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If strikes are meant to be versatile, jack of all trades ships


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If strike fighters are meant to be versatile, jack of all trades ships then it follows that they need tools to deal with all opposing classes of ships. Let's use this as a lens to see what strikes need to gain.

 

Tools against Bombers: all strikes can equip a stand-off armour piercing weapon. Two out of the three can equip an armour piercing weapon in both primary and secondary slots. Two can equip EMP missiles, which is a tad underwhelming yet still quite useful against bombers. Two can go full DR (94%) which hard counters most bomber deployables. Type 1 strikes can equip Retros, the best engine manoeuvre for sat-hugging, and all three can use K-turn, which at least does not take you off the sat you're contesting.

 

Overall, bombers are the best matchup for strikes and strikes do not particularly need better tools against them. You can make a general strike build that retains some anti-bomber tools, or a more specialised strike that counters bombers harder but not as efficiently as gunships, the true bomber counter.

 

Tools against Gunships: it's a truism on this forum that strikes do not have a significant mobility advantage over gunships, and I'm not going to contest that. However I'll discuss things brought up less often. Strikes do have a counter to most gunship weapons in Directional Shields, since it is easy to maintain a given arc facing the gunship that is charging a railgun at you, and it takes an annoyingly large ammount of railshots to kill a Directional Shields strike. However, while that is effective against Type 2 and Type 3 gunships, the elephant in the room is the Type 1 gunship's Ion Railgun.

 

Ion Railgun is one of very few truly meta-defining components. The problem for a strike is that the damage of Ion Railgun does not matter very much, what matters is the control it exerts by draining power pools and applying its Tier 5 talent. Scouts have a counter by stacking huge ammounts of evasion, strikes do not have significant evasion stacking. Additionally, there are a few components that can partially mitigate the control of Ion Railgun, however strikes only get Power Dive and only on the Type 3, which is meant to be the support strike. The Type 1 and 2 strikes need to be more lethal, yet they are not lethal in the slightest when they are kept at range and their wepaon pools drained by repeated Ion hits.

 

Overall, it is too easy for a Type 1 gunship with Ion Railgun—by far the most common and important type of gunship—to control strikes and render them useless. Strikes vitally need a new tool to either make Ion Railgun hits much less likely or strongly mitigate their controlling effect. In addition, there is broad consensus that strikes should probably see their boost efficiency increased, in order to make them better at chasing gunships. I would suggest giving strikes a way of rapidly regenerating their power pools, with a cooldown.

 

Tools against Scouts: there are a few strategies that have been discussed on this forum, but ultimately it all comes down to the fact that a scout pilot must misplay in order to die to a strike. An ace can push a less skilled pilot to misplay, but at comparable skill levels it happens, at best, once before the scout pilot corrects his error.

 

The strengths of a scout are having great agility, very high evasion, strong burst with armour piercing options, and two lock breaks. Against this, a strike has no weapons that are effective at very high deflection (there is only one in the game, and strikes cannot use it), only the Type 3 strike has an accuracy cooldown and it lacks the weaponry to make good use of it, a strike's options to boost defences are either directional with a GCD between direction switches or armour, and all a strike's secondaries depend upon lock-on times.

 

Overall, strikes are basically worse than scouts in almost every way and any kind of buff would help here, really. Directional Shields should not be slowed by the GCD, anything that increases their accuracy would help them hit scouts, they could have non-missile secondary options, and either there should be viable alternatives to Burst Laser Cannon for close-in dogfighting, or Burst Laser Cannon should be available on strikes.

Edited by MiaowZedong
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In the main thread we juggled around this one. We tried recommendations for if they were meant to be "jacks of all trades", and were split on the issue. Personally, I don't think it's that doable.

 

The real point is, does "jack of all trades" mean "never very good against X, no matter the component choice" or does it mean "can be really good against X if a component is chosen, but that component doesn't help you much against Y"?

 

 

You begin by going over strikes versus bombers. The issue here is that strikes don't have any game against bombers on a node. Even if using EMP missile (and even if EMP missile was actually good), the bomber isn't going to die to a strike under pretty much any circumstances. Top ships have situations that they can absolutely kill a bomber on a node- normally the bomber has to misplay, or have a build not suited for that attack, but against a strike, the bomber mostly just has to be at keyboard. None of the armor piercing weaponry can be applied to a close range target on node.

 

Is this a problem? I'm not really convinced that it is. There's plenty of things that do hurt bombers on nodes, and strikes are great against them if they are in open space, a situation that isn't very common. But they don't feel like "jacks of all trades" against bombers- they feel pretty darned weak against them.

 

Gunships, you spend a lot of time talking about ion railgun, and propose an optional button (maybe a shield or engine button) that can regen a lot of energy. That's a pretty solid idea, mostly because it lets a strike be worse at some defensive stuff in exchange for a defensive buff versus a thing that the strike can't answer. But I don't think this makes him a generalist in any way- I think it gives him a defense versus a meta choice that is optional and decently common. I like the idea a whole lot, but I don't think it backs your thesis.

 

 

Scouts I don't feel you have any good ideas. Giving them a bunch of close range weapons really just makes them better against bombers (the scouts don't need to be under the strike's nose hardly ever). While BLC or similar would be a buff against scouts, it's only because it's a buff against a lot of things, and it would hurt bombers and honestly gunships more than scout matchups.

