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How to deal with mines?


Royox

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Hey. I usually play as scout with my AWESOME Flashfire...and I usually don't have any problems to deal with other ships except the mines. When I try to dstroy a "concussion mine" or other kind of offensive mines I just got facerrolled with 100000 missiles and stuff beating on me.

 

I'm starting to think I just have to think "other player will do that"....but, srsly, this is SWTOR PVP.....if you don't do that nobody will.

 

 

 

 

 

PLZ, GUNSHIPS, USE YOUR 15M RAILGUN TO DESTROY MINES, TY.

Edited by Royox
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When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.

 

Sun Tzu

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When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.

 

Sun Tzu

 

You really like this quote, but you have a tendency to take it out of context. This line comes from The Art of War 10:7. The Art of War 10:6 is as follows:

 

When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, it is called TEMPORIZING ground.

 

10:7 refers directly to temporizing ground. It is not necessarily applicable to other aspects of war. I would argue that temporizing ground only applies to TDM gameplay where neither side controls a section of space, or the space between the two sides at the start of the match. Even at that point, bombers benefit from stalling: if neither side wants to make the first move, the bombers will set up a home base (complete with railgun drones and/or hyperspace beacons), which gives them an advantage.

 

Domination gameplay (where bombers excel) is more appropriately described in 10:4-5:

 

Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy is called ENTANGLING. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.

 

Thus, you must have a strategem that enables you to assault and capture a fortified satellite without being defeated. This is what the OP is asking for.

 

(To clarify, the entangling ground is the area between the capital ships and the satellites, which will become filled with blaster fire during your retreat. You will also find it harder to retreat through this area than advance through it, since on advancing you shall be moving at maximum possible speed and on return you will likely find yourself with less engine power and, possibly, a cooldown time on barrel roll.)

 

Unfortunately, it seems that currently the only way to handle a bomber without using multiple ships is to use an upgraded ion railgun that is specced for aoe damage.

Edited by Armonddd
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As a flashfire, your only real choice is to hit and run the bomber laying these mines enough to take it out.

You do have the short end of the stick here as the novadive could sweep in, pop EMP field, then rocket pod the hell out of the bomber, but flashfire is just not the ideal ship to take on a sat guarded by a bomber on it's own, much like a bomber is not the best ship to take out a flashfire in open space combat.

 

That is the price of not choosing the strike fighter, you can't always handle every situation, you are specialized for dogfighting, the bomber is specialized for defending objectives.

 

Rock, meet paper. :(

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Doesn't your blaster have at least 4k range? Most mines hav 3k or less activation range, so just shoot them. One shot and mide is down. Turrets are a bit tougher, but they still go down in 3 seconds.

I admit that shooting mines and turrets during a firefight is not optimal, but better than letting them damage you. Escape is usually the best option unless you know that a friend with some kind of EMP is coming in 5 seconds.

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Hey. I usually play as scout with my AWESOME Flashfire...and I usually don't have any problems to deal with other ships except the mines. When I try to dstroy a "concussion mine" or other kind of offensive mines I just got facerrolled with 100000 missiles and stuff beating on me.

 

I'm starting to think I just have to think "other player will do that"....but, srsly, this is SWTOR PVP.....if you don't do that nobody will.

 

PLZ, GUNSHIPS, USE YOUR 15M RAILGUN TO DESTROY MINES, TY.

 

Armonddd, you are a better Sun Tzu scholar than me. I like the quote because, regardless of context, the point is not to charge at a bomber, but to let it come to you... or at the very least, ignore the bomber completely.

 

Post #1 asked about mines and defeating bombers, and nothing about Domination or Deathmatch. The answer is to remove the bomber from its position of strength, be it through ignoring it, luring it out, or as you said, bringing an AoE ion railgun and friends.

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Armonddd, you are a better Sun Tzu scholar than me. I like the quote because, regardless of context, the point is not to charge at a bomber, but to let it come to you... or at the very least, ignore the bomber completely.

 

Post #1 asked about mines and defeating bombers, and nothing about Domination or Deathmatch. The answer is to remove the bomber from its position of strength, be it through ignoring it, luring it out, or as you said, bringing an AoE ion railgun and friends.

