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Gavin_Kelvar

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  1. I think a fair bit of the scout deaths is again because they're so used to strikes having no burst DPS and laughable DPS overall. I suspect there was also a fair bit of DField addiction that is proving hard to break. Either way I think the speed with which you're observing torps destroy scouts is what their intended threat potential was unlike what we've had for two years (for the aforementioned reason of being a built in counter to max evasion stacking).
  2. My impression was that Strikes were always meant to be the backbone of teams, essentially the X-Wings of the game with scouts being less prevalent as a glass cannon that were best for quick hit and runs behind enemy lines. If you assume the flavor text of ships is an insight into design intent strikes were definetely meant to be the backbone supported by high risk, high reward scouts flanking enemies and exploiting openings created by strikes to decimate support ships like GS that hung out behind the front lines. Strikes weren't viable as the backbone of a team until 5.5 which left scouts with no role competition and somewhat forced to serve both roles (durable front line dogfighter and hit-and-run infiltrator). I think a lot of the reduced effectiveness of scouts post-5.5 is more a product of people not being used to having to play scouts as scouts and not pseudo strikes as they had for the past two years. I think overall GS and bombers becoming clear support ships is a good thing. It really was crazy that ships that, in any other game, would be a minority used tactically for support were the backbone of teams. It'd be like having medics and snipers be the overwhelming majority of players in a TF2 match, and having that set up be a meta that stood a reasonable chance of winning matches even against teams more evenly distributed class wise. Honestly I think this will be beneficial for railguns in the long run. Missiles were always clearly meant to be a counter to evasion stacking but they never actually worked until now. Now you can still be safe to outright immune to railguns (perhaps even moreso with the accuracy nerf) but be murdered by a torp or attempt to mitigate death by torp (HP armor minor I believe buffs a scout to 1140 HP, just enough to survive a torp hit) at the cost of more likely death by railgun. Which is way better than the the old meta of "no matter what I choose I can ignore everything except clusters... so do I want to very safe from railguns or live dangerously?" If pilots start adapting to torps by stacking extra HP railguns will have an easier time picking them off. My guess is they reduced railgun accuracy so that stacking HP to protect against torps is a more viable scout option by making evasion not so mandatory.
  3. I've sadly only gotten to play GSF once so far but running the Clarion it felt like it was actually a threat. I especially like the RFL change as it gives the Clarion the ability to be a bomber buster (at least in my one game impression). I can't begin to say how happy I was going toe-to-toe with a battlescout and actually killing them in a reasonable amount of time and not being total fodder for everyone else in the process (used to be they'd have to make a serious misplay to be taken out by a strike or be really, really nooby). torps also feel like they're in a good place now. Unrelated to the patch directly is GSF dead on JC? I've been out for a long while so I didn't keep up with server GSF health.
  4. With their current mobility limitations probably pretty balanced actually. They'd have to eat through quite a bit of their own shields to get anywhere and without high evasion they'd have basically weakened their only defense by the time they got there. On the flip side if they didn't cannibalize their shields to get to the fight they'd have pretty strong shields by the time they got there (theoretically stronger than what directionals + large reactor provide).
  5. Personally I think they should give the strikes homogeneity when it comes to engine components. It's kinda silly that the T2 doesn't get retros and all of them having PDive would at least mitigate their lack of a second missile break (meaning the devs could buff missiles without necessarily being totally crippling to strikes that have to rely on 15 second CDs). I'm also of the opinion that the T3 strike should be altered to be considered a "assault strike" rather than "support strike" so I don't think the T1/T2 would become irrelevant if the three were balanced around the T3 taking on that role. That's why I'm more interested in the HLC than concs since HLC fills more of the assault role and concs are more generalist.
