... people still are willing to have it in their hangar!

http://imgur.com/shLPjR9

So you played vs the perfect counter to Scouts and are complaining that what Scouts aren't good enough? I don't understand what point you are trying to make, unless it's sarcasm then it's hilarious.

Yes, it is a sarcasm.

The 'deathball' isn't just a counter to scouts, How much Stingfires, 'most OP ships' are in battle? Yet the deathball still is working nearly perfectly (well they should watch their flank a little more... the scoure would be perfect then ).

it is a counter to virtually everything in TDM - and a pretty everything in domination. Yet, people still say that the Stingfire is the 'most OP ship'...

And no, I am not complaining about a match. With the new records thread the people are focused on getting most win % ratio, so it's natural that they are doing double premades. I am just proving that to all GS pilots who are complaining about scouts not being as easy kills as others.

GS is the most OP ship

The optimal counter for the 4GS + 4Bomber setup is to go 8GS which in turn is contered by 4GS+4scouts. I believe Drakolich has a video somewhere which showcases just this. Unfortunately, your team wasn't in a position to field enough gunships.

I feel that the problem with the gunship bomber deathballs is not so much that they can't be countered but that they have a very low skill floor to set up. You can have an effective deathball with stock bombers and gunships piloted by relatively inexperienced pilots. Just spend the initial 5k fleet requisition grant to get the quarrel/mangler and the rampart/razorwire and you're all set. However, to properly counter this you require a bit of requisition spent in a GS, with both railguns at t4 (ion prefrably at t5 with the regen blocking talent).

I've been daydreaming about GSF balance a bit and came up with something which I haven't seen discussed on these forums. What if railgun accuracy was tied to zoom? Right now, there is no cost for zooming out all the way while scoped to get the best turning rate. If there was a drastic drop in accuracy when zoomed out (say 50%) and a corresponding increase in accuracy (something like 20%) for being zoomed all the way in, it would make it a good deal harder for a gunship to nail someone who was charging them.

Thoughts?

~Zen

The optimal counter for the 4GS + 4Bomber setup is to go 8GS which in turn is contered by 4GS+4scouts. I believe Drakolich has a video somewhere which showcases just this. Unfortunately, your team wasn't in a position to field enough gunships.

 

I feel that the problem with the gunship bomber deathballs is not so much that they can't be countered but that they have a very low skill floor to set up. You can have an effective deathball with stock bombers and gunships piloted by relatively inexperienced pilots. Just spend the initial 5k fleet requisition grant to get the quarrel/mangler and the rampart/razorwire and you're all set. However, to properly counter this you require a bit of requisition spent in a GS, with both railguns at t4 (ion prefrably at t5 with the regen blocking talent).

 

I've been daydreaming about GSF balance a bit and came up with something which I haven't seen discussed on these forums. What if railgun accuracy was tied to zoom? Right now, there is no cost for zooming out all the way while scoped to get the best turning rate. If there was a drastic drop in accuracy when zoomed out (say 50%) and a corresponding increase in accuracy (something like 20%) for being zoomed all the way in, it would make it a good deal harder for a gunship to nail someone who was charging them.

 

Thoughts?

 

~Zen

I think this thread is what you were talking about.

As far as the accuracy on Railguns going up and down with zooms I'd rather just see the zoomed out version be the default and have zoomed in add a little accuracy. Evasion is already so freaking good vs railguns.

I can only say for myself but I was solo queing that one. Damned conquest makes me use the Jurg! LOL

I find it hard to believe...

Anyway, I dont care much, but next time think about new players... How good will be your bloated stats if nearly no one will be playing?...

PS. Drakolich... with all due respect for your skill and knowledge, don't tell me that GS needs more accuracy for countering those 'OPed' scouts... because they are already doing it way too efficiently. Assuming the same level of skill and coordination of course.

And no, I do not mean 1v1 duels because 1v1 rarely happens in a match on above novice level.

Edit down: yeah yeah... and how often do you see 50% of battlescouts in a match? Now, how often it is 50% GS in TDM/50% bombers in domination , later phase (earlier scouts are used for capping fast).\

In the match I have posted a screenshoot, I scored 2 kills, only with GS. (all ships on similar level of commedations).

