Capturing Satellites & Defending in 5.5 - You need to be a lot closer

[Erurainon]

Two 5.5 changes that were not ship related:

 

1. Distance players need to be around satellites to capture and hold was reduced.

2. Time for a single player to capture a satellite was increased.

 

This has upgraded capturing and holding a satellite to an advanced skill. With the reduced area to maintain a hold on the satellite, your defensive flying has to be so close to the satellite that you barely avoid crashing.

 

Other factors to take into account are the speed buffs to strikes and scouts in F3 powers settings. Prior to 5.5, only the speed ships could make it to a satellite being captured and interrupt the capture in time. Now in the small dominations maps, a strike in F3 can boost from A to C and interrupt a ninja capture. Scouts were able to boost from A to C before, now they can do it faster without a penalty to their weapons or shields. This means players don't have to react as fast to captures in progress, unless there is more than one person capturing the satellite.

 

-Audson

[LordFell]

That's interesting to know. If I'm doing DOM, I generally roar up to a satellite as fast as possible, and hit X to full stop and also either F1 or F2 (preparing to deal damage to take it).

 

...I was actually thinking that Defense Turrets could use a buff. Again, when I'm doing DOM, I usually sit on a satellite until the first turret pops (especially if I need to repair damage). But, watching videos on Ianir-srw's channel has confirmed for me something I've kinda suspected... any talented fighter can clear 3 turrets in 10-15 seconds. I'm a decent pilot, and I can do it in under 30 seconds. What this is telling me, mostly, is I'm wasting my time waiting for turrets to pop up; they're kinda useless.

 

Mostly, I don't feel that Turrets should be a major impediment to players, I'm definitely not advocating that. GSF is still PvP, and players should be the agency through which other players are foiled. But, I do think they could take a bit more beating and/or dish out a bit more damage.

[Ianir]

Thank you for this information, especially the information about length of capture time by a single player.

[Verain]

I'm not sure if you actually cap slower, or if the "depth" of the cap has increased. I think Drako came up with that idea, but of course we have no way to test it.

 

The cap distance is honestly confusing to me, because sometimes I seem to be able to prevent a cap at the old distance, but mostly I have to be a bit closer.

[Ianir]

I haven't noticed much of a difference in terms of distance, but definitely in time. You may be right about the capture "depth" being increased. In any case, it really helps to have two capping each node.

[Verain]

We should be able to figure out a couple things from old videos.

 

1)- How long does it take a single ship to capture a starting node? That has to happen in some youtube somewhere.

2)- If that single ship captures it, how long until the "capping" icon stops displaying?

3)- Compare (1) to live

4)- Compare (2) to live

 

The capping time thing I'm not certain about, just pretty sure. I thought that the extra difficulty to solo cap a node was more about the fact that strikes and scouts are both faster now.

[Ramalina]

Looking through some old recordings of mine, I'm pretty sure that the distance is the same.

 

The tricky thing about distance, is that like turret and drone target acquisition, it's often subject to latency of some sort greater than client to server latency.

 

So for example, if I'm play with 35 ms latency spiking up to 80 ms or so, it will take on the order of 0.25 to 0.75 or so seconds for these things to kick in. As if to reduce the server overhead they're only checking say 4 to 5 times per second, and if there are problems anywhere in the pipeline it can take 2 to 3 checks before things register properly.

 

Normal latency is easy to spot because there's a delay on things like firing blasters, abilities triggering, boost engage/disengage, and there are vids where I'm way inside capture distance before it starts to show the capture starting, or where it keeps on going when I've boosted several km outside the capture range. This despite the normal signs of latency very clearly being absent.

 

Haven't found a solo cap yet in my archive, but I'll keep looking unless someone else finds one first.

 

Edit:

 

Having viewed more than 25 recordings of pre patch domination matches, I can say the following with a high degree of certainty: If there are enough competent pilots on both sides scouts and strikes were already both fast enough to prevent solo caps from happening with something very near 100% effectiveness. I found zero examples, and I quit as far as the search goes.

 

Based on partial captures, I'd say somewhere between 8 to 12 seconds for a single ship to cap from neutral. That's a fuzzier number than I'd like, but I don't know for sure if the timer starts when you reach the right range or if it starts when the client starts drawing the green status effect, or some point in between. The gap in some cases appears to be over 1 second.

 

Given that there was no notice about this from devs, given that there was no request for a change to these traits as far as I know, and given the sloppiness of the client reporting when exactly the timer starts, I'm inclined to think that this is really just a matter of perception where it's now harder to solo cap against a team of newbs because the ships are fast enough now to compensate a bit for them taking longer to notice that something is going on.

 

Also I apparently only like to record during community events and am very short on samples that don't have at least 4 good pilots on each team.

 

Someone that records beating up hopelessly outclassed PUGs needs to take up the search. I've beaten up my share, but apparently don't bother recording those matches.

 

The only good result I got was that 2 ships can cap from neutral in very close to exactly 6 seconds pre-patch. Make of that what you will.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Ramalina

[Ianir]

Nah, I’m pretty sure the solo capture time has increased.