Jump to content

"New" Strike Fighter Balance


voltaicbore

Recommended Posts

Disclaimer: I am extremely and unabashedly salty. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong about everything I say, but now that the bias is out there I don't have the burden of attempting to hide it behind the veneer of civility. I also put "new" in quotes for the thread title as I realize most of these changes have been around for a while, but I'm returning from a years-long break and they're still pretty new to me.

 

To all you strike fighter devotees, who suffered through the long period of strikes being the laughable niche choice you flew just for a challenge: your patience has been rewarded handsomely, and I deeply, deeply resent you for it. With total sincerity, I hope something horrible happens to you IRL to compensate for the strike fighter renaissance you currently enjoy. Although I have no cosmic powers to actually make anything happen to any of you, when the next tragedy befalls you or the ones you love the most, know that I am out there somewhere feeling an inexplicable sense of satisfaction.

 

Now that I've spewed forth that bit of toxicity, a question for discussion. What do veteran strike pilots think of the current balance between strike fighter killing power, survivability, and disengage ability? Admittedly the last two things I listed are closely related, but "survivability" as used here refers primarily to the simple ability to take some solid hits yet not blow up. I find it hard to criticize any one of those 3 aspects individually, but put together I feel they make strikes nearly impossible to deal with, outside of running equally skilled and equipped strikes against it. It's much the same way that I feel the protorp improvements would make more sense if they didn't take away the disto break. Both at the same time just makes protorp oppressively effective.

 

Some of you might say "hey, that actually describes balance, and what the workhorse strike fighter role should be." You might even be right! However, I feel like strikes currently enjoy too many advantages for the precious few weaknesses to make up for it. It seems too easy for a competent strike to close gaps on every class of ships (especially slug rail GSes) and just run off if things go south with scout-esque impunity. Sure, the scout might better evade retaliatory shots, but the strike can now just eat a few clean hits and run off to reset the whole affair in short order.

Edited by voltaicbore
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Disclaimer: I am extremely and unabashedly salty. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong about everything I say, but now that the bias is out there I don't have the burden of attempting to hide it behind the veneer of civility. I also put "new" in quotes for the thread title as I realize most of these changes have been around for a while, but I'm returning from a years-long break and they're still pretty new to me.

 

If the changes are new to you, let me fill you in on the big changes and how those have changed the meta:

 

1- Protons are threatening.

 

In the past, it was trivial to avoid proton torpedoes, or really all missiles except for clusters. Simply fly normally, and if you can't shake the extremely lengthy lock-on, go ahead and use a break. Now, they lock too fast for such behavior- the fundamentals have not changed, but what "fly normally" means certainly has. If you are going into an area where there will be more than one guy potentially locking you, you need a plan to get to cover, either with your break or shortly thereafter, or you will eat a proton torpedo.

 

I'm of the opinion that proton torpedo has been in a mildly overbuffed state since the patch, and I think this is entirely due to the lock on time being just a bit too short.

 

That being said, protons are entirely avoidable, and make up neither the majority of the hull damage dealt nor the majority of the kills being dealt, for sufficiently skilled pilots flying ships with proton torpedoes. My objection is mostly due to the fact that the defensive play that they encourage seems just a little bit too defensive.

 

2- Strikes are damaging if allowed to engage at midrange

 

This has had much better ramifications- if a strike challenges you in open space, you are best off moving past the strike, or potentially even engaging in a brief turn fight (if you are a scout). Previously, the strike doing this was a total waste of time. This makes more places dangerous. Strike offenses are almost entirely negated when near large objects, or when running over long distances.

 

3- Strikes are tough and capable of tanking multiple serious hits in space

 

This also has good ramifications, as a strike previously would be rendered helpless with almost no effort by any control at all. Generally, if you see a strike, expect it to take a commitment of time to destroy or control that strike, unlike before, when such a ship mostly represented no meaningful threat.

 

4- Missiles are not just a dumb joke, because of disto's "new" limitations.

 

While you can still squeeze in extra railguns and still dance around in a scout, you can no longer force commitment of long lockon + missile cooldown weaponry just by pressing 2. Instead, you want to disable these at close to their last possible moment, and prepare yourself for either line of sight, target elimination, or engine maneuver.

 

To all you strike fighter devotees, who suffered through the long period of strikes being the laughable niche choice you flew just for a challenge: your patience has been rewarded handsomely, and I deeply, deeply resent you for it.

 

You should not. The meta now includes all ships except the type 2 gunship and the type 3 bomber. Previously the meta was three ships deep- type 1 gunship, type 2 scout, and type 1 bomber. All these ships are still good, of course- just more ships are now too.

 

 

With total sincerity, I hope something horrible happens to you IRL to compensate for the strike fighter renaissance you currently enjoy. Although I have no cosmic powers to actually make anything happen to any of you, when the next tragedy befalls you or the ones you love the most, know that I am out there somewhere feeling an inexplicable sense of satisfaction.