 

But is a strike supposed to be good against a scout? If so, lets talk about a weapon like rapid fire laser, which Nem has suggested be amazing versus evasion. RFL is a scout weapon that also appears on two of the three strikes, so it would give them play versus evasive targets as well, but that could be just fine. A highly accurate RFL wouldn't be great against bombers or all builds of gunships, but it would maybe hurt scouts some....

But maybe strikes are just supposed to lose dogfights to scouts? That certainly seems to be the case. The scouts are more maneuverable, and for some reason have all the burst dps cooldowns too. They are the kings of dogfighting, the type 2 scout in particular, and I very much doubt this is an accident. How can you become a jack of all trades here? You either win this 1v1 or lose it, and I think the strike has to lose it with all builds or they just become the best dogfighter period. It's possible that charged plating was meant to allow scouts to be shrugged off more than they are, or something- I don't really know. A cooldown that makes strikes take a lot less damage (even armor ignoring damage being reduced) versus weapons that originate close to the strike could help here, but a general way to outmaneuver a scout dedicated to engaging you in a turn fight has to end in a loss for the strike unless you are ok essentially taking a job away from a scout. That's not a terrible call, but it's definitely not within your overall jack-of-all-trades mission either...

 

I dunno. I think, give them a damned job. And we listed a lot in that thread.

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In the main thread we juggled around this one. We tried recommendations for if they were meant to be "jacks of all trades", and were split on the issue. Personally, I don't think it's that doable.

I don't want to debate this in this thread. It is a legitimate debate, but one I'm not sure is productive, especially here. Please remember all arguments in this thread are premised "If strikes are meant to be versatile, jack of all trades ships, then..."

 

 

You begin by going over strikes versus bombers. The issue here is that strikes don't have any game against bombers on a node. Even if using EMP missile (and even if EMP missile was actually good), the bomber isn't going to die to a strike under pretty much any circumstances. Top ships have situations that they can absolutely kill a bomber on a node- normally the bomber has to misplay, or have a build not suited for that attack, but against a strike, the bomber mostly just has to be at keyboard. None of the armor piercing weaponry can be applied to a close range target on node.

You don't **** up often, but you ****ed up massively here. EMP is honestly not especially a big help, because you can also hang off the node at midrange and never be at risk from the deployables, unless he charges at you—and then you're not dogfighting on the node anymore anyway. It's one of the few situations in the game where midrange seriously matters. There's really no reason to litterally hug the node after the bomber. Unless you thermited him and want to LLC in a Type 3, but I don't recommend that because I don't recommend torpedoes in serious matches. Frankly it takes less skill than killing bombers in a BLC scout, which is as it should be. Granted the BLC scout can do it faster, but it also runs far greater risks.

 

A big advantage of the strikes here is also being able to take both shield piercing and armour piercing, something they share with gunships. Again, this decreases the need for trying to play the strike as a scout.

 

Gunships, you spend a lot of time talking about ion railgun, and propose an optional button (maybe a shield or engine button) that can regen a lot of energy. That's a pretty solid idea, mostly because it lets a strike be worse at some defensive stuff in exchange for a defensive buff versus a thing that the strike can't answer. But I don't think this makes him a generalist in any way- I think it gives him a defense versus a meta choice that is optional and decently common. I like the idea a whole lot, but I don't think it backs your thesis.

There's no thesis here, just a discussion of what strikes lack. I'm not saying it has to come at the expense of defences, though I'm quite okay if this were, for instance, a change of Quick Charge Shield to emphasise its regen, at the expense of actual shields.

 

Scouts I don't feel you have any good ideas. Giving them a bunch of close range weapons really just makes them better against bombers (the scouts don't need to be under the strike's nose hardly ever). While BLC or similar would be a buff against scouts, it's only because it's a buff against a lot of things, and it would hurt bombers and honestly gunships more than scout matchups.

Disagree on the bombers heavily. Even on the gunships, to a lesser degree, but a strike trying to BLC a bomber would commit itself to not using any synergy with its secondaries, unlike a strike trying to HLC. It's not a great idea, unless the strike took a secondary that's useless against bombers anyway. In which case it's definitely being a jack of all trades.

 

That said, I'm not specifically attached to that one change. Frankly I'd rather RFL and LLC became competitive with BLC, which would probably a slight nerf to BLC and a big buff to the others. I don't feel BLC are heavily overpowered, only perhaps slightly overtuned.

 

You could also add a number of other ideas I didn't list. There are really many ways to buff strikes specifically against scouts.

But is a strike supposed to be good against a scout?

IF it's supposed to be a jack of all trades, it has to hold its own there. And short of a massive redesign, they are too similar to scouts to ever be used if they can't at least go 50/50 with scouts.

Edited by MiaowZedong
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You don't see a problem with them being 50/50 with a scout in a turn fight, while also having other buffs? Here's a ship that goes 50/50 with a scout in a turn fight right now:

 

- A scout

 

Doesn't this sound like "scout plus buffs" is your plan here?

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Good job not addressing her arguments. For starters, no one said anything about turning wars.

