Personally, when playing the gunship hunter role, I consider myself to have failed if I ever get hit by a gunship blast at all. I figure if I get hit, I've already lost, without regard to whether or not it was a one shot death, or soon will be a two shot death.

 

I can see a tweak to the ion gun regen disable duration, but it should not be overdone either.

If getting hit at all means that you've already lost, then that would be the very definition of a balance problem.

Because what this scenario entails is that anyone who is not actively hunting gunships is merely prey for Gunships, which makes doing anything BUT gunship hunting an exercise in futility (and tantamount to suicide). If that's not terrible game balance, I don't know what else.

No, what _needs_ to happen is that people getting hit by a gunship _must_ have the opportunity to react and avoid further attacks and/or take the fight to the gunships. With Ion Railguns, this is frequently impossible: the first hit (which cannot realistically be avoided) disables your engines and leaves you a sitting duck, the gunship is then free to finish you off with the slug railgun. This is a balance issue, and must be resolved.

What's more, the ion railgun makes even pursuit difficult, especially since the drain occurs even on snap shots (instead of a full 3 second charge). All a gunship needs to do is barrel roll away and manage to bring its ion railgun to bear for a snap shot to leave his pursuer stranded... even if within blaster range the pursuer will usually be drained of blaster power as well, while the gunship is free to open up with his blasters.

I hate this thread.

 

Before this there was only one gunship I have fought that knew how to use ion rail intelligently, but I'll bet by the end of the week every gunship and their mothers are going to be stacking ion rail.

I like it, personally.

Yes, it will make gunship pilots who read the forums learn the meta faster, but the fact is that it is already being learned, and all the good gunship pilots already use the Ion Railgun.

But the fact is that the more gunship pilots abuse Ion, the more obvious the imbalance will become to the Devs, and the faster they will take action.

I like it, personally.

 

Yes, it will make gunship pilots who read the forums learn the meta faster, but the fact is that it is already being learned, and all the good gunship pilots already use the Ion Railgun.

 

But the fact is that the more gunship pilots abuse Ion, the more obvious the imbalance will become to the Devs, and the faster they will take action.

And in month or so before that happens GSF is going to be utter BS. I have already fought teams that stack nothing but gunships and pikes.

If getting hit at all means that you've already lost, then that would be the very definition of a balance problem.

 

Because what this scenario entails is that anyone who is not actively hunting gunships is merely prey for Gunships, which makes doing anything BUT gunship hunting an exercise in futility (and tantamount to suicide). If that's not terrible game balance, I don't know what else.

You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that, since I am actively hunting gunships as my role for the match, I figure if they see me before I see them and a clear shot off, I've already lost, as I failed in my objective.

When I'm hunting gunships they very rarely have a 15k straight line between their position and mine. I wind through cover looking for them, and approach them obliquely. In the event I have to charge one head on, I time it to when I believe them to be distracted, or if I think they have seen me, I pop my evasion skill and pray. (Works about half the time.)

As a result, I very rarely get hit by a gunship at all. This is the point of being a gunship hunter. If I see them first, they are dead, and if they see me first, I am dead, and I'm largely okay with that. My biggest problem lately is that fewer and fewer people fly gunships, meaning I have to spend more time dogfighting strikers, which y build is not as good at.

I would like to see a (small) nerf to Bypass to kill the automatic one shot and striker one shots, but gunships are just not as OP as people seem to think, so it does not need to be a drastic or immediate change.

You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that, since I am actively hunting gunships as my role for the match, I figure if they see me before I see them and a clear shot off, I've already lost, as I failed in my objective.

 

When I'm hunting gunships they very rarely have a 15k straight line between their position and mine. I wind through cover looking for them, and approach them obliquely. In the event I have to charge one head on, I time it to when I believe them to be distracted, or if I think they have seen me, I pop my evasion skill and pray. (Works about half the time.)

 

As a result, I very rarely get hit by a gunship at all. This is the point of being a gunship hunter. If I see them first, they are dead, and if they see me first, I am dead, and I'm largely okay with that. My biggest problem lately is that fewer and fewer people fly gunships, meaning I have to spend more time dogfighting strikers, which y build is not as good at.