  6. You'd be giving the T1/T2 the T3's big defensive strength. Which would leave it as a slower, but just as durable, strike with more limited weapon options and it's only unique feature being it's system components. Right now the T3 trades mobility for defense but the proposed change would mean it traded mobility for nothing (sensors don't count as a strength or anywhere close to be worth the loss of thrusters). If it's not going to have a defense advantage compared to other strikes it shouldn't have a mobility disadvantage. Now to be clear I don't think what you're suggesting is necessarily a bad change but you'd need to swap the T3's sensors for thrusters, give it HLC and (maybe) Concs. The latter two weapons I think should probably have been on the T3 regardless as they're kinda key in allowing strikes to fulfill generalist roles (and just because the T3 is a so-called "support" strike doesn't justify making it less able to perform it's class's generalist role; neither HLC or concs would allow it to take the role of dogfighter from the T1/T2 which have components that are better geared to that purpose). Otherwise you risk making the T3 strike a one trick pony like the T3 scout. Which I don't think is a good thing since the entire strike concept is as a multi-role ship. Now in a world where strike components are homogeneous (or nearly so with the exception of QCS, shield projector, clusters, and what their system ability does) the T3 would still likely be the most versatile ship and most meta worthy (as kind of is the case now) but the T1/T2 would also probably be better able to fulfill the "strike" part of their name since they'd have the defenses to engage bombers more easily. You'd also likely find strikes could be piloted based more on personal preference than choosing a strike variant due component options making it stronger than another variant.
  7. Maybe what you could do on decent weapons like HLC is make 50% of the buff be to the component with the other 50% being a strike chassis buff? So for example a DO buff to HLC would only be a 50% increase in damage on a bomber but strikes would get the full 100% damage increase. (Obviously weapons like RFLs would have 100% of the buff go to the component). You'd be able to buff components in general to be more competitive on all ship classes while still allowing strikes to benefit most from the buff. This assumes of course that chassis buffs of this sort are possible.
  8. true but that doesn't invalidate my point. GF wasn't designed to be a speedrun tool. I wouldn't aim to speculate. But I suspect it wouldn't be so bad for the cutscene crowd. They'd at least not get a queue for a FP and then get kicked when they ask to watch cutscenes because it's their first time or whatever. Queue for the speedrun crowd would inherently be faster because they're able to complete a FP and queue for another sooner all true. But at the same time that sets up the unhealthy attitude that if you want to appreciate the story you have to be around and play right when everyone else does or else you aren't welcome in the MMO part of the game you're playing. And it seems silly to say the MMO part of the game is only for the speedrun crowd and not the story crowd (barring the brief week or so when the content is new).
  9. Since the main selling point of TOR is story it seems illogical to say that people that are there for the story should have to ask to watch the story. You're effectively arguing that story should be skipped by default and you should have to ask "spacebar please? I'd like to watch the cutscenes" There's also been a lot of implication in this thread, with all of the calls to do solo mode if you want to watch cutscenes, that grouping (ie the MMO part of TOR) is only for people not interested in story and any individual interested in the story is not welcome in the MMO part of the game. If the community wasn't outright hostile to letting other players enjoy the story we would never have needed a solo mode. The devs could've also proceeded with developing TOR as an MMO instead of the apparent new direction "singleplayer game with online components."
  10. Agreed. And just to point out when originally made there was no solo mode, GF was designed to be a more user friendly means of getting groups together to do content. The introduction of solo modes doesn't invalidate the use of GF by newcomers, it simply reflects how seemingly hostile some of the community is to newcommers. Starting a Sith Warrior I used GF to queue for the first FP, was met with spacebar demands, calmly explained I never had done it and was kicked because I wanted to enjoy the story. Now I've been around since release (just haven't gotten around to Imp toons till now) so it didn't turn me off to playing but if that had been my first character ever it sure as heck would've. Mostly I think the problem with spacebar demands is that TOR explicitly bills itself on story and demands to spacebar (especially in a tactical FP) is effectively asking others to skip the entire point of playing TOR. Skipping HM where you're just doing it for the comms might be okay or through the made up language gibberish sure. But it's silly to effectively demand "I know you're here for the story but I want you to skip it so we can kill more pixels." People seemed upset that TOR is going more single-player but I'd wager it's because the community can be so hostile to doing story instead of spacebar they've left the devs with no other way to introduce content that will meet the main story draw of the game, be accessible to players, and, most importantly, insulate potential new paying customers from being driven away by a community that can be, paradoxically, outright hostile to the primary draw of the game. EDIT: and what does it say about the community that there are some who believe you should effectively play a single player game and ignore the MMO part of the game unless you're willing to skip the story? To me that sounds like what is desired is what we're moving towards; a story based single-player game that coincidentally is online with some MMO elements. It seems a very narrow definition of MMO that defines MMO (as in grouping) as mutually exclusive with story (as in watching cutscenes).
