Personally, I feel that due to their speed Scouts have a higher skill cap than the other two ships. In the hands of a very skilled pilot they can be extremely powerful.

However I also routinely have 10-0 games on my Strike fighter, and if I'm left unharassed in my Gunship I can easily rack up 12+ kills.

A Gunship with a Wingman supporting it is a deadly weapon.

I kinda got off track their, but my point is that basically its about the pilot, not the ship.

Another thing that just occurred to me that might be the big reason for Flashfires topping the scorecarts.

 

At this point all those kill and damage records are from people who do nothing but go after kills the entire match. This means that the moment a fight clears at one node they are zipping off towards the next bunch of red dots.

 

Strikes however are much slower which means that they have to spend more time traveling from fight to fight. Strikes are just as effective in a fight as flashfires but they spend more time travel to and fro which adds up to less kills. Thus the high speed Flashfire becomes the ship of choice when it comes to racking up kills.

Going to say right now best games on the Pike seem to be Defense as most burn engines trying to get to the satellite making missile locks easier if something closes in Turrets help keep them at bay and if a gunship tries to take the Pikes strong shields and high maneuverability allow it to get in close with minimal damage and destroy the Gunship.

Only those few scout pilots will cause me issue but even then they generally try to lead the strikes away from the Sat rather then face the wrath of the turrets.

Just some thoughts on this regard.

There's too many Republic players in this thread. I really need to learn the names of pub fighters, otherwise idk what some of you are talking about.

Flashfire= second Scout class

Star guard= Starter Strike

Pike= Second Strike.

Lets face it the pub ships look the best.

There's too many Republic players in this thread. I really need to learn the names of pub fighters, otherwise idk what some of you are talking about.

About time! You know how irritating it is to read PvP forums and see everyone using the imperial names for every ability?

First, everyone really needs to stop referring to just "scouts" or "strikes". The variants are different enough that we really can't lump them together when talking about balance.

I'd say the Novadive, Star Guard, and Pike are remarkably well balanced. If we consider the Star Guard (the default ship of the jack-of-all trades class) as the base line, the Pike sacrifices some short-range lethality (no Ion Cannons to obliterate shields) for the long range punch of ProTorps (while the Star Guard *can* equip ProTorps, they're too specialized to be practical as your only secondary weapon); no balance issues here. Meanwhile, the Novadive sacrifices firepower and durability for speed, maneuverability, and sensor range; all in all a pretty fair trade.

The Flashfire, on the other hand, I believe is slightly OP, and this is coming from someone who has been using it almost exclusively since I've unlocked it. Compared to the Star Guard, it has equal damage-dealing potential. The standard Star Guard build uses Ion Cannons, Quad Lasers, and Cluster Missiles, while Flashfires generally run with Quad Lasers and Cluster Missiles. While Flashfires lack Ion Cannons for shield stripping, they can use Blaster Overcharge, which is incredibly powerful and evens out the damage potential. This basically means, compared to the Star Guard, the Flashfire only trades durability for speed, maneuverability, and sensor range, which seems a little too good of a trade. Ultimately, a Flashfire can do as much damage as a Star Guard while being far superior for capping satellites and hunting gunships. Not to mention, the extra speed means you spend less time flying between satellites and more time actually in the fight, giving you more time to rack up damage and kills.

IMO the jack-of-all-trades is whats killing strikes because of this

 

 

I am a speed and crazy maneuvers junky, I have always been a interceptor pilot, and the flashfire is like the Focke Wulf F190 D9 of space. There are many other great pilots who are with me in the speed and maneuverability are the best shields.

 

Conversely many of the pilots who like ranged tactical combat all gravitate to the gunship. That leaves the Star Guard without any real niche of appeal.

Well I'd say anyone who loves the X-Wing in other Star Wars games would love the Star Guard. But I think the reason that the flashfire is preferred is because, again, the accuracy/evasion mechanic.

As I said previously evasion/accuracy is completely unsuited to a flight game like GSF. But now that I've been using the flashfire I've noticed another way evasion/accuracy is completely broken: with the right components it allows flashfires to essentially be invulnerable against turrets which results in them being equally effective if not superior to Star Guards in the role of attacking sat defenses.

Star Guards depend on their shields to survive an attack run and may take so much damage defenders can pick them off. Flashfires, by using evasion, can destroy a turret while taking no damage leaving them in a good position to take on defenders (I know this can happen as I've done this). Again I do NOT blame scouts for this, I blame a game mechanic that does not belong in a game mode like GSF.

Now I'm not arguing that scouts shouldn't be able to survive an attack run on turrets but it should require tactics like the A-Wing Slash (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/A-wing_Slash). In essence Star Guards would draw turret fire while Flashfires destroy the turrets. This would give Star Guards/Pikes an essential role in any squadron since they'd be required to succeed in any attack on enemy sats, whether just as an attack group of Star Guards or implementing an A-Wing Slash (without evasion Flashfires attacking without striker support would be chewed up quickly by turrets). It would also encourage team work.

