In going through Stasie's guide thread and all of its subsequent posts on multiple occasions (I love procrastinating!) I found it immensely useful in helping me, a relatively new player (<500 games), understand how different components synergized well. I have also noticed that every 3rd post on this message board is people complaining about how every ship except strikes are overpowered and impossible to defeat.

I thought it might be useful to newer players to have a centralized location for ship-specific counter builds. It may be the case that you more experienced players don't bother using ship-specific counters, but that certainly isn't the case for me yet.

As an example, I prefer to use my t1 Scout as a gunship-hunter since I like to save my t2 Scout as a dogfighter (and I am not shelling out the CC for two t2's on multiple characters). The build I use and the reason I use it (in way too much detail) are as follows:

Gunship counters

My build:

Nemarus's gunship-hunter:

Verain's Gunship-counters:

Wishihadaname's gunship-hunter:

Bomber counters

Verain's Anti-bomber builds:

Wishihadaname's bomber buster:

My bomber counter

Scout counters

Verain's Anti-scout builds:

I like the thread concept a lot. I think that it will be about five minutes before someone comes in claming that gunships or bombers are "bad design" though, and your thread will be crapped up by "woe is me" posts instead of legit advice- after all, if there's counters, that precludes the devs having to swoop in and nerf everything that the complainer doesn't play.

Still, solid.

Ok first- you know that this build would be better as a type 2 scout. Quads are simply more dps than lasers, and a reactor is a lot better than the sensor component.

You really can use dampening to hit and fade, however- it's just not a super useful tactic, but it absolutely does work. If you plan to mainly hunt gunships with this, you should really go with the bonus shield damage to lasers. Gunships have a decent shield and a poor hull- your typical target will have like 1800 shield and 1250 hull, and that's with distortion bringing the shield total down. Plus, any gunship that survives your assault or flees immediately will get some shield back, so you'll spend a lot more time attacking shield than hull. You also will be a lot better off versus the guys that run fortress.

Fundamentally, your options on the fighter scouts optimized for gunships are like this:

Booster Recharge / Distortion: You have boost and a frequent railgun immunity, but once you have killed or been chased off you need to pause a bit for cooldowns. Distortion is a pretty solid counter, but if you can stay on them a couple seconds it will run out.

Targeting Telemetry / Distortion: You have amazing burst that mostly ignores distortion. You need to pause for breath frequently and only do your runs when you have plenty, and a stray ion that hits you forces you to LOS immediately or face swift death.

Booster Recharge / Shield to Engine: You can always be boosting. Best on maps with plenty of line of sight to haul around (Kuat Mesas TDM), it generally is worse than the other options because you have neither the direct burst of TT/BO, nor the ability to tunnel for a couple seconds granted by distortion. You also lack a lot of evasion passively, and will take more railgun hits. Even with solid uptime, this build is generally weaker at the task- but it is fun.

Targeting Telem / Shield to Engine: Worth considering, this build relies on managing your resources around the thirty second TT cooldown. You want to be diving out of LOS at a target with full engine and shield, get in range and TT them a bunch, and run away immediately after. Lack of passive evasion means you can't meaningfully engage a group of gunships without very likely tanking a shot or two.

Concentrated Fire or Wingman are the two big choices for copilot abilities, and given that you don't run TT, Wingman is the top pick without doubt. CF's extra crit chance is wasted without it being able to be comboed with the crit magnitude boost from TT, and you need the extra accuracy pretty badly without it.

I consider these some choices in each class versus heavily dominated maps by one ship type.

VS: Heavy Gunship Map

Scouts: The type 2 scout with Quads, Pods, Targeting Telem is my choice. I rarely queue with this on my bar, but it's not because it's bad.

Strikes: The only strike that is reasonable at all versus gunships is a Clarion, and it's still a support ship. I run the strange health hull, which provides less effective health than the evasion option, but my belief is that the small chance that a single hit doesn't hit me- even smaller if the gunship has wingman- is going to effect my fate less than being tankier, especially given my ability to heal up with repair probes. This build uses quads, any secondary, repair probes, power dive, and directional, and you take your shields double front when charging a slug or plasma and double back when charging an ion (watch their color). It isn't a hunter so much as a shove.

Bomber: While any bomber is great against a gunship when hiding LOS, a map lousy with them generally rewards a type 2 (dronecarrier) with railgun sentry drone, heavy laser, health hull, and repair probe. Seeker mines or concussions both produce a very different build. In this case, you don't really go hunting gunships, so much as offer an area that your own team can use as refuge, turning enemy placement into a much less rewarding endeavor. The amount of gunship energy required to clear your nest is also large, and the time spent is nontrivial, allowing for friendly gunships or scouts to capitalize. Even if you never kill a gunship with this build, you will absolutely kill his dreams!

Gunship: I run the standard type 1 gunship build versus other gunships. I don't feel that the type 3's superior melee makes up for their lack of barrel roll in this situation, as I can charge an enemy gunship with that, and sometimes this is the right call.

Heavy gunship maps are rare, and are best approached with a balanced team of scouts, gunships, and bombers.

