plating DR by 15% and decrease its duration by 10 seconds.

Engine Options. Other then the missile break ones they are all weak but honestly I dont think they "break the game" and minor components are minor really. If any other change would be made it would be to strike chasis... yes I know hypocrit. and it would be to change engine efficiency to match scouts and thats it

Edit: the changes are to both normalize things a bit and to illustrate that I believe minor system changes if any system changes at all are need and simple number tweaks can bring things in line. However I have personally noticed that i missed a couple components that could still be talked about AND that other component changes have drastically changed the purpose of a weapon, with those in mind I am going to add both the stuff I missed and alternates to keep the purpose of the weapons intact while allowing them to preform that job since they dont seem to preform that job as of now. First Ion canon add 5 drain to it passively so that like all other ion weapons has base drain and drain improved by talents. Second Sabo probe changed to lock on in 2 seconds and reload in 6 seconds to match conc missile, duration halved and travel speed halved though to make it more reliably dodged by less skilled players and slightly less devistating when it does land as it should still land more frequently. Plasma Rail gun duration T5 increased to 3 seconds instead of 1 second to make it a more appealing choice as a debuff weapon (remember changes above to plasma are under the assumption that changes to Armor and Armor pen go through, so that it is less binary this is to allow for both a wider variety of weapons as well as to help out new players who are experiencing another seperation of haves and have nots since they have no access to armor pen thus by having DR be binary they are experiencing a gear issue in addition to their understanding issue). Finally in my changes I made Lights the anti-evasion knife gun and Rapids the DPS gun semi swapping the roles of Rapids and Lights. Lights currently are the dps gun and rapids are the "efficiency gun" to keep these roles in tact but to actually make these roles something people want to take the alternate changes to rapids and lights are as follows. Lights decrease tracking penalty by .2 increase accuracy
at max range by 2% and at point blank range by 5% (change range scaling appropriately) decrease rate of fire to 150 RPM to match Laser canons and quads. Rapids Increase accuracy at all ranges by 20% decrease tracking penalty by .3 decrease rate of fire to 180 RPM. what this should do is make lights a little burstier damage wise while being slightly more reliable, rapids would have the same effect but now efficiency also means accurate a weapon that never hits is not efficient by making them more accurate we can make them more efficient. Futher the current 240 RPM means each shot is pretty weak this way they still fit their name as the fastest firing gun but they will actually pack a bit of a punch.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Greezt

Montaag · July 15, 2017

Here my random idea for a unique role for strikes: Medium range heavy puncher. Not as fast or nimble as a scout. Accomplished via 2 strike-only components which could be new or current ones revamped. I'm not experienced enough to suggest specific numbers, so y'all can argue about how it should be tuned (if it's worth arguing about in detail).

- New primary: "Focused Laser Cannon" (horrible name, can't think of one) Range - Long ~ 10k; longer than any other existing blasters, shorter than railgun range. Damage - High; close to but not quite equivalent to a low-mid missle? Speed - Slow; ~ rocket pod speed? Accuracy - Middle of the road at long range, Bad at medium range, Atrocious at short range. Special - *ignores evasion and +accuracy buffs*

- New secondary: "Tracer Missile/Probe" - Lock Time: Medium/Reasonable. Damage: Very Low or None. Cooldown: Medium; 30 seconds? A minute? Special - *Gives a debuff that causes enemy missiles to lock immediately and ignore missile break effects (other than LoS) for very short time (5 seconds?)*

Strikes with two primaries can switch between their long range and short range options but have to choose either Tracers and depend on teammates to actually take advantage or a traditional missile choice.

Strikes with two secondaries can Tracer and then get a missile or two off after switching, but have to choose between the new long range primary (leaving them vulnerable up close) or a traditional primary.