The only situation where team of 4+ Stingfires is better than 4+Gs is against a newb team, where scouts mobility allow to get kills faster.

The scout is optomized perfectly to be a killing machine early. An accuracy + crit talent that also dispels evasion, a missile break + evasion adder, a missile break that also lines you up head on, the natural evasion, and the copilot ability. Couple the best offensive combination for devastation with the ability to not have to be stationary when firing, you have the best hunter in the game. The only bit about being OP is that it's currently the only build that is THAT optomized.

The ships aren't OP - RNG is.

I find it hard to believe...

 

 

Anyway, I dont care much, but next time think about new players... How good will be your bloated stats if nearly no one will be playing?...

 

PS. Drakolich... with all due respect for your skill and knowledge, don't tell me that GS needs more accuracy for countering those 'OPed' scouts... because they are already doing it way too efficiently. Assuming the same level of skill and coordination of course.

And no, I do not mean 1v1 duels because 1v1 rarely happens in a match on above novice level.

You were okay before you continued typing....

This is just wrong. New players can't be expected to be effective participants in high level matches, so we'll omit that bit about novice level, since I often don't base the meta off those who're just beginning. That said, you want to balance GSF for newbs? Don't have new players play against vets. Solve the actual problem by fixing what's broken, not citing cries for OP.

The TTK for a scout is under 1 second depending the build. The TTK for a GS is a minimum of 3 seconds (2.7s with talent), and that requires a 16% crit on a scout, or DO. Even if the gunship hahas DO, a scout with DO is capable of killing faster (charge time).

A GOOD scout, like the kind at the more advanced level, will not be approaching GSs on a straight approach. They're corkscrewing, coming from many angles and dodging by the sheer mobility of the scout. They then are within 4000m and light you up with quads and pods, popping targetting telemetry for good measure, cuz crits for kicks.

Against a gunship wall, a scout isn't going to be a good choice, especially if there are drones and mines, just like if there is a team of nothing but acouts, a bomber squad with gunships is a good counter.

Highest damage in the game comes from scouts. They don't have to be stationary to fire. Their engine components work more frequently and use lless energy through boost. They have the highest natural evasion in the game. The can close the gap of 15000 without being hit in the time it takes to charge 1 railgun. They can be outfitted to have the fastest turning in the game. They can naturally just change directi ok ns to have infinite missile breaks, assuming no spam.

At the highest level of 1v1 duels between GS and Scout, scouts win more. Tom and I had a match on Jung'Ma. He accounted for 8 or my 9 deaths. I think I accounted for MAYBE 6? Teams weren't even a consideration because we met in open space. Even though Tom isn't running an evasion build, the amount of rails I shot at him and missed is maddening, but it's because he's not flying in a straight line. He's manuevering and dodging, and getting an average damage of 70k. The highest GS average is 57k at the moment. That's what happens when the opportunity cost for missing is higher on a GS than it is on a scout.

Especially since the engine nerf along with the ion nerfs, the meta has been favoring scouts for a while now.

Edit: 4 stings vs 4 GSs still lend advantage to the sting in terms of overall potential, with the pilot skill being the determining factor. Our Actuary, someone who's job it is to work with number and statistics, percentages, calculatikns, comparisons, etc. was one of the best Gunship pilots in the game. Since they nerfs GS, his math indicates that the Scout has the highest potential for damage as well as killing probability. These are the opinions that shape my beliefs - if the dude was that good in a GS and he switched to scout because he can identifidentify mathematically that there is a correlation between winning and having higher stats, and flying a flashfire, then it's probably right. Judging by the records threads too, i'd say so. Scouts have top dps and top overall damage.

The bomber ball / gs wall is a tactic to be countered with counter tactics. Scouts dont have much of a place when your opposition field that team

And no, I am not complaining about a match. With the new records thread the people are focused on getting most win % ratio, so it's natural that they are doing double premades. I am just proving that to all GS pilots who are complaining about scouts not being as easy kills as others.

GS is the most OP ship

You know, it's kind of funny you mention this, because I was thinking about how the new records thread has changed the way I fly. But probably not in the way you think.