 

Maybe you need to inherit my forum sig, this is... uh, this is pretty twisted bro!

 

What do veteran strike pilots think of the current balance between strike fighter killing power, survivability, and disengage ability?

 

I'm much more a gunship pilot, but I think it's great. Strikes have a job now. You didn't add "control" (probably because that's just one move), but I do think slicing is too strong- I think it takes too much engine instantly. But strike killing power is where it needs to be (and the counter is to remember how generally inflexible everything except lights and rapids are, and that those two are both range limited). Survivability seems about right- I'd argue it's a bit too high versus mines, specifically. Strikes ability to escape is also a huge boon to the game- previously they were left out of breath and worthless after almost anything, now they have a large enough pool (that they have to manage properly- few pilots do) that they can do what needs to be done.

 

I feel they make strikes nearly impossible to deal with, outside of running equally skilled and equipped strikes against it.

 

I feel a pile of strikes is countered by a balanced team. If my team is going against a really solid team, the answer isn't just a bunch of strike fighters.

 

It's much the same way that I feel the protorp improvements would make more sense if they didn't take away the disto break. Both at the same time just makes protorp oppressively effective.

 

The disto change is perfect. Absolutely perfect. The protorp change is a bit much. You know how I know this? Because you aren't complaining about concussion, thermite, cluster, or ion. (you also aren't complaining about EMP, and it's the best missile, but I get it regardless)

 

I feel like strikes currently enjoy too many advantages for the precious few weaknesses to make up for it.

 

Strikes deal damage very slowly on node, requiring a setup and light lasers (at which point they switch to F1 and have pretty great dps). You can avoid being undernose of a strike in most situations. A strike still is punished by ion railgun, and punished very well. Strikes have greater power pools, but those do exhaust, and they require catching their breath to pull off their good moves. Strikes don't require peels like gunships, but they also aren't nearly immune to meaningful pursuit as scouts are.

 

It seems too easy for a competent strike to close gaps on every class of ships (especially slug rail GSes)

 

This is a very good change, though. Strikes are still countered by gunships- they aren't laughed at any more, however. If you slug a strike and he's coming at you, break position- you've been deroosted. Once you are behind a rock, the strike will have to come over to hit you with light lasers. If he's running heavies or quads, you are safe already. If he's running rapids, well, think of them like lights, except worse against you than the lights. Either way, make use of your stop-on-a-dime ability as a gunship- while this is a bad idea versus scouts, it's pretty useful against strikes, who don't do well against opponents who get to ignore the fundamental rules of flight.

 

and just run off if things go south with scout-esque impunity

 

You should have dealt hull damage to him without taking any- meanwhile, he should have deroosted you. That's the tradeoff here. If you are dying, you weren't reacting in time. And honestly, slapping him with an ion or interdiction missile is a solid play here too. The only build without ion railgun or interdiction missile is slug plasma, and if you are running a niche pure-dps build like that, take your lumps and reposition against whatever the heck you are running that build to be effective against.

Edited by Verain
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the strike fighter buffs have been a good thing, mainly because it helps newer pilots survive a bit longer and do a bit more damage. Pilots always used to complain about being disabled by 1 ion railgun hit. That is no longer true, and if pilots are paying attention, they can learn that getting hit by ion probably means it's time to go on defensive and los or run towards friends. More survivability means less frustration about instant death and more time to learn to fly. The fact that a strike can survive more blaster hits give the newer pilots a chance to get away or at least shoot back. Also the ability to engage at longer range makes it easier for newer pilots to do damage. Finally the buff to hydro spanner makes it much easier to continue to fight if you can survive the initial attack.

 

People still complain about the learning curve and one sided matches. But I think the biggest problem is most are still solo queueing, and when they get into a match with opponents that include a strong 4 man team they know they have little chance. I do think that there are fewer one sided routs, 50 - 8 or 1000 - 100.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Verain, good to see you still fly & post.

 

Protorp was just the first projectile that came to mind when I wanted to fire up some complaints - I personally lean towards EMP and concussions for my own use. It's just that, as you said, protorp really can't be temporarily outrun like we used to, and has that obscene range that good pilots (or bad ones en masse) can use to perform GS-like area denial - just on more mobile and mid-range-deadly platforms. I used the word "oppressive" to indicate that perhaps-too-defensive style mid-range pilots are locked into, not raw damage output.

 

I did notice that strikes struggle to notch kills quickly on node, perhaps I didn't give that drawback enough credit. My warcarrier does passably well against strikes on point, since I can poop out seekers, circle pursuers strategically around railgun drones, incessantly break lock with bolder satellite-hugging maneuvers, and unload a magazine full of armpen HLC on them if they decide to peel off. I'm the worst T2 scout pilot I know, and on point I feel like BLCs give me a good chance of killing or at least chasing off a strike. I'll have to pay more attention to that the next few domination matches I get into.