VS: Heavy Bomber Map

Scout: The only scout build that is reasonable versus bombers is burst lasers, pods, and TT or BO. Distortion, of course. The only scout who routinely runs this I've seen personally is Lampert, though Scrab has run it too. It's easily the only build able to meaningfully able to attack a charged plating razorwire, but it is not the best ship for this task.

Strike: Any strike can contribute versus bombers, as long as it is running thermite, concussion, or proton, and ideally has heavy lasers or repair probes. Charged plating on the two that have it (no, the starguard/rycer does not have charged plating) is also pretty decent. Any strikes can attack a bomber, but you don't need a lot. A Pike with EMP and concussion can actually do very well here too. The downside is that these battles all take place in 'slow time'- the time to kill is very low, and if you are trying to assault a node, this is bad.

Gunship: You need gunships versus a heavy bomber map, but you don't want too many. Gunships are great for spot removal of mines and ranged harrass of bombers, but the bomber has a LOT of options to avoid dying. A swarm of gunships isn't the win here, but you absolutely need at least one.

Bomber: The razorwire with charged plating will counter enemy bombers unless they also run this build. If your team has a razorwire or two on TDM, an interdiction drone / repair drone type 2 bomber is amazing support for them, greatly multiplying their effective life and threat.

To counter a bomber heavy map, a mix of bombers, gunships, and fighter class craft is your best mix, ensuring that you run a charged plating bomber into their nest at the same time that a gunship is sniping. By taking bomber, gunship, and scout or strike into even a node guarded by SEVERAL bombers, you'll have a lot of success.

Vs Heavy Scout Map

Scouts are popular and very strong, and because of this many of the top players have tuned their play on them pretty hardcore. A scout heavy map is one where death can come unpredictably, so the creation of safe zones is a high priority.

Scout: The dogfighting type 2 scout (burst, clusters, distortion) is the best scout build versus other scouts. I've also run a really obscure type 1 scout (lasers, sab probe, shield to engine, power dive) to harass scouts, but I can't recommend it wholeheartedly.

Strikes: At most one Clarion per team with repair probes- scouts make the strikes unable to do much compared to the other ship types on this map.

Gunships: The standard gunship build is already as heavily optimized to fight scouts as it can be. Other builds can be considered as part of a group strat. A type 3 gunship is pretty decent at defending itself here as well, and a type 2 gunship should be avoided as per normal.

Bombers: You want a few more than normal. Seeker mines, seismic mines, concussion mines, any drone you can rely on (if you have one drone in an area it should be railgun, if you can afford multiple a mix of types works well), all act to create a safe spot for your gunships to roost and your scouts to retreat to. The individual bombers might die to scout burst, so they need peels when a scout dives at them.

Primary: Laser Cannons (Crit, Hull Damage)

I realize that Light Laser Cannons would be the burstier choice here, but I like to have Laser Cannons equipped to help me deal w/ mines more safely. Plus, the boosted mid-range accuracy is nice when I have to chase down a gunship who sees me coming. I go with crit because I love seeing those red numbers flash on the screen and I switch between hull and shield damage depending on whether I just won or lost the last game w/ my currently equipped variant.

Not really actually. LLC are better under 2000m. With pods you will often engage to around 4000m. I tried both and my DPS is better against everything but stupid gunships unaware of your presence 'till you unload from 500m.

Secondary: Rocket Pods (Ammo, Plasma Warhead)

This seems like the only sensible choice for gunship hunting. The lack of missile notification makes these my favorite secondary in the game. I go w/ ammo over firing arc because shots off center are so inaccurate that increasing my arc doesn't seem useful at all and I often find myself out of pods. I go with Plasma over increased range because I am very rarely in a situation where the increased range will benefit me: I usually am opening up w/ pods at close to point blank range. The extra DoT damage helps for gunships that manage to run away after the initial burst.

But the extra range may allow you to land an extra pod and make your pods slightly more accurate at close range.

Systems: Booster Recharge (Power, Quick Boost)

I know that Targeting Telemetry would give me more burst, but I find Booster Recharge indispensable in a map laden w/ gunships. Having Booster Recharge means that I can eat an Ion shot from a gunship that is covering his buddy that I am about to attack and w/ a push of a button have 20% of my energy back. It also means that I can cover vast distances in relatively little time and effectively harass gunships all over the map.

 

Shields: Distortion Field (Missile Break)

This one seems like a no brainer to me. Having a second missile break is fantastic. Having a second missile break that doesn't take you out of the fight is just too good to pass up. I doesn't hurt that Distortion Field is equally fantastic at frustrating gunships when you suddenly have 60% evasion.

So you want mobility. Booster + Disto is the obvious choice. Targeting Telemetry + StE yields good results too if you know how to maximize your mobility and not rely on a second missile or heavy evasion to kill stuff.

Honestly, your choice, if you asked anyone but two persons, would be the best one. As far as I know, only me and Nemarus roll StE scout even remotely seriously.

Engines: Barrel Roll (Turning)

I suppose an argument could be made for Power Dive here, and to be honest I haven't tried it yet, but Barrel Roll seems to good to pass up. The sheer amount of mobility it adds is unparalleled. One of my favorite things to do is if I see a gunship lining up a shot on me, I let them charge their shot a bit and then Barrel Roll ~15 degrees over their head. This usually puts me above and behind them while they have either wasted a shot or, even better, held on the charge while trying to pan to find me. Meanwhile, with the increased turning rate I have maneuvered behind them w/ ease and am lining up a shot. As a side-bonus, since Barrel Roll is the engine maneuver of choice for 2/3 of gunships, having Barrel Roll allows me to Barrel Roll after a gunship and stay on him without allowing him any chance to catch a breath.

