Hi folks,

 

currently I am observing a very disturbing evolution in GSF: Deathmatches are reduced to the question which team fields more Gunships and has more patience for camping.

 

Truth be told, this is pathetic.

 

I do not know, if this intended. GSF is great with dogfights, but Galactic Star Sniper (in empty space) is not what I would call fun.

 

What can we as pilots do about this?

What can be done by the developers?

 

And please, all you wise guys whose railgun is longer than other's and have the urge to tell me to learn to play: refrain from posting. I DO know how to play and I do NOT like the current evolving Deathmatch play style.

 

regards

Trehirjay, Vanjervalis Chain

And please, all you wise guys whose railgun is longer than other's and have the urge to tell me to learn to play: refrain from posting. I DO know how to play and I do NOT like the current evolving Deathmatch play style.

 

So don't bother posting unless we completely agree with you? This will be an excellent thread.

So don't bother posting unless we completely agree with you? This will be an excellent thread.

 

No, if you've read my post, there are two (2) questions. This should be enough to start a discussion.

I had only some hope to avoid flaming.

1) L2P

2) Current build is broken with t4/t5 talents

3) Gunships require you to force them to flee. If you or your team isn't doing that, it's your and your team's fault

4) You're gonna lose to a better player, regardless of the ship they're in (for the most part). Get used to it if you want to get good

 

Edit: Devs have already brought gunships in line. What kinda ship are YOU playing

Edited December 14, 2014 by SammyGStatus

Well, what a pilot can do about it has been covered in many threads, so I'll give the very brief summary.

 

If the gunships are part of an organized team, you need to organize your own team, or you're pretty much guaranteed to fail.

 

Once you're balanced on the teamwork front, it's mostly a matter of denying the gunships the range advantage of their railguns.

 

So either you counter with gunships, and have the same range as them, or you use cover to close to your primary weapon range, where the gunships no longer have a significant advantage. Scouts are easiest to do this with, but with practice the other ship classes can also be quite successful.

 

Mind the interdiction missiles and BLCs when you close on a T3 gunship though.

 

For the developers, what will be done is probably not much.

 

There are things that could be looked at in some form, that would affect gunship balance such as BLCs, D-field missile break, balance tuning of underperforming ships, etc, but for gunship specific balance changes the only thing I see as reasonably likely would be adding Koigran, Snap, or Power Dive to their engine component choices and/or improving Interdiction Drive. That is, the most likely dev change to gunships is likely to be buffing their defense options slightly.

 

In general the hard part is not so much countering the gunships, as it is convincing newer players that throwing themselves into the meatgrinder (flying around in open space without trying to evade the gunships) is perhaps not the best strategy.

 

I'd suggest using advanced search and the keywords "gunship" and "counter" if you want to find the many threads that go into great detail on how to fly effectively against gunships.

Edited December 14, 2014 by Ramalina

Thank you for the replay (even the L2P, I totally didn't expect that...).

DF bugged -> less scouts -> GS less threatened -> more GS around Edited December 14, 2014 by Danalon

I fly a gunship a lot, and I find that it can sometimes be easier to play against a gunship ball than against dogfighting ships, especially since I usually queue solo. Scout pilots are getting smarter about not letting gunships settle in and snipe from long range. So now I often only get 1 or 2 shots in before a scout comes after me and I have to move and hope that I can get to the protection of friendly ships or mines before he gets me. Against other gunships, I can pick out one on the edge, get to about 20k, boost in suddenly to range and start shooting. If I can get in the first shot, or if my target is shooting at someone else, I have an advantage.

 

The best case situation for a gunship is to be the only gunship in a match. If the enemy is busy dogfighting my teammates, I can often get a lot of shots in before I get noticed or anyone is in a position to go after me.

 

If I'm flying a scout or strike, I love any chance to chase a gunship. Even if he has enough support from his teammates that I can't spend a lot of time chasing him, at least I can make him move and prevent him from sniping. Of course, if he is isolated or his teammates are busy elsewhere, the hunt is on. The most important thing is to have full engine power at the start of your run, so you can make him move and still have something left to chase or escape, so I usually am on F3 most of the time.

Hey SkratchDieRatte while I can understand the frustration of hating gunships there are a lot of ways to counter them currently in the game, now I know that isn't the kind of thing you wanted to hear so I have a few questions that might clear up why you might be so frustrated.

 

What kind of ship do you usually fly?

 

Do you stack evasion on the ship you do fly? Evasion is the best defense against railguns.

