First up: THANKS! I really enjoy GSF. There's huge scope for expansion of this section of the game, if not spinning it off into a separate game in it's own right.

Random thoughts in no particular order:

1. Gunships are, by and large, just fine. While I don't play them much myself, I like the concept. However, there are a couple of things unbalanced in heavily upgraded gunships, namely: that damn Ion Railgun. I don't mind the concept of Ion weapons draining power and demolishing shields, but it should apply debuffs only from a full charge and should do zero Hull damage and have it's range drastically reduced. I would also remove Barrel Roll as an engine option for gunships entirely and add missile-lock break to Rotation thrusters. Gunships are massive artillery pieces, Barrel Roll turns them into very fast, mobile artillery pieces. They don't need huge whomping great nerfs, just some minor tweaks.

2. Scouts have some issues. The Flashfire/Sting is, imho, a little overpowered at the moment while the Blackbolt/Nova is, comparitively, a little lacking when fully upgraded. May I suggest removing Rocket Pods from the Sting and giving them either a modest damage boost or change the fourth upgrade tier to a choice between a 20% Critical Hit chance or another 20% increased shield penetration. The Plasma Warhead final upgrade to rocket pods is completely underwhelming in comparison to, for example, the Double Volley final upgrade available to Cluster Missiles. If I understand the patch notes from the PTS correctly, plasma rocket pods are getting a nerf, which they seriously don't need.

3. Strike fighters and me just don't get along terribly well. I find if i want to play dogfighter, a Sting is a better tool for the job than a strike. perhaps that's just me.

4. MAPS, we need more maps. I would like to try my hand at creating maps for GSF and feel this is a prime opportunity to open up some user generated content. A Map Editor would be very useful and would allow an explosion of content with minimal effort from bioware.

5. game modes. ok, Team Deathmatch is coming. how about an Assault/Defend mode and Capture The Flag/Cargo/Datacron?

6. AFK'ers sitting at the captial ship all match? c'mon, eZ fix.

7. Self Destruction has, predictably, become something of a go-to tactic for some players when they get heavily damaged. Instead of copping the defeat on the chin, they'll dive into an asteroid to deny you any credit for a kill or assist. Can I suggest that after two or three self-destructs in a match that the points awarded to the opposing team start climbing and also apply a requisition penalty for the end-of-match awards. Possibly including an Assist point to anyone inflicting more than, say, 400 points of damage before they self-destruct?

2. Scouts have some issues. The Flashfire/Sting is, imho, a little overpowered at the moment while the Blackbolt/Nova is, comparitively, a little lacking when fully upgraded. May I suggest removing Rocket Pods from the Sting and giving them either a modest damage boost or change the fourth upgrade tier to a choice between a 20% Critical Hit chance or another 20% increased shield penetration. The Plasma Warhead final upgrade to rocket pods is completely underwhelming in comparison to, for example, the Double Volley final upgrade available to Cluster Missiles. If I understand the patch notes from the PTS correctly, plasma rocket pods are getting a nerf, which they seriously don't need.

Stings have to many stacking buffs, make distortion field block all other active buffs until it finishes. Also roll off Burst lasers just a hair so that 2 second kills go away, and the sting has to line up it's shot again before it can finish a strike.

Last thing the game needs is an opt in keybind to switch directional shields to forward while leaving the "2" button to perform normally. The put shields forward can be unassigned by default and the player must assign the key where they think it is best.

I've been playing it all weekend and I have to say, the Special Abilities ruin it.

I thought, when I signed up to try it out, that it would be about flying.

But now I see its just about leveling up and getting "powers" to deck out your hotbar with. And flying, takes a back seat to that.

Don't think I'll be playing much longer.

7. Self Destruction has, predictably, become something of a go-to tactic for some players when they get heavily damaged. Instead of copping the defeat on the chin, they'll dive into an asteroid to deny you any credit for a kill or assist. Can I suggest that after two or three self-destructs in a match that the points awarded to the opposing team start climbing and also apply a requisition penalty for the end-of-match awards. Possibly including an Assist point to anyone inflicting more than, say, 400 points of damage before they self-destruct?

You get credit for an assist on self destructs. The developers revealed that when they did their first stream of GSF.

really? sweet.

now, how about gimping requisition awards for constant self-destructors?

I've been playing it all weekend and I have to say, the Special Abilities ruin it.

 

I thought, when I signed up to try it out, that it would be about flying.

 

But now I see its just about leveling up and getting "powers" to deck out your hotbar with. And flying, takes a back seat to that.

 

Don't think I'll be playing much longer.

i disagree, i'm finding it's mostly about the flying. i took a completely untouched Novadive out on a mission and still managed to dish out over 20k of damage, killed >eight turrets and capped four nodes.

really? sweet.

 

now, how about gimping requisition awards for constant self-destructors?

.

What for? They're already penalizing themself and their team enough by taking them out of the match for 15-30 seconds. All that does is punish the newbies who fly into things all the time.

1) While I agree that barrel roll on a gunship is a bit much, it's too late to do that. As soon as they start arbitrarily removing components from ships you may as well just throw in the towel since they can arbitrarily mess with your favorite ship and loadout at any time. The problem is more that barrel roll itself is too good no matter what ship you use with it. It could use a range reduction or cooldown increase for how useful it is.

3) Strikes are about versatility, not raw power. You can change their loadouts and switch to adapt to multiple situations, where as scouts tend to be very locked into a role (short range dogfighter, objective capture, scouting etc. etc.)

6) They're adding something in the patch, but probably won't help if the afker just moves to an objective and sits there. I've honestly gotten confused by all the talk about them, because I never really see them.

What for? They're already penalizing themself and their team enough by taking them out of the match for 15-30 seconds. All that does is punish the newbies who fly into things all the time.

Precisely. The "Omg, I didn't get to shoot him down :'( " ego doesn't count.

Also, most self-destructs after taking heavy damage from that I've seen were less than intentional - the person panics, makes a sharp turn, or activates engine special at the wrong time and crashes into a wall/asteroid/pipeline/satellite.