So again to sum up: evasion/accuracy is completely inappropriate for a game mode like GSF, it allows ships to perform jobs outside of their designed roles. Nerfing evasion/accuracy isn't the solution, it needs to be removed completely due to being completely unsuited to a twitch based game mode (there is a reason no twitch based game, such as Battlefield, has an evasion stat because it would give players the ability to dodge bullets like Neo by virtue of successful RNG roles).

First, everyone really needs to stop referring to just "scouts" or "strikes". The variants are different enough that we really can't lump them together when talking about balance.

 

I'd say the Novadive, Star Guard, and Pike are remarkably well balanced. If we consider the Star Guard (the default ship of the jack-of-all trades class) as the base line, the Pike sacrifices some short-range lethality (no Ion Cannons to obliterate shields) for the long range punch of ProTorps (while the Star Guard *can* equip ProTorps, they're too specialized to be practical as your only secondary weapon); no balance issues here. Meanwhile, the Novadive sacrifices firepower and durability for speed, maneuverability, and sensor range; all in all a pretty fair trade.

 

The Flashfire, on the other hand, I believe is slightly OP, and this is coming from someone who has been using it almost exclusively since I've unlocked it. Compared to the Star Guard, it has equal damage-dealing potential. The standard Star Guard build uses Ion Cannons, Quad Lasers, and Cluster Missiles, while Flashfires generally run with Quad Lasers and Cluster Missiles. While Flashfires lack Ion Cannons for shield stripping, they can use Blaster Overcharge, which is incredibly powerful and evens out the damage potential. This basically means, compared to the Star Guard, the Flashfire only trades durability for speed, maneuverability, and sensor range, which seems a little too good of a trade. Ultimately, a Flashfire can do as much damage as a Star Guard while being far superior for capping satellites and hunting gunships. Not to mention, the extra speed means you spend less time flying between satellites and more time actually in the fight, giving you more time to rack up damage and kills.

I disagree.

Overcharge is active for 12 seconds every 40 seconds fully buffed. I hardly think that makes them over powered when you consider Strikers have their Ion cannons and missles on demand. Seems rather balanced to me. Furthermore, the benefit to using a striker is you can strip turrets at a longer range without being touched by them. Every class is good in their own way.

The primary role of a scout is satellite capture. They really are pretty weak against other geared fighters, unless the pilot is really horrible.

You are simply wrong. Scouts score the highest kill numbers. That has nothing to do with capturing control points.

As a matter of fact I'm having trouble defining what scouts and strike fighters roles are supposed to be.

Scouts seem to be best at

- First capture of control points from start of match. Which by all rights should unquestionably be a Scouts job and no thought or effort should be given to this point further.

- Dominant in close quarters combat or fur-ball as I call them where ship perform tight turns to land on their opponents tail. Again I think this is part of what a scout should be, or as I like to call it Knife Fighters

- Killing turrets. To this one I believe Scouts are merely average vs the other 2 classes however they are none the less highly capable at this task. I think maybe they need to be less good at this, this role belongs to strike fighters and gunships.

- Head to head combat. This one is very build dependent some builds leave the scout a barely flying wreck others let it flash though unharmed, and lastly some make the scout invulnerable and overgunned. this area should be strike fighter dominant

- Gunship hunting. Again this is fine if they are doing LOS, that at least makes sense for a Scout. But anytime a scout can head to head and kill a gunship we have problems.

- Slash attack, scout moves lots target moves less target gets hurt scout dodges fire. Again I think a core to Scout ability as long as: 1 Scout in 1 slash vs 1 full health + shield gunship/strike fighter does not equal 1 kill.

- Medium ranged attack or in the scouts case maximum range attack, this is one area I think scouts have no business being as dominant as they are and this is one where Evasion/accuracy needs adjustment, Everytime I fly a scout I'm appalled by how many hits I score from such far range, this range is strike fighter territory BW needs to get the scouts out of it

Scouts are poor at

- solo defending control points vs multiple enemies

- head to head vs gunships, with the exception of the invulnerability build.

if we remove anything a scout is proficient at:

strike fighter

- is always even in head to head vs gunship, which is really a 50/50 thing I don't even know if it's actually an advantage, but merely an advantage compared to scouts.

- solo defending a control point vs 2-1 odds. Unfortunately there are only 3 control points and at best only 2 will be solo defended at any one time.

gunship

- co defending/assaulting control points.

- Killing turrets without taking damage. Yeah! put that on your Resume under special skills.

My point is Scouts are doing other classes jobs, doing them well too and the few things a scout cannot do are best solved by removing the strike fighter and gunship classes from the game, if you really think about it. So please BW fix scouts.