Power Dive. Power Dive. Power Dive. There is no other answer. You can also run behin a BR'ing Sheep with Power Dive and will still end up in firing position. Just raise your nose about 60°, press Power DIve, then pitch back to level and chase. It is much better against Sheeps than BR'ing behind them.

Thruster: Turning

I don't really need Regen or Power thrusters since I have Booster Recharge, and the increased turning rate allows me maneuver behind gunships more rapidly and win turning fights quicker. It also helps to be able to maneuver well in those occasions when an enemy scout tries to peel for the gunship.

Turning isn't nearly as useful as you make it to be. Switching power to weapon/shield and slowing down to minimum throttle is much more helpful to turning sharply then a turning rate boost will ever be. Regen on the other hand will allow you to ourun an escaping Sheep much better.

Offensive: Qyzen/Jaesa

I waffle back and forth between using the Firing Arc/Accuracy companions versus the Ammo/Accuracy companions. I think I still do more of my damage w/ blasters than I do w/ pods so I figure Arc/Accuracy is the way to go.

All your burst is coming from your pods. Without pods you do little to no burst damage. Once you,re out of pods you're merely an annoyance to any good Sheep.

Not really actually. LLC are better under 2000m.

I never recommend LLCs with pods. The LC and QLC options are just generally better.

But the extra range may allow you to land an extra pod and make your pods slightly more accurate at close range.

Pod damage doesn't scale with distance, only the accuracy does. Normally an extra range boost is decent, but with pods it maths out to "pretty terrible". The talent tier is largely ornamental- it's total crap compared to what you might expect such an expensive upgrade to be, and is the worst upgrade in the whole tree.

Generally, plasma warheads will be up to 3% more damage, and extra range around 1%. The plasma warheads are easily very superior, but both are very pathetic upgrades.

Power Dive. Power Dive. Power Dive. There is no other answer.

You make compelling points for power dive in your post. I do consider barrel to have a lot of merit, and remember he DOES have disto missile break, but I also feel that power dive is a really solid move on any scout.

Turning isn't nearly as useful as you make it to be.

It's much more of a dogfighter's choice. With this build, I think you could argue that speed thrusters would matter a lot. Remember that speed thrusters give you some of the benefits of regen as well, as you use less boost getting where you are going, and in a build that actually has booster recharge, I think regen thrusters are not great. I actually missed this on my read through.

It's much more of a dogfighter's choice. With this build, I think you could argue that speed thrusters would matter a lot. Remember that speed thrusters give you some of the benefits of regen as well, as you use less boost getting where you are going, and in a build that actually has booster recharge, I think regen thrusters are not great. I actually missed this on my read through.

Booster isn't up nearly enough to make up for Regen. With Regen AND Booster you can almost get to the mobility StE + Speed has. Just 10% slower.

I agree with you completely about the t2 versus t1. On one of my characters I run BLC/Pods/TT or BO/DF/Barrel Roll with Running interference as my gunship killer. It works extremely well and it doubles as being pretty effective against bombers provided they aren't too heavily entrenched. As you stated, I have to manage energy a little more cautiously, but regen thrusters are pretty good at keeping me in the fight.

The only reason I prefer the t1 is that it allows me to keep clusters on the t2 for dogfighting.

For scouts (I play them way more than anything else) vs. bombers, I am a fan of the t3 scouts. I build my t3 sort of stupidly (and I have it nowhere near mastered on any of my characters), but I like the following:

Primary: Lasers Cannons (crit, hull)

The extra range is almost mandatory for clearing mines, I find. Bombers have huge hulls so I take +hull.

Secondary: Thermite(arc, duration) or EMP(range, shields)

I take thermite more frequently since it allows me to melt the Bomber more readily, but EMP could be super useful.

Engine: Power Dive (turning)

I just love mobility.

Systems: Tensor (evasion, engine recharge)

Because it is the real reason you have this ship on your bar in the first place and any build w/o tensor feels like a waste.

Shields: Repair Drone(Ammo)

Any time you are fighting bombers you are going to take a ton of hull damage. I think repair drone keeps me in the fight longer than distortion field would, particularly given that power dive is on a 10 second cooldown.

Sensors: ???

Never gotten far enough in to care.

Reactor: Large

Armor: Lightweight

I considered reinforced or deflection to better stand up to mines, but evasion is just too good. The hull is so small to begin w/ that reinforced doesn't do a whole lot and w/ so much armor pen I feel like deflection is always a risky choice.

Capacitor: Range

I like to be able to engage the bombers from as far away as possible.

For copilot I usually take wingman because sometimes I like to shoot at things that aren't bombers.

A lot also depends on your notoriety and whether you fly solo.