 

There are many arguments to be made about how to buff strikes. "Make them tie scouts in a turn war, then buff them more" is not necessarily going to be too much -- and it's not necessarily going to be enough, either. Given the current state of things, I'm very surprised that you'd suggest such a buff would be too much. In the wrong direction, perhaps. Too much of a move towards homogeneity, sure. Straight up too much power given to the underpowered ship? Frankly, we're not in a good enough state to make estimates about what the effects of strike buffs would have on the meta.

 

Then you imply the point that "OH BUT STRIKES SHOULDN'T BE BETTER THAN SCOUTS BECAUSE THAT'S NOT BALANCE" -- and you're right, and if anyone were suggesting that, you might be within a mile reason. But you're not.

 

Scouts (killscouts) are passable against scouts, strong against strikes, strong against gunships, and weak against bombers. Proposed buffs to strikes, however you cut them, will likely change them to be merely passable against strikes.

 

Currently, strikes are passable against strikes, weak against scouts, weak against gunships, and passable against bombers (though that last is generous, imo). The proposal is to make them passable against strikes, passable against scouts, passable against gunships, and passable against bombers. How you turn that into "scouts plus buffs" is, frankly, beyond me -- especially given the nature of dual weapon swapping and probes vs tensor.

 

I would like to see strikes always on the low end of passable at every role regardless of components, with specific choices available to tailor them to fight specific threats. I think the design of strikes should be that you need to be aware of, and perhaps nervous of, a strike coming at you no matter who you are, but perhaps you don't need to be scared of him until you discover he's running [thing] that counters you.

 

I would also like to see Quick-Charge Shields revamped entirely, removing the shield pool penalty and changing the functionality to "restores x% of shield, weapon, and engine power on use". T1 and T2 upgrades could reduce the cooldown and increase the amount restored; T3 upgrades could, at the most boring level, bump one (or two?) pools to restore more than the other(s), and I'm sure there are more creative upgrades to be thought of when it's not 1 am.

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The number of weapons strikes have which can seriously threaten good bombers is: 1. It's the heavy lasers cannon, which can hit the bomber a couple of times before it breaks line of sight and keeps the sat between itself and you. Maybe the concussion missile. Protorps and thermites are almost totally useless.

 

If a striker could combine a minesweeping missile with burst lasers, it would be a lot less of a joke against bombers under sats: a couple of missiles would give it a free pass or two at the bomber at close range before it had to disengage to avoid mines. There is one which can (and it even comes with your choice of retros and Koiogran turn-and distortion field!), but people prefer the slug railgun on that particular ship.

 

Against everything which can laugh at long-locking missiles (or: everything near cover or with a lock break), a quick-locking slow-moving missile would jam out a target's lock warning, making the target completely oblivious to the torpedo lock in progress.

Edited by ALaggyGrunt
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Maybe the concussion missile. Protorps and thermites are almost totally useless.

 

Concs are actually pretty solid. Torps I generally agree, though it's fairly simple to tag a bomber moving from point to point. Unfortunately, that doesn't help at the start of the match or against bad bombers that don't react to the game state.

 

minesweeping missile with burst lasers

 

The problem is that the minesweeping missile is terrible. If you need it, the guy's on a point, and he has plenty of time to flip to the other side of the sat. If he's not on a point, you don't really have a reason to clear out the mines (unless they're guarding a bunch of gunships in TDM, but it won't help there either).

 

On the other hand, I misread this as "minesweeping lasers" at first, and I think EMP lasers would be hilarious in both the good and the bad ways.

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It is a legitimate debate, but one I'm not sure is productive, especially here. Please remember all arguments in this thread are premised "If strikes are meant to be versatile, jack of all trades ships, then..."

 

I'm just fundamentally not convinced this is possible. But fair point.

 

You don't **** up often, but you ****ed up massively here. EMP is honestly not especially a big help, because you can also hang off the node at midrange and never be at risk from the deployables, unless he charges at you—and then you're not dogfighting on the node anymore anyway. It's one of the few situations in the game where midrange seriously matters.

 

First, I didn't say EMP was a help- I said that bombers on nodes don't need to fear strikes. Given that a strike fighter's titularly implied job (as an attack ship, not an interceptor) is to attack an objective, it's definitely worth pointing out that he's literally the worst guy for that out of every ship type in the game. Second, this mid range play won't do much to a ship that can simply LOS that, and if there's any backup for him you end up playing a "fast" game with a ship optimized for "slow" play, while the bomber creates a safe node for if you actually start winning. The bomber controls the pace, you can't attack him well in most cases.

 

 

There's really no reason to litterally hug the node after the bomber.

 

Correct, that's sort of my point- this isn't an effective strategy. I think where we disagree is that you think a midrange play would be effective- floating at a decent distance with heavies and concussions or torps and hoping that he floats into range and lets you take shots. He's got no reason to take more than a couple heavies as he deploys a mine in your general direction.

 

 

A big advantage of the strikes here is also being able to take both shield piercing and armour piercing, something they share with gunships. Again, this decreases the need for trying to play the strike as a scout.

 

The problem with this strategy using heavies is that there's just such solid counterplay to them. Also note the bomber usually has them himself, so any point where he's not jousting he can hit you pretty well too. That's not a problem with heavies in general, but it does restrict this strategy from actually controlling the bomber much.

 

 

There's no thesis here, just a discussion of what strikes lack.

 

Your thesis is that strikes can be made to be versatile, and you have a list of things aimed towards that.

