I flew mostly pubside last night (because all my Imperial Strikes are mastered), and it seemed like participation was pretty high for the most part. Each side usually had 6-8 Strikes, and the occasional errant Scout, Gunship or Bomber did not disrupt the fun.

Thanks to all for participating!

Hope to see people participating again tonight, but while I plan to fly a Strike, I'm going to have my gunship and my flashfire on the toolbar as a counter to those who aren't. Sorry.

Edit: Er. That's if I fly at all. I forgot that I've got something else to do tonight, too.

I'm not!

Believe in the power of Strike Synergy!

Hope to see people participating again tonight, but while I plan to fly a Strike, I'm going to have my gunship and my flashfire on the toolbar as a counter to those who aren't. Sorry.

 

Edit: Er. That's if I fly at all. I forgot that I've got something else to do tonight, too.

You flying a non-Strike "to counter" has no chance, in any parallel universe, of convincing someone to participate. All it does is reinforce their own decision.

And I'm not expecting super duper participation tonight, since it's the last night of double requisition and people will likely want to spread that across all of their unmastered ships.

I hate to say it, but this one seems like a bust. Except for one game I got into I've just been seeing bombers, gunships, and I myself got pretty sick or trying to play nice with them.

I wasn't able to get on until late, and even then I didn't feel like trying to turn the tide--especially on the last of double req night. We'll see if we can get it going again next week.

Double req is over, and we've all had plenty of time with the new T3's, Let's get back to Strike Night on Monday!

7 / 7 / 7pm!

Enemy team: Five flashfires, three quarrels.

Sriia was on his quarrel rather promptly, but I think we need a smaller window or period on this. Once Stasie died to nothing but scouts and gunships, he swapped flashfire and just cleaned their clocks. Maybe the Republic was done with strike night much earlier tonight, but I don't see the reason to play an unmastered support strike if the whole game is going to be dodging railslugs and having bad flashfires try to cluster me without being able to call for my own artillery.

Strike night isn't happening. I was just in a match - saw three bombers, two gunships and the rest scouts. And against an obvious noob-heavy REpublic team, too - I was one of just two people with more than the starting two ships.

**** YOU, Gunsheep et al. **** YOU. Fine. Enjoy your 1000-45 victory. But I'm *********** DONE WITH YOUR ****. If I see you, I'll just leave the battle. I'm done with you.

Strike night isn't happening. I was just in a match - saw three bombers, two gunships and the rest scouts.

 

**** YOU, Gunsheep et al. **** YOU.

Strike night ended 14 mins ago nubkins. I respected your little event until midnight EST

Isn't strike night over at midnight?

Whatever, after seeing some evasion scout hump a node constantly, it's def not happening this late anyway.

**** YOU, Gunsheep et al. **** YOU. Fine. Enjoy your 1000-45 victory. But I'm *********** DONE WITH YOUR ****. If I see you, I'll just leave the battle. I'm done with you.

Sounds good.

**** YOU, Gunsheep et al. **** YOU. Fine. Enjoy your 1000-45 victory. But I'm *********** DONE WITH YOUR ****. If I see you, I'll just leave the battle. I'm done with you.

I love free wins, thanks for that.

Isn't strike night over at midnight?

 

Whatever, after seeing some evasion scout hump a node constantly, it's def not happening this late anyway.

No, it's over at 1 am EST, to give west coasters more time to participate after work. See original post.

I am sorry you guys ran into a wave of non participants, but participation is not going to improve if people don't commit, regardless of what the opposition is flying. That is why I recommend people take everything off their bar. And that is how the first two nights were so successful. Participation snowballed because of people visibly committing.

But now everyone seems to think that, as soon as one person on the other team flies something else, then it is justification for everyone to abandon participating. So then lack of participation is what snowballs.

"Punishing" or "countering" doesn't work to influence people to participate. All it does is create resentment and escalation, until Strike Night is just like any other night--perhaps even worse because of crushed expectations.