 

I also agree that strikes *should* be as damaging as they are, at the ranges they are. I just don't see them paying high enough a price in terms of risk. The GS vs strike engagement does run, in broad strokes, like you mentioned - I've done hull damage to the strike and have abandoned my perch before taking anymore more than nominal damage myself. However, the hull damage I caused is pretty minimal relative to the hits I put on. I can land two full T5 ion rails on a strike, and watch it saunter away with shields and engine power to spare, apparently.

 

Again, I'm not saying that it should go back to the days of strikes being suicide runs against a T5 ion + rail combo, but I also don't think it's balanced for a quarrel/mangler to land two fully charged hits on a strike and watch it leisurely peel off with 80% health and some engine boost (and yes, I'm aware that pdive can cost 0 engine power, but I know the pdive movement and what I'm seeing is not that). It's quite possible I'm just shooting into particular builds that are exceptional at dealing with ion rails and other lockdowns, I'll have to pay more attention to which flavor of T3 strike gives me the most trouble.

 

I guess what it really comes down to is what I perceive as a "reset time" advantage strikes have. I just feel like a strike is much more capable of coming back for another bite a bit too much more quickly than the other classes. I *do* think that strikes should indeed be the best at that particular aspect of combat - a deroosted GS rightly pays a high engine cost for picking an assailable spot, scouts should always be paranoid about losing what little hull they have, and bombers should fear persistent attack swoops from strikes. I'm just not sure that the price other classes have to pay to keep up with the strike is commensurate for how much killing power the strike brings each and every time. Perhaps the hydrospanner buff that Thutmose mentioned is why I'm seeing strikes coming back faster and healthier for round 2.

 

Maybe I'll feel differently after more matches and more observation, and more tweaks to components/crews/etc. I'm prepared to admit, if I discover it's true, that it was all merely an L2P issue on my part. However, I doubt I'll fully change my position on strikes being overtuned; even on a stock T1 strike, I'm finding that I'm notching more kills and safely resetting more fights. I don't even have a proper escape engine component, just base retro thrusters to help me finish a kill or reposition in a dogfight.

 

Even if I don't change my mind on strikes, I might be willing to accept it if I feel like more new and unknown pilots can perform acceptably in them. Anecdotally my experience thus far lines up with what Thutmose said about less frequent blowouts, and if strikes have to be this way to contribute to that, I'll grudgingly accept it.

Edited by voltaicbore
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alright so there's a lot to cover here.

 

One of the things with this new meta that I hear often is how most of the ships they're seeing are Strikes these days and that must mean they're overtuned. However there's a big mistake people make just looking at the ship class. Strikes right now have a huge amount of viable builds in the meta, they can specialize to do all sorts of different jobs. So even if 3 different people are all playing Strikes they might be doing very different jobs. In the old Meta, we only had 3 ships, and I really mean that, we had 1 Scout build, 1 Gunship build and 1 Bomber build it was very cookie cutter and the Scout and Gunship were so freaking good they did so many different jobs.

 

Now those two ships were changed and they're much more focused, for example the Sting/Flashfire of old is still a really meta ship, but only when used on nodes in Domination games. You can't use it to go murder Gunships out in the open or kill Bombers before they get to the nodes, because they have a weakness now and it's being out in the open, Scouts need to be near line of sight at almost all times now.

 

Where as the Gunships used to control all Mid and Long range combat, that's no longer the case, you can't just stay out in the open on a Gunship anymore and just play aggressive all game, you're a support ship, you need peels from teammates to do your damage.

 

What these changes to these archtypes did was open all sorts of jobs for the Strike fighter to fill, now the best Gunship killer is a Starguard/Rycer Piledriver that does absolutely crazy amounts of dps to anyone not evading immediately. Or for example if you need peels for your Gunships there's no better ship for that then a Remote slicing/ Proton Torpedo Clarion/Imperium. These are jobs that the Sting/Flashfire used to do as the close ranged ridiculously good fighting that it still does.

 

 

Now onto just the straight gameplay changes, many returning players struggle to adjust to the changes because of how different the flow of combat is now. While we used to play 90% offence and 10% defence. Now it's more like 50/50 for both, you must spend way more time simply flying defensively now, because you have to actually use positioning to evade enemy attacks and not just cooldowns. You can't simply cycle your cooldowns and be immune to missiles anymore. This means teammates can actually peel for one another better then ever before, so if you're playing a Strike you want to watch for your teams Gunships to go peel for them, because the less time they're flying defensively the better. Same with playing Gunship you need to constantly be aware of somewhere to fly to get a peel from a teammate, you can't just expect to Rambo everyone down anymore.

 

Learning to use line of sight is super important, it's one of the first things I teach when I get some students in the custom matchs. I start locking missiles on them and get them to evade them by never using a cooldown. What's funny is this lesson is so much easier to teach brand new pilots too, then players from the pre 5.5 era returning to the game.

