I fundamentally agree with all of the above, but I will note that high rate-of-fire (especially when combined with low power consumption) does have one strength: if you are bad at timing your clicks for when your cursor drifts over the leading indicator. You can better afford to just hold down the trigger and try to connect.

I fundamentally agree with all of the above, but I will note that high rate-of-fire (especially when combined with low power consumption) does have one strength: if you are bad at timing your clicks for when your cursor drifts over the leading indicator. You can better afford to just hold down the trigger and try to connect.

 

The disadvantage of that is that it gives you away. Heavens knows I've had people sneak in on my six, but I still get away without a single scratch because I saw the tracers as they where lining up. And those tracers point straight back to my attackers location...

Great analysis OP. Though I'd recommend coloring/highlighting main and/or damning points. Edited February 17, 2014 by Nemarus

The disadvantage of that is that it gives you away. Heavens knows I've had people sneak in on my six, but I still get away without a single scratch because I saw the tracers as they where lining up. And those tracers point straight back to my attackers location...

 

The other disadvantage is the "you're bad at aiming" premise. Of course it's suboptimal, the benefit only accrues to people who are at the lower end of the skill range.

Different players have different styles, preferences, and inclinations which adhere to their skill sets.

 

Agreed but... does this really have that niche?

 

 

And two? I wasn't saying they're for bad pilots, good pilots, etc. I'm saying they're for those who want a ship that's never going to run out of ammo in terms of it's blasters unless you hold the trigger down forever. I use the rapid-fire cannons on my Flashfire/Sting and have no problems with them. I'm frequently near if not "at" the top of the leaderboard with these cannons.

 

This is surprising tbh. If a pilot needs to avoid going oom, IME they are missing a lot of shots, and rapid fire lasers will just make that worse, because their very few hits will be for not much.

 

If you are topping leaderboards with RFL, I have a challenge for you: try out your light lasers. I bet you anything that you will do way better with them.

 

The problem here however, by your reaction as I see it, is you just want everything handed to you.

 

Sigh. No bro, I don't like to look at an underbudget gun that helps no one. The Type 1 Strike needs a weapon like this to be good, because its whole thing is weapon diversity. The sting and flashfire have the superior light laser (and the amazing burst laser cannon), and the novadive also has this gun. I strongly suggest you try that out, I bet you get more damage for sure.

 

 

You don't want them balanced, you want blasters that have the least amount of power draw to have no drawbacks to using them.

 

While you carefully avoided quoting the parts of both of my posts that addressed this (one of which was right to you), no, my argument is that, as a niche, this is bad. I would be fine with a talent offering extraordinary rebates (such as 20% blaster energy reduction) as long as you could opt out of it to make it a real boy. If the devs think that having a base 16 energy consumption cannon is good, my argument is that they are valuing the energy consumption way too much. Light lasers at 21 per second are a good gun. RFLs at 16 per second are not. But I'd be fine with a talent that upped it to 19 or 22 or whatever it takes to allow it to be a good gun.

 

I for one love the damage of quads but I "hate" how much quickly they drain my blaster's power pool. It's why I use the rapid-fire cannons, I don't have to worry about running out of power at the most inopportune of moments i.e. when I'm shooting at somebody and trying to gain a kill before they turn to try and avoid me or start shooting back.

 

Quads at 22 are more expensive than lights at 21, which should be your compare (quads have a bad tracking penalty, but a much larger range- quads are more for a different role, light laser is the one that basically blows RFL out of the water).

 

I'm just surprised that this matters to you. I've seen so many good scout pilots man, and I've NEVER seen anyone doing what you describe- deciding that their power consumption rate is worth throwing away all the good damage for. The other scouts in this thread don't share your experience, and neither do I. IMO you are underperforming based on weapon choice and won't realize it until you try lights substantially or the RFL gets brought to the level it deserves to be at.

 

If you don't like them, don't use them.

 

I don't "not like them". The problem is, they are not as good as they should be. Simply put, they need to reward you for all the hoo-haa you have to go through to use them properly. "Can fire into empty space" is not a niche!

 

Just because the majority of people you've spoken to does not like them does not mean that is the opinion of the majority as a whole.

 

My sample size is... moderate? I wouldn't try to publish it in Nature, but I've talked to around a couple dozen pilots and you are the only proponent of these guns. I'd basically say, you're misled or confused. I doubt there's some huge population of guys using RFLs and loving it, because it has a visually distinctive fan that I see very rarely and look for constantly.

