Who will kill the pillar humpers then? O_O

the other pillar humpers also trying to hold / cap the point.

To me the problem with Gunships is twofold:

1- Balance issues. Arguably there are some very real balance issues with the Gunships, once they reach high level of upgrades. Ion Cannons, in particular, have a way of disabling a ship and making it impossible to escape the gunship's fire, which defeats the very thing that made Gunships somewhat balanced in the first place (which is to say that once you take the first hit, there is a reasonable chance for an alert pilot to escape and avoid the killing blow and/or chase down the gunship... this is sometimes not possible with the ion railgun).

2- The main balancing factor for Gunships depends entirely on having opposing players who know that Gunships must be hunted down, and know how to do it.

To me this is the most significant factor, on which the entire enjoyment of the match depends. If the enemy team contains several skilled gunship pilots, and your own team has significantly fewer proper gunship hunters, then the match simply cannot be enjoyable. It will be reduced to your team getting picked off at a distance whenever trying to cap objectives, and any attempt at dogfighting will be equally futile. And god help you if you are one of the gunship hunters, as without backup it is simply an exercise in frustration.

In effect, whether or not the entire match is enjoyable becomes a factor of the Gunship to Gunship Hunter ratio. If the enemy team has 4 skilled Gunships, but your own has its own stable of skilled Gunship Hunters, then everything will be fine and balanced, and the match will not be dominated by long-range sniping that prevents any dogfighting. Hunting Gunships can be fun, and those not busy hunting Gunships will be having a good time dogfighting and doing what they like best, as opposed to being picked off by coordinated unseen and unreachable Gunships at every turn.

And that is in itself a problem: the enjoyment of the game becomes a matter for the matchmaker, and it is the matchmaker that decides whether or not the match will actually be an enjoyable bout of fast and furious dogfighting, or a tedious exercise in frustration where any attempt to dogfight or to capture an objective is made impossible by lurking Gunships.

How to fix this last issue is beyond me. Maybe certain nerfs would suffice (at least that can deal with issue #1), or perhaps the devs are simply hoping that as time passes players will just learn to deal with Gunships... but personally I fear that more players will be driven away by the frustration caused by Gunships than those who stick around and learn to cope and properly hunt down Gunships.

Thank you.

I've played my Gunship maybe 4 times since release, not my cup of tea. I've read today that ION is "OP" because you don't need to full charge to use their slow/disable ability when fully upgraded. This smells like a possible nerf in the future if enough smart GS pilots catch on.

I oppose all calls for nerfs until we get the full game with the other ships, but to all those GS pilots..karma.

Actually, it would have been more realistic had they made the gunship a two player system where one pilots and one shoots. This would have forced teams to sacrifice on field numbers for more accurate firing and power without losing realism.

And it would be absolutely AWESOME.

I oppose all calls for nerfs until we get the full game with the other ships, but to all those GS pilots..karma.

^^this

I don't believe gunships are in and of themselves overpowered, but I do not have any respect for those that main gunships. I respect fighters that shoot me down, but when a gunships gets me its just "oh well law of probability in action"

^^this

I don't believe gunships are in and of themselves overpowered, but I do not have any respect for those that main gunships. I respect fighters that shoot me down, but when a gunships gets me its just "oh well law of probability in action"

heh, you say that until I'm the gunship on your team obliterating enemy gunships that don't know what hit them. I'm a cannibal like that.

Personally, I even agree to that. It has done bad things to the RPG genre, I believe.

 

However, I kind of disagree if you mean Gunships - I (personally) see a ground version of them in the massive AT-TE's from AOTC. They did similar things on Geonosis. They even managed to bring a Separatist ship down.

 

More about it here : http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Tactical_Enforcer

 

Gunships are like ... "AT-TEs in space".

Themepark mmo, call of war craft, and galactic starfighter go so well together unfortunatly.

I miss JTL