 

 

I hope this helps Voltaic and while some of your posts stuff (Like the salty tone and wanting something horrible to happen to people *** man?) I really didn't like, I do however like the conversation you're trying to start here. Myself personally I don't think Strike fighters are over tuned but I do think a few abilities/weapons might be in the game currently. However this meta is by far the healthiest one we've ever had in GSF, so many ships are viable! I do miss my Bombers though, they really got hit hard when all the EMP weapons got so good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for swinging by, Drak. I'd quote your post but we're already getting into walls of text, so I'll mix general and specific remarks.

 

Most of the meta shifts made themselves obvious within the first 2 matches upon my return, especially your point about shifting from our old "almost always offensive" style to a much better mix of defensive and escape flying. The first ship I master on any character is always a GS, so I already flew with an eye on line of sight, and I definitely see that it's become vastly more important as a dynamic source of missile (and strike fighter blaster) break. I've also begun to notice a wider variety in strike fighter packages being run successfully, which probably reflects the new roles that you mention being opened up for strikes.

 

But while I agree with your description of the current state of meta shifts in GSF, I'm more interested in knowing specifically what you (and anyone else who has an opinion on it) thinks of the cost/benefit balance of running the various T2 strike builds that make sense. Sure, it's great that strikes are doing well (despite the tone of my initial post I was one of the many pilots yearning for a strike rework back in the day), but is the current mix of killing power and survivability on strikes where you think it should be?

 

With the passage of just a little time (and several more matches where I flew/flew against strikes of all kinds), my opinion remains that strikes are slightly too forgiving. I'm particularly impressed with the Clarion/Imperium's ability to soak GS hits, survive the barrage, and kill its way back to safety, and I've done the same on Starguard/Rycer setups but with what I feel is a generally slimmer margin of safety. My flight time on the Pike/Quell variants are too low to say much, but suffice it to say that I flew two zero-death deathmatches on my very first two outings on those things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well to answer your question, which basically boils down too do I think Strike fighters deal too much damage based on how tanky they've become.

 

The quick answer is no, I think the amount of killing power they have even with how tanky they've become is what they need to be relevant in the meta. They're still out turned by Scouts, so on a node they need the extra damage to have any kind of chance in close proximity (like on a node). They're still outranged by Gunships, so they need to be tanky enough to close the distance which they finally are. Ion Railgun is still a very powerful tool vs Strike fighters it just doesn't end them immediately anymore, and with the extra second added to it's cooldown the Strike can actually LoS the second one now.

 

Now I do think certain abilities that the Strikes have are a touch too powerful, case and point Proton torpedo, it could use just a touch longer lock on time. Also I think while remote slicing is really great to have in the game to have an instant control to help peel for teammates, I believe it's instant engine drain is a touch too high.

 

The Strike frame however needs to be as good as it is, not to mention the fact that the power settings are even more important on the Strikes gives them a really nice skill ceiling as controlling your power settings becomes that much more important.

 

Now having said that, I really like the way the game plays right now, having so many tools in the game to peel for your teammates is so good for GSF. If for example Proton and Slicing were nerfed way too much, we'd likely lose that feeling of immediate danger when you're out in the open and the game would go right back to 90% offence all the time. So because of that I'm hesitant to make any changes at all, because I'm not sure how good Proton needs to be so we get that danger feeling.

 

 

The ship that really got screwed by the Strike buff was Bombers though, the mines and drones just don't deal anywhere near enough damage to scare a Strike fighter. I'd actually like to see something like Mines and Drones start dealing extra damage to them to bring that fear of Bomber stuff back. Even with all the EMP buffs that hurt Bombers, the fact that there's so many more tanks in the skies now means their nests just aren't as powerful as they once were.

 

 

But yeah long answer to your question. Basically I think Gunships, Scouts and Strikes are all really well balanced at the moment with Bombers trailing behind. While the Flashfire/Sting isn't particularly good in Team Death Match it's so good in Domination I think that's ok and since the other 2 Scouts are still very useful in Team Death Match I believe Scouts are pretty well represented in the meta. As for Gunships sadly the Cometbreaker/Dustmaker still isn't great, but it's nowhere near as bad as it once was, the extra range on the missiles for the Gunship frame did wonders for that ship in my opinion, but with Distortion field still being by far the best shield in the game, it still not having access too it is keeping it out of the meta.

 

I hope that answers your question well enough, let me know if I missed something or if you have another. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

But yeah long answer to your question. Basically I think Gunships, Scouts and Strikes are all really well balanced at the moment with Bombers trailing behind. While the Flashfire/Sting isn't particularly good in Team Death Match it's so good in Domination I think that's ok and since the other 2 Scouts are still very useful in Team Death Match I believe Scouts are pretty well represented in the meta. As for Gunships sadly the Cometbreaker/Dustmaker still isn't great, but it's nowhere near as bad as it once was, the extra range on the missiles for the Gunship frame did wonders for that ship in my opinion, but with Distortion field still being by far the best shield in the game, it still not having access too it is keeping it out of the meta.

 

The NovaDive / Blackbolt with EMP Field and LLC is pretty useful in Domination. Can you expand on how the Spearpoint / Bloodmark is very useful in deathmatch?