 

In which case, you need to get over yourself as I originally stated, and just use a different blaster for your starfighter.

 

No. The devs need to fix THIS blaster so that it has a niche versus lights on scouts, and so that it actually does a good job filling its niche on strikes.

The other disadvantage is the "you're bad at aiming" premise. Of course it's suboptimal, the benefit only accrues to people who are at the lower end of the skill range.

 

touché

 

But still rapids are immensely satisfying to use, and I would love for them to be more effective.

I've stuck with and mastered rapids on my Strike 1 as backups to my heavy lasers. I only use the things when i'm in some turn fight that I just can't bring my heavies to bear. So, if I'm shooting rapids, it's near the edge of the fire arc which is dicey as hell.

 

The only thing I can say is this:

 

If I didn't have them, I couldn't hit bastards in those unbreakable turn fight situations.

 

That's all I can say. They're not reliable, they seldom kill, but sometimes I can land enough hits to force the other pilot to break out, then I bring the heavies to bear and finish the fight. I REALLY wish I had a better fire arc laser for close range. That said, there's satisfaction in forcing some scout to bug out on a turn fight with a piss poor excuse for a gun >

I was fooling around with RFL back when I was a noobie with a Novadive. They kept missing everyone in no small part because everyone was using distortion field, which made the weapon's accuracy really weak. That, and the default ability is Engine Recharge, not Targeting Telemetry or Blaster Overcharge, either of which would make the weapon mildly interesting. About the only things I could kill with them were turrets, because those couldn't evade.

 

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to try them out again, to see if practice had anything to do with it.

I'd also like to hear from other pilots who have mastered rapid fire laser and used it a lot, especially on a scout. Does anyone think it's fine? Which of the suggestions I made could we all get behind?

I'm not done reading the thread yet, but figured I'd go ahead and answer here.

 

I'm not an expert with RFLs, but I've spent a good deal of time in Class 1 Scouts, since I have 4 toons I fly with, and had to unlock the class 2 with something, and for the first toon I started with, I started upgrades to the Blackbolt.

 

Prior to the release of 2.6, I thought they were a little loose, but somewhat viable. I'm not sure what, if any changes they made specifically to the RFL for 2.6, but something is definitely different. It could be that most prior experience was all still in the infancy of GSF, and no one was upgraded, or it could be that the RFL was actually nerfed when they tinkered with a lot of the abilities and laser, tiered options. But regardless, the performance right now is p**s poor.

 

I was watching this video, and knowing who IDM is (JC server, I fly as Graendahl with my "main" on imp side, class 2 scout all the way at this point), I thought I'd give his build a try, because the numbers I was seeing with Blaster Overcharge looked really solid. He was hitting for 250-300, and critting in the 450-500 range (Note, the video is from late December, well before changes in 2.6).

 

So I gave it a try last night with my Sting, since I have plenty of ship req that isn't in use. I just maxed everything out, and gave them a whirl. The performance was absolutely dismal. I tend to average between 8-12 kills, the 40-50k damage mark, and between 1-3 deaths in a normal match.

 

With these, the outcome was just awful. I think I had 3 deaths (they were a good team), a semi-respectable 30k damage, and a whopping 2 kills (I think 8 assists? Might have hit double digits, but still not impressive). It wasn't that I got reamed, or found no targets... I am usually able to find a window and kill an opponent within about 5s of engaging at range against a type 1 sf, but with the RFL, it took me literally 15s on target to whittle away his shields (using double clusters as well), and start actually hitting his hull.

 

Without Blaster Overcharge, I was hitting for a paltry 130 for a non-crit at med/short range (within 1500m). With BO, I was seeing 210 on a normal, and 320 or so on a crit hit. Taking out the crits, at that rate, it's going to take ~14 hits to chew through 2 shield arcs of 1400 of a SF. That's not even including the hull, but assuming your aim is perfect, and you get all 14 shots to hit in succession, you're looking at almost 5s on target just to get through the shields. That's on a SF... I'd hate to see how long it would take to chew through bomber shields if they have a high defensive build.

 

If he has quick charge shield as a defensive, he will get back ~1/4 of what I do in an instant, and will get back another 4-5 shots worth over ~10s with the right upgrades. All said and done, you're looking at actually being on the target for about 15-20s in order to get the kill on a type 1 SF, and that's assuming you barely miss and get a cluster volley or 2 off.