I know we have a couple of pilots who show up on our server on Mondays purely because of Strike Night. All I would ask is that, if you are really here because you like the event and want to participate, then take everything else off your bar. You might lose that one match against a bunch of Flashfires and Gunships and Bombers, but I truly believe that if people see the likes of Dementia, Drakolich, Valix, Gunsheep, Renegade(s), Aimbot, myself, various Eclipsers, etc. all with nothing but Strikes on their bars, then they will feel more secure about participating in good faith. That is how it succeeded the first two weeks. It took some patience, and the willingness to lose an otherwise winnable match or two, but it resulted in many subsequent fun matches.

Right now everyone is just paranoid that someone is trying to cheat them--especially new and mid-tier pilots whom regularly get spanked by "those mean, arrogant aces".

For Strike Night to work, the aces must be the first ones to make the leap of good faith.

Anyway, I still had some good matches tonight--even if there wasn't full Strike participation, there was more than usual, and that was enough to change up the game and make tonight distinct from other nights.

We crushed the 5 type 2 scout / 3 type 1 gunship team. The only one of us not on a strike the whole time was Stasie, who was on a battle scout after getting dogpiled while the rest of us could't peel because railgun.

The next game was a general mix of whatever, and again we all shipped out on strikes. I eventually got cross at some ludicrous scout, crashed my Imperium, and railslugged him, after which he never respawned. He certainly was never on a strike.

Ebon Hawk has some noble pilots and goodhearted folks, but it's still an RP server, and terrible sportsmanship is definitely around here. I'd say it's the minority, and over the course of the GSF community it may well be, but I mean, it was 8 of them on scouts and gunships. The only reason there weren't more scouts and gunships on their team is that it wasn't a 12v12. I'm not taking my one mastered ship off the bar to give the 5 scout 3 gunship team a possible victory, even though I was on my Imperium the whole game with 0 deaths. Sorry. Those guys can commit first. If we're there to strike, we'll hop on our unmastered strikes with the benefit of the doubt, but if the enemy team can't handle losing on strikes, I certainly feel no need to spend the match trying to quad laser some 33% distortion field princess scout off the node. That's so far removed from fun it's absurd.

If Four Flashfire Skill Swarm with Ion Overwatch manages to get a kill on Stasie in his 70k Rycer, I *want* him on his Sting. Those bads don't deserve to see him explode.

A 3 gunship 5 flashfire swarm isn't "strike night". This isn't some escalation thing- we killed them with our strike fighters, and then the few of them that were on strikes initially were suddenly not. That's not escalation, that's them not handling anything.

Nem, I'll keep the 3 strikes on my bar AND 1 GS just in case we have a match that isn't - I feel that's a fair compromise because I can still enjoy the event and not ruffle feathers without sacrificing the win against pilots NOT part taking. Best of both worlds no? If everyone used their strikes + their main ship, it'd be more of a symbol because I doubt others would want to pull their favorite ships from their bar (and forget to put it back on Tuesday just to get stomped against gunship walls).

My statement in GSF last night was my honest belief that would only serve to help strike night (then again, I forgot my anniversary this year, so the whole "important day" concept is lost on me ). I'm keen on making enjoying the strike nights as it's a lot of fun to play against other strikes, but every week is a large commitment to undertake (especially when I'm trying to get Leggo a mastered GS on TEH).

I'm willing to keep trying if yall are

I like Strike Night. Until this Monday, I threw 1 strike on my bar on any alt I flew, and gritted my teeth when names I regularly encounter flew GS or Bomber to feed their kill count. I always do a gentle reminder at the start of the match.

This past Monday, pilots I respect and pilots who I feel just enjoy clubbing baby seals (farming beginners) alike seemed resistant to allowing the community event to happen. So I added a Cattlescout to the bar and tried to "punish" the GS/Bomber crowd. I was... Unsuccessful. Lone scout jousting with effective gunships just feeds their kill count faster and makes you a target to be shut down at range, so that you spend the game stun locked, slowed, and destroyed. Sooooo much fun.... NOT.

I am going back to the 1 ship on the bar. But to be blunt, unless I am flying Moden with Eclipse Squadron, Strike Night seems to be something that pilots claim to observe but in practice ignore. This is something I cannot fathom. The pilots doing this are perfectly capable of ruling the top of the leaderboard on Strike. They simply choose not to. And that means for the past several strike nights Q'ing has been a very frustrating set of lost games to endure. It would be nice if the aces and vets put one night aside for the community event.