 

Disagree on the bombers heavily. Even on the gunships, to a lesser degree, but a strike trying to BLC a bomber would commit itself to not using any synergy with its secondaries, unlike a strike trying to HLC. It's not a great idea, unless the strike took a secondary that's useless against bombers anyway. In which case it's definitely being a jack of all trades.

 

A strike trying to BLC the bomber would force the bomber to take much closer vectors and deny him many of his valid positions and mine deployments, while constantly forcing the bomber to risk the crit that would devastate his hull for any dive it does. I'm not saying the strikes need BLC, but it would be a massive buff versus bombers.

 

I mean, what's your experience on your bomber? Your personal scare-o-meter when any of these come into your node:

1- An enemy bomber with heavies

2- A type 2 gunship with heavies

3- A type 1 or type 3 gunship with BLC

4- Any strike with anything

5- Type 2 scout with BLC?

 

IMO nothing with the heavies counts as a solid threat. Certainly they are in the game- if you screw up you can take damage or die- but they can't force your position and breath like the BLC can. If scouts could equip heavies and concussions, this would not be a good build versus bombers.

 

 

That said, I'm not specifically attached to that one change. Frankly I'd rather RFL and LLC became competitive with BLC, which would probably a slight nerf to BLC and a big buff to the others. I don't feel BLC are heavily overpowered, only perhaps slightly overtuned.

 

I concur entirely here. The buffs need to happen, and this would make the meta deeper for sure. It might help strikes a little on its way, but its just like, these lasers need better roles than they have now. LLC has a role that isn't very effective (highest dps in game, assuming the enemy exists in a very narrow lance-shaped area in front of you), and RFL has no job at all except tricking noobs into wasting req.

 

 

IF it's supposed to be a jack of all trades, it has to hold its own there. And short of a massive redesign, they are too similar to scouts to ever be used if they can't at least go 50/50 with scouts.

 

There's a big difference between "buff them so that they have better game against scouts", which I think is uncontroversial, and the statement of "50/50". If you are 50/50 with a ship, you are equally as good at the ship in that role. This would require vastly powerful buffs of some manner, and would be terrible for balance. That you and Armondd don't see that is pretty shocking to be honest. You are literally asking for them to be able to win versus a more maneuverable ship half the time, in a fight where maneuverability matters. That level of buff is wild... and when you are done, the strike will be a god of dogfighting, because it means he can either maneuver with the scout and burst with the scout, or it means he doesn't even need to do that thing at all, and can just light it up so immediately that it's terrible.

 

 

This is the problem- the more common suggestions of adding any of these things to strikes stop well short of allowing them to be equal dogfighters to scouts in a solo situation. Most are focused on making it so that a strike fighter on you isn't something to /lol at. You should not, on any ship, be happy to tank a strike. If we were to see strike buffs to the point where they can PEEL scouts off of enemies, and set up any strike that is able to hit a scout as being able to threaten to kill that scout, that is wonderful. Making them 50/50 with a scout in a fight- which yes, is a turn fight when 1v1 is discussed, unless the strike can outrun or outmaneuver the scout, because the scout chooses the type of battle- is a bad call. Making them able to contribute to a team as much as a scout should be the goal, not making them able to solo the scout at the same rate another scout would be.

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Against everything which can laugh at long-locking missiles (or: everything near cover or with a lock break), a quick-locking slow-moving missile would jam out a target's lock warning, making the target completely oblivious to the torpedo lock in progress.

 

This would work, but it would be bad design. Essentially, the fact that we can't be aware of multiple missile locks is a great failing of the UI, not a feature we should be looking at asking for changes to exploit. If the devs let the five button be "silence launched missile", this would work around this feature, for instance.

 

If a missile should lock stealthily, it should lock stealthily and be balanced around that. If a missile is meant to mask other missiles, that should be its feature, not a trick of the system.

 

Many missile buffs could help here. Obviously, a bomber needs to be able to dodge missiles or tank them (they don't have a break, as we obviously aren't discussing the fighter/bomber), but that can become too extreme on live. I don't think further UI shenanigans are the right answer here.

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If you are 50/50 with a ship, you are equally as good at the ship in that role.

 

Oh, I get it. You're just using terminology you don't understand so that you sound more like you know what you're talking about. Well, that's an easy fix.

 

Take a look at SSBB's matchups table. Note the legend. Then, pick a character in the leftmost column and compare their matchup to a character on the top row. The icon tells you how likely your chosen character is to win that fight.

 

Marth is clearly the best character in the series, so we'll use him as an example. Notice how he's got even (yellow) matchups or better (cooler) against every character that isn't banned in tournament play. Notice especially how, in that sea of green matchups as you move right, there's an even matchup against Donkey Kong. Then take a look at DK's row; a large number of poor (or worse) matchups (represented by warmer colors), some even matchups (yellow) in the middle, and as you go down the tier list he gets a number of strong (cooler) matchups against the weaker characters.

 

Donkey Kong and Marth are 50/50. That doesn't mean they are "equally as good... in that role" or anything silly like that. Marth is a fast swordsman with an excellent air game and punishing tip attacks. Donkey Kong is a slower, heavier power character that will really knock your lights out if you let him get a hit in. Both share relatively long attack ranges, but beyond that, they play very differently. The two against each other are fairly evenly matched (that's what 50/50 means), but because of all their differences, they fill different roles in the game and metagame.