In looking at the new records thread, with regards to win %, I'm fairly certain that I'm not going to catch win %s for pretty much any of the leaders. I fly solo too much, and to be quite honest, in some ways, I don't really care about win %. I also don't care too much about KDR, although I will note that especially with Mierin, I'm trying to be far more careful, which is netting me far fewer deaths. I honestly don't think I've SD'd with her more than once since that thread was started. Maybe twice. But for some reason this added caution only really applies to Mierin, and not so much with the rest of my alts (I had a whopping FOUR self destructs in a match with Deios yesterday, for instance).

No... The main thing that's changed is that when I start in a ship, I finish in that ship. I know one of the reasons that Graendahl's avg damage stats are in the Sting are in the 33k range is that I swap around ships in combat a LOT. We're stomping? Fly into an asteroid and go get my BloodPoint. We're getting stomped? Go hop in whichever ship our team most needs, or where I feel I can do the most good (often this would be me swapping from something into a StingFire halfway through a match). If I swap to or from the Sting, the time spent in it is usually easily enough to get close to 30k damage and 7-8 kills, but I'm not going to get 90k damage on the one ship if I swap halfway through the match, and that definitely affects those averages.

Now that we have the stats thread, though, I find myself not really swapping around very much, especially with Mierin. The reason isn't win % or KDR, it's because I want to make sure that my damage and kill counts are representative of flying the ship in an entire match. Insofar as records go, yeah, I absolutely want to keep my win % and KDR respectable. But the ones I keep eyeing are avg damage and avg kills, which for a Stingfire, Tomm has put me into #2 and #3 respectively. Drak will push me down one more with one of his alts, most likely, and Scrabs probably has me in both as well.

Mierin's sitting at just under 10kills/match, and has gone up to almost 47k damage per since I posted her stats in the other thread. But every time I get into a match and do this or this, I'm helping my StingFire stats, and hoping I can catch Tommm. Those are both a little higher on the kill counts than I usually get, but the damage is starting to get pretty representative. If I swap to another ship, I'm hurting my damage counts for the purposes of the leaderboard, even if I'm not necessarily changing my overall damage for the match too much.

This is just wrong. New players can't be expected to be effective participants in high level matches, so we'll omit that bit about novice level, since I often don't base the meta off those who're just beginning. That said, you want to balance GSF for newbs? Don't have new players play against vets. Solve the actual problem by fixing what's broken, not citing cries for OP.

Again, this is not about newbies being able to actively compete with veterans - it is about them being shoot down from somewhere where tehy can't even reach (because they do not have even access to gunships). After 2-3 matches like this how hivh is the chance someone will say 'meh, no point in all this, GSF sucks'? ... Prety high, I guess.

The TTK for a scout is under 1 second depending the build.

for maybe 6 seconds in 1 minute (concentrated fire). Even in a GS i am pretty much able to run away from a scout. If I get first shot with ion rail, well... sitting duck.

The TTK for a GS is a minimum of 3 seconds (2.7s with talent), and that requires a 16% crit on a scout, or DO. Even if the gunship hahas DO, a scout with DO is capable of killing faster (charge time).

Time from first damage to kill - GS against scout ... 16% 0 seconds (1 shot), full charge and a small charge (about 1,5 seconds ) without crit. Time to kill with ion rail? Who cares, after first hit the scout can power dive once... ir just wait helplessly.

GS being attacked by a scout has serious warning (large red triangle on screen), scout does not have anything, first warning - rail hit and red hull (assuming the rail does not crit).

And with DO... Gunship does not have to fly 10 clicks to each opponent, changing the direction is enough. Ah, you can survive BLC hit, especially within larger distance, goodluck with surviving slug with DO...

A GOOD scout, like the kind at the more advanced level, will not be approaching GSs on a straight approach. They're corkscrewing, coming from many angles and dodging by the sheer mobility of the scout. They then are within 4000m and light you up with quads and pods, popping targetting telemetry for good measure, cuz crits for kicks.

And then GS BR away... while another GS lands an ion rail hit...

Against a gunship wall, a scout isn't going to be a good choice, especially if there are drones and mines, just like if there is a team of nothing but acouts, a bomber squad with gunships is a good counter.

The problem is that the only good counters for GS with bombers are... GS and bombers. the 'OPed' scouts won't do anything much against a bomber nest or GS wall.