If you are a well-known ace on your server who gets called out as a focus target in every match, and you fly solo on occasion, then I highly suggest TT/S2E/PD/LC/Pods/Wingman/Lightweight/Regen/Range/Dampening (which I call the "Lancer" build). It lets you pick up all the power-ups--DO is the most notable of course, but don't overlook the others. Purple gives you further boosting and speed (which means more power ups) but also gives you 10% Evasion. Blue means you can use S2E without any loss of shield power, since they will regen faster than you can burn them. And Yellow refills your rockets.

Using this build, you can identify isolated, distracted or damaged targets, lance in for the kill(s), and then flee as soon as you are targeted for retaliation. With DO, you can kill 5+ targets before the enemy can retaliate. Without it, you can still manage 1-3, depending on the skill of the targets.

It doesn't matter if you have 3 Flashfires chasing you--they are incapable of catching you. Not only because of your more sustainable boost, but because you also take Regen Thrusters and Speed boost on Power Dive. Their exceptional turning will be useless when you fall off their sensors at 15km.

The best part is you'll still be able to see them--their target will change from "You" to "No target". At that point, you can pause, catch your breath (engine/shields), and then look for more choice targets.

Why Wingman and not CF? I've done a lot of testing with both, and I find that Wingman just delivers more sustained success. CF+TT might let me burst kill more Gunships before they can react, but in truth, any decent Gunship is on the move the moment he gets hit, so I'll have to pursue him either way. And after the initial burst, Wingman still delivers value.

Wingman + TT also lets me cut through any Evasion on other Scouts. If I line up 4-6km away from a Scout who is distracted shooting someone else, it's easy for me to track them with a sustained stream of lasers and rockets, and without Evasion they melt very, very fast.

I had previous Blackbolt records set by my previous alts (which used CF instead of Wingman), but in time, all of them were replaced by my alt that uses Wingman. It's because Wingman lets me be not only a Gunship hunter, but also a Scout hunter. And of course Strikes are the trivial snacks in between.

A few guidelines about using this build:

1) It's for TDM only. Don't use it in Domination.

2) Take out Gunships first. They are the greatest threat to you.

3) Don't attack Bombers without DO.

4) Don't attack someone who is also targeting you, except perhaps in a long-range joust. You won't win any turning wars.

5) If you do have DO, don't worry as much about running--just use Power Dive to frustrate pursuers while you rack up as many kills as possible before attrition catches up with you.

If you look at the records thread, the only Blackbolts in any TDM records are mine The lesson here is... if you are going to use a Blackbolt, use a build that actually cannot be duplicated better on a Sting.

If you are specifically hunting gunships, I would suggest StE instead of booster recharge. You would then take TT for systems, and regen for thrusters, with speed barrel roll. LC/pods is obviously the right choice. With this, you give up a missile break and have less on demand engine pool. The onus is then on you to be more aware of your engine resources and to keep a reserve on hand, as well as to maneuver and use LOS to break missile locks. You might think this level of concentration throughout the match is not worth it, but here's the real reason for these choices: the best gunship pilots give you very little time to do anything, so you should prioritize burst, especially evasion-countering burst using telemetry. The other changes are to give you mobility to counter the loss of booster recharge.

Against a bad gunship (to be honest, about 90% of people who pick up the class), lack of burst isn't a problem. Against a good one, you have very, very little time to burst the target down. Once they break contact with BR, you got maybe one more pass to kill them before they can burn up your time to get help, LOS, whatever. The gunship will often have Dfield up for part of the time and be stunting like mad, and if you don't have telemetry then good luck even with wingman. Let's face it, T1 scouts are not dogfight winners - they're ambushers, so you don't want to not kill your target on your first attempt. When I say they, I mean me, since don't think I haven't noticed you chasing me. The advice applies to every gunship though.

This is of course a very specialized build. However, like Nemarus said, if you build a booster/dfield scout, you might as well run Stingfire for the better health pool and more weapon variety.

Strikes: The only strike that is reasonable at all versus gunships is a Clarion, and it's still a support ship. .... It isn't a hunter so much as a shove.

No, I disagree here. Because of your last sentence, the Clarion/Imperium wouldn't be my first choice of hunting/killing gunships because it lacks a thruster. Even with powerdive-chasing him, you will run out of enginepower before he does, giving him the opportunity to chose a new firing position and hit you with his railguns while you have to spin around helplessly. Your Clarion still has a chance then of course due to directionals and repairprobes, combined with your choice of weapons, to finish him but it is a lot more stressfull. Worst case would be, he runs into a friendly minefield where you don't want to follow him without engine power. At least I wouldn't.

The Quell/Pike with its two secondary weapons and even the Rycer/Starguard with Ioncannons and Concussionmissiles are excellent gunshiphunters.

You take your Rycer with driectional shields towards the GS, hit wingman and start locking your missile. If he runs, you can keep up with him because you also have a thruster component and barrelroll. Chase him, hit him with Quad Lasers, finish him with the missile. If he doesn't run, you hold your missilelock, take out his shields with Ions and finish him with your missile at pointblankrange. It's a laboratory scenario, I have to admit. But when I mastered my Rycer, I scored a lot of kills that way (alas I didn't use Ions at that time).

The downside of that ship is, that you have no close quarter qualities. So if the GS is cuddling rocks, or starts to challenge you into a dogfight with his BLCs, you will be on the receiving end of a good beating. You can face these kinds of pilots by equipping retrothrusters. You give up a bit of a chasing abiility, yet you earn some dogfight enhancement.