Enemy team: Five flashfires, three quarrels.

 

Sriia was on his quarrel rather promptly, but I think we need a smaller window or period on this. Once Stasie died to nothing but scouts and gunships, he swapped flashfire and just cleaned their clocks. Maybe the Republic was done with strike night much earlier tonight, but I don't see the reason to play an unmastered support strike if the whole game is going to be dodging railslugs and having bad flashfires try to cluster me without being able to call for my own artillery.

Yeah, I went Quarrel as soon as I saw that half of your team wasn't participating. If you'd been paying attention, you might have noticed I was trying to target non-strikes first and people who were targeting me second. By that point I had been in one match after another full of bombers and gunships. I was a little bit tired of letting people get farmed by that point.

Strike night's a great concept and all, but I'm starting to feel that one night a week is just too often.

(Also: Cool, I'm a guy now.)

That seems to be par for the course - starting the first run in strikes and then switching to a different ship when you see the game start to go poorly for your team. I know that's what I did - no reason to allow the team of gunships to think they're good, especially when the point of strike night is to fly strikes.... Leggogurl now has an abysmal kd on the rycer, but I still think we saw quite a few games of strikes only on mondays (some that eventually deteriorated yes, but overall it felt like a strike night).

I will try the only-strikes-on-bar thing for the next one. Who knows, maybe it will do something.... But if I do that I'm going to remain on pub side more because it's gonna be a long time to climb outta that kd.... The only number I've seen smaller was my GPA in college :/

We'll see how the next one goes

There is this assumption all through the past page or so of posts that if a strike is confronted with a non-strike, the strike pilot will derive an absolute undeniable advantage from switching ships.

This is bullcrap.

Verain's blandishments about firepower notwithstanding, it is entirely possible to suppress a gunship with a strike - I've gone after Aimbot often enough, successful and not, to be confident in my own mind of that. I'm pretty sure it's equally possible to suppress a team of gunships with a team of strikes. I'll grant you that it might take a higher baseline level of coordination on the part of the strikes, but once that's met there's not much the gunships can do. As for "bad" flashfires, it's downright EASIER to kill them in a strike than in most anything else. If you want to make strike night a thing, if you think it's worth doing, fly a strike, learn how to fly it better, and stop yourself from running to your comfort zone every time things get iffy. Losing a match isn't such a bad thing, and you won't stop losing if you don't learn what's causing it.

The reason the Bastion group win all their matches is not because they, as individual pilots, do impossibly superior things with the ships they fly. They're good but not that good; the only pilot in GSF who is that good is Scrab. It is not because they fly ships that are inherently overpowered. (Inherently easier to fly, sure; but not overpowered.) The Bastion group win all their matches because they fly and fight as a team, and they do that better than anybody else on this server - they do it in a way that hardly anybody else on this server even tries, the Pylan/Aimbot pairing being the one notable exception. When they're up against veteran pilots, it's not the particular ships they're flying, it's that they maximize their advantages and their opponents don't. That's not something to complain about, or to go running to mommy gunship for. It's a reason to learn to fly better.

A well-flown T1 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any T2 scout you care to name. A well-flown T2 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any gunship or bomber you care to name (with the one exception of a sat-hugging bomber, in which case a wingman will be very helpful). Either of those can also do decently well against near everything else. A team of such strikes can handle a team of lolwtfpwn ships. Yes, even when YOU, reading this, are the one flying the strike - IF you and your teammates know what you are doing. It's a question of practice.

I was giving myself a couple months' break from the game but now y'all are making me want to cut that short.

In the meantime, here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7527484

Rhodogast / Kelril

There is this assumption all through the past page or so of posts that if a strike is confronted with a non-strike, the strike pilot will derive an absolute undeniable advantage from switching ships.

 

This is bullcrap.

I agree with this. I do see lots of people switch. But, seeing as strike night is optional I don't hold it against them. If people feel the need to fly something other then strike on "Monday" that's their prerogative.

Verain's blandishments about firepower notwithstanding, it is entirely possible to suppress a gunship with a strike - I've gone after Aimbot often enough, successful and not, to be confident in my own mind of that. I'm pretty sure it's equally possible to suppress a team of gunships with a team of strikes.