 

I would like to see a (small) nerf to Bypass to kill the automatic one shot and striker one shots, but gunships are just not as OP as people seem to think, so it does not need to be a drastic or immediate change.

But my point is that this concept still leaves those who are NOT actively hunting gunships at their mercy, and that's a balance issue.

People SHOULD be able to react and avoid dying after taking that first hit, which they realistically cannot avoid if they're busy doing anything other than looking for gunships and making sure not one is pointed their way. This is why one-shots and the Ion Railgun need fixing: because they make it potentially impossible to react to the "sneak attack", which is about as frustrating as it gets.

Personally I'd like some sort of warning whenever an enemy gunship charges up a railgun while in sensor range, but nemarus posted an excellent list of suggestions already.

Personally I'd like some sort of warning whenever an enemy gunship charges up a railgun while in sensor range, but nemarus posted an excellent list of suggestions already.

I wouldn't be opposed to to something like that. However there is something to be said about situational awareness. Far too many people just simply lock on to the closest fighter and chase it forever. A lot of times even with dampening sensor and communication range is so large that gunships are visible. If people just checked the map for red dots in weird locations, or scanned above and below the map for that nice red box they'd be amazed how often they'd find gunships before they have been marked as a target. Even with maxed dampening there still should be some scout in sensor range of it if the gunship is actively trying to target someone.

I just really think that so much of the problem is a result of players just flat out ignoring gunships and then complaining that those same gunships keep racking up kills.

But my point is that this concept still leaves those who are NOT actively hunting gunships at their mercy, and that's a balance issue.

 

People SHOULD be able to react and avoid dying after taking that first hit, which they realistically cannot avoid if they're busy doing anything other than looking for gunships and making sure not one is pointed their way. This is why one-shots and the Ion Railgun need fixing: because they make it potentially impossible to react to the "sneak attack", which is about as frustrating as it gets.

 

Personally I'd like some sort of warning whenever an enemy gunship charges up a railgun while in sensor range, but nemarus posted an excellent list of suggestions already.

Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I actually like the fact that you have to have a team strategy in order to counter the other team, and that it has to adapt over time both in the match and between matches as people get better.

If I have a build set up for hunting gunships, and that's what I spend my time doing, I don't spend a lot of time on objectives. However, by preventing gunships from taking hold, I enable my team to take and keep objectives, which amounts to the same thing. The existence of the gunship made the creation of an effective counter, i.e. the gunship hunting scout, necessary. More recently I've noticed that the existence of gunship hunting scouts like me has drawn the attention of scout hunting strike fighters and scouts. Once more, the playerbase is adapting. If you want your snipers to be effective, kill the people hunting them.

As they get more effective at hunting me, we'll see even more adaptation. For example, I recently switched to retro thrusters to see if I can use them to get behind the buggers that get behind me while I'm trying to kill their gunship.

My point is, yes there are minor tweaks that need to be made, but people are way overblowing it instead of looking for solutions with the tools they have. You can kill balance by over-nerifing just as easily as by refusing to make changes at all. People are far too reactionary and quick to bring our the nerf argument. The devs need to move slow and in small steps, as the game is not broken, it's just slightly cracked around the edges.

Sorry, but the one-shot of some GS's does NOT require a long cooldown or, apparently, a crit. While boosting at a GS attacking a defended objective single handed I watched him kill 3 players defending the node in the time it took me to close the final 17k, and the only reason I could see him is someone dropped a sensor probe nearby.

Most likely what you saw was 3 kill shots and not 1 shots, If all 3 ships had some hull damage already then it would seem like the gunship one shot them. I doubt you were able to tell how damaged your friends were since there is no good way to target them. Also as someone else pointed out it does not take long enough to close 17km in a boosted scout with priority to the engines, not long enough to charge up 3 full strength rail shots.

The snap shot ion blast or plasma giving a debuff is a problem though.