- Unique skill set

- Still work best with support from other ships

- creates interesting choices

- Requires new strategies and counter-strategies (and is still counter-able)

Kissakias · July 17, 2017

havent play GSF from summer of 2015, simply coz seeing a scout killing a master defensive gunship in 2 secs isnt normal

left some achieves tho, i dont know if i ever try to finish them.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Kissakias

Stellarcrusade · July 17, 2017

These thinly veiled insults to the skill of people good with that build are extremely reductive and grossly understate the effort necessary to get into close range and stay there without dying.

- Despon

I think you misunderstood my points. Of course I wasn't insulting smart skilled pilots, instead I have great respect for smarts and skill. The suggestion was to increase the skill required which would allow the smartest most skilled pilots to shine even more, in both fighters and scouts equally. I'll need to phrase things better.

The main point I doubt any changes to increase the abilities of fighters will result in veterans change from just gravitating to blc/scout. It would be better to balance both of them together making them equally as viable instead of a weak attempt to simply make strikes more powerful. It doesn't matter, as you just watch, if any balance changes are made you'll still see everyone flying blc/scout and competing nicely with GS for top kills every battle. After that the discussions will be "how can we bring strikes into the game", same discussion as now.

Since everyone flies the blc/pods scouts for obvious reasons I'm sure the forum will not accept any suggestions to change them to more of a "scout" role to make _room_ for the fighter role but the suggestion stands.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Stellarcrusade

theaspie · July 17, 2017

Good evening.

I've been flying, from launch, on the European Progenitor, or Prog, Server. We haven't got a massive community, although it's been getting larger again of late. There's usually one pop every fifteen to twenty minutes during peak times.

The thing that always stands out about Prog, is the sheer damned evasiveness of pilots there. I'm not talking so much about people using evasion builds: they're pretty common. There are also the inevitable 'Darwin' builds people put together. These usually suffer from natural selection fairly quickly. When I'm talking about evasiveness, I'm talking about pilots who refuse to fly in straight lines unless they need to. If they're charging a GS, it's not in a straight line, it's in a complex corkscrew. Up, down, left, right, all sorts of combinations.

The other thing that might surprise people is that I'm a 'Strike Ace'. I specialise in T2 strikes, with a fair affinity for the T1. And I'm pretty handy with them. A fairly usual score, in a competitive match, is nine kills. This is generally a fairly mixed bag of other strikes, scouts (including battlescouts) GS and Bombers. I'm not invincible, and I know it, and I fly habitually as part of a team.

I don't hold the team back by not flying a scout. In a strike, I can, from experience, tackle 95%+ of opponents, either killing them, running them off, or providing a target for a friendly GS. I've never personally meshed with scouts: They're lovely to fly, and they've got killing power in bucket-loads. But when the going gets tough, I get a strike out, as I can fly at a higher level in a strike than a scout.

From personal experience, missile vs scout kills are not rare, or hard to achieve. In a 1v1 with a battlescout who knows their stuff, I might be in a bit of trouble. Flying support/sweeper roles, it's a very different ball game. You wait for them to burn their cooldowns, and be in open space, or unable to hide from you. Then, blip, blip, bloop, missile away. I've launched concussion missiles at some of the best pilots on Prog. I've killed them with them. I've killed some of the best scout pilots on Prog with a proton torpedo, simply because they'd burnt their cooldowns, and had nowhere to go. From experience, when we've gone on tour, the group I fly with wreaked absolute havoc with stock ships.

Do Strikes need fixing: Hell yes. They need more killing power, on a par with, or greater than, a BLC/Pods scout. Without evasion, they can, and do, melt a scout in a joust, although I admit that's a case of good ship, bad pilot. They would benefit from increased survivability as well.

My thoughts on how to improve strikes:

Increase their turning slightly to match a scout OR Give them a frame bonus to reduce their tracking penalty significantly. This is a big issue for strikes in a turning fight. From personal experience, I can usually point my guns at a scout in a turning match, but I can't hit it.

