Crew Parity between Factions

[OscarDivine]

As more crew abilities become useful, it is more and more apparent that Crew Parity between factions is actually meaningful for builds, though I don't think it's quite a big enough problem to destabilize the balance of the queues, it does mean that pure parity of builds cannot take place between Imperial and Republic ships.

 

Ship parity exists, but ultimately builds vary a lot based on which Co-Pilot you can use.

 

Missiles are far more important in the game than ever before, which brings me to my first example:

Engine maneuvers, efficiency for maneuvers and total engine power is an attractive stat to have. On the Republic side, you can use C2N2 for this, while on Imperial side, you would use Blizz. The difference here is the CoPilot ability you can use. C2N2 gets Lockdown, which is good. Blizz gets Hydrospanner, which is also good. But they're different and turn one build more defensive and another offensive. Hydrospanner is a very popular build on TDM's with Strike Fighters now, one that requires a strike pilot on Republic side to use B-3G9 taking Rapid Reload/Pinpointing over Arc/Pinpointing or Arc/Ammo that some might want. The ability for preference generating sacrifice now for republic over imperial side exists, and that is where the Lack of Parity becomes a problem IMO.

 

The lack of parity actually makes parity of builds impossible. I'm taking Wingman or Listening to the absurd Whining of C2N2 to use Lockdown. This has been an issue in the past, of course, as well, but the expansion of ability to use other Co-Pilots because they're now quite viable makes the improvement of some of these abilities counteracted by our inability to create equal builds on both sides. I actually PREFER to fly Imperial just because of Hydrospanner on my Quell over Wingman or Lockdown on my Pike. This shouldn't be the case.

Edited October 17, 2017 by OscarDivine
grammar

[Verain]

This shouldn't be the case

 

I'm glad that it is, and I wish they had done more to distinguish between the factions. I want my Imperial ships to feel a bit different than Republic ships.

 

The changes addressed a lot of problems with crewmen, but we still have some big ones:

 

-Engine Efficiency is still pretty much mandatory.

-Extra Engines kinda feels mandatory now too (the buff to +15% made it 50% better, and it was already pretty good- previously you could make a better case to take blaster efficiency than you can today).

-Pinpointing (+6% accuracy) is so important that it is punishing to miss out on it.

 

The defensives are pretty much perfect now.

 

These particular passives are powerful enough that they limit your actives.

 

If you are on Republic side and want Hydrospanner, you can take Pinpointing and Rapid Reload (B-3G9, correct) or T7-01 (double blaster, incorrect). This means you can't get extra arc with hydrospanner easily on Republic, which you likely want if you are running protons. Meanwhile on Empire, Hydrospanner is available for Blizz, who you are probably fine with taking (double engines), and you won't look at MZ-12 (Spare Ammo and Rapid Reload- no pinpointing). It's fair to say that Empire has easier access to Hydrospanner because of Blizz.

 

But similarly, Republic has much easier access to Bypass, Concentrated Fire comes with Improved Kill Zone on Republic and Rapid Reload OR Spare Ammo on Empire, Empire has much easier access to Lingering Effect... and others.

 

I don't think this disparity is a big deal. I do think that certain passives still being too mandatory (meaning their effects should probably be distributed partially to other passives, like Pinpointing, or their guts redesigned, like the blaster power guys) is a medium deal, and I think that's really the cause of most consternation on the topic.

[OscarDivine]

While I agree on some level that Republic and Imperial ships should feel different, I don't think that it should be on the availability of equal builds. This is what cosmetics are for.

[OscarDivine]

The mandatory nature of the passives I would agree is a big part of the discussion, I absolutely agree. That then leads us to the question:

 

In the Meta, are equal builds available? it used to be that in the Burst Scout/Gunship/Bomber Meta it was. There was perfect parity between the two factions. If the new Meta (which ofc, is TBD) includes Hydrospanner, or even any other Copilot ability that has unequal access based on other preferred abilities like Pinpointing/Arc Size, is that Acceptable?

 

That's really the question here.

[Ramalina]

Well, all the ships in the old Meta had viable active and passive choices on both factions where no slots were really wasted, and there was even some space for personal preference on each faction. Those choices were also the most viable choices for all of the non-Meta ships.

 

None of those choices became wrong choices, but some ones that were previously clearly wrong choices became potentially right choices.