  11. Would that necessarily be bad though? It would give a more clear role assignment between the T1 and T2. Doing like Nem suggested in the OP and swapping armor for sensor might further help reinforce those roles.
  12. I believe it was Nem who first floated that idea. I kinda like it along with a 40% accuracy bonus (20% is not enough as evidence by the fact that no scout is afraid of a strike with wingman ready). Now that may be in part due to strike primaries not being very bursty to begin with (which the permanent DO would partially solve) but I think it's also in part due to a scout's active evasion being able to completely negate wingman and still have enough left over to buff a scout's evasion beyond it's maximum passive evasion of 33%. 40% would effectively mean a scout doesn't have passive evasion against a strike (meaning being under a strike's guns would be very dangerous, making jousting finally an ideal tactic for strikes) and it would also greatly lessen a scout's ability to opt out of being damaged by both strike primary and secondary weapons (they'd still be able to makes strikes effectively have no secondary weapon slot with DField but they wouldn't be able to simultaneously trivialize a strike's primary weapons). Ultimately though I agree with your sentiment and if the buff achieves that I will be very, very happy
  13. If by "big missiles" you mean torps I agree. I think ion rails would be more balanced if strikes could still threaten with a torp even if they were otherwise dead in the water. The GS would either have to eat a torp and kill the strike or bug out and let the strike live to fight another day. I feel though that the double break is most unbalanced on the scout since it basically allows it to opt out of receiving damage from the other dog fighting class in GSF and ignore it's effort to force a peel while the strike doesn't have a comparable ability to opt out of being pressured by the scout. (Which I don't think strikes should gain the ability of the scout to opt out of being pressured so much as be brought up to the level of the scout, and all offensive meta ships for that matter, in forcing their enemy to "flee or die"). That would be pretty cool and maybe would make combat command unique instead of just the poor man's TT. It'd also make stacking the two under a sat very powerful. More importantly I think the debuff would lessening the impact of lacking a systems component that 2/3 strikes have.
  14. Forgot that part. So I guess they basically had the missile lock immunity they have now, just with the added bonus of being immune to blaster fire. Probably the best thing to do would be to alter the T1 upgrade to grant the current passive evasion (making it functionally similar to directionals which require the 1st upgrade to be truly worth using), reduce the duration to it's original 3 seconds (making the T3 left upgrade more appealing, and attach the former T1 active evasion upgrade to the T3 left upgrade). Basically make it so you can have either the current maximum evasion or the current missile break but not both. Scouts have a more difficult choice sure but the main thing being that it avoids nerfing DField just right on scouts but overnerfing it on GS that rely a lot on the missile break. To me this sounds like the way scouts should have always been designed from the get-go. Strikes would absolutely still need a buff, if for no other reason than their mobility being so aweful. But I don't think we'd face the current problem of what are strikes even for since there wouldn't be a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-most ideal scout component combo.
  15. Honestly I think going back to evasion where it was at launch would be bad, even if DField lost it's missile break (as I recall most people didn't use the missile break anyway because evasion was so powerful the T3 left option was better, but DField also had a 3 second without that upgrade back then too). I think you'd also need to revert DField back to it's original 3 second duration but ultimately I don't think it would benefit strikes since missiles fire too slowly to make up for effectively having DField mean strikes don't have primary weapons. I do agree though that DField is broken since it grants immunity to all sources of damage a strike can throw at it without making a scout choose which immunity it wants. In that regard I think you've convinced me that directionals would have to be buffed to fairly crazy levels (the odds of which happening are probably about the same as winning the lottery) to make it a compelling choice over DField on a battlescout.
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