I think that suppressing a team of gunships is for sure possible. Do I think it'll help you win? No. Suppressing and shutting down are 2 different things and I believe that in the end the strike will lose if pitted against a good gunship. This goes doubly for teams, especially since it only takes 2 slugs (give or take) to kill a strike. But, this is not the point of the thread so whatever.

I'll grant you that it might take a higher baseline level of coordination on the part of the strikes, but once that's met there's not much the gunships can do. As for "bad" flashfires, it's downright EASIER to kill them in a strike than in most anything else. If you want to make strike night a thing, if you think it's worth doing, fly a strike, learn how to fly it better, and stop yourself from running to your comfort zone every time things get iffy. Losing a match isn't such a bad thing, and you won't stop losing if you don't learn what's causing it.

It doesn't matter what a bad pilot is flying, they are easy to kill in anything, so that point doesn't matter. I think everyone should fly everything so that way they know how to best counter it. It just is funny that battlescout will pretty much counter everything nowadays anyway. As for taking your lumps, I think you need to take your own advice. How many matches have I seen you leave because you didn't want to fly against us? (Even when you were in a premade). The only way you'll get better as a veteran is to play those tough matches against players that are comparable or better then you. Leaving because you are not in your comfort zone is a poor excuse. Knowing you are going to lose is a poor excuse. Just take your medicine and continue with your day.

The reason the Bastion group win all their matches is not because they, as individual pilots, do impossibly superior things with the ships they fly. They're good but not that good; the only pilot in GSF who is that good is Scrab. It is not because they fly ships that are inherently overpowered. (Inherently easier to fly, sure; but not overpowered.) The Bastion group win all their matches because they fly and fight as a team, and they do that better than anybody else on this server - they do it in a way that hardly anybody else on this server even tries, the Pylan/Aimbot pairing being the one notable exception. When they're up against veteran pilots, it's not the particular ships they're flying, it's that they maximize their advantages and their opponents don't. That's not something to complain about, or to go running to mommy gunship for. It's a reason to learn to fly better.

Correct that we are very good at working together. But, we are also very good. All of us have 2000+ games played and we play all different ships and we are VERY good. Not just kinda good, we are VERY good. This is just insulting. We all started playing solo or against each other and we have become better because of it. We all started out solo players and for you to claim that we are just above average is an absolute farce. Although it sounds egotistic, I KNOW that our pilots, individually, are significantly better than MOST of the aces on any server. (Including scrab - The 1 ship wonder). As for your remarks of flying the best combination, I agree. We do work together to fly what will help us win more easily BECAUSE winning is fun to us.

A well-flown T1 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any T2 scout you care to name. A well-flown T2 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any gunship or bomber you care to name (with the one exception of a sat-hugging bomber, in which case a wingman will be very helpful). Either of those can also do decently well against near everything else. A team of such strikes can handle a team of lolwtfpwn ships. Yes, even when YOU, reading this, are the one flying the strike - IF you and your teammates know what you are doing. It's a question of practice.

Anyone will eventually kill anything just because sheer numbers. But, a T1 strike will lose many times against a comparable skilled T2 scout on average. That's just how it is. T2 scouts are in a very good place right now, which is why people fly it. That's the meta. Any teams with ANY decent pilots can win ANY game if they are good enough and coordinated enough. That's the joy of the game.

I was giving myself a couple months' break from the game but now y'all are making me want to cut that short.

 

In the meantime, here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7527484

 

Rhodogast / Kelril

You can come back if you want. I miss seeing you quit games against us then roll noobs all day thinking you're good, but won't step up to the big leagues.

Hugs and kisses.

There is this assumption all through the past page or so of posts that if a strike is confronted with a non-strike, the strike pilot will derive an absolute undeniable advantage from switching ships.

From the start you put the wrong foot forward.

Strikes are unquestionably weaker. If you don't think so, you aren't very good at GSF. Sorry bro!

However, that's not the point. The point isn't that strikes are weaker- the point is that this server has "strike night", a night devoted to good players mostly on strikes. This lets the strikes focus on traditional dogfighting roles, instead of:

> Assuming they will be outmaneuvered by scouts

> Assuming they will be outburst by scouts

> Assuming they will need to de-roost gunships

> Assuming they will be able to rotate on nodes without having to be concerned about bombs

> Assuming they will not hurt their team by lacking railgun drone, interdiction drone, heal drone, and hyper beacon: these utilities won't be present because it's strike night.