Highest damage in the game comes from scouts. They don't have to be stationary to fire. Their engine components work more frequently and use lless energy through boost. They have the highest natural evasion in the game. The can close the gap of 15000 without being hit in the time it takes to charge 1 railgun. They can be outfitted to have the fastest turning in the game. They can naturally just change directi ok ns to have infinite missile breaks, assuming no spam.

Every time they change opponents they have to go for about 10 clicks more than GS. I can surprise you also - GS does not have to be stationary to fire as well. They have BLC. More. They have DF as well. Sure, less damage, but again can do pretty much damage in close combat.

And scouts do more damage? Sure, in 'newbie game, stats farming' maybe. In a game on average and higher level the GS can do more hull damage than scout can dream of (assuming the same skill levels).

At the highest level of 1v1 duels between GS and Scout, scouts win more(...) Tom and I had a match on Jung'Ma. He accounted for 8 or my 9 deaths. I think I accounted for MAYBE 6? Teams weren't even a consideration because we met in open space. Even though Tom isn't running an evasion build, the amount of rails I shot at him and missed is maddening, but it's because he's not flying in a straight line. He's manuevering and dodging, and getting an average damage of 70k. The highest GS average is 57k at the moment. That's what happens when the opportunity cost for missing is higher on a GS than it is on a scout.

Again - how much '1v1' do we have on GSF? it is team vs team - most of the kills come from attacking enemy that does not suspect you're about to attack.

Pressing Tab (and as a GS you can fire without having target selected, so you can do this without losing your firepower) will reveal enemy ship closing, Can you do it on 'OPed' scout?... good luck.

Edit: 4 stings vs 4 GSs still lend advantage to the sting in terms of overall potential, with the pilot skill being the determining factor. Our Actuary, someone who's job it is to work with number and statistics, percentages, calculatikns, comparisons, etc. was one of the best Gunship pilots in the game. Since they nerfs GS, his math indicates that the Scout has the highest potential for damage as well as killing probability. These are the opinions that shape my beliefs - if the dude was that good in a GS and he switched to scout because he can identifidentify mathematically that there is a correlation between winning and having higher stats, and flying a flashfire, then it's probably right. Judging by the records threads too, i'd say so. Scouts have top dps and top overall damage.

Well, from my experience it is quite the contrary - most of the matches I fly GS, I have much higher damage and kill counts. I don't do complicated match to count my chance, I fly. Or stay in place and charge rail.

The bomber ball / gs wall is a tactic to be countered with counter tactics. Scouts dont have much of a place when your opposition field that team

The bomber/GS ball is better than anything else, maybe close to 8XGS; assuming the GS pilots in 'deathball' know when to disengage it is still an eve game (getting repair, shield recharge in few seconds can counter more firepower that pure 'GS wall' has.

Only way to have it countered is - the same team. So don't talk anymore about 'OPed' scouts becuse I will only laugh at you then...

Assuming the same skill lvel, those OP scouts are losing to all GS/bomber combos or pure GS/pure bomber teams.

I have 7 toons that play GSF regularly on 4 different servers ALL of them rock the Sting/Flashfire because it is my personal favorite ship and probably one of the best ships in the game to counter everything besides good bomber pilots. Only 2 of my toons have other ships such as gunships, strike fighters, and bombers and only 1 of those has every ship fully upgraded including the cartel ones. I don't usually pull my Sting/Flashfire out on that toon because I don't find that ship fun after I get it fully upgraded. I usually only use it with fully upgraded shields and 2nd tier upgrades on everything else because then getting kills is still somewhat of a challenge and fun.

I personally start toons on different servers with zero intent on playing them again just to play GSF for a few hours and even with a tier 1 zero upgrade scout I get anywhere from 5-7 kills in a single match. (my record was 23 with a teir 1 upgraded with 2 of the minor components fully upgraded tier 1 scout) When you do this you will find gsf to be more enjoyable and you will become a skilled pilot a lot faster than using your fully upgraded ships to get the same kills.

I love ebon hawk for GSF because they do stock fighter matches with some ship choice restrictions and they are fairly successful with 90-100% of all people following the rules. Harbinger GSF is fun because you get a lot of bads playing and I get kills fairly easily even with brand new ships. Jung Ma is a bit tougher because its a small community of players and not many new players queue for GSF its usually experienced pilots with new toons or new ships that queue so its fun WHEN GSF actually pops over there usually during peak hours only. BC was fun too but it doesn't have the stock fighter matches that EH has and most of the experienced pilots over there aren't very good.