 

That is what we're trying to do here: we're trying to give the strike a fairly even matchup against the scout (before skill discrepancies, obviously) while normalizing its power against other ships. As I said before, the end result would be that scout is 50/50 with scout and strike, 75/25 with gunship, and 25/75 with bomber, while strike is 50/50 with scout, strike, gunship, and bomber.

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It doesnt have to be equally good at a role to be 50/50. The 50/50 could be caused by what the strike can do that the scout cant while also being close to the scout role. For example if I were again to point to my own suggestions and they had strikes with range near that of gunships and engine efficiency near that of scouts and toughness near that of bombers. Then the 50/50 could occur simply do to the extra effective range the strike has allowing it to wear down to the target before it gets in close. Then the toughness means it can survive the burst of hte scout as well as the mobility allows it to get maybe that little extra distance needed to finish it off. The 50/50 in this case isnt their ability to out turn or out run, but their ability to run well enough along with have ENOUGH toughness to survive the early burst and still end up with enough range to finish the target.

 

Basically its the combination of having something close to the scout in its role while having 2 things the scout just doenst have that allows it to come down to who can use their tools better.

Edited by tunewalker
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If "strike" were a cookie-cutter ship frame with no components to play with, maybe. Gearing the ship against a particular foe should make your odds a lot better against that foe:

Something with high accuracy and some shield piercing, but lackluster damage would boost your odds against scouts, but be weak against bombers. On the T1 strike, there are two weapons which fit that in the real world: HLC with the crit/tracking talent, and ion/cluster. T2 just have HLC. In the real world, those are too weak to actually threaten a scout, because spacebar will usually get the scout out of it. You could say concussion missiles, but they are really hard to land on a squirrely scout in the open and basically impossible if the scout is near cover. BLC also do this, but aren't on strikes. By far the best copilot ability which makes this work is Wingman.

MLC kind of do this at the medium range (the extreme range accuracy stat and lower tracking penalty). Against something with short-range guns, extreme range is exactly where you want to be firing this weapon-and no strikes have it. The weapon should probably pick up 5-10% accuracy and lose 5-10% raw damge output so it can do this better.

 

Something with high raw damage but low accuracy and no armor piercing should be good against things like fortress and overcharged shield. Concussion missiles show up-kind of. Ion missiles show up-kind of-because targets with those shield components have one or zero lock breaks and aren't as fast as scouts. Quads and LLC kind of do this. BLC do this in the real world, because you're on target -> shoot -> back to evasive. The crew passive which should make this trick better is concentrated fire, but because of tracking penalties, a lot of times it's wingman you want.

 

And weak accuracy + low damage + DR ignore would counter DR builds. Those are DR-ignore/shield-pierce HLC and armor-ignore concs, and to a much lower degree, protorps and thermites (because of how hard it is to actually hit anything with those). And BLC with DR ignore, preferably with bypass.

Edited by ALaggyGrunt
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Oh, I get it. You're just using terminology you don't understand so that you sound more like you know what you're talking about. Well, that's an easy fix.

 

Lol

 

A 1v1 represents a job where you have to win the 1v1, or you lose it. That's not a very GSF relevant thing, but it is absolutely what is being discussed. More importantly, in a 1v1 game such as Smash, there's no situation where one character has an extensive advantage due to topography, and the map is small enough that retreat is never a true or real option. These are very important parts about GSF.

 

Marth is clearly the best character in the series, so we'll use him as an example. Notice how he's got even (yellow) matchups or better (cooler) against every character that isn't banned in tournament play. Notice especially how, in that sea of green matchups as you move right, there's an even matchup against Donkey Kong. Then take a look at DK's row; a large number of poor (or worse) matchups

 

In a game where there's only one role to play- die less than your opponent- This is a useful comparison. A GSF table would, if played on "final destination" (open space I guess?) look like, the scout wins every single match. Put it on a node and it would look a little different, but assuredly the strike would still be in a bad situation.

 

 

The problem is this: the scout's actual real job primarily involves being unstoppable in a 1v1 dogfight. If you made a strike equally unstoppable they would be 50/50. That's what's being discussed: a scenario where a strike is buffed to the point where it's just as good at turn fighting a scout as a scout is at turning fighting it. None of the serious things being discussed in the actual buff thread are aimed at this rather ludicrous tuning.

 

If the game was a series of 1v1s versus opponents, then a table like SSB would be appropriate.

 

Also note: SSB was designed more around group scenarios, timed matches, on real levels, with items, huge dimensions mostly erased by the community's obsession with 1v1s, stock matches, on a flat blank surface, with items off. To reduce all of that and then whine about balance as they do is frankly silly. This obsession even fueled the devs to try to cater to it in the latest version, but at the end of the day, this isn't what the game was designed around. The devs even gave the playerbase a huge amount of control over which items could drop, what frequency, and, importantly, a handicap option. Instead of using any of that to try to deepen their meta, they ignored it entirely, banning characters instead of nerfing them, a very real option that the community could have done (and could still do at any time) by accepting different play restraints such as the supported-in-game handicaps instead of play restraints such as bans.

 

Donkey Kong and Marth are 50/50. That doesn't mean they are "equally as good... in that role" or anything silly like that.