Give all strikes Distortion Field, Retrothrusters and powerdive (T2, T3) and a new cannon, with a high ROF (19ps, or 1140 shots per minute), high accuracy (150% at max range, curving to 165% at Close Range) and a 5k range, and with a damage output per second equivalent to Quads. The cannon would be designed, effectively, to mince stuff. The draw-back I would give it is a very high power draw: 50 points per second, with an upgrade to reduce the draw to 33 per second. It'd be effective, but limited against high-endurance targets.

Taking a look at secondary lock-breakers would be quite interesting as well, as would the tertiary lock breaker available to the T1 scout. It'd give strikes a slightly greater 'kill-window' against an unfortunate scout. I'd leave the rest of it more or less alone initially, though.

I don't claim to be the best strike pilot on the server I fly on. I'm good, but not the best. I fear battlescouts in the right hands, because, even with all my skills and experience, I still get murdered by some of them. GS are a serious threat, but attackable in a strike, as long as you don't fly in a straight line and they are alone (Which is bloody rare). Bombers are rarely a true threat, but there are some I generally leave alone.

- Junn, Veteran Strike Pilot, Progenitor Server.

Edited July 17, 2017 by theaspie

Verain · July 17, 2017

I don't like the quick charge missile break idea. Disto needs a defense against missiles, just as all shields offer, but it probably doesn't need to be exactly what it is.

Here's the real point: does anyone think we would need disto missile break, at all, if clusters (and maybe interdiction) were not things? Interdiction is only barely a thing as it is.

The examples with concussion aren't questions about how hard it is to hit a gunship, or a scout, with concussion. They are examples of why concussion is not a good component anywhere in the game, and disto is definitely part of that.

The idea that you would make a meta choice between a shield that is amazing against missiles and one that is useless against missiles is... I mean, you could make it work. I just would like better.

IanArgent · July 17, 2017

I don't like the quick charge missile break idea. Disto needs a defense against missiles, just as all shields offer, but it probably doesn't need to be exactly what it is.

Here's the real point: does anyone think we would need disto missile break, at all, if clusters (and maybe interdiction) were not things? Interdiction is only barely a thing as it is.

The examples with concussion aren't questions about how hard it is to hit a gunship, or a scout, with concussion. They are examples of why concussion is not a good component anywhere in the game, and disto is definitely part of that.

The idea that you would make a meta choice between a shield that is amazing against missiles and one that is useless against missiles is... I mean, you could make it work. I just would like better.

Maybe I should mention this in the "friction points" thread, but too many components are niche - intended to combat a specific other component (or a small range of components) and worthless if the enemy doesn't bring the Thing that component is intended to counter.

phalczen · July 17, 2017

The idea that you would make a meta choice between a shield that is amazing against missiles and one that is useless against missiles is... I mean, you could make it work. I just would like better.

Well, I guess, one way to think of it would be regarding the roles a shield could provide?

1) Shields could be good at defending against mines (This is something charged plating builds do well)

2) Shields could be good at defending against railguns and blasters (This is something Distortion Field and associated evasion builds do well)

3) Shields could be good at defending against missiles (this is something DF is superb at)

Should any shield be good at all 3 tasks? Probably not, since that would make it OP. Should any shield be good at two things? Well, that is clearly what DF is. I guess you could argue Directionals are good against all three simply because of raw hitpoints, but they don't dominate in the meta the way DF does, and I would argue that is solely because of the missile break. Could the missile break be changed to something that still makes DF decent at mitigating missile damage, without making it superb?

Ramalina · July 17, 2017

Could the missile break be changed to something that still makes DF decent at mitigating missile damage, without making it superb?

Easily, even with keeping in logic regarding tooltip lore and naming.

Power Shunt: increases base shield amount to 100% of base shield for class.

Basically undoes the -20% shield strength reduction for the duration. Probably not strictly desirable, as it's going to put your effective health through the roof with respect to blasters. Not that it's not ridiculous already, but there are different degrees of ridiculous. For Railguns it wouldn't make much difference, because they just care about getting two shots through evasion, whereas blaster shots are small enough so that the 20% difference in shield health might actually save the scout by forcing the need to get an additional shot through evasion.