All this thread boils down to is Distortion Field and Blaster Overcharge being unbalanced.

Distortion field will most likely get nerfed so that you can't stack 100+% evade with CD. Blaster Overcharge will most likely get its CD time increased. Other than that... a skilled pilot can get tops regardless of what they fly. Period! End of Discussion!

Scouts are not OP.... those two components are! And they are only slightly OP!

On the contrary, I'm not wrong. A geared Scout is still a wet paper bag next to geared Gunships and Strike Fighters. Sure Scouts can do all those support roles well, but they trade that for gun power and durability, even with their offensive and defensive cool downs.

And if you ever see a Scout topping kill charts, then all they're doing is big number chasing while abandoning objectives. A Scout's prime objective is Satellite capture and support.

Overcharge is active for 12 seconds every 40 seconds fully buffed. I hardly think that makes them over powered when you consider Strikers have their Ion cannons and missles on demand. Seems rather balanced to me. Furthermore, the benefit to using a striker is you can strip turrets at a longer range without being touched by them.

I think Delta V may be on to something. It's not just Overcharge being better than the strikers' weapon switches, although that is clearly the Sting/Flashfire's biggest advantage. The strikers get to upgrade either their armor or the shields via reactor, depending on variant, but the Sting gets BOTH of these components and only has to give up the much weaker magazine upgrade that strikers get. The Sting can also match the strikers blasters with quad lasers and missiles with cluster missiles.

Now it's true that strikers will have higher base health and shield scores, as well as a base 5% damage reduction. But the Sting gets base 10% evasion, which synergizes the best with Distortion Shields, which just might be the best shields out there.

The Sting might well be the best scout AND the best striker, or at least is capable of doing the jobs of all those ships at the same time.

And if you ever see a Scout topping kill charts, then all they're doing is big number chasing while abandoning objectives. A Scout's prime objective is Satellite capture and support.

I agree... Although, a skilled pilot can defend a node in a Pike. I've done it many times. This whole debate about BO and DF being overpowered is about skilled versus unskilled pilots. My main is an IL-5 but I use Booster Recharge in order to cap and move to defend quickly. I also use a pike, when I feel like killing everything on the screen, and STILL be able to down all scouts on nodes.

Scouts are poor at

- solo defending control points vs multiple enemies

- head to head vs gunships, with the exception of the invulnerability build.

Laughable on both accounts.

I've solo defended control points against multiple enemies on numerous occasions. I pick them off one at a time while weaving on the node to keep them from capping. That's about others noticing the flashing node icon, which is other player's job (that they suck at).

I don't have the "invulnerability build" but it IS the job of the scout to kill gunships. Take an indirect approach... someone is trying to ram a gunship is fail piloting...

- Killing turrets. To this one I believe Scouts are merely average vs the other 2 classes however they are none the less highly capable at this task. I think maybe they need to be less good at this, this role belongs to strike fighters and gunships.

 

- Head to head combat. This one is very build dependent some builds leave the scout a barely flying wreck others let it flash though unharmed, and lastly some make the scout invulnerable and overgunned. this area should be strike fighter dominant

From what I've observed playing both strikers and scouts this is largely due to the evasion mechanic. A striker will take considerable damage during an attack run on turrets (unless you sit and use missiles only, viable but just asking to be ripped apart by defending strikers & scouts). Scouts can use the evasion stat to essentially be invulnerable to turret fire during their attack run. Now scouts SHOULD be able to destroy turrets, but only when using a tactic like the A-Wing Slash (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/A-wing_Slash), not a straight-line attack run (and I KNOW scouts can do straight line attack runs using abilities that boost evasion, I done it multiple times and because of evasion take LESS damage than I do doing the exact same thing in a striker).

Likewise scouts can survive playing chicken with a striker at least in part because of evasion for the same reason they survive against turrets.

These two cases demonstrate why evasion should be removed from the game, it artificially allows scouts to avoid incoming blaster fire by virtue of RNG roles and allows them to do things outside of what they should be capable of without help from strikers/going against a bad pilot where you'd win whether it was in a scout or striker.

Evasion's ONLY purpose is act as a crutch so players don't have to learn how to manually evade being in their opponent's sights. Combined with the accuracy penalties of firing blasters off center this should not be terribly hard to learn to do (with the maneuverability of scouts if you can't do this then you shouldn't fly a scout - as is the case in every other Star Wars starfighter game I've played).

Distortion Field is up for 3 seconds. I fly a scout, and if the pilot is competent, the dogfight usually lasts a good bit longer than that.

3 seconds is nothing.

I can't comment on Blaster Overcharge as I use Booster Recharge. Most of the arguments here seem to stem from strike pilots that want to fly their strike like a scout, which it just won't do.