 

It actually would, if the game was composed of a bunch of players who couldn't solo either of them. If that was the case, you would pick Marth over DK every time, because he would have everything DK did, but more- he would be the strike buffs proposed in this thread.

 

That is what we're trying to do here: we're trying to give the strike a fairly even matchup against the scout (before skill discrepancies, obviously) while normalizing its power against other ships.

 

See, this goes well beyond a strike buff. If you give strikes enough oomph to beat scouts evenly, that alone makes them dominate the heck out of the other ship types. Maybe it's that you don't understand what would be needed to make this happen, but honestly, that would surprise me.

 

 

Again- we all want strike buffs. I very much want strikes to have a job. It's silly to pretend he's a "versatile" ship if he is as dominant at melee as the scout- that makes him a scout plus more. It takes the scout job away from the scout. Is that intended? I seriously doubt it.

 

As I said before, the end result would be that scout is 50/50 with scout and strike, 75/25 with gunship, and 25/75 with bomber, while strike is 50/50 with scout, strike, gunship, and bomber.

 

And this is a silly table. It shouldn't be anything like this. If the bomber on a node is 50/50 with a strike, why would you fly a bomber ever, at all? The fact that the bomber is maybe a bit too unassailable doesn't get away from the fact that the bomber needs to be mostly unassailable on a node, or he's utterly worthless. If the matchup game looked like you said, it would be all strikes, all the time, forever, a trashcan meta far narrower and much worse than we have today.

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The problem is this: the scout's actual real job primarily involves being unstoppable in a 1v1 dogfight. If you made a strike equally unstoppable they would be 50/50.

 

Firstly, a scout is by no means "unstoppable" in a dogfight, however you define "dogfight" in a game where physics are markedly different from real-world dogfights. Secondly, saying things like "equally unstoppable" is like trying to compare unstoppable forces and immovable objects: it's pure sophistry, devoid of meaning. You're an intelligent person who has made many cogent arguments on this forum, so please refrain from rhetoric that adds nothing to the debate :)

 

Another problem is:

First, I didn't say EMP was a help- I said that bombers on nodes don't need to fear strikes. Given that a strike fighter's titularly implied job (as an attack ship, not an interceptor) is to attack an objective, it's definitely worth pointing out that he's literally the worst guy for that out of every ship type in the game. Second, this mid range play won't do much to a ship that can simply LOS that, and if there's any backup for him you end up playing a "fast" game with a ship optimized for "slow" play, while the bomber creates a safe node for if you actually start winning. The bomber controls the pace, you can't attack him well in most cases.

 

I think where we disagree is that you think a midrange play would be effective- floating at a decent distance with heavies and concussions or torps and hoping that he floats into range and lets you take shots. He's got no reason to take more than a couple heavies as he deploys a mine in your general direction.

 

The problem with this strategy using heavies is that there's just such solid counterplay to them. Also note the bomber usually has them himself, so any point where he's not jousting he can hit you pretty well too. That's not a problem with heavies in general, but it does restrict this strategy from actually controlling the bomber much.

 

A GSF table would, if played on "final destination" (open space I guess?) look like, the scout wins every single match. Put it on a node and it would look a little different, but assuredly the strike would still be in a bad situation.

Honestly, much of what you say here is disconnected from actual reality. I know that you, like Sriia and many others, absolutely hate flying strikes because you want to have all the edge you could possibly have, but have you even given serious thought to it? Because the extent of your actual knowledge seems to be "they're underpowered". Most of your quoted statements are counterfactual. I could explain in detail, if you really want me to, and will listen.

 

P.S. a final point is you only consider this strike v. bomber situation as a one versus one, and you shouldn't. I think you're wrong about the one-on-one situation, but you're definitely wrong to forget that all strikes have effective options to help drive a bomber off a node in a many versus many scenario (whereas they still lack effectiveness against gunships and scouts even in many versus many situations).

Edited by MiaowZedong
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See, this goes well beyond a strike buff. If you give strikes enough oomph to beat scouts evenly, that alone makes them dominate the heck out of the other ship types.

 

This is probably the most important (read: only meaningful) part of the discussion (read: our bickering).

 

Why is it that when strikes are on par with scouts they are superior to every other class, but when bombers beat scouts, they don't beat gunships?

 

There's also a fair amount of discussion to be had as to whether scouts vs gunships are 75/25 (or whatever advantage they actually have) or 50/50 (depending more on the circumstances, including cooldowns, ammo, shields, hull, and cover, than the builds themselves). And we also know that gunships beat bombers and strikes. But this is ok, for various reasons we've both iterated over the past 6-12 months. Why is it suddenly not ok when strikes want to be in the same place?

 

Again- we all want strike buffs. I very much want strikes to have a job. It's silly to pretend he's a "versatile" ship if he is as dominant at melee as the scout- that makes him a scout plus more. It takes the scout job away from the scout. Is that intended? I seriously doubt it.

 

Ah -- perhaps this is it. I don't necessarily want the strike to be better at "melee" than the scout. I actually dislike the term, so I'll dissect it a bit more.

 

Optimal scouts use BLC, quads, or LC, depending on tier and build. That puts the scout's range anywhere between 3 km and 5 km.