Verain's blandishments about firepower notwithstanding, it is entirely possible to suppress a gunship with a strike - I've gone after Aimbot often enough, successful and not, to be confident in my own mind of that.

You killing Renegade-One, under a situation where you probably are forgetting a lot of other factors, is not compelling to me. If I saw strikes routinely threaten me (no) or if I routinely threatened gunships in my strikes the way I can in a gunship or scout, I might believe you. As it is, the only hypotheses are:

1)- You don't know what you are talking about.

2)- You are so much better than me and my crew that we don't even understand you.

2 isn't true. The answer is 1.

I'm pretty sure it's equally possible to suppress a team of gunships with a team of strikes.

I'm glad I picked 1. This is delusional.

I'll grant you that it might take a higher baseline level of coordination on the part of the strikes, but once that's met there's not much the gunships can do.

Well, they could railgun, and barrel roll. Ludicrous assertions like yours are the reason strikes aren't getting the buffs they need though. "Oh look at me, I'm some random guy on the forums! I claim strikes are fine, and everyone else must be a low skill dirt bag because I think I killed Aimbot one time, on the third server he rolled on, in a game he was losing, with my friends in mumble."

Here's a logical proposition for you and other readers:

IF you think strikes are fine AND you killed Aimbot, THEN he was probably drunk or wildly outnumbered.

Agree? Disagree? At this point, I don't even care what you think about game balance, because there wouldn't be "strike night" if the community didn't understand how your assertions are garbage. We'd have "scout night" or "gunship night". Strikes are the underdog. Hence you have eight servers worth of good pilots with low req ships rolling around on strikes to have fun in gentleman's games.

As for "bad" flashfires, it's downright EASIER to kill them in a strike than in most anything else.

I'm quoting this mostly so you can't delete it later to hide your ludicrous claims.

If you want to make strike night a thing, if you think it's worth doing, fly a strike, learn how to fly it better, and stop yourself from running to your comfort zone every time things get iffy. Losing a match isn't such a bad thing, and you won't stop losing if you don't learn what's causing it.

So, lemme get this straight big guy:

1)- I make an alt on your server.

2)- I run some unmastered ships of the worst class

3)- Locals try to beat me and my buddies by swapping to more powerful and synergistic classes

4)- We still win and don't die.

5)- We should l2p.

The reason the Bastion group win all their matches is not because they, as individual pilots, do impossibly superior things with the ships they fly.

Damned straight. We're very good! You have some other solid groups who we clash with too, which is why we are here.

They're good but not that good; the only pilot in GSF who is that good is Scrab.

Anastasie (Phytia, Dementia) and Drakolich (various spelling with and without wangs above the i) are the best pilots I have ever seen. If this game had ranked, or ELO, you would see exactly that.

You know how I know a pilot who knows what's going on? They recognize the talent of these two.

If the game had ranked or whatever you'd know that. Instead it has a scoreboard.

Scrab is not in the same class as these two. He's an excellent pilot, but I've only see him on one specific spec of one specific role, and he dies a whole lot in that role. Excellent damage, but comparing him to Drako or Stasie honestly is redic. I've never seen him do anything but lasers/pods and quads/pods. It's not the same.

I dislike conversations like these, because they turn into peen-waving, and I'm bound to offend someone- there's plenty of great players, after all, why would I single out these two? I certainly can't quads and pods like Scrab, Gunsheep is amazing too etc.

The thing is, if you have to lie to yourself, that's whatever. But when you come to this thread and put a bunch of passive aggressive stuff out, guess what? I'm gonna call you on it.

It is not because they fly ships that are inherently overpowered.

I have every ship mastered, even the cartel ships, Imp and Pub. I have some thousand something games.

Sheep lacks cartel ships, but has everything else mastered. He has many more games than me.

Drako and Stasie had everything mastered, and FAR more games than me, months ago. I started playing when the game launched, and Stasie had me at 5:1 games ratio at some point- it's lower now, but still.

So do we fly "good" ships? "easier to master" ships?