Proximity fuze jammer: Reduces missile and torpedo damage by X%. Probably on the order of 20 to 35.

Throw something in the tooltip about it fooling missiles into detonating at incorrect range, and you've got lore cover for a flat missile damage reduction at whatever magnitude your heart desires.

I'm sure one could come up with others as well.

Given the req already spent on unlocks by players and the pattern of the upgrade trees, you sort of have to have something for that upgrade slot.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Ramalina

Greezt · July 17, 2017

Disto offers a better defense than any other option against two damage types. This is due to two things -- the abundance of shield piercing, and the missile break. If there were no SP on missiles, then directionals (and other shields to a lesser extent) would be good at negating them, and the missile break would be a utility for disto. That would make missiles quite weak though even compared to what they are now.

I don't know why disto could not simply be given the base amount of shields (instead of having them reduced by 20%) and evasion. That should be it, really. If you take disto, you know you're more vulnerable to missiles and mines than someone with shields, but less vulnerable to accuracy-based weapons. If you take CP, you know you're more vulnerable to missiles and armor penetrating weapons than someone with shields, but less vulnerable to mines and drones. And if you take shields, you're taking middle ground -- not best against anything, but not horrible against anything.

Verain · July 18, 2017

Disto offers a better defense than any other option against two damage types. This is due to two things -- the abundance of shield piercing, and the missile break.

There's some other mechanics in play. One of the odd things about GSF is that armor penetration is largely all-or-nothing. With the sole exception of plasma railgun's talent that reduces armor by some fixed percentage (subtracts, not multiplies), everything ignores armor or respects it completely. Meanwhile, armor itself varies from 0%, 5%, 10%... to like 99%, with turrets at a surprising 70%.

Of the missile types, the two fast lockon guys- clusters and interdictions- are forced to respect armor. Ion respects armor because all ion stuff does, dealing large damage to shield and being bad against hull and terrible against armored hulls. Rocket pods, concussions, protons, and even EMP and sabo probe, all ignore armor. Thermite doesn't just ignore armor, it disables it completely for its duration!

While obviously signalling that these are meant to be more useful against bombers than they are in practice (all bombers have to huddle by objects or be destroyed by any missile or railgun on the map- the missiles work amazing versus bombers waddling unescorted from A to B or whatever), the other important thing to notice is that there is no mechanic to take 30%, 50%, or 60% less damage from missiles. There's no model for taking a glancing blow from a proton that explodes near you, but doesn't detonate straight on your engine or whatever.

This is why no one suggests stuff like "distortion field reduces damaged caused by lock-on projectiles by an amount equal to half of your evasion percentage" or whatever. There's few attempts to change the ability to meaningfully make distortion offer SOME benefit against missiles. You've seen mine- the increased lockon time as baseline for distortion, which should hurt cluster spam more than the other missiles. Others attempt to shrink the double missile break advantage by raising the distortion field cooldown (along with the evasion magnitude or duration), and keeping the break, and making it happen less often. And others just want to take it away with no real compensation, hoping that the meta will become "you can fly a ship good against blasters and railguns, or you can fly a ship good against missiles", a design that honestly would probably work, but I just am not a fan of adding more rock-paper-scissors unless it is necessary.

If we had a separate mechanic to talk about this, or a way for evasion to effect missiles in some manner, then that could work out. But we sorta don't.

I still feel the problem child here is kinda cluster missile. If you had no fast lockon misiles you were even thinking about, you'd be super willing to discuss getting rid of anyone ever having a second missile break, or discuss the possibility of changing missiles wholesale to lock on easier, or with a much larger angle, or range, and not have to constantly be like "...but I mean, except for clusters, because type 2 scouts with clusters are reasonably present in the meta already".

Eh, whatever. I'm repeating myself on this. We're deep enough in thread that I should go ham on the crewmembers anyway.