 

I would like the strike to have stronger options in that range, at least for the T1 strike. I've said before that I think killscouts and killstrikes should be balanced around the T1 strike's ion/clusters/HLC build, with a slight buff to engine efficiency and ion cannon range. Such a buff would (hopefully!) make the Starguard/Rycer competitive with the Flashfire/Sting in a dogfight, while presenting different strengths and weaknesses (no burst cooldowns, more defenses, and a better matchup against bombers compared to a killscout).

 

This strike's job would be 5 km range combat against heavily shielded targets (bombers, other strikes) and support (tearing down shields to make a 2+v1 happen faster so you can move on to the next kill or capture). The latter overlaps with the T1 gunship somewhat, but I think that's acceptable given that the strike will be in a better position to capture a point, pick up a powerup, etc.

 

On the other hand, strikes don't have to want to fight in the 5 km range. And, I would argue, the T2 strike shouldn't be designed to do so. Missiles have a longer range by design; they should take advantage of that. If the Pike/Quell got a component to increase missile range by 30% in the same update that reduced cluster missile damage by 30-40%, it would be scary against scouts, the above T1 strikes, and bombers (who don't work so well at range) but not so much against gunships (who do). Furthermore, the matchup against scouts and gunships would be determined largely by circumstances; spacebar or barrel roll in the right direction means the Pike has to rely on its poor turning to get the lock back, but depending on the larger picture (and how well the Pike can predict you), that may not be a good idea.

 

This strike's job would be midrange combat (6-9 km), which is much more defensive but also more difficult to pull off due to the nature of missiles. Its job is also to peel enemies off your buddies and to make gunships move.

 

Remove armor penetration from BLCs and you promote both of these strikes' jobs to also handle armored targets, such as turrets.

 

T3 strikes and scouts should, I think, grow some teeth, but I don't think anyone wants them to be competitive dogfighters and noticeable team support. (On a side note, I would suggest buffing the radius and/or cooldown of repair probes, in addition to making Combat Command, Remote Slicing, and Sensor Beacon more relevant.)

 

And this is a silly table. It shouldn't be anything like this. If the bomber on a node is 50/50 with a strike, why would you fly a bomber ever, at all?

 

It's a radical shift from the 1v1 design I discuss below, but perhaps the strike should be less "50/50 chance to kill a bomber on the node" and more "50/50 chance to disable and disrupt a bomber on the node". If EMP missile were actually noteworthy (which would probably require longer range and less lock time; deadfire would be an interesting change), the strike would only be reliably able to kill a bomber if he had armor penetration on his HLCs, which comes at the cost of being better against scouts and strikes (because you're missing the crit and tracking talent).

 

(It won't happen, but I would love it if the T1 gunship's job was to take out shields because most other classes couldn't. If ion railgun did more shield damage, less hull damage, and didn't drain engines, it would be excellent for setting your allies up for the kill. Of course, then you need to rearrange the entire game around team coordination, and hope pugs can figure it out.)

 

I'd still want to fly a bomber, though, because it brings to the table area denial, rapid repairs, and missile break pressure. But I think you're right that if the strike and gunship both had a reliable chance of taking out a minelayer, minelayers would gradually fade from the meta unless the opposing team didn't have the tools to handle them (they're still good noobfarmers, after all). That isn't to say that I want strikes to have as good a chance at taking out a bomber as a gunship does, unless perhaps they build for it specifically.

 

If the matchup game looked like you said, it would be all strikes, all the time, forever, a trashcan meta far narrower and much worse than we have today.

 

If those matchups were set in stone regardless of circumstances and team coordination, yes, that would happen.

 

Would that be boring? Probably eventually, but I'd fly it once or twice. After all, I flew strike night on TEH once or twice.

 

And I've heard tell that a bunch of stock strikes coordinating can take out a CP bomber with difficulty. That sounds interesting to me.

 

A 1v1 represents a job where you have to win the 1v1, or you lose it. That's not a very GSF relevant thing, but it is absolutely what is being discussed.

 

You say it's not very relevant, but GSF, like the ground game here and in WoW and probably multiple other games, focuses so much on damage output that not only is 1v1 a reasonable situation to consider, but many other fights get broken down into a series of 1v1s instead of, say, a 4v4.

 

When your premade focuses fire on a target, you're not making a 4v1; you're eliminating a target from the fight. Damage output is so high that it's not really worth considering a 2+v1 because it always ends in the favor of the side with superior numbers, assuming equal skill.

 

When your premade doesn't focus fire, you have a series of 1v1s, as I said.

 

And that's fine, I think, since one of the major goals of the game is to evoke a space dogfighting experience. It has been well documented that the devs want GSF to be a fast-paced game, and I think that is wise because it fits with what most players know of Star Wars dogfighting and dogfighting in general. However, that does inherently mean that the 1v1 becomes a very important concept.

 

The situation where I am chasing Shayd who is chasing Sriia who is running for her life and not doing much else doesn't quite fit into the 1v1 bucket. On the other hand, it's perhaps one of the most skill-intensive moments you'll find in the game; whoever dies first loses, and there are a ton of factors that all pilots must consider in order to meet that end. More to the point, I think that so long as combat balance is acceptable in other areas, it will be acceptable in this one, no matter how things turn out elsewhere.

 

(Again, that situation can be disrupted by adding a fourth party to the mix. But that necessarily creates a 2v1 situation, or else just adds to the chain and thus can be simplified.)