 

I would say overall the Strikes are the best ships. However, a lot of players like to fly Strikes anyway. Even if there is another patch to rebalance the ships, we will probably still see most players flying Strikes in most matches. I wish more players would fly the other ships because it gets a bit repetitive sometimes fighting an entire team of Strikes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Strike Fighters are ok, the only problems is people exploiting the weapon switch mechanic which unintentionally results in massive damage increase. So don't complain about strike fighters, complain about cheaters. (or lazy devs) Edited by Xarko
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Strike Fighters are ok, the only problems is people exploiting the weapon switch mechanic which unintentionally results in massive damage increase. So don't complain about strike fighters, complain about cheaters. (or lazy devs)

 

It is not an exploit. This mechanic has been in the game since patch 5.5. Which was just over 2 years ago.

 

Furthermore, we asked Musco to pass on messages to the devs before posting the piledriver build, about 4 months after the patch.

 

-Audson

Edited by Erurainon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's very clearly an exploit. Don't even try it.

 

Prior to patch 5.5 you had to release your mouse click and then click again if you swapped lasers on the T1 Strike. This was a HUGE weakness to the T1 Strike. Back in 2015 there was an entire tread started by a dev titled "Let's Talk about Strike Fighters" in which the weapon swap system ability was discussed as being useless on the T1 Strike.

 

There is a lot information in the 1,012 posts about the T1 Strike weakness. Here is a very good one by Nemarus: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=8220589&postcount=25

 

In addition, of all the weapon swaps on ships (Gunships and T2 Strike) the T1 Strike is the only ship to have the re-click mechanic removed.

 

-Audson

Edited by Erurainon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's very clearly an exploit. Don't even try it.

 

Its no more an exploit than Clipping the third ability into the ferocity window for carnage was an exploit. It was a technique of advanced play, and the changes to Ferocity were made to make it easier for newer carnage players, not because it was an exploit. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the developers knowing about this and not considering it an exploit.

 

Also, it happens to be easily countered by:

1. EMP Field

2. EMP Missile

3. Remote Slicing

 

And anything else I've forgotten that disables system abilities.

 

Also, you don't have to worry about the Strike that you disable from outside piledriving range, 8km (Ion followed by slug from GS).

 

Also, piledriving isn't so great on the node, since HLC have crap for a firing arc and QLC isn't much better, so the Sting/FF still have advantage there.

Edited by phalczen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The NovaDive / Blackbolt with EMP Field and LLC is pretty useful in Domination. Can you expand on how the Spearpoint / Bloodmark is very useful in deathmatch?

 

I would say overall the Strikes are the best ships. However, a lot of players like to fly Strikes anyway. Even if there is another patch to rebalance the ships, we will probably still see most players flying Strikes in most matches. I wish more players would fly the other ships because it gets a bit repetitive sometimes fighting an entire team of Strikes.

 

Spearpoint / Bloodmark in Deathmatch, can be a great support ship. Repair drones in Death match are really really good right now, so both ships that can take them are worth it just for that especially in 12 v 12 matches. However what the Spearpoint / Bloodmark offers over it's Bomber counter part is both Tensor Fields for ships that want even more mobility like Pile drivers and Slicers and also EMP missile makes for a great setup maker, so you just roll around constantly taking away missile breaks from enemies or nuking Bomber drone fields. Basically your job is to Heal your team and assist your high killing ships, it's a pure support role. In difficult matches you'll see this ship actually have very little stats on the end scoreboard, however it's contributing a lot.

 

 

I'd also agree that the Strike ship chassis is overall the best currently, however the other ship types are far more specialized, which means they still have plenty of jobs they are superior at compared to Strikes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pretty sure that clearing it with the devs 2 years ago makes it not an exploit, but maybe that's just logic.

Same devs who made the game famous for still having bugs from beta and the same devs who rather shrug'd and said things are ok than fixing it on multiple occasions already? I guess that actually does make sense, you got me there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Same devs who made the game famous for still having bugs from beta and the same devs who rather shrug'd and said things are ok than fixing it on multiple occasions already? I guess that actually does make sense, you got me there.

 

Here's the thing it's clearly not an exploit because when things have been an exploit they've fixed them very quickly.

 

Just to quote a few examples, there used to be a pipe in Lost Shipyards Deathmatch you could go into that let you shoot out but blocked all shots that came in, giving you a huge unfair advantage. Once this was reported to them, it was fixed right away.

 

The other huge one was when a group of players on the EU servers managed to figure out how to get inside the Satellites so that they could never be attacked and you could never kill them. They were banned within days of using this exploit multiples times and it was also quickly fixed.

 

So to say that it's an exploit after them having literal years of time with the information is just silly.

 

 

As others have said it is the same technique used on other ships.