 

So there's more variability available, but everyone still has access to one or more sets of choices that can be considered approximately optimal. I don't think there's a balance problem here.

 

 

It does occur to me, that my level 70 Sage has companion affection level 25 or something like that with Blizz, so in terms of end game level characters there's no longer really a hard and fast reason to exclude companions of opposite faction from the GSF crew pool. Potentially almost all of them joined the Eternal Alliance. Lt. Pierce, M1-4X, and Tanno Vik are slightly problematic, but there are plenty of neutral characters that could substitute, Hylo Visz knows her way around a starship pretty well for example. They could just make both sets of crew available. Limit it to character level 60+ if worried about story continuity. That would require work though, and the question is whether that work is the best use of time spent developing GSF at this point, I think probably not. If it were as easy as a simple copy past operation, the sure why not, but if it would be a time sink for the developer then I wouldn't recommend bothering with it.

[RickDagles]

-Extra Engines kinda feels mandatory now too (the buff to +15% made it 50% better, and it was already pretty good- previously you could make a better case to take blaster efficiency than you can today).

 

2V-R8 and Yuun are still very good choices on BLC scout. If you take a lot of shots in F4 and/or use frequency capacitor, you need the extra blasters way more than you need the engines.

 

 

It's fair to say that Empire has easier access to Hydrospanner because of Blizz.

 

But similarly, Republic has much easier access to Bypass, Concentrated Fire ..... Lingering Effect... and others.

 

 

You must be trolling here? Lingering effect is garbage. Bypass and concentrated fire are offensive cooldowns that have never proven to be as good as wingman.

 

 

 

Empire definitely has a slight edge by being able to take hydrospanner and full firing arc. It has a pretty significant affect on Strikes.

Edited October 17, 2017 by RickDagles

[OscarDivine]

Empire definitely has a slight edge by being able to take hydrospanner and full firing arc. It has a pretty significant affect on Strikes.

exactly this

[Verain]

While I agree on some level that Republic and Imperial ships should feel different, I don't think that it should be on the availability of equal builds. This is what cosmetics are for.

 

We disagree completely. When the differences are cosmetic, that feels cheap as hell to me. I want real mechanical differences between factions, and the crewman give us that, to some degree. I do feel that there are still some balance issues (derived from some of the passives being garbage, and two being mandatory), but I would love more well-balanced differences between the sides.

 

In the Meta, are equal builds available?

 

I hope not.

[Verain]

2V-R8 and Yuun are still very good choices on BLC scout. If you take a lot of shots in F4 and/or use frequency capacitor, you need the extra blasters way more than you need the engines.

 

Yea, it's not junk for everyone, but you used to be able to make a better case for it in general. Blaster efficiency didn't get a buff, engine max did. I really think that the questions posed by the engineering crewmembers are not good choices in general.

 

 

You must be trolling here? Lingering effect is garbage.

 

I don't think it is garbage, it's a meaningful chunk of hull damage now. Shield piercing in general is good right now, and that means more opponents will have max shields and injured hulls, which means that its position in the meta is improved, on top of the fact that it does more damage now. Certainly it is valid when bringing up bypass, another niche ability that involves shield piercing damage and which got a mild improvement in the patch.

 

Bypass and concentrated fire are offensive cooldowns that have never proven to be as good as wingman.

 

Wingman will continue to be generally better, but there are certainly more ships that aren't stacking evasion, and aren't focused entirely on being evasive. If these ships actually stay present in the meta, then other offensive cooldowns are likely to have a job. If your number one concern in building isn't "must be able to hit scouts and evasion gunships", these abilities stop being trash. I feel that is the case right now for some builds- but I'm not really sure. Certainly I'm not dropping wingman on a gunship, but that's a different beast completely, especially considering how many crew skills jump through hoops to be worthless to gunships.

 

Empire definitely has a slight edge by being able to take hydrospanner and full firing arc. It has a pretty significant affect on Strikes.

 

If every new build turns up in Empire's favor, then I'd argue that is a problem. The problem wouldn't be that "they aren't equal", it would be that "they aren't balanced".