 

Are you constantly solo Q ing and trying to take on 3-4 gunships on your own? Gunship stacking definitely can get scary especially on Lost shipyards deathmatch. (that place is gunship heaven) You can't really expect to be able to deroost 3-4 gunships on your own though, especially if you're new to the game.

 

 

Anyways if you would rather learn how to counter the gunship play you are so frustrated with there is plenty of information on that already on the forums so I won't go into it here. I really think people need to stop saying "this is a dogfighting game only" because it just isn't. Half of the ships aren't made for dogfighting.

 

Anyways look forward to your response.

From my experience so far, I have to agree with the previous posts. Gunships are tough, but nothing beats an organized team. It's a deciding factor.

In my experience, gunship walls only dominate teams that back off of them, or teams so outmatched in skill/gear/coordination you could farm them in T2 strikes. If your team is not aggressive on the gunships, you're litterally actively encouraging people to switch to gunship for easy farming against you.

 

Unfortunately, alot of people's strategy seems to be to hide and hope the gunships magically go away, which just leads to you being driven back to spawn in an effort to stay hidden, and then can't run any more and get farmed.

 

What you can do about this is play a fast scout, pick up a DO if you can and get to farming those gunsheep back. Or if you have a bad team and have to face multiple gunships on your own, at least you can hit and run and get some kills, keep them on their toes, and then hopefully when you've got top kills on your team the rest of it will listen to you explaining that backing off from gunships is bad.

 

As Drak said though, if you're facing 3-4 good gunships with nobody decent on your wing, you probably shouldn't expect to be able to carry the match.

Edited December 14, 2014 by MiaowZedong

Overuse of gunships in death matches is definitely very frustrating for solo queues. Especially since rank-and-file gsfers don't coordinate, which is especially need against multiple gunships (or bombers). My team will typically see several matches a night where the enemy team is using 4+ gunships on lost shipyards. Besides using scouts and gunships as several people have suggested, we will use a decimus with interdiction sentry and interdiction drive. If you have the decimus lead the charge with 2 scouts, drop one or two interdiction sentries and pop your interdiction drive, you'll basically prevent the gunships from escapeing and the scouts will chew through them. But again, this requires teamwork, and that's the underlying issue with a lot of gsf--to really get the most out of it you need a team. If you're team won't change ships and they just keep feeding the gunships there's nothing one man can do.

Gunships go crunch easily if you know how to use a scout.

 

Attack from an appropriate angle. If you fly straight at them, head on, from 18k, they're going to kill you. Sneak up on them and/or use cover. Avoid using straight, predictable flight paths of any kind if one is actually targeting you.

 

Situational awareness is supremely important if there are multiple enemy gunships. Be aware of their positions and if you wish to engage them, position yourself so that when you approach one you are not flying across the firing line of the others, attack quickly, and then return to cover. The longer you stay out in the open the more likely your destruction becomes. For this reason, scouts, which can fly in, activate burst CD's and pop a gunship like a piñata and then zip back behind an asteroid are the best gunship hunters, other than perhaps another gunship.

 

If you are already engaging someone else and can't switch to the gunship, you need to get the hell out of the GS's range. If your attacker pursues you, engage them somewhere safer. If they don't, go for the gunship.

 

Try to keep your eyes on the horizon and avoid tunnel visioning whoever you're currently trying to kill. Gunship pilots love enemies who fly around ignoring their presence, as it turns what would have been a battle into a shooting gallery. Only one type of ship will fly up to the edge of an engagement and then stop. If you see this on your minimap or see the telltale red squares around enemy ships acting like this, you know it's a gunship, and if you're in range of it you should assume it's targeting you until you can verify that it isn't.

Edited December 14, 2014 by TheGreatSatan

Quads and Pods for life.

Quads and Pods for life.

 

quoted for emphasis

Avoid using straight, predictable flight paths of any kind

 

I always assume I am being targeted by some sneaky gunship bastard. Adopt this mindset and you will go far (hopefully, at least as far as me )

Edited December 15, 2014 by Ymris

I always assume I am being targeted by some bastard.

 

Fixed that for you . Words to live by.

Hi folks,

 

currently I am observing a very disturbing evolution in GSF: Deathmatches are reduced to the question which team fields more Gunships and has more patience for camping.

 

This has been addressed, but have you checked out our super serious nights?

 

 

There's other TDMs in there, and gunships are definitely important, but a team that stacks gunships gets countered.

 

 

What can we as pilots do about this?

 

Play a solid comp and a gunship heavy group won't win. I really think this is based on your lack of experience.

 

What can be done by the developers?