All this thread boils down to is Distortion Field and Blaster Overcharge being unbalanced.

 

Distortion field will most likely get nerfed so that you can't stack 100+% evade with CD. Blaster Overcharge will most likely get its CD time increased. Other than that... a skilled pilot can get tops regardless of what they fly. Period! End of Discussion!

 

Scouts are not OP.... those two components are! And they are only slightly OP!

^ I think sentawan has this figured out. If Distortion Field and Blaster Overcharge were both nerfed, the Sting/Flashfire would no longer be able to exceed the strikers in both offense and defense. It would just be a meaner, tougher, slower version of the base scout, which is what one would expect.

Distortion Field is up for 3 seconds. I fly a scout, and if the pilot is competent, the dogfight usually lasts a good bit longer than that.

 

3 seconds is nothing.

 

I can't comment on Blaster Overcharge as I use Booster Recharge. Most of the arguments here seem to stem from strike pilots that want to fly their strike like a scout, which it just won't do.

If you're talking about a turning battle, neither of you will be able to hit each other. The only way turning battles end is either an ally shows up, or somebody makes a run for it.

If you're talking about a head-to-head joust, then 3 seconds is huge. You can also upgrade the Distortion Field cooldown to last 6 seconds, which is a damn eternity.

Distortion Field is up for 3 seconds. I fly a scout, and if the pilot is competent, the dogfight usually lasts a good bit longer than that.

 

3 seconds is nothing.

 

I can't comment on Blaster Overcharge as I use Booster Recharge. Most of the arguments here seem to stem from strike pilots that want to fly their strike like a scout, which it just won't do.

True but if you're decent at dogfighting & making the fight work to your advantage it will finishing the CD before you need to pop it again.

The main problem is what evasion as a stat does and how it allows scouts, even if just for 3 seconds, to perform tasks that they shouldn't be able to do considering their paper thin armor & shields. It's comparable to having an ability in an FPS (such as Battlefield) that allows you to dodge bullets if you get lucky RNG roles and there's a good reason such abilities aren't in twitch based games like that.

It isn't a matter of wanting strikers or gunships to be flyable like scouts, it's a matter of fixing scouts abilities/stats that allow them to perform like strikers (even if only briefly).

^ I think sentawan has this figured out. If Distortion Field and Blaster Overcharge were both nerfed, the Sting/Flashfire would no longer be able to exceed the strikers in both offense and defense. It would just be a meaner, tougher, slower version of the base scout, which is what one would expect.

Personally I have my doubts that overcharge would be OP if the evasion stat was removed from the game. Sure they could blast in and destroy something but they wouldn't have a stat that automatically lowers their opponent's accuracy. If your opponent literally can't hit you as often as you can hit them because a stat gives them RNG dodges then of course a damage buff ability will seem OP. By the same token if RNG roles aren't there to bail a scout out if they stop manually taking evasive maneuvers a damage boost won't be as threatening because you can rip them apart and force them to flee before they can kill you.

True but if you're decent at dogfighting & making the fight work to your advantage it will finishing the CD before you need to pop it again.

Couldn't you equally say a skilled fighter attacking a scout with distortion field can work the fight so they get their shots in when distortion isn't up?

Couldn't you equally say a skilled fighter attacking a scout with distortion field can work the fight so they get their shots in when distortion isn't up?

Technically yes but then we're talking about who is the better pilot aren't we? If a striker, despite being slower and less maneuverable, manages to manipulate a dogfight to their advantage while a scout's abilities are on cooldown they should get the kill for being the better pilot.

Technically yes but then we're talking about who is the better pilot aren't we? If a striker, despite being slower and less maneuverable, manages to manipulate a dogfight to their advantage while a scout's abilities are on cooldown they should get the kill for being the better pilot.

Well that's the thing though, the skill of the pilot. Strikes have extremely powerful directional shields and more hull hp. A scout is highly susceptible to shield piercing and range. Neither of these are giving one craft a significant advantage over the other. Considering what directional shields can do a strike can have virtual invulnerability for longer than a scout can.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, a geared Scout is a wet paper bag next to a geared Gunship or Strike Fighter.

The strength of a Scout is not in doing damage, but in satellite capture and support. Anyone trying to top damage/kill charts should not be flying a Scout.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, a geared Scout is a wet paper bag next to a geared Gunship or Strike Fighter.

 

The strength of a Scout is not in doing damage, but in satellite capture and support. Anyone trying to top damage/kill charts should not be flying a Scout.

I agree with you philosophically, but not practically. The basic scout certainly cannot match a striker in offense, although with Distortion Field they might be able to equal them in defense.

The Sting/Flashfire, however, easily surpasses the strikers in offense. Stings can use some of the same blasters and missiles that strikers have, and then use Blaster Overcharge to smoke them in damage.