 

The big example being the Quick switch while playing Gunship. Railguns have a cooldown after you fire them before you can begin charging again, so to get around this we will start by full charging an Ion Railgun and after fired swap to Slug and immediately begin charging it bypassing the 2 second cooldown you're supposed to have after firing an Ion Railgun. The exact same mecanic is being used with the Rycer/Starguard it's just actually much harder to use, because if the target moves at all, landing lasers with different flight speeds becomes very difficult since your reticule jumps all over the place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The way I see it, prior to the current build the flashy was absolute BS (if used by mildly experienced pilot), gunship was very good, and 2 bomber builds were viable.

 

The current build gave the dog-fighters an easy lateral move into various BS fighter builds. Seemed silly to me to feature a dog-fighter, to a new patch where it features a dog-fighter, but so be it. One issue is that by switching the feature from scout to fighter, really pushes the bomber down in viability. The important bomber builds have no missile breaker, and EMPs are pretty common now so you cannot even hit things with your mines. Really 6 enemy ships that are faster and more manuverable than you are trying to get missile locks on you while you frantically try to LOS them and have little cover from mines. The fighter is the anti-bomber.

 

So now, various fighter builds - BS, Gunship build still viable, Bombers - very important to team, but too weak to play - not viable.

 

That being said, a few veteran bomber pilots have adapted and make the best of a bad situation and do ok, and most have simply switched to flying fighters as I do. The build can be fun, so the above problems may have made GSF bad in some ways, there still is room for fun.

 

As for the perfectly legal laser switching that a fighter build can do, that really is BS and should be not used and should be "fixed" by game devs. I truely think its considered legal simply because they have no will or ability to fix it, so you cannot punish people for using it. Really doubt the featured ship type should also do enormous burst damage with lasers. Adept players can still lead the war in kills without ever using this mechanic.

 

I worry a little about new players, many start with bombers while they perfect use of lasers/aiming it is nice to be able to drop a few mines out and actually do a little damage. They come in, get insta-killed by a mechanic they do not understand, and move on to other games.

 

So I like the build, if they eliminated that "mechanic", gave bombers some sort of breaker which allowed them to remain still or deflect or reflect the torp, and some sort of global cooldown on how many EMPS can hit your little mines over a time period, I think it would be much improved. Bringing a third class back into viability can only add to the game.

Edited by Stellarcrusade
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The T1F (Rycer / Star Guard) is very strong, with or without the quick-switching "Piledriver" mechanic. I'm still mostly using the old Ion Cannon + HLC combo, as I haven't had enough practice with the Piledriver. It is plenty powerful enough already. I did some calculations (hopefully correctly) to compare the two builds.

 

Build 1

- Ion Cannon (Drain Engine, Drain Weapon)

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Improved Tracking, Shield Piercing)

- Range Capacitor

- Ion-only against shields, switch to HLC-only against bare hull

 

Build 2

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Improved Tracking, Shield Piercing)

- Quad Laser Cannon (Reduced Power, Increased Hull Damage)

- Range Capacitor

- quick-switching

 

Maximum range

- Ion = 6325m

- QLC = 6613m

- HLC = 8596m

 

Let's assume our target is a gunship at 6000m, dead center, it has 23% evasion, and we don't have Wingman. The damage produced by each build is as follows. For the quick-switching, I'm simply adding HLC + QLC.

 

Scenario 1: Gunship with shields, 6000m

Ion = 1002 dps(shield)

HLC = 558 dps(shield) + 106 dps(hull due to shield-piercing)

QLC = 509 dps(shield) + 32 dps(hull)

HLC + QLC = 1067 dps(shield) + 138 dps(hull)

 

Scenario 2: Gunship without shields, 6000m

Ion = 125 dps(hull)

HLC = 709 dps(hull)

QLC = 635 dps(hull)

HLC + QLC = 1344 dps(hull)

 

The results:

- Compared to Ion-only against shielded target, Piledriver produces 20% more overall damage

- Compared to HLC-only against non-shielded target, Piledriver produces 90% more hull damage

 

The Piledriver is strong, but the old Ion + HLC combo can still do a lot of damage, especially when the target has shields which is most of the time. Piledriver also has a much higher power cost (Ion = 16.6, HLC = 17.4, QLC = 20.7, HLC + QLC = 38.1) and higher tracking penalty. If your quick-switching technique is not perfect, you will deal less than exactly HLC + QLC damage. The quick-switching mechanic really is not game-breaking or anything on its own. The entire Rycer / Star Guard is strong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The current build gave the dog-fighters an easy lateral move into various BS fighter builds. Seemed silly to me to feature a dog-fighter, to a new patch where it features a dog-fighter, but so be it.

 

The difference here is that the type 2 scout in the older meta had no effective answers that weren't heavy rock-paper-scissors. They were completely immune to missiles, could trivialize seeker mines (to the extent that seeker mines mostly served to pull a cooldown and allow peels to actually occur), could out turn any other meaningful fighter threat, could outrun any meaningful fighter threat, all while having literally every single piece of anti-railgun and anti-gunship tech on them. That was way way way too much.