The Quell with two "missiles" is another very solid GS hunter. Heavy Lasers, Clusters, Torps, directional shields, barrelroll, wingman. Same scenario as above. Due to the torp range of about 11k you don't have to rush on him. You won't believe it but there are GS-pilots who are so hungry for their current target, that they don't care about their missile warning tone. At 6k you start hammering them with your heavies, and your clusters will do the rest. If he bails at any moment of your approach, chase him. If it's an open map, don't use barrelroll. Just chase him and try to target him with your torps. He just used one missilebreak and if he is also glittering, your next torp will hit. If it's a coverheavy map, stay close to him and hit him with clustermissiles while hitting him with your primary weapon. Even if he turns around to dance with you, your clusters will drive him crazy.

And if you are their target in your Quell/Pike - Ryver/Starguard, you can withstand quite a beating with directional shields.

And now the 1 Million Dollar question: If you are in a gunshipheavy scenario, are you jumping into one of your strikes to counter them? Answer: No, I would stick to my Blackbolt or Sting. Reason: My Overall survivability in those two is much higher when the hunted gunship gets support of another pilot no matter the ship type.

You take your Rycer with driectional shields towards the GS, hit wingman and start locking your missile. If he runs, you can keep up with him because you also have a thruster component and barrelroll. Chase him, hit him with Quad Lasers, finish him with the missile. If he doesn't run, you hold your missilelock, take out his shields with Ions and finish him with your missile at pointblankrange. It's a laboratory scenario, I have to admit. But when I mastered my Rycer, I scored a lot of kills that way (alas I didn't use Ions at that time).

The downside of that ship is, that you have no close quarter qualities. So if the GS is cuddling rocks, or starts to challenge you into a dogfight with his BLCs, you will be on the receiving end of a good beating. You can face these kinds of pilots by equipping retrothrusters. You give up a bit of a chasing abiility, yet you earn some dogfight enhancement.

Personally I prefer HLC to QLC on the T1. If you strip a target of their shields with ions your heavies will shred them, have extra range to land that kill shot (especially with ranged capacitors), and some shield pierce to land a kill shot even if they start regening shields. Not ideal in close quarters but any ship that has their shields stripped away usually considers fleeing when an HLC shot or two land for massive hull damage.

No, I disagree here. Because of your last sentence, the Clarion/Imperium wouldn't be my first choice of hunting/killing gunships because it lacks a thruster. Even with powerdive-chasing him, you will run out of enginepower before he does, giving him the opportunity to chose a new firing position and hit you with his railguns while you have to spin around helplessly. Your Clarion still has a chance then of course due to directionals and repairprobes, combined with your choice of weapons, to finish him but it is a lot more stressfull. Worst case would be, he runs into a friendly minefield where you don't want to follow him without engine power. At least I wouldn't.

 

The Quell/Pike with its two secondary weapons and even the Rycer/Starguard with Ioncannons and Concussionmissiles are excellent gunshiphunters.

.

As soon as you get hit with ion railgun on either type 1 or type 2 strike its game over for you.

On a pike you can harass the enemy gunship to deroost them for a kill by a fellow gunship or being chased by scouts but you will just die if you try to kill them on your own.

If you start locking proton torpedoes from max range the time of the beeping sound will give it away and you will have effectively taunted the gunship to target you with ions.

Ion railgun will leave your engine and blasters dry so you wont be able chase much or if you get into blaster range wont be able to shoot much.

If you want to spam them with clusters you can do it on scouts as well.

On a starguard your only hope of success is if you can get the drop on them with ion cannons. Otherwise, once you are hit by ion without cover nearby its game over for you.

On clarion you can use your power dive to get to melee range or dive behind cover to replenish energy even if your engine power is 0, thus tremendously increasing its survivability without considering its ability to heal itself.

Therefore clarion is the stronger choice not only because of its ability to heal but also due to being able to mitigate effects of ion railgun, which are a death sentence at other strikes, to some degrees ( with directional shield and power dive )

I honestly wouldn't take a striker with directionals and barrel roll gunship hunting. Normally I have to dodge other things (like angry bombers and/or strikers and/or scouts), so I'd run out of power before reaching my target, or while shaking his cover off. In that kind of a fight, quick-chargers are a must because they make your afterburner consume power significantly more slowly. Use regens + quick-chargers, and your striker (or Stingfire!) can run marathons and leave people confused about why you haven't run out of power yet. This would also free a Stingfire's systems component from having to be booster recharge for that kind of endurance-or you could do booster recharge+QC shields and be able to run around the map twice. This means you can not only run a lot of ships out of power as you lead them around terrain, but also have enough power to catch up with the gunship before its engines are charged all the way back up. Quick-chargers do make you pretty vulnerable to burst damage, so you better be able to get on the GS' tail, which a good one won't let you do.

On the Rycer/Star Guard, you'd be surprised how well the Whiskey Strike build (ions/rapids/clusters) works against GS.

Ion Rail....

...is the death sentence to a lot of ships. But if a GS relies on his Ion to kill my Rycer or Quell, he will lose. At some point he has to switch to Railguns and charge those up (or BLCs and close in if he can equip them). Put your shields up front and keep hitting him. He will lose.