Verain · July 18, 2017

Crew members Passive Overview

Crew member selection is a uniquely SWTOR take on ship abilities. It takes a game mode that is just a bunch of ships and adds people to it. Early on, there were threads asking for more choices among crewmen, and this post will mostly echo to that era. The reason that those threads fell off is twofold- first, we weren't seeing a bunch of new GSF changes, so players naturally focus on talking about the issues that they perceive to be top problems. Second, the crewmember system, while having fallen short of its potential, is neither broken nor unworkable as-is.

Also, I'll echo what we've seen in the itemization thread- the eight crewmembers (four imperial, four republic) that you get by default in GSF, should absolutely be companions somehow by now. I see people with pages and pages of companions, there's no way I shouldn't be able to have Salana Rok follow me around in-game. Ok, back to topic.

GSF crewmembers are divided into four categories. In each category, there are four "passives" to choose from. These passives normally differ pretty wildly in power- that is to say, they aren't balanced. Because everyone has access to these, none are "overpowered", even if they are considered mandatory- they don't have a deleterious effect on gameplay. Of the three categories, one of them- tactical- has reasonably meaningless passives. For this reason, any copilot ability available in there can be selected pretty much "free of charge".

The copilot abilities have been the subject of nerfs and buffs in the past. They get the attention, and they do matter, as their abilities can absolutely swing games.

If "tactical" didn't have four largely unimportant passives, then we would see players having to choose between copilot abilities and passives that were different across factions. I think this is great (and it is present to a small degree still), but it definitely somewhat controversial.

I believe this is the correct path towards making GSF crewmembers a more engaging system:

1- Fix some of the crappy passives. A niche passive is fine, a stupid or strictly-worse passive is not.

2- Try harder to make some of the weaker copilot abilities, stronger. I feel that some copilot abilities in the current game are underranked by many players in the meta, simply because it is easier to use a known-good copilot ability that you have internalized, versus forcing yourself to learn a playstyle that is better under some situations and worse under others. But there are still weak abilities.

Passive Problems

In Offense, the passives are:

+6% accuracy

+2 Degree firing

8% faster missile and railgun reload

25% of base quantity extra missiles and rocket pods

In Defense, the passives are:

+10% of class base shield added to shield maximum

+15% of class base shield regeneration added to out-of-combat shield regeneration

+5% evasion

+9% armor

In Engineering, the passives are:

13% Reduced blaster (not railgun) cost

13% booster and engine maneuver cost

10% of class base engine bar added to engine bar maximum

10% of class base blaster bar added to blaster bar maximum

In Tactical, the mostly-unimportant passives are:

5km to comms sensors

3.5km to frontal cone sensors

3km to non-frontal cone sensors

2km to sensor dampening

In Offensive, the 6% accuracy is too important to not take for almost all ships. The few that ignore it will do so for the purpose of getting a different copilot ability, and this is almost exclusively bombers. 6% accuracy can easily be higher than 10% extra blaster and railgun damage over the course of a match. This is very high for an accuracy number. Even in a non-evasion meta this would be a really big deal, but it has been mandatory since the start. The passive would compete well with things like "+10% blaster damage" or "+8% railgun damage" or "missiles crit chance +40%". It is totally out of place next to the other three, which are reasonable choices about firing arc and missile allocation. I will continue to recommend adding 5% or 6% accuracy to every blaster and railgun choice in the game, and replacing this with something that doesn't map so reliably and importantly to dps and crowd control. Whatever is added needs to be something you might meaningfully either give up, or choose over, the extra ammo, arc, and reload abilities.

The other three offensive ones are reasonable choices, though I will point out that it is a bit odd that they work with so few components. The 8% reload is a very small boost, even to railguns who can make maximal use out of it. Perhaps it could have one small value for rocket pods (instead of 0), one larger value for railguns, and one even larger value for missiles. The final one, extra ammo, is almost exclusively taken with rocket pods (where the generous pod allocation is still reliably run through quickly) and cluster missiles (where the +25% of base is very helpful when taking the double warhead special). Mines and railshots are infinite in quantity, and most other missiles it is difficult to fire all of, and generally poor anyway. Extra arc competes well with these, as the extra arc normally has a pretty terrible accuracy- the shots taken in this space of the screen are iffy and rare. I still take that arc though. I know not everyone does. Seems balanced.