 

That's how things happen in TDM, at least. In Domination, it's more "you lose if you leave the node" -- which is why bombers win most of their matchups there. You can run into trouble against gunships (we've both, I'm sure, lost track of how many times we've called for someone to handle one for us), but unless they get on the node, you can use LOS to force a draw, which means you win because you're on the node and he's not.

 

All of this, of course, assumes that every pilot is equally comfortable with every build of every ship, despite differences in skill requirements, floors, and ceilings. It also ignores that multiple ships (much less ship classes) have builds that play very differently and thus have different matchups against other ships. It's not as simple as "bomber beats scout beats gunship beats bomber", though this forum (myself included) likes to oversimplify that point for ease of discussion.

Edited by Armonddd
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When you take it out of a 1v1 scenario, you introduce new other-ship cover for the bomber. Say you have another strike to threaten the node from the other side-the bomber gains a scout which will totally massacre a strike if it stays on target for more than a couple of seconds.

 

Good tactics will say you want to outnumber the bomber, but a gunship+scout team will get the job done a lot faste-and be less vulnerable while doing it. The gunship ion-splashes the mines, the scout takes many free shots at the bomber with Broken Laser Cannon because the gunship has taken care of the mines for it. And if there's an enemy scout/strike/gunship, the attack force will take care of it:

 

A defending scout will have to deal with the gunship. It can tie up both the scout and the gunship by circling and threatening the gunship: neither will get a clear shot once the scout is under the gunship's guns unless the scout gets aggressive and careless. To leave the gunship alone is to get slugged while dogfighting the scout. If the attacking pair is distracted enough, the bomber can leave the node and drop mines in the furball, but most of them don't do that.

A defending gunship will have to flee from the scout, which means the attacking gunship plays slug-a-mole with the defensive gunship not able to respond without the scout taking shots at it.

And, a defending strike will have problems from both a scout and a gunship: it won't be able to out-reach the gunship so it will have to get close. It won't if the gunship tags it with ion. Guns will be out because of energy drain, and big missiles will be out because of distortion field. And there's that enemy scout to worry about. A strike with full power pools can usually be laughed off. One with no power pools and a snare debuff is an almost-stationary target.

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We can't and should not expect all ship types to balance 1 vs 1 against all other ship types. GSF is a team game. What we need is a strike fighter that will be useful enough in some match types that good pilots might want to select one in a tough match.

 

In an earlier thread I made some suggestions about buffing strikes, but will repeat them here. They are based on the lore description of SF as a heavy fighter, and try to buff the strengths that a heavy fighter might have.

 

1. Make quads a strike fighter only weapon, and make them somewhat more powerful. Keep the current range and tracking penalties. This gives strikes better burst damage. Maybe give them a larger weapon power pool. As a heavy fighter, a strike should have room for more powerful weapons and energy storage.

 

2. Make concussion missile a strike fighter only weapon, and give it the same lock on time as a cluster missile.

 

3. Give strike fighters a larger engine power pool, so that they can maintain boost longer than scouts. Leave the speed the same.

 

These changes leave the strike with the same speed and agility as they have now, and scouts would still be faster and more agile. Strikes would have the best burst damage in a dogfighter, if they can get a good shot at their foe. With a larger engine power pool, they can cross the map faster that they could, have a better chance to escape if they get in trouble. Strikes would still have a problem in a turning fight with scouts, especially around a sat where the larger firing angles of BLC have the advantage. These changes can be scaled to try to get the optimum balance.

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I would modify that idea a bit and would give Strikes the advantage of an improved core/energy grid/system.

Not much need to buff specific weapons emself but improve the way the Strike makes use of em,

 

Strikes have more room for tech than scouts, gunships and bombers (Gunships need most of it for their advanced weaponsystems/ammo while scouts are overall more compact. bombers, while have the size they mostly use it for drone/mine storage)

 

Computersystem:

=> advanced targeting systems improve missle lockon/angle by a small ammount

=> improves energy weapon precision by a small amount

 

Energycore:

=> slightly improved Energypools/ regeneration rate.

=> having a more stable core inscreases the Resistance to Energydraining / disabling effects making em less effective.

 

And finally/most important an improved Energygrid / -controlsystem.

=> while only slightly improved on balanced settings the positive AND negative sites of specialized Settings are increased.

 

Offensive

+improved weapondamage / blasterenergy regen / maybe a small crit/firerate boost.

-Reduced speed / turningrate / shield / debuff-resistance.

 

Defensive

+improved shieldpool/-regen / debuff-resistance / maybe a small shield damageresistance

-Reduced speed/ turningrate / weapondamage / blasterenergy regen

 

Engine

+improved speed / turningrate / boostefficence / enginepool regen

-Reduced weapondamage / blasterenergyregen / shield / shieldregen / debuff resistance

 

 

 

Values should range in an area that it has high damageoutput in offensive stance but turns nearly as bad as a bomber while

Defensive should help in shrugging off Ion/interdiction debuffs while still beeing vunerable to ion shielddmg/shield penetration

Engineboost should mostly improve the overall travelspeed (boostduration more than speed) so it's still slower in overall speed but ,caused by boost efficence and pool regen , is able to substain the speed over longer distances (not as much as a enginereplenish/speed scout)

 

 

Hope my Textwall doesnt scare everyone away from this Post/Thread and you find intrest in atleast some of the ideas.

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