I'm shocked. I've played over a thousand matches (yeah, I'm a noob) and have never even heard that you can zoom in a gunship.

/slapforehead

I have 7 toons that play GSF regularly on 4 different servers ALL of them rock the Sting/Flashfire because it is my personal favorite ship and probably one of the best ships in the game to counter everything besides good bomber pilots. Only 2 of my toons have other ships such as gunships, strike fighters, and bombers and only 1 of those has every ship fully upgraded including the cartel ones. I don't usually pull my Sting/Flashfire out on that toon because I don't find that ship fun after I get it fully upgraded. I usually only use it with fully upgraded shields and 2nd tier upgrades on everything else because then getting kills is still somewhat of a challenge and fun.

 

I personally start toons on different servers with zero intent on playing them again just to play GSF for a few hours and even with a tier 1 zero upgrade scout I get anywhere from 5-7 kills in a single match. (my record was 23 with a teir 1 upgraded with 2 of the minor components fully upgraded tier 1 scout) When you do this you will find gsf to be more enjoyable and you will become a skilled pilot a lot faster than using your fully upgraded ships to get the same kills.

 

I love ebon hawk for GSF because they do stock fighter matches with some ship choice restrictions and they are fairly successful with 90-100% of all people following the rules. Harbinger GSF is fun because you get a lot of bads playing and I get kills fairly easily even with brand new ships. Jung Ma is a bit tougher because its a small community of players and not many new players queue for GSF its usually experienced pilots with new toons or new ships that queue so its fun WHEN GSF actually pops over there usually during peak hours only. BC was fun too but it doesn't have the stock fighter matches that EH has and most of the experienced pilots over there aren't very good.

Im inclined to disagree on the assessment of Jung Ma, right now the quality of pilots is probably the lowest of all the servers Ive been to.

That said, you want to balance GSF for newbs? Don't have new players play against vets. Solve the actual problem by fixing what's broken, not citing cries for OP.

That is the best possible thing that could happen to GSF, any way you cut it. There's no other single improvement that would make the game better for everyone more than this.

Whatever balance issues persist in the meta (like strikes being underpowered, certain components being too good or bad) should be a distant secondary concern to giving new pilots somewhere to learn the game that they aren't being hopelessly and repeatedly mowed down by people they have no chance of fighting back against.

- Despon

Im inclined to disagree on the assessment of Jung Ma, right now the quality of pilots is probably the lowest of all the servers Ive been to.

I think he may have been saying that the number of complete noobs as a percentage of the population is lower, not that there are a significant number of high skill pilots.

Also you clearly haven't been grinding req at off hours on Bastion lately.

Two weeks ago I would have said a Clarion using thermite torpedoes is a pretty bad platform for taking out battlescouts. It turns out that depends on how bad the battlescout pilots are.

I've been sort of torn the last couple of weeks, I want to gear up Bastion alts for Super Serious nights, but the fun matches have been on Shadowlands and TEH. Thermite DOT kills on scouts are fun briefly, but the novelty wears off quickly.

The NovaDive/Blackbolt is absolutely devestating in Deathmatch with only these upgrades:

Laser cannons tier 0 = 2000 req

Rocket pods tier 1 = 1000 req

Targeting Telemetry tier 1 = 3000 req

Powerdive tier 2 = 5000 req

Distortion field tier 1 = 2500 req

Lightweight armor tier 3 = 5000 req

Regen thrusters tier 2 = 2500 req

Distortion field level 3 is nice but not 100% mandatory since you have a 10 second missile break in powerdive.

You'll probably also want to use some fleet req to buy wingman co-pilot, 5% evasion passive, and 6% accuracy increase. Lt. Pierce and Kira Carsen are good choices to also give you an extra 8 rocket pods but it's not mandatory to do well.

So that's 21,000 ship requistion and probably 2500-3725 fleet requisition to get an absolute powerhouse of a scout. You can get that in a week merely by playing that ship every day until you complete the 2x bonus and get the daily reward.

I find it hard to believe...

 

 

Anyway, I dont care much, but next time think about new players... How good will be your bloated stats if nearly no one will be playing?...