And if you really are engine and weaponpower dry, even your Clarion is a sitting duck.

Scouts and clusters.....

That certain scoutbuilds outperform strikes is and was out of the question. We were talking about gunshipcounters in general and Verain's statement, the Clarion beeing the only viable strikechoice for doing that, is, imho, not correct.

Powerdive...

You can charge and bail out with barrelroll, too. But I would keep that for either closing the distance to a running GS or to get out of that scenario, when the gs receives help.

Missile Tone giving you away....

Yes, so what? The element of suprise is for burstdamage delivering scouts. Barrelroll (Missile break 1), Distortion Field (Missile Break 2), wait 3 seconds...the torp will hit. And I see a lot of gunships using Feedbackshield. So in that case, after the barrelroll you can be certain your next lock won't break.

On Lost shipyards or Kuat Mesas he will try to break LOS, there of course you have to switch to Clusters.

And for those gunshippers who think they are invulnerable and stay where they are (and there are a lot of those out there due to all those imbatalk)...well...beepbeepbeepbeepbeep..swooooooosh......KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

Anyone else thinks torp explosions are awesome??

Don't get me wrong. I am not denying the superior survivability of the Imperium/Clarion. I am just saying that the other two strikefighters in your garage can also be very nasty.

Distortion is rather pointless here, 75% of GS have no rockets. Otherwise Disto is rather weak, is just RNG, and a railgun hits passing through the RNG and it's over. S2E and Directional can easily sustain a hit.

When you play on Bastion, you generally run gunship with distortion, not gunship with directional. Is this some plan to trick players into running directional on scouts? Because that's not very good.

No, I disagree here. Because of your last sentence

While I was typing this, Davionix said good stuff, but this is what I had on that:

1)- Yes, the Clarion is your best bet versus a gunship, out of the strikes. The type 1 and type 2 are both particularly vulnerable to gunships.

2)- The part about that thread is what to do in a gunship heavy map. That is to say, there are a lot of gunships. Your ability to dive or burst a gunship is not the main thing here- it's your ability to support your team versus gunships.

3)- Writing a page where you debate with yourself which of the two mediocre dogfighters is better at soloing a gunship (which is not relevant, nor accurate), and eventually come to the conclusion that scouts are better is, frankly, ludicrous. Yes, of course you want scouts in a map versus gunships. I have a scout section for that. Note my conclusion: Heavy gunship maps are rare, and are best approached with a balanced team of scouts, gunships, and bombers..

A lot also depends on your notoriety and whether you fly solo.

Countering enemy ship teams depends a lot on this? I sort of disagree.

Nem, why is your pet build in here? The "brave sir robin" scout is definitely good at hit and fade, but do you feel it "counters" anything?

Also, I don't feel that a takeaway about building a type 1 scout to be like a type 2 scout is in any way wrong, and OP gives a great reason for that. While the damage thread is dubious, all it really shows is that type 1 scouts do not, in practice, compete with type 2 scouts.

I mean, in general, this has become a build thread. We have one of those already. Wasn't this about counters to ships, in strategies, techniques, and (lastly) build combos of the sort that we don't already have in the stasiepedia?

While I was typing this, Davionix said good stuff, but this is what I had on that:

1)- Yes, the Clarion is your best bet versus a gunship, out of the strikes. The type 1 and type 2 are both particularly vulnerable to gunships.

2)- The part about that thread is what to do in a gunship heavy map. That is to say, there are a lot of gunships. Your ability to dive or burst a gunship is not the main thing here- it's your ability to support your team versus gunships.

3)- Writing a page where you debate with yourself which of the two mediocre dogfighters is better at soloing a gunship (which is not relevant, nor accurate), and eventually come to the conclusion that scouts are better is, frankly, ludicrous. Yes, of course you want scouts in a map versus gunships. I have a scout section for that. Note my conclusion: Heavy gunship maps are rare, and are best approached with a balanced team of scouts, gunships, and bombers..

 

Ok, then let's take a gs-heavy map.

1. Your Clarion will die. It will last longer than the other two, but it will die. And even with its supporting role, you won't stay in second line just to hit repair probes now and then. At some point you will want to dish out with it. And again, cause I have the impression everyone feels personally attacked when someone says something negative about holy-Clarion: I am NOT denyiing his ability to kill stuff. All I say is, you can also kill stuff with other stuff.

2. To charge, hunt and kill a gunship or to chase it over the map disabling his ability to stand still and snipe your teammates is another way of supporting your team.

3. I can return that: Debating yourself about a strikefighter supporting your team and then concluding that the best approach is a team of scouts, gunships and bombers is...what then?

What I wanted to emphasize is, that despite the success you can achieve with Rycer and Quell your chances are greater in a Blackbolt or a Sting.

Oh and since the OPs idea was to...

I thought it might be useful to newer players to have a centralized location for ship-specific counter builds.

... I thought to tell new players that there are ship-specific counterbuilds on a Quell and on a Rycer (which everyone has) to counter gunships.

When you play on Bastion, you generally run gunship with distortion, not gunship with directional. Is this some plan to trick players into running directional on scouts? Because that's not very good.

My Mangler has Fortress, my Jurg Disto. At least today.