 

Currently, type 2 scouts are still fine dogfighters- arguably the best in low-numbers fights in real games, still able to choose the pace of gameplay, still able to quickly move around the map, still excellent versus gunships. What they've lost is the immunity to missiles, which allows other ships to actually interact with them. They also get to choose a hull that lets them survive a single proton hit, or instead reduce their survivability versus railguns.

 

Meanwhile, the current meta has included a bunch of other dogfighters. For node builds, we have a node type 3 strike and a node type 2 strike, of which the type 3 strike is probably a little bit better, as it is more defensive in nature and can bring slicing instead of clusters- less damage, but way better at holding off an assault upon your ship for long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Meanwhile, the type 2 strike build can alternate between clusters and EMPs to get enemies to break, take damage, and spread controls. The piledriver can run around and attack nodes, using retros. The EMP field scout can spread CC in a much more guaranteed fashion than the tensor scout, who lives on the node. There's just so many meaningful dogfighters in this pen now. And the type 2 scout is still total hotness here in dom, getting from node to node.

 

For TDM builds, we saw the double speed EMP/proton type 2 strike build get a lot of adoption, but at this point it seems many pilots kinda have its number. Again, the type 3 strike has edged it out of position, and again, with slicing being a better method to guarantee the landing of a missile along with offer a very threatening control. Piledrivers are good here. Gunships are good here. Bomber nests aren't as good as before, but they are still worth building. The spread of viable ships in TDM seems to me to be a bit smaller than the spread of viable ships in dom.

 

One issue is that by switching the feature from scout to fighter, really pushes the bomber down in viability.

 

So, I agree that bombers aren't great... but there are times when they are. We've certainly seen people complain about huge numbers of bombers, especially the less experienced pilots. And everyone has reason to believe that in a full premade versus premade- like 8v8 or 12v12 of really good pilots- that bombers are the real threat in Dom. The issue is that these games are rare, and if you have two 4 man premades swimming in the middle of the 12v12, it is often not worth bringing your own type 1 bomber, instead asking one of the non-premade members to run beacon, because of how punishing it is for 25% of your premade to be married to one node mostly. In the full premade v premade team, anyone you occupy is roughly as good as you, roughly as good as anyone else. Anyone attacking you, again, same thing. In the games where each side has 5 or less really solid pilots and the remainder are not so wonderful, it's easy to simply not engage the good enemy bomber, and instead bring more force to where their bomber isn't.

 

 

The fighter is the anti-bomber.

 

The gunship is really the anti bomber. A type 1 scout with EMP and rapids will wreck a bomber really good too. Solid play from a type 2 scout with bursts will still wreck bombers just like before- heck, the scout gets to close faster with the better F3. Basically, bombers are team support ships, whereas previously they had a strong enough advantage versus most scouts that you could survive long enough for backup to arrive.

 

Bombers - very important to team, but too weak to play - not viable.

 

I just disagree with that assessment.

 

As for the perfectly legal laser switching that a fighter build can do, that really is BS and should be not used and should be "fixed" by game devs.

 

I think it's really great. Given how rigid the requirements are for piledriving, I think it's a really solid emergent piece of play. Almost any lateral motion completely wrecks the strategy.

 

If the devs wished to disable piledriving, they would simply do whatever is necessary to keep the thing that tracks "where you are in the weapon cycle" and move it over to the new weapon. Maybe that's hard, and they simply don't want to bother. Or maybe they are fine with it, because it is an awesome playstyle with literally a giant pile of counters.

 

Really doubt the featured ship type should also do enormous burst damage with lasers.

The only ship to feature double the lasers of any other ship shouldn't do good laser damage?

 

Adept players can still lead the war in kills without ever using this mechanic.

 

Of course, no one is saying the piledriver is the best thing ever. It's great damage, it's great burst, but it has so many requirements to get this lance charge to line up properly.

 

I worry a little about new players, many start with bombers while they perfect use of lasers/aiming it is nice to be able to drop a few mines out and actually do a little damage. They come in, get insta-killed by a mechanic they do not understand, and move on to other games.

 

If someone gets gibbed by a mechanic they don't understand in GSF and immediately leaves, bye felicia. GSF is filled with a huge assortment of mechanics that can kill a new pilot without them understanding what is happening. Here's a list:

 

1- Gunships. New players don't understand gunships, and often cry endlessly about them.

2- Scouts shooting lasers. New players don't understand that being shot with lasers requires them to move, and often die.

3- Strikes shooting lasers. Same problem with (2)

4- Interdiction drones deployed near new players. Drop a drone behind a new player, and not only will the drone frequently solo the player, the player will often accidentally suicide.

4- Slicing.

5- EMP aoe. New players often don't understand they can't break a missile when afflicted by the EMP debuff.

 

If a new player leaves the moment he stares down a strike fighter who is shooting at him and blows him up, he will never play GSF period, because at some point he will die to something he doesn't understand. There's nothing particularly novel about this.