 

No competent pilot is going to give you more than a few seconds before evasive maneuvers kick in, and it becomes a chase/dogfight.

 

The bottom line I took away from last night was that the RFLs simply aren't a viable option. You can certainly shoot for days with the upgrades, but when it takes days to down a pilot in a dogfighter, it's not really a good trade.

 

Part of the reason the burst lasers are my choice for the t2 scout is that the damage output allows you to actually get the kill in that 3-5s window, so the energy drain is offset by you not needing to fire that much if you're accurate. The blaster power only really comes into play with multiple targets, but if you're rocking RFLs with 2-3 people on you, you're far better off just running. You won't be able to take one of the enemies down quickly enough to make staying a viable option if he's got 1-2 buddies with him. Not to mention that it's far easier for an enemy to lead you away from objectives with that amount of time.

 

I didn't go much into the numbers like you did, but my conclusion based on feel is roughly the same. Right now, the RFLs suck, and simply aren't a viable option for a scout.

 

The tipping point was when I tried to take down a defensive sat turret. I had to use BO to up my damage, and hit retro thrusters to give myself an effective "2nd pass" in order to kill it at the same time that it and its friends killed me. A turret is about as stationary as it gets, and I couldn't even effectively kill that with RFLs.

 

As for your suggestions, I think I kind of prefer the stacking damage boost. Give me a real reward for keeping a target in my sights for 8s and hitting him half the time with my blasters. Just my 2¢.

RFLs on my nova were the first laser I maxed. They are marginally acceptable to me when I'm getting successful probe locks. Beyond that they suck. You don't even want to try to kill turrets with them. I do love the low power consumption but as has been pointed out there isn't much value in that when it means it takes you that much longer to get a kill. I might suggest upping the damage output and increase tracking penalty. Best idea I have at the moment.

I use rapid fire lasers on my Novadive, in combination with rocket pods. In general, I try to avoid turning dogfights and operate it as a high speed craft.

 

If you're doing a head on pass while boosting and also maneuvering to avoid eating too much of the other guy's fire then high rate of fire can be nice in terms of being able to hit anything at all. I also find that it does just fine in combination with rockets for popping turrets.

 

On the other hand, for a tail chase or any sort of quartering approach where you have plenty of time to aim it does suck pretty badly.

 

It's the best blaster when other blasters just wouldn't hit at all. So it has some value for a high speed slashing attack style. If you ever fire a blaster on a particular model of ship without also holding down boost at the same time then rapid fires probably aren't the best choice.

 

Aside from achieving hits through sheer volume of fire (which is what machine guns are supposed to do), it's a decent tool for harassing a target.

 

I'll admit though, that when I get kills in my Novadive it almost always is from a combination of blasters and rocket pods.

 

As far as pilot skill goes, I don't consider myself a spectacular shot, but I do use rocket pods vs. scouts and strikes and hit with 50% + of the shots. Generally what I do is continuous fire from the rapids starting a second or so before getting in range, and then I fire the rockets when I think I have a decent shot lined up. The rapids are just sort of background dps unless you're parked about 700m from a target that isn't dodging any of them. They can be scary to newb gunship pilots with tunnel vision problems though.

 

It also might have a special place for pilots with high latency connections. Being able to fill a volume with fire is probably handy when you don't really know where the target is.

Edited February 20, 2014 by Ramalina

What if there were a systems ability that transferred power from weapons to shields, or weapons to engines, or something like? Would that make rapid fires more viable?

What if there were a systems ability that transferred power from weapons to shields, or weapons to engines, or something like? Would that make rapid fires more viable?

 

No. Why would it?

You still couldn't kill anyone with them. You'd just be better at running away.

No. Why would it?

You still couldn't kill anyone with them. You'd just be better at running away.

 

Power to crit chance, then.

Power to crit chance, then.

 

I doubt that an ability like this would make Rapids more useful. People would still use stronger lasers, even if they could only shoot a few but powerful shots.

 

Beside that, the only ships which could use such an ability are scouts. Other ships don't have a system slot. So, this would only partially fix the problem.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Sindariel

This thread makes me feel a little better, on my imperial side I have yet to upgrade to a new laser set (spent my first upgrades on engines then upgrading the RFLs) and even as my accuracy got better, I always felt like I could be hitting someone for 5-10 seconds and still "almost" get through their shields... which was always very annoying to me. On my Pub guy I had swtiched Laser loadout immediately and was gettting more kills rather than the 10+ damn assists that I always seem to get otherwise.