Hm, I think I have a problem with the term "gunship Counter". For me that is a specialized ship that I use from time to time and exclusively for this task. If the opposing GS is down, the job is done and another ship comes. Most here are looking for a build that is ALSO well as GS counter, but always used. Since then completely different configuration naturally come out here.

...is the death sentence to a lot of ships. But if a GS relies on his Ion to kill my Rycer or Quell, he will lose. At some point he has to switch to Railguns and charge those up (or BLCs and close in if he can equip them). Put your shields up front and keep hitting him. He will lose.

And if you really are engine and weaponpower dry, even your Clarion is a sitting duck.

You can charge and bail out with barrelroll, too. But I would keep that for either closing the distance to a running GS or to get out of that scenario, when the gs receives help.

To repeat myself, Power Dive has 0 engine cost and the shortest cooldown amongst engine moves.

Barrel roll has a cost and a 30s cooldown.

So when you get hit with ions and your purple engine pool is empty you will just float around hammering the button for barrel roll before eating a slug railgun. In that scenario power dive makes the difference between exploding in a fireball and covering that last distance to get behind gunship / obstacle.

Yes, so what? The element of suprise is for burstdamage delivering scouts. Barrelroll (Missile break 1), Distortion Field (Missile Break 2), wait 3 seconds...the torp will hit. And I see a lot of gunships using Feedbackshield.

If you are fighting against gunship pilots that use barrel roll first to break missile locks and use it before missile launch alert you can kill them with anything. Hell, you could even just fly to them head on with a minelayer and kill them with mines to face.

High damage missiles like proton and thermite torpedo have long reload times as well so you can not spam them like clusters and with decent use of terrain to los a good pilot with 2 missile break may mitigate all of your proton launches.

When you are flying against competent gunships on a starguard, once you shoot your missile it gets missile lock broken with distortion field while gunship keeps shooting you with railguns and if you are in range for blasters you are either out of shields, weapon pool or both and can be dispatched easily with burst laser cannon even if you were able to shoot a few lasers with your remaining power pool.

Anyone else thinks torp explosions are awesome??

Don't get me wrong. I am not denying the superior survivability of the Imperium/Clarion. I am just saying that the other two strikefighters in your garage can also be very nasty.

I like flying type 1 & 2 strikes as well but sadly whatever role they can play in the team can be filled better by other ships so they lose their nastiness. At least clarion makes for it with its supporting system abilities.

To repeat myself, Power Dive has 0 engine cost and the shortest cooldown amongst engine moves.

Ok, you got me there. I am a bit ashamed to admit it, since I have a mastered Bloodmark and a mastered Imperium, both with powerdive equipped, that I wasn't aware of the 0-engine cost. Now you can beat me, I deserved it.

But...which brings me to the next part:

When you are flying against competent gunships...

Yes, I also agree and admit that my approaches are some sort of all-or-nothing scenarios. But I am and was doing surprisingly well with those. I really don't see a lot of gunships with disto though, maybe because missile break is T3 and everyone thinks feedback is superior. I like it that way. But when I see a competent gs-pilot on the field...seriously...I wouldn't challenge him with a strikefighter.

When Vector says "There is poetry in your flight" I think he mentions those EMP explosions are also nice as well.

Haven't used those.....should I try them?

I like flying type 1 & 2 strikes as well but sadly whatever role they can play in the team can be filled better by other ships so they lose their nastiness. At least clarion makes for it with its supporting system abilities.

That I can subscribe.

...is the death sentence to a lot of ships. But if a GS relies on his Ion to kill my Rycer or Quell, he will lose.

Are you for real? This is a pretty wild statement. A single Ion hit means the gunship can simple go where you aren't and then begin working your hull. If you are farming gunships on your Rycer or Quell, you are fighting gunships a lot worse than you.

And if you really are engine and weaponpower dry, even your Clarion is a sitting duck.

Yes and no. The thing is that any strike has enough hull to survive a bit of railgun, but a Starguard sitting behind a rock at half hull is mostly dead and not helping, but a Clarion is spinning his repair probe cooldown at the very worst.

You can charge and bail out with barrelroll, too. But I would keep that for either closing the distance to a running GS or to get out of that scenario, when the gs receives help.

It's a gunship heavy situation. He doesn't receive help like eventually, he has a buddy covering him, often by accident, also from range. You can trade hull for deroost on a clarion, you can't on a starguard, and the clarion helps reverse incidental damage as well.

It's not a damned 1v1 guide. The clarion is better than those guys at that too, but READ MY POST DOOD

And I see a lot of gunships using Feedbackshield.

It's a niche choice, but it should not be common.

Don't get me wrong. I am not denying the superior survivability of the Imperium/Clarion. I am just saying that the other two strikefighters in your garage can also be very nasty.

Stop changing the topic. What's a gunship, bomber, or scout counter? How do you fly in a meta heavy with each of those types? If you find yourself saying "but MY starguard" and "I can solo...", just... that's not the topic.

Edit:

It's not a damned 1v1 guide. The clarion is better than those guys at that too, but READ MY POST DOOD

Yes, yes I was too fast to see the context.... forget what I said..... /walksoutooftheroomwithhisheaddown.......