 

gave bombers some sort of breaker which allowed them to remain still

Bombers already have an engine component which does this- they simply can't bring the gamechanging beacon at the same time as this. Bombers generally don't need to be rewarded for holding still any more than they already are, IMO.

 

Bringing a third class back into viability can only add to the game.

 

Bombers are viable today in all game modes. They are not viable on all four man premade teams, but that's because pugs can and do play bombers pretty good. When our premade fights another in a game in the live queue, the allied and enemy bombers are going to have a huge say in how that game turns out, both the type 1 and the type 2 bombers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The T1F (Rycer / Star Guard) is very strong, with or without the quick-switching "Piledriver" mechanic. I'm still mostly using the old Ion Cannon + HLC combo, as I haven't had enough practice with the Piledriver. It is plenty powerful enough already.

 

This stuff sounds great, but then you get to:

 

I did some calculations (hopefully correctly) to compare the two builds.

 

There's a lot to dislike about your comparison. I don't know that it's wrong, but it is discomforting to see dps numbers used to draw a conclusion, as the further you get from a pure continuous stream of energy, the further dps becomes lame compared to damage per shot.

 

When you open up with ion cannon, you hit someone with ion cannon. After a delay, you hit them with a second ion cannon. Ion cannon shoots at the same rate as quads, I think, so this seems fine to compare.

When you open up with heavy leaser, you hit someone with a heavy laser, switch, and immediately land the quad. After a delay, you hit them with a second quad. At this point, you switch back, and a heavy will be with you shortly.

If you are using ions and heavies, what will normally happen is, you will likely switch to heavies after landing that second ion cannon, or sometimes after the third. At this point your heavy should fire immediately- the weapon swap here basically being a piledrive. But don't wait to see hits landing for jack squat against bare hull, don't even wait for the number to pop up- once they've taken their prescribed ion dosage, switch to heavies.

 

I agree that ion/heavy is a fine build. But it's not piledriving, and a dps analysis really leaves out that initial mapping of H+Q, Q+H being compared to I, I. Heavies are a slower laser than quads and ions, but the numbers of heavies that shows up in this space is roughly equal to the number of ions over the span that matters. The dps numbers discuss a world where a number of shots have been fired where that important initial "charge" doesn't matter. Basically, heavies does way more dps out of the gate than the dps number gives it credit for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

There's a lot to dislike about your comparison. I don't know that it's wrong, but it is discomforting to see dps numbers used to draw a conclusion, as the further you get from a pure continuous stream of energy, the further dps becomes lame compared to damage per shot.

...

 

Sure, why not?

 

Here are some calculations for the time-to-kill. I changed the HLC level 4 upgrade from Improved Tracking to Ignore Armor, and corrected the gunship's armor (5%, not 0%). This gets a bit long compared to the dps metrics, because the accuracy-evasion check gives a probability distribution for the number of shots required.

 

Build 1

- Ion Cannon (Drain Engine, Drain Weapon)

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Ignore Armor, Shield Piercing)

- Range Capacitor

- stream of ion, quick-switch once, stream of HLC

 

Build 2

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Ignore Armor, Shield Piercing)

- Quad Laser Cannon (Reduced Power, Increased Hull Damage)

- Range Capacitor

- quick-switch repeatedly

 

Ion reload time = 0.370s

HLC reload time = 0.500s

QLC reload time = 0.370s

assumed quick-switch time = 0.000s

 

The target is a stationary gunship at 6000m, dead center, it has 23% evasion, 5% armor, 1870 shields, 1250 hull, and we don't have Wingman.

 

Build 1 minimum time-to-kill from the first hit = 2.111s

(1.111s for 4 Ion hits + 1.000s for 3 HLC hits)

The probability to land 4 consecutive Ion shots + 3 HLC shots with none evaded = 26.7%

 

Build 1 average time-to-kill from the first hit = 2.750s

(1.394s weighted average for 4 Ion hits + m Ion evasion misses

+ 1.356s weighted average for 3 HLC hits + n HLC evasion misses)

 

Build 2 Minimum time-to-kill from the first hit = 1.500s

(1.500s for 4 HLC hits + 5 QLC hits, 0 shots evaded)

The probability to land 4 HLC + 5 QLC shots with none evaded = 7.3%

 

Build 2 average time-to-kill from the first hit = 2.4s approx.

This is approximate because the maths got really long.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Linuxizer

 

It seems i missed your math post a few days ago I really like it, it's the exact math I was doing for days after Audson introduced me to Piledriving!

 

Just so you know we actually run Damage Capacitor and not Ranged with it, because it does change the TTK's to use one less shot, so it makes it even faster. What that also does it help us consume less weapon power because the build is just starving for weapon power.

 

The other thing and the reason I absolutely love Heavy + Quads in Deathmatch. Is that vs the exact same Gunship setup you put up here for your test. (You know the ideal Piledriver target :p ) If you have Damage Overcharge and Damage Capacitor it only takes Heavy switch Quad, Quad switch Heavy to kill