This is a big what if, no I do not suggest they ACTUALLY do this, nor do I suggest this would some how MAGICALLY fix things.... it was just a random thought that entered my head.

What If, Strikes had the same turning Radios as Scouts but were slower.

IE they ACTUALLY made sharper turns since they have slower speeds and same radius, but could not cover distance as well thanks to their less efficient engines and slower speeds.

I would think they would have SOME better dog fighting ability but still sacrifice speed and map control that seemed to be an intended weakness..

Others thoughts, how would it be good, how would it be terrible, how would it make absolutely no difference.

I mean, it doesn't fit with the common-sense idea of the interceptor being more maneuverable than the heavy fighter....

But if this appeared as a GSF patch note, I would be wildly thrilled. It would:

> Discourage any scout from engaging in a protracted turn fight with a strike.

> Still leave open the more dynamic approach of changing distance and approaching with cooldowns.

> Greatly boost the utility of strikes on satellites.

> Mildly boost the ability of a strike to threaten and kill with missiles. The inability to meaningfully lock on a missile versus non-bombers is a pretty big deal, especially in a game with copious missile breaks.

> Prevent the out-of-breath strike from being forced into LOS or death by a scout.

> Minimize the "right click stop" gunship trick (a trick that normally really only hurts strikes), thus enabling strikes to be much more threatening when close to a gunship.

> Allow for better nose-to-target on the one class who ONLY has nose-to-target weapons.

> Allow strikes to meaningfully peel scouts, a role they are seriously bad at.

I doubt we'd ever get a change like this, because it's pretty much the scout's kit. But if they DID do it, scouts would keep all their other roles, without being nerfed, AND strikes would have something they were the best at, a thing that would give them some role in the meta.

It's not the Star Warsiest solution, but it honestly sounds like it would be the GSFiest.

Solid idea.

Strikes aren't actually as turn deficient as most people think they are. For a scout to catch up a half circle worth of angle on a strike takes just over 14 seconds if they both take the same number of turning upgrades. Or a more relevant number would be about 10-11 seconds to get the strike to the edge of BLC firing arc after the merge in a pure one circle turning fight.

If the strike starts out directly behind the scout, it's about 25 seconds for the scout to gain enough angle to make an edge of the circle BLC shot.

If you're insane enough to take turning thrusters, then a strike will out turn the vast majority of scouts. It'll be perpetually out of gas, but it will out turn them.

The problem is that even in an out-turning scenario, the strike is stuck with Ion Cannons, RFLs, LLCs, and cluster missiles as weapons in an extended turning fight. Ions are fine, clusters are ok as long as you use ion cannons first, but the scout can disengage at will, and unless gunships get broken so hard that you can hear Verain screaming all the way from other continents getting into an extended turning fight in a ship that can't stack evasion cooldowns is pretty suicidal.

I mean, I wouldn't mind if say for example strike turn rate was reprogrammed as

 turn = base turn +0.5*(1-throttlepercent/1.0) 

or something along those lines. I just don't think it would have that much of a payoff in most cases. That'd give a strike a .3 radian/second gain at 1/3 throttle, and put it 0.08 rad/s ahead of a scout. Or maybe even up the coefficient from 0.5 to something like 0.8, which would make the strike as much better than a scout at 1/3 throttle as a scout would be compared to a strike at 100% throttle.

*Note: I just did some math, and I looks like the baseline strike turn radius is 471 m vs 433 m for a scout at full throttle and at 1/3 throttle 157 m for strikes, and 144 m for scouts. Not a very big difference given the size of the circles, and it goes in the strike's favor if the strike picks a turn upgrade on an engine upgrade but the scout picks a speed upgrade.

One thing to note is this Idea actually came from reading Wookie pages about the "Talon roll" technique, of which the idea was to twist and turn in a matter that made the enemy over shoot you, using similar levels of turning ability against an oponent that was "faster" causing the faster opponent to overshoot you and allow you to light them up. So on the whole "not Star warsy" ness of it I would say is Maybe?

But keep them coming guys I like the different thoughts here.... interested in hearing more.

I mean, I normally say "I'd be ok with pretty much any strike buff". And I also think there's no real chance we'd get this kind of change- it's a bit contrary to the design, and the devs are busy devving something else.

But having thought about it more, this is my favorite of proposed strike buffs, because it would give strikes good jobs. The ship wouldn't just be "can hit distracted targets", while not being "can inevitably hunt down in dogged pursuit any target".

One thing to note is this Idea actually came from reading Wookie pages about the "Talon roll" technique, of which the idea was to twist and turn in a matter that made the enemy over shoot you, using similar levels of turning ability against an oponent that was "faster" causing the faster opponent to overshoot you and allow you to light them up. So on the whole "not Star warsy" ness of it I would say is Maybe?

 

But keep them coming guys I like the different thoughts here.... interested in hearing more.

Star Wars space battles are Basic Fighter Maneuvers ( or Air Combat Maneuvering ) unencumbered by any comprehension of the physics of aerodynamic flight or space flight.

This sort of strategy is based on what a low thrust low-speed-wing plane wants to do facing a high thrust high-speed-wing plane, the hope being that the guy in the faster plane starts the fight by throwing away all his hardware advantages and then commits to not trying to get any of those advantages back until after you've started shooting his plane full of holes.

It's the sort of advantage that a Spitfire, P-51, or A-10 has in a guns only fight with an F-15 or F-16. In other words, an advantage that you would love to trade for one that's more useful.

The lack of inertia and the presence of boost seriously break the rules of BFM. The lack of inertia makes slowing for tighter radius much more viable, because you're not dumping airframe energy at suicidal rates by doing it. Unfortunately boost hard counters both turn rate and turn radius advantages, and if the other person has more boost capacity and knows what they're doing your chances of pulling a win out of a turning fight are effectively zero.

It would keep scouts from being able to win purely on turning, they'd have to use at least a little bit of boost to kill a strike.

With this change, as long as you broke railguns beyond repair, going to a turning fight would always be the right choice for a strike going against a scout, and boosting out to reset would always be the right choice for the scout.

Given the history of SW space combat games, I have to agree with Verain that this would be unlikely.

In air combat history of the sort that SW space conflict is based on though, there have been plenty of times where faster "boom and zoom" craft would face ones that were slower and would prefer a turning fight. With a sufficient thrust/speed advantage the faster craft has a huge advantage, as it can initiate, get a shot opportunity, and disengage without the turner being able to do anything other than try to evade the shot. If the fast plane gets slow and is foolish enough to stay slow, the turner will eat it for breakfast.

This already exists a little bit in GSF, a change would make it more noticeable.

I mean, it doesn't fit with the common-sense idea of the interceptor being more maneuverable than the heavy fighter.......Solid idea.

I agree that this would likely be a good change. It's always felt like the original concept for the strikes was that of a dogfighting superiority fighter whereas the scouts seemed to have originally been intended for more specialized and supportive roles (ie intercepting gunships, providing defense against the originally planned stealth ships, etc).

I don't think it would take anything away from the scout's role as an interceptor either since typically an interceptor's primary objective is to get from where they are to within weapons range of the target as fast as possible by prioritizing speed above all else (I would cite examples such as the F-104 Starfighter or the Messerschmitt ME-163 Komet, etc where the craft was built for speed (rate of climb) rather than maneuverability -the presumable reasoning being that the ability to out-turn a foe is rendered moot if you can't even reach it in time)

I don't think simply increasing the strikes' turning rate will *completely* fix the class but it would be a very solid step in the right direction.