 

It's important to separate domination and deathmatch when regarding bombers. In deathmatch, the bomber is already in a position of weakness: his abilities are not, overall, very useful, as they can be easily avoided. In domination, it is important to quickly and efficiently remove the bomber from play. You absolutely cannot afford to wait for the bomber to come to you, to ignore it, or to wait for it to come to a position of weakness, because as long as he holds the point, he is in a position of greater strength than almost any other a pilot could hope to attain.

 

Mistakenly following Sun Tzu's advice regarding temporizing ground instead of his advice regarding entangling ground and fortified locations results in fullstopping 20 km out from a satellite in the hopes that the bomber will leave his position of advantage and engage you on your own terms.

 

The Art of War 3:3-5:

 

"Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets, movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over against the walls will take three months more. The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege."

 

I am not the scholar you credit me to be; I had to do some digging to find this passage, which I think much more appropriate to dealing with bombers (specifically) than the passages on temporizing and entangling ground.

 

You must first try to predict and prevent the enemy's strategy; failing that, you must distract his reinforcements; failing that, you must engage his forces; failing that, if no other options are available, you must fight him at his advantage.

 

If you can predict where the enemy is going, you should send your best pilots there. I know certain names that can be relied on to head to a certain point immediately at the start of a match or on respawn; I myself try to mix it up often. I also know that pubs tend to favor Kuat Mesas A and Lost Shipyards B, and imps tend towards Kuat Mesas C and Lost Shipyards C. If they find several of our players already there (generally the barrel roll scouts), they may reconsider that point. Bombers especially seem likely to change their flight path if the point will not be taken by the time they arrive. This wastes their time and engine power, which is a huge advantage for your team.

 

Because GSF is not as strategic a war game as, say, Civilization, you will not fully accomplish Sun Tzu's goal of disrupting the enemy's strategy. You cannot, in this early engagement, prevent the enemy from fielding forces in critical areas or disrupt his supply lines or what have you. This is because GSF is a tactical, not strategic, game. Sun Tzu's advice is still mostly sound, however.

 

If you cannot stop the enemy from engaging you, you must prevent him from bringing his full force to bear. It is worthwhile to send a scout, strike fighter, or gunship to scare the bomber on its way to the point, unless doing so would compromise the point. I'm of the opinion that a satellite cannot be more compromised than by the arrival of a full strength bomber, so forcing the bomber to arrive with reduced shields and hull (and possibly forcing him to field a repair drone early) is a large advantage for your team. In a more general sense, Sun Tzu is also telling us that we should distract fighters on their way to an objective so our forces already there are at less of a disadvantage.

 

The next tactic is to engage the enemy. This is, perhaps, the heart of GSF. Shooting things is what we do every day.

 

Finally, Sun Tzu warns us against assailing a fortified satellite. Once a bomber opens shop on a node, it takes a lot of time and resources to remove him -- time and resources that could be spent capturing another satellite. If my opponent holds A and C, and I find a bomber at A, I am liable to turn tail and head for C without engaging the bomber at all. It's often a faster way of capping.

 

If you've read all this and haven't picked up The Art of War yet, I highly recommend it. It's a very important and thought-provoking book that covers all manner of statecraft, which I think is a very important topic in the modern world. It's also flat-out interesting, especially seeing how it still applies today.

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Getting back to the point of the topic... mines need an accurate area depicted around them to know when you're getting too close. There's no reliable way to eyeball it otherwise. They already have that red or green glow to depict whether they're friend or foe, just have that extend to indicate the maximum range of the mine's blast radius.

 

As for turrets? They need their HP reduced significantly. It should not take as many hits as it currently does to disable or destroy something a tenth the size of our fighters. One imagines that even if it weren't destroyed, a single shot would cripple it beyond use for combat. :p

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  • 1 year later...
a T3 scout with EMP missles and tensor field can be key to winning dom matchs. this ship and build can seem pretty weak but the buffs and debuffs it puts out can really tip the balance. in death matches bombers should always be top target of T1 gunships ion splash and rail.
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