No. We fly all ships. On multiple servers and factions. Ebon Hawk Empire is one of the places we play. If we don't have mastered strikes here, it's because we have mastered strikes elsewhere. Again- I have 8 mastered strike fighters on Bastion, two of them complete (that's every possible upgrade).

(Inherently easier to fly, sure; but not overpowered.)

We fly the ships we feel are best. They are more powerful. If the devs change which ships are more powerful, we'll have those ready to go, with all upgrades, very soon. I don't think a type 2 gunship is as good as a type 1 gunship, even though it is so fun to play, and my TEH type 2 gunship doesn't have much req. My four type 2 gunships on Bastion are mastered and then some. Heavy, Laser, Slug, Plasma, Thermite, Proton, all mastered. Sheep likely has the same and he doesn't even like that ship much.

The Bastion group win all their matches because they fly and fight as a team, and they do that better than anybody else on this server - they do it in a way that hardly anybody else on this server even tries, the Pylan/Aimbot pairing being the one notable exception. When they're up against veteran pilots, it's not the particular ships they're flying, it's that they maximize their advantages and their opponents don't. That's not something to complain about, or to go running to mommy gunship for. It's a reason to learn to fly better.

I'm glad to hear you say it, but understand this: we'd have a devil of a time if our ships were type 3 scout / type 2 strike / type 2 gunship. Flying as a team, and being very practiced, is obviously much better than not. Having a mastered ship is better than not. But having a good ship is better than having a weak one too.

It was just a few weeks ago that we were being accused of being skillless bomber pilots on this server, and not one of those was a mastered ship. I got called across the map in that 6v3 game because I was the only one with heavy lasers, the only one who could pierce armor.

A well-flown T1 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any T2 scout you care to name.

Ok, I pick Aquillon-Tune or Stasie or Drako on a type 1 strike VERSUS Stasie or Drako on a type 2 scout. Maybe those guys will come in here and offer their opinion on that matchup. But I know how Verain versus Verain would resolve there, and I can't imagine Drako versus Drako would be much different, or Stasie versus Stasie.

A well-flown T2 strike can hunt, suppress, and kill any gunship or bomber you care to name

The Pike is the worst choice versus a type 1 gunship. That's a fact man. It's like it was meant to be a counter almost. The gunship drains the Pike, has way more maneuverability if he can land a single Ion railgun, and can break missiles twice. A clever gunship can break that missile with just strafing while charging. The Pike has some serious threats it can pull off, and I like the ship, but if you are pretending it's a solid choice versus a type 1 gunship get real.

We all started out solo players and for you to claim that we are just above average is an absolute farce.

Sheep responded by typing, but lemme just second this. Rada's post is meant to be passive aggressive and derogatory, and claiming that our only trick is that we work well together is ludicrous.

It's a question of practice.

How many games you got? Lets talk about practice. How many games you got on a strike?

I doubt that practice will fix a serious balance problem, and I'm not the only one to feel this way.

Rhodogast / Kelril

What's your Bastion toons?

What's your Bastion toons?

Same names. In levelling up in regular (ground) missions there I was noticing regular lag spikes between me and the server of about 100-1000ms, at least once a minute, at any/all hours of the day, consistently the whole time I was connected to the server. GSF is going to be unplayable under those conditions, so I stopped wasting my time.

As for the rest of it, I'm content to let what I said above stand.

e: 2180 total battles, 1018 of them in strikes.

I missed this in Verain's wall'o'text.

How many matches have I seen you leave because you didn't want to fly against us?

...

You can come back if you want. I miss seeing you quit games against us then roll noobs all day thinking you're good, but won't step up to the big leagues.

You have NEVER seen this because it has NEVER happened.

The last match I ragequit was back in February or so and it was Obhrim's and Lixalia's doing. I have NEVER quit out of a match against you guys, specifically for the reasons you cite.

It is entirely possible that you have seen me leave one or two matches against you. About 1 in 20 matches, SWTOR will crash to desktop about 1 minute into a GSF match. This has been happening since GSF launched for me and customer service has been giving me the runaround ever since. But that's one or two matches at most, not the repeated times you're pretending.

For you to claim otherwise is a dam ned lie, and I don't know why you'd do that.

Rhodogast / Kelril