The defensive abilities are almost balanced. The shield regeneration was clearly lowballed, probably out of an abundance of caution as regards shield regenerating dudes orbiting satellites in the early meta. It's just too small to be a good choice for most ships, even if some can use it occasionally. I'd recommend a buff. The two generally best defensive abilities are +10% shield and +5% evasion, but if you build for damage reduction the +9% damage reduction becomes mandatory. These feel like reasonably balanced choices, and if you wanted a specific copilot ability, you would probably feel comfortable exchanging one of them for a lesser (for your build) one in exchange for that. You certainly have more choice here than with offensive or engineering.

The engineering abilities are trash tier balancing, the only one of the four categories to be truly dumb. No one can afford to not run +13% engine efficiency without their build being badly hurt. The +10% extra engine is almost strictly worse than the +13% extra efficiency (like, from a full power pool of engine). Likewise, for anyone but a gunship, the +10% blaster pool is almost strictly worse than the +13% blaster efficiency. Even with this terrible balancing, the six crewmembers on each side still see two get chosen reasonably often: the double efficiency crewmember and the double engine crewmember. Rarely chosen but arguably optimal under some situations is the crewmember with more weapon energy plus engine efficiency, which a few gunships have found use for.

I wrote a whole post about the engineering guys:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=736226

These are the hardest to try to balance, because 13% engine efficiency is; noticeable in terms of game power, pretty much omnipresent across all hangars, not actually broken, and very disruptive to try to come up with alternatives to. Oh, it's also not something you can just bake into all the components like you can with +5% accuracy.

My suggestions for the other thread were to increase blaster efficiency to 15%, roll the extra engine and extra weapon power together into one passive, and make a new passive that maybe decreases the duration of controls by a percent (a mechanic that GSF may not be able to support, who knows). Even with those changes, you would still almost always be picking the 13% engine efficiency as at least one of your two choices- you would have three crewmembers to choose from instead of two, at least, and if you were fishing for a copilot maybe you could talk yourself into it.

MikadoWu · July 19, 2017

Hey folks,

This week, we are creating three separate forum threads for GSF discussion. You can head to this thread to get links to each of them.

Are there any ships you feel are over or under powered? Which ship(s) and why?
Are there any ship components that you feel are over or under powered? Which components and why?
Are there any crew members that you feel are over or under powered? Which crew members and why?
Let us know your thoughts!

-eric

I have been on and off since beta. I keep trying to go back in and learn SF, each time I leave after a few days of frustration. In pvp, 1 player can not carry a team, in SF this is not true. 1 play can absolutely dominate a match. In 1 week of trying to play and learn again, I have exactly 2 kills. Mouse controls for me are terrible, repeat I am trying to learn it, but there is always an elite player on either your or the enemies team and you get nothing done.

If you are going to truly try to fix it, you have to bring in more players. Balancing ships, Itemization, Friction Points is NOT going to bring new players into the SF. You have to do something Major. It may piss people off, but I only see que pops for about 1-2 hours a day.

Flusssaeure · July 19, 2017

Crew members Passive Overview

I am not sure if this is intended as part one about the Crew members but if you want to talk about Crew members I find the differences between the active abilities much more pressing than the passive. Outside of a bomber who are a little bit the special snowflake of GSF "gearing wise" when was the last time it wasn't outright wrong not to select Wingman or Running Interference on a ship?

I think a lot of topics mentoined in this thread should maybe combined into two questions.