[OscarDivine]

Regarding Strikes in particular, let's break down the "MUST HAVES" of Crew Skills:

 

Firing Arc* (HK, J. Willsam, Kaylio, Khem, Corso, Zenith, Q.Fess)

PinPointing (Gault, J.Willsam, Lt. Pierce, B-3G, Kira, Q.Fess)

Evasion (on non-CP ships) - (Ashara, Vector, Bowdaar, Nadia Grell, Tanno)

Engine Power (Blizz, Temple, C2-N2, Theran)

Engine Efficiency (2V-R8, Aven Geth, Blizz, Ashy, C2-N2, Yuun)

 

*a good argument could be made for Spare Ammo as well, but for simplicity we'll talk about Arc due to missile preference.

 

Maximizing how many of these you're likely to want, you'd be wise to take:

Willsam/Fess, and Blizz/C2N2.

 

That leaves you with 2 out of your 4 possible Co-Pilot Abilities being:

Lingering Effect / Concentrated Fire and Hydrospanner / Lockdown

 

Both factions can take Wingman from Tactical Crew because sensors aren't a priority

Both factions will take a Defensive with PROBABLY Power to Shields / Evasion, so we'd get our choice of Bypass/RI, or on Imperial side Servo Jammer.

 

Let's line up these skills:

Wingman "cancels" out because both sides get it.

Our choices are LE, CF, HS, LD, Bypass, RI, or Servo.

 

be honest man, LE, CF, and Servo are no contest compared to Hydrospanner, Lockdown, RI, or Bypass.

 

Bypass is GOOD, but still no contest to Hydrospanner or LD and RI is meaningless in the Current Protorp game (will it last? idk)

 

What's the choice then? Hydrospanner once every 36.7 seconds or Lockdown once every 45 seconds? Call me Crazy, but I've never seen anybody actually take Lockdown regularly (though recently I have been, and it's good, but I'd still take Hydrospanner over it right now).

 

Verain, your fantasy of having mechanical faction differences is still quite alive, but are the really equivalent in advantage?

 

Most would argue that Hydrospanner gives you the advantage here, where Hull Strength and resilience is everything, as you said.

[Greezt]

First of all, I'm of the opinion that ships and crew should be 100% equal on both factions. If they're not, even assuming they are considered "balanced", it gives people incentive to fly on one faction alone -- the one where they can build their favorite build. Even if WM and CF were theoretically equivalent (and we know they can never, ever be because of how they work) many people prefer WM for reliability. Therefore, if a choice had to be made faction-wise, they'd go to the faction with WM.

 

My opinion on passive crew is that almost all crew is viable right now. Only some engineering crew members (everyone except C2-N2/Blizz and Yuun/2V-R8) are suboptimal, but every other member can be used.

 

For copilits I think they rate as follows:

 

Top tier (generally best): Hydro spanner (strikes, bombers), WM (scouts, GS, strikes), RI (scouts, bombers, strikes).

Second tier (good): Suppression (scouts, bombers), CF (scouts, GS, strikes), Bypass (scouts, GS, strikes), In your sights (scouts, strikes, bombers).

Third tier (weak): Lock down (strikes, scouts), Slicer's loop (strikes, scouts, bombers).

Fourth tier (junk): Nullify, Lingering effect.

 

I don't value the increased firing arc that much. I take pinpointing/rapid reload on my T1/3 strikes (as well as anything but pods scouts and bombers), and spare ammo/rapid reload on my T2 strike. My issue is that I cannot get Hydro spanner like that on my pub T2 strike. The imp one is ok with MZ-12, but on pub I either have to sacrifice ammo (which is a big hit assuming I want to take efficient targeting as my magazine) or take RI as the next best defensive copilot. RI is in no way equivalent to Hydro spanner on strikes, and that makes my pub build inferior to my imperial one.

[Verain]

I would only put nullify in the "junk" tier. That move is total trashcan. I think lingering effect is better than you are giving it credit for. I also think that, while hydrospanner is good on a strike, I doubt it will be so good that it dominates all other options.

 

More importantly, I think that of the three people discussing passives in this thread, we have three sets of opinions still. Prepatch we generally did not. That tells me that at least two of us (and probably all three of us) will have different opinions later on.

 

Both factions will take a Defensive with PROBABLY Power to Shields / Evasion

 

With the buff to the regen crewman and the buff to strike base hull, I think you can make a better argument for a variety of defensive crewmen than before. Meanwhile, the shield component buffs for strikes in particular mean that the Power To Shields guys are giving you a lower percent of total shields than they used to for directional and quick charge.

 

Verain, your fantasy of having mechanical faction differences is still quite alive, but are the really equivalent in advantage?