../stickshisheadbackin: "Although Rycers and Quells still are a valid choice to knock gunships out "

The problem with most of the builds presented here is what happens when the gunship:

A: Knows how to dogfight. The good ones do. BLC are better at high-deflection shots than anything you can put on a striker, so you better know the fade part or you'll end up with a slug up your tailpipe.

B: Knows you're coming. The good ones do, unless they're being messy and sniping from inside a dogfight. The good ones tab while firing, so you will not have the element of surprise. The GS will have decided to either run and call for backup or turn and fight before you ever enter weapons range.

C: Has buddies protecting him. The good ones do, so you better bring some of your own or you'll get swarmed by angry... whatever, usually battlescouts or other GS.

The problem with most of the builds presented here is what happens when the gunship:

A: Knows how to dogfight.

Presumably if you are trying to attack a gunship, or a whole team of them, you also know how to dogfight. It's worth pointing out than in all of these things, skill is assumed to be not terribly distant. But note that in a turn fight, a gunship just won't win- especially not the thrusterless variants.

B: Knows you're coming. The good ones do, unless they're being messy and sniping from inside a dogfight. The good ones tab while firing, so you will not have the element of surprise. The GS will have decided to either run and call for backup or turn and fight before you ever enter weapons range.

And that's fine too. It's a team game, so a deroost where you stop them from attacking targets that could be ignorant or defenseless is still amazing.

C: Has buddies protecting him. The good ones do, so you better bring some of your own or you'll get swarmed by angry... whatever, usually battlescouts or other GS.

Obviously, better team play will always win- that's good design.

What are you trying to say? It sounds like you came into a thread about discussing counters for gunships, scouts, and bombers, and came up with a post that says that two of these things don't exist, and the third thing can't be countered. Are you talking solo? Because a battle scout is a pretty great call then. Are you talking as a team? Because I talked about what to do when you queue into a gunship heavy map, and what team comp is generally effective against that.

I don't think the thread is about "Gunships hate him- Stay At Home Battlescout discovers this one weird trick to clearing gunships!". That would be a badly designed game.

But maybe this is meant to be another build thread. Or maybe it is meant to be a class cry thread. I was hoping it was neither of those.

Here is my counter to gunships: its the ship i'm famous for flying on JC. I guess its a modification on the "Brave Sir Robin" you guys love to poke fun at but its great in a gunship heavy domination map:

http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/?link=dGEAAAANAAICAw8C8gLyA9AA9ALQAeAB4ALgAeA=

This is the maximum accuracy build with an additional sab probe. The tactic is to approach from directly above or below, boosting in from 15 km to minimize your time on their sensors. When you get into TT range, pop wingman and TT then unload. Start locking a sab probe. Gunship is probably gonna BR at this point, chase after him with afterburners, cycle some shields if you're below 50%. Get in range and start locking again, he's gonna use distortion. Laugh at his puny evasion as your 140% accuracy rips his shields off. If he's still not dead, sabo probe while charging at him, release at point blank, pop a koi turn 1 km behind him and rip him apart while he gets to sit there like a lame duck.

Here is my bomber buster:

Its not exactly optimum but I hate flying gunships and I think bombers shouldn't even exist so I don't fly either on principle. This is what an actual torpedo bomber should play like. The point is to use charged plating to face tank mines while harrassing the bomber with EMP's and cluster missiles, this is a very nice build for removing a bomber who has already dug into a sat. HLC's will allow you to take out 2 turrets per run on the sat, and your EMP should take care of any drones. The problem with this build is that its heavily reliant on support fighters as it has the dogfighting ability of a drunken hutt (what do you know, like a real bomber). With proper fighter support its great, without it, its a pain in the ***.

http://dulfy.net/2013/11/16/swtor-galactic-starfighter/?link=dGEAAAASAAYEBRAA7ADsBPID4ALQAuAC4ALgAeA=

And yes I know hydrospanner is bad, but with this build its decent for fixing up the dinks you get from face tanking mines. It's not much but it adds up over time. Again its not a dogfighting build so accuracy and turn rate aren't a concern. And I use double volley clusters instead of lingering effects because i've got 75% extra ammo and rarely do I see them run out.

Sab probe is definitely a good ability, but I wouldn't say it's particularly amazing versus gunships. Given the way sensors, line of sight, and the rectangle the games take place in folds together, it can be impossible to approach from due heaven or due hell, though it's still very good to approach from those directions in general, as even an opponent who is good at thinking in three space will have a harder time switching and determining which target is biggest threat if the targets are spread over a much larger cone than straight ahead.

When using a sab probe, remember to never take the "reduced speed" talent, as it is bugged, always take "reduce engine" instead. When being attacked with a sab probe, remember that the transit speed is almost instance once launch happens, and try to select vectors clear of obstacles if you are going to be hit. Nothing can stop you from varying your boost and speed, and this alone can greatly reduce the damage you take.

Your Quell build is openly motivated by your idea of game design, not on efficacy, but I think it should be emphasized that this build needs to carefully time the EMP versus type 1 bombers- turning off their ability to charged plating is a big deal, but you need to be sure that it's going to overlap the period where charged plating comes down and before they put it back up. That build does speak to some interesting games, however- it really can walk into mines. I suspect it would need some heals to keep going. You also picked MZ-12, and I always recommend Blizz if you need hydrospanner.