Did the accuracy versus Evasion fight went to far as a game mechanic? Much of the components and the crew member choices can be combined how to max accuracy and evasion. Would that still be the case if evasion is capped stronger than it is right now? And would scouts still be viable with this reduced evasion? If not could that be solved by reducing the evasion from components that are always active in favor to increase cooldown based evasion from abilities like distortion field or running interference? You can hit a gun ship with it pants down when you attack it while it is still charging its rail gun. You can catch a bomber with its pants down if its mine / drones are out of order and the ability to redeploy it is still on cooldown. It is much harder to hit a scout with its pant down because even without running interference or distortion field a scout has still a lot of evasion. If we switch the evasion from scouts to be more cooldown based you can wait for the moment where the scout is without its cooldown instead of gearing every possible point of accuracy on any ship. This would make other gearing choices more accesible. I don't think that we can see the full impact of such a change without trying it on the PTS but on paper it definitly would be something to look into to make other choices more accesible.

The other questions that affects more than a single component is 100% armor reduction to strong? Instead of nerfing BLC, Slug Railgun and so on would it be an idea to reduce the effect of armor piercing from completly ignoring any armor to ignoring a given percentage of armor? Maybe this needs to be made possible by reducing the effect of charged plating and the armor on turrets so that armor piercing is still the answer to charged plating but does not make anything else ineffective. If every component with armor piercing it to powerfull maybe the problem is not BLC or Slug Railgun or what ever component with armor piercing you could name but armor piercing itself.

If changing one game mechanic can balance a bunch of components dosn't make changing the game mechanic more sense than changing a bunch of components?

RickDagles · July 20, 2017

I'm going to answer these questions using the ship examples from the Republic

Are there any ships you feel are over or under powered? Which ship(s) and why?

-Flashfire, Quarrel, and Rampart are perfectly balanced for Domination mode. It's a fantastic example of a soft rock, paper, scissors matchup. Nothing else is really worth flying (other than using Spearpoint tensor suicide at the start), but if I had to rank the usefulness of the remaining ships I'd say it's: Warcarrier, Condor, Novadive, Spearpoint, Demolisher, Sledgehammer, Starguard, Clarion, and Pike.

-Team Deathmatch is dominated by Gunships with 1 or 2 Warcarriers for support. Gunships stack too well due to slug railguns being so effective for covering teammates. Even a scout with maximum passive and active evasion will not last long when 7 gunships all have a chance to roll the RNG dice. The Flashfire can still be useful in most games, but it gets shut down pretty hard by a good team of Gunships with Warcarrier support. If I had to rank the usefulness of the ships I'd say it's: Quarrel, Condor, Warcarrier, Flashfire, Demolisher, Novadive, Clarion, Spearpoint, Starguard, Sledgehammer, Rampart, Pike.

Are there any ship components that you feel are over or under powered? Which components and why?

In Domination there are no overpowered components. In Team Deathmatch, slug railguns are overpowered because they stack together so well.

Rather than list all the underpowered components, it's probably easier to just mention the components that are good. The story is a bit different in guild battles, but in most games the only components worth using are Targeting Telemetry, Distortion Field, Directional Shield (for Gunships only), Feedback Shield, Burst Laser Cannons, Heavy Laser Cannons, Rocket Pods, Cluster Missiles, Slug Railgun, Ion Railgun, Barrel Roll, Power Dive, Retro Thrusters, Seismic Mine, Interdiction Mine, Concussion Mine, Repair Drone, Railgun Drone, Interdiction Drone, and Seeker Mines. Tensor Field is good only at the beginning of a Domination game. Repair Probes is a good component on a bad ship. EMP Field and Combat Command would probably be worth using if they were on a Flashfire.

Are there any crew members that you feel are over or under powered? Which crew members and why?

I think the Crew is well balanced. For co-pilot abilities, the only ones worth using are Wingman and Running Interference. In Your Sights and Suppression are great for guild battles but don't really have a place in most games. Hydrospanner can be decent on bombers.

Edited July 20, 2017 by RickDagles

GSF Discussion: Ship Balance

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Announcements