 

After one pass? Probably not. The only reason this wasn't an issue before is because the majority of actives were junk. Now they have uses. I don't feel that Empire is OP or anything though.

 

If they're not, even assuming they are considered "balanced", it gives people incentive to fly on one faction alone -- the one where they can build their favorite build

 

I mean, I think that's good. I think you should have a favorite faction if you have a favorite build. I just think it shouldn't be everyone's favorite faction for every favorite build.

[OscarDivine]

so ironically I decided to listen to last night's Drako stream on my way home from work, and the discussion of Lingering Effect, which Skell clearly believes is (along with many others of us) is a terrible bottom of the barrel skill still. haha. I appreciated your standing up for it though @verain, but I don't think a strong enough argument is being made to put it on the same level of usefulness as Wingman, Hydrospanner, or even Bypass. I would still take Lockdown over it, and according to Close Shave, he even considers it a 2nd to last tier ability.

[Verain]

The next part to this saga was that we tried out Lingering Effect in some random games. There's some cute synergy with EMP field and Lingering Effect, but nothing about that build made it appear to be something that would be a "must include" in the metagame.

 

For what it is worth, I think that LE is a really hard skill to balance, because you have to consider its most synergistic use as the edge case you balance around, and lesser versions are going to be worth a great deal less. I don't currently predict that lingering effect will have much of a presence in the meta, but nor do I think it will be total trash, as it was in the past.

 

More precisely on topic - it definitely bothers me that some of the early experimenters and adopters of the proton strikes are basically of the opinion that this is an issue. It implies that ALL FOUR of these are true:

1)- Proton on strike fighter is definitely worth running

2)- Proton means you "have to have" increased arc crewman

3)- Strike fighter means you "have to have" hydrospanner

4)- Hydrospanner means you must avoid the double-blaster Republic companion (this one is uncontroversial and not new at all)

 

If this is true- and further, if the lack of support for this on a faction is actually a perceived weakness (with no equivalent perceived strength, for instance)- then my thought doesn't go to faction balance, it goes to component balance.

 

This overall implies that proton is outcompeting other missile options to a pretty big degree, which honestly, could be the case. It also implies that either hull heals are a very important feature in a "truedamage" meta, to the point where offensive crew skills or other defensive crew skills simply don't compete.

 

I don't know if that is true yet, but it is worrying that a decent number pilots are of this belief already, and share this concern.

 

The perceived imbalance between factions could, as always, be resolved by having more balanced passives (in this case, engineering passives). The bigger concern is kinda coming down to "are the protons and the hyrdospanner feeling mandatory", etc.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Verain

[Magira]

Fourth tier (junk): Nullify, Lingering effect.

 

Lingering effect has never been junk, I love it on my Tensor Scout. Unfortunately I have very bad access to it on pub side. If you always arrive first under the satellite with tensor and interdiction, you can annoy incoming opponents for a very long time with repeated lingering, interdiction and tensor. Add distortion field and you're a real pain in the ***. In the free field, lingering is of course pointless.

[Magira]

I don't currently predict that lingering effect will have much of a presence in the meta, but nor do I think it will be total trash, as it was in the past.

 

There will never be only ONE meta, the differences between solo flying in a PUG team and flying in a Premade group are too big. Much of what makes sense in the group is completely pointless in a PUG team.

 

Not much will change for me, my two most important ships are the Tensor Scout and the Beacon Bomber. As a solo pilot, I can best support my team with them.

 

For me, the individual ships themselves are not as important as a well coordinated hangar with which I am well equipped for TDM and Domination.

 

I always find it a little arrogant of the Premade pilots to call their playing style the only and important thing. There are much more people travelling solo than in groups.

Edited October 20, 2017 by Magira

[Ramalina]

More precisely on topic - it definitely bothers me that some of the early experimenters and adopters of the proton strikes are basically of the opinion that this is an issue. It implies that ALL FOUR of these are true:

1)- Proton on strike fighter is definitely worth running

2)- Proton means you "have to have" increased arc crewman

3)- Strike fighter means you "have to have" hydrospanner

4)- Hydrospanner means you must avoid the double-blaster Republic companion (this one is uncontroversial and not new at all)

 

If this is true- and further, if the lack of support for this on a faction is actually a perceived weakness (with no equivalent perceived strength, for instance)- then my thought doesn't go to faction balance, it goes to component balance.