 

Bloated stats? Here is a screen shot of my toon. Not too much to yell about.

 

PS. Drakolich... with all due respect for your skill and knowledge, don't tell me that GS needs more accuracy for countering those 'OPed' scouts... because they are already doing it way too efficiently. Assuming the same level of skill and coordination of course.

And no, I do not mean 1v1 duels because 1v1 rarely happens in a match on above novice level.

 

 

Edit down: yeah yeah... and how often do you see 50% of battlescouts in a match? Now, how often it is 50% GS in TDM/50% bombers in domination , later phase (earlier scouts are used for capping fast).\

 

In the match I have posted a screenshoot, I scored 2 kills, only with GS. (all ships on similar level of commedations).

 

And if you look in the chat and if I am guessing your toon correctly you killed me one of those times! LOL

The only situation where team of 4+ Stingfires is better than 4+Gs is against a newb team, where scouts mobility allow to get kills faster.

Yes it does look like a double premade but there is only one other person I recognize. And he got to know a few good pilots on the Pub side and talked to us and has become a good pilot himself! Despair was on and running premades for conquest but they were not in this match. But at this time I was solo queuing. You can believe me or not thats up to you. But if you ask around the community you will find me to be a really stand up guy. Cheers!

How about if were going to talk about team strategies (Like the dreaded Bomber/Gunship setup) everyone stops talking about the 1 ship they want to use to counter it.

On top of that, can we stop using the perfect strategy to counter Scouts as a reason why it's not a good ship. In every other situation other then killing this setup a Scout is really good.

The really funny part here is Bomber > Scout > Gunship > Bomber is the meta at the moment. However the Bombers in this setup counter the Scouts harder then Scouts counter the Gunships. Because of this the optimal strategy is 8 Gunships, because 4 of your Gunships counter the Bombers and the other 4 are equal with their Gunships.

This is how the meta works currently, stop complaining that opponents are using a strategy to counter what is right now probably the most popular ship.

@Drakolich: This isn't only the strategy to counter scouts , this is the winning strategy in TDM - a fortress strategy. And thats the problem.

Practically all mixes of GS and bombers are countered only by combos of GS and bombers; with exception of bomber majority where CP strikes sometimes have something to say. And, please, don't say that 8 scouts (any tier) > 8 GS, because it just plain isn't true, unless we're talking about voip premades where they have a chance. Few well placed ion shots will render most of the group useless. How good is the allmighty scout without engines? ...

And I am still OK with that - if the GS/Bomber tactic happens, I am just hopping into my own GS. Sure, it's less exciting , i become a game of chess - but I can still play it.

I just laugh in a face of anyone saying that T2 scout is 'the most OP ship'. If someone likes slaughter of newbs, and 'gg' means a 50:0 win against stationary targets then maybe it is true. In all other games the 'most OP ship' is clearly a gunship.

@Drakolich: This isn't only the strategy to counter scouts , this is the winning strategy in TDM - a fortress strategy. And thats the problem.

 

Practically all mixes of GS and bombers are countered only by combos of GS and bombers; with exception of bomber majority where CP strikes sometimes have something to say. And, please, don't say that 8 scouts (any tier) > 8 GS, because it just plain isn't true, unless we're talking about voip premades where they have a chance. Few well placed ion shots will render most of the group useless. How good is the allmighty scout without engines? ...

 

And I am still OK with that - if the GS/Bomber tactic happens, I am just hopping into my own GS. Sure, it's less exciting , i become a game of chess - but I can still play it.

 

I just laugh in a face of anyone saying that T2 scout is 'the most OP ship'. If someone likes slaughter of newbs, and 'gg' means a 50:0 win against stationary targets then maybe it is true. In all other games the 'most OP ship' is clearly a gunship.

I honestly don't know what game you are playing if you don't think 8 evasion Scouts wouldn't beat 8 Gunships. The Gunships would get destroyed, it wouldn't even be close.

So laugh away but I'm done arguing with you.

I honestly don't know what game you are playing if you don't think 8 evasion Scouts wouldn't beat 8 Gunships. The Gunships would get destroyed, it wouldn't even be close.

 

So laugh away but I'm done arguing with you.

Wow Bolo_Yeung you actually pissed off "THE" nicest and most helpful guy in the GSF community!