 

When the developers look at this game again for balance, "gunships op" should not be anywhere near the top of their list. Much larger issues exist, notably the general absence of effective strike fighter strategies. I propose balance ideas here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=752949

 

And please, all you wise guys whose railgun is longer than other's and have the urge to tell me to learn to play: refrain from posting. I DO know how to play and I do NOT like the current evolving Deathmatch play style.

 

Given that anti gunship trollers go into good threads and try to ruin them with gunship QQ, and the fact that this thread is explicitly about game balance, asking directly what players and devs should DO, also asking that players who have a lot more hours than you on the game and don't share your opinion go away is not really a reasonable request.

 

 

Anyway, watch some of the games I linked on that channel- that's teamplay from our serious nights. And Drako isn't the only youtuber of GSF, Scrab, Redmist-Rondo and others all have solid play, some of it against gunships.

COORDINATION! COORDINATION! COORDINATION! Grouping with even 1 other person using some form of voice chat is KEY! If you are too shy and or too lazy to install mumble etc I highly suggest learning to LoS approach and utilize TAB targeting and C (look to who you have targeted). Once decently outfitted the Type 2 Scout can cause a major ****-storm in the GS lines... if you can make it there in one piece. I do agree with the overall assessment however there are ways to combat that tactic. PRESSURE! Even a simple charge (NOT IN A STRAIGHT *********** LINE!) will force most (certainly not all) GS pilots to burn Barrel Roll, LET THEM RUN, regroup with the rest of your team and mop up the remaining ships WHILE keeping eyes on GS's trying to set back up. And like I've always said- you won't get any better going up against a full group of 2-shippers. When you find yourself outmatched try some new evasive tactics, maybe attempt to put pressure on that one GS pilot who's name has been flashing on the screen the whole match. Point is you won't get any better ************ about things being "fair". And just to go back to what I originally said- I myself used to fly mostly solo (pretty much 1,000 matches doing that, with the occasional group every now and then) but when I really started to interact and group with other like-minded pilots it changed everything. Edited December 18, 2014 by Werehowie
grammatical error

Counter a gunship=easy. Let's say your in a scout/strike fighter and you see a gunship is trying to snipe you. To counter this, turn and carge your ship straight at them with speed boost on and get a missle lock at the same time. Most of the time your moving at them so fast they barley have time to charge up and get one shot off, and a missle lock usually motivates them to move.

One time I saw a guy sniping people so I began to lock a missle on him. He got so scared he ran into a wall:p.

I think that when people type in ops chat, "stay back" it is to discourage the bads to stop feeding the gunships. If I am single queuing against a bunch of decent gunships I will pick evasion scout with powerdive,TT/wingman, and blc/pods or quad/pods and rack up heaps of damage and kills. The problem is that I can't attack all of the gunships at once and therefore the uncontested ones will continue to chew up my team.

 

The biggest problem is that the default T1 scout and T1 strike have paper armor and low evasion so they are easy food for gunships. The T1 strike should at least start with directional shields and large reactor so that gunships need 3 shots to kill them. Beginner players should choose either tanky builds with healing (T2 bomber or T3 strike) or long range heavy evasion builds like T1 Gunship (DF, lightweight armor, possibly running interference). This would make the enemy GS have to work a lot harder for their kills.

Edited December 19, 2014 by RickDagles

I think that when people type in ops chat, "stay back" it is to discourage the bads to stop feeding the gunships. If I am single queuing against a bunch of decent gunships I will pick evasion scout with powerdive,TT/wingman, and blc/pods or quad/pods and rack up heaps of damage and kills. The problem is that I can't attack all of the gunships at once and therefore the uncontested ones will continue to chew up my team.

 

The biggest problem is that the default T1 scout and T1 strike have paper armor and low evasion so they are easy food for gunships. The T1 strike should at least start with directional shields and large reactor so that gunships need 3 shots to kill them. Beginner players should choose either tanky builds with healing (T2 bomber or T3 strike) or long range heavy evasion builds like T1 Gunship (DF, lightweight armor, possibly running interference). This would make the enemy GS have to work a lot harder for their kills.

 

I would not recommend changing the default loadout of the stock ships to directional shields. Juggling between front and rear shields adds another level of micromanagement to the flight routine which I believe would confuse and frustrate new players more than giving them simpler tools to recover from mistakes(as quick charge does). Directionals can be both a curse and a blessing, and while they are better in certain circumstances, I am of the opinion that quick-charge is better suited for a wider variety of situations, while directional shields are not. Just my two cents

Edited December 20, 2014 by Lavaar