 

This overall implies that proton is outcompeting other missile options to a pretty big degree, which honestly, could be the case. It also implies that either hull heals are a very important feature in a "truedamage" meta, to the point where offensive crew skills or other defensive crew skills simply don't compete.

 

I don't know if that is true yet, but it is worrying that a decent number pilots are of this belief already, and share this concern.

 

I think there are really two things that are implied.

• The crew balance pass was partly successful, but only partly successful.
  
• Some players want specific combinations of passives and actives, and get grubmly if they can't have them.
  

 

Evaluating your list:

 

1) True. Qualified with the statement that, "worth running," is not the same as, "a mistake to run anything else." A T2F without protons is an odd build unless you specifically plan on flying in a way that's going to preclude most proton shots. That's as close as proton gets to mandatory. The T3F has scenarios where EMP is clearly better. The T1F wants a faster locking missile if it's stripping a lot of shields with Ion Cannon.

 

2) False. Running with no arc expansion is annoying, and tends to restrict to long range shots, though it's somewhat mitigated if you start stacking turning bonuses. Even so, the torp is usable stock and without a crew buff to arc. One arc bonus is perfectly adequate. I'm doing that with arc from crew and speed on the torp. I don't feel like I'm missing targets because they're escaping the arc in that case, it's either LoS or break CDs. One could also go with arc from the torp and something else from the crew if so inclined. Double arc makes it a bit less work to lock, but I don't feel for myself that it actually increases the number of locks, it just lets me be a bit lazier. It also makes it take a really long time before the torp hits, which I find annoying.

 

3) FALSE! Wingman is still the best overall, and RI is still probably marginally better defensively. Bypass is competitive in some situations. Lockdown isn't really competitive per se, but the troll is so strong with it that it might get taken regardless. Hydro is a solidly second rate ability, unless there're really good healing support in which case it's an exceptionally good third rate ability. I think that's ok, because truly first rate abilities are sort of abnormal. Wingman is in its own special class and RI is there for the evasion scouts. Good solid second rate actives are where balance lies I think, and Wingman and RI escape that because the accuracy/evasion mechanics reward stacking in a non-linear fashion and because the bulk of GSF damage is affected by that set of mechanics. Keep in mind that as seductive as spamming missiles is, the most missile using ship in the game, the T2F, still has about 2/3rds of it's offensive potential locked up in its primary weapon slot. GSF is still a blaster/railgun shooting game, and the strongest actives are the ones that have a strong effect on that. Hydrospanner, though bigger and with more uptime than it used to have, still has all the fundamental weaknesses of a modest HoT. I still see occasions of, "Crap, I would have gotten them if I'd had Wingman," but I have yet to see a convincing case of, "rats, they got away because they had Hydrospanner." If they got away for some other reason they might come back with an orange hull instead of a red hull, because of Hydrospanner, but that's not a big deal.

 

4) Conditionally false. It may have escaped notice, but base strike mobility and QCS both got significantly buffed. A QCS strike build that's running Regen thrusters can afford to take double weapon pool engineering passives. It's not thrilling and exciting unless you're planning to really spam a lot of Quad fire, but it's not a total disaster anymore. If there's an active that's a genuine, "must have," and not just a strong, "I want," then it's reasonable to suffer the weapon pool passives for the sake of the active.

 

 

It's also worth considering that the perfect combination of passives and actives that ruled the Battlescout-Gunship meta might not be an ideal state of game balance to shoot for. If you look at the way passives and actives are set up, for any specific set of passives there's a very limited pool of active abilities that can go with it. The perfect synergy of Wingman or RI + Accuracy, Arc, Shield Pool, Evasion, (sensors we don't care about),Engine Pool, Engine Efficiency, is not really a normal result of the crew design. For most sets, even if things did what they did well enough to all be worthwhile, you run into choices of, "ideally I'd like all three of these, but it's only possible to get two, and then I have to choose between sub-optimal options for the third slot."

 

All the ships in the new meta have meta-worthy crew options for active and passive. Most of them also have some

space for customizing to personal preference without sacrificing significant viability in the meta. The customizations available vary between the factions.

 

So people may gravitate to a specific faction out of love for a particular customization, but it's not a game balance issue as far as I can tell.

 

Additional balance passes could increase the number of viable customizations on each side, but to mirror them would take additional crew for each faction or a serious and probably out-of-scope overhaul of how crew abilities are arranged on the existing crew.

[Nasja]

Very long answers but I am just going to say that the new KotFe companions (Lana, Theron, Koth etc., including Star Fortress characters) should be selectable one's you unlock them. They are for both factions and it would open up a lot more possibilities.

[FlavivsAetivs]

I second Traesha, I'd like to see the new companions added too.

[Verain]

I mean, I feel that we keep touching on different issues.

 

 

1)- Adding new dudes- We'd all like new companions, but new companions can undo or maintain the non-mirrored state of this. I'd like new companions to be added with care taken to make sure that the factions remain somewhat different to play, for instance, while others would want to use this as a way to equalize them. But neither goal matters: adding new companions is basically new content, and is design neutral.

 

2)- Setting the crewmembers as mirrors, or nearly such- this accomplishes the goal some players have of eliminating all differences between factions. In this case, each faction would get the exact same set of abilities, such that each companion would have an exact mirror. I don't like this idea- others here really like it.

 

3)- Addressing passive balance- This is what I want, because it keeps what I think is good about the differences (the ships have some subtle differences between factions), while addressing a problem that should be fixed anyway- the inability to run some of the terrible crewman. We saw a solid balancing wave, but it didn't fix everything by any means. Engineering got closer, but still has issues. Precision remains mandatory. I think everyone is in favor of this, even if they also want (2) and/or (1) as separate things.

[RickDagles]

The more I play the new patch, the more I think that the Pike is significantly weaker than the Quell. Hydrospanner is easily the best copilot on the T2 Strike, and losing the proton firing arc is a HUGE deal. The Pike is probably better off taking lightweight armor and running interference in order to get the proton firing arc. That makes it better for single isolated attack runs but quite a bit weaker overall unless the republic side has a T2 bomber with repairs (an increasingly rare sight these days). So far there is absolutely no similar advantage for the republic side, no matter how much you want bypass to work.

 

With the T1 Strike it's not a big deal because the Starguard is really strong with rapid reload + clusters (or concs if you prefer them). The Rycer is slightly weaker if it runs firing arc + clusters/concs. However, the Rycer with firing arc + protons is a solid option, and it does this way better than the Starguard. It should be noted that the best domination T1 Strike co-pilot is likely wingman, which makes these ships equal in those maps. So far the faction imbalance really only seems to be in TDM since wingman is very good in domination for all types of Strikes.

Edited November 1, 2017 by RickDagles

[Verain]

See, I guess I look at that and say "man, I wish that double blasters wasn't totally garbage compared to double engines". If the engineering crew skills were meaningfully selectable in the way that the defensive guys are, this issue would be much smaller, and probably more within range of the other ships (some of which I do think are better on pubside).

[Ramalina]

See, I guess I look at that and say "man, I wish that double blasters wasn't totally garbage compared to double engines". If the engineering crew skills were meaningfully selectable in the way that the defensive guys are, this issue would be much smaller, and probably more within range of the other ships (some of which I do think are better on pubside).

 

As long as running out of engine power is a massive problem for most ships, and running out of blaster power is at worst a minor nuisance for most ships, you can't really cure the double weapon passives unless you make them do weapon related things that aren't power usage related.

 

Damage, rate of fire, accuracy, shield piercing, armor piercing, sufficiently strong drain/debuff/snare, crit, and range are all weapon related traits that are reasonably valuable in Crew Passive scale amounts.

 

Weapon power related traits have the problem that even if you dial it up to "weapon pool is infinite" or "weapon power regenerates at 1000/sec", it's still not really that great.

 

As long as you generally have enough to shoot about as much as you want to, more weapon power doesn't help, and the design of GSF puts very little stress of weapon power pools as a general rule. As long as that's true, stacking weapon power will pretty much always be crap compared to even trace amounts of traits that increase the effectiveness of shots.

 

You can cure some of the complaints by following the design rule, "never put a worthwhile Crew Active ability on a double weapon power passive crewmember," but you can't cure it by making weapon power passives better, because even at the maximum possible values double weapon power is still generally going to suck for most ships most of the time. It's fine for a Whisky strike though, they're all about the pew, pew, pew, and infinite weapon pool potentially works with that. For unpressured gunships too I suppose.

 

@Siraka I'm curious about your logic about Hydro being more valuable for Strikes in TDM. I generally feel that in TDM the accuracy of Wingman is even more valuable, because there's a lower proportion of low evasion targets like bombers and turrets and additional damage for snagging kills on ships is more valuable. In DOM on the other hand, there is more hull damage from various "near the node" sources and every last bit of healing to stay alive a bit longer on the node is potentially of game deciding value.

 

I think Wingman is flat out more valuable for strikes by a significant margin in both modes, but if I were forced to choose Hydro for one mode or the other I think I'd take it for DOM. So far in my tests that's more or less how it has felt to me.

[OscarDivine]

Regarding Crew Skills and CoPilot abilities So far my experience playing a TON of T2 Strike on both imperial an pub side is the following in order of preference:

 

Hydrospanner is unmatched in its utility and importance especially in TDM, but also in Dom. Taking one Protorp leaves you at Low enough HP that a few HLC Shots can EASILY Kill you, Hydrospanner mitigates this weakness almost completely. If evasive and smart enough with cover, you can heal up a huge amount of your HP Pool and over enough of the match, even heal to full. Combined with Reinforced Armor, you become a very difficult target for other Strike Fighters to kill, which aids you in being lower on death count and as well, being alive longer to continue kill runs. In Dom matches, it helps to ensure that you won't be one of those EMP Bank shot kills on a satellite as you are far less likely to be at a sliver of HP.

 

Bypass is an exceptional skill to take but is not as strong in matches as Hydrospanner is due to the short length of time you have it active. As an offensive skill, I feel that this so far has been the best crew skill to take if you run HLC especially in order to pick off low-HP targets (of which there are now tons of them thanks to Protorps). It keeps the battlefields rid of those pesky low hanging fruit flies that still throw nuking Protorps.

 

Wingman is a very good as well, and may be superior to Bypass in Dom matches due to it's ability to improve shot accuracy while circling nodes, which is, of course, the name of the game in Dom. In Overall Utility offensively, however, Bypass is still superior for me.

 

Running Interference has always offensively been a good skill, however, in the protorp meta, it is less meaningful as you cannot evade a missile with it. It DOES help when charging gunships, however.

 

At the end of the day, my ideal build still has Hydrospanner on it although Bypass isn't a poor choice by any means, it is not as meaningful in as many situations as Hydrospanner is. The benefits of Hydrospanner outweigh the decrease in offensive capabilities you get in either Wingman or Bypass.

 

On to a related matter, the ENGINEERING Crew chosen largely determines the availability of Hydrospanner short of taking B3G9 as a republic toon thereby giving up Increased Firing Arc, which I think most of us would agree is a pretty crucial crew skill bonus to have. So for Republic side in Engineering, you can take T7-01 which gives you Hydrospanner, but you take Double Blaster (Power + Efficiency). For Imperial side, you can take Blizz, who gives you Double Engine (Power + Efficiency). There is ZERO Contest here for a T2 Strike Fighter. Double Engines hands down. I tried for 4 matches to use Double Blaster, even being more conservative with my engines and using cover more, the drawbacks to loosing the double engine were too high for the meager benefit of taking Double Blaster. No Contest here: for Engineering, Blizz is Best.

 

The end result of this is that Imperial side gets a tremendous advantage with Hydrospanner use. For the game that is currently being promoted with Protorps everywhere, Hydrospanner isn't being beat and Imperial Side does reap all the advantages and benefits there of. I have yet to see this be a true balance issue but I do know that flying Imperial side "feels right" to me because of this disparity.

[PlagaNerezza]

I like differences. There is a push to equalize gameplay and mirror things in this game between sides. Some people like the op will always oppose any kind of variation between sides in the game. I think the developers have overly taken this players prospective into account at the expense of fun.

 

There are reasons this game should have variation. The first is that the bad guys are played more. So if you want to try and balance the game out somewhat adding some incentives in the form of positive tipping of the scales is a way to encourage that behavior.

 

Flying games traditionally involve variation in the crafts between sides that a pilot can exploit. Faster climb rate. Better turning radius. These craft variations are appreciated in most other games. This game overly caters to the "parity" crowd.

 

I'm not advocating for massive differences, but the ones pointed out here are so subtle and minor I think they should be embraced and celebrated. Cool. There is some difference between what side you pick in the war.

 

Good. Do more of this. Try and get a little more game balance. In other words have a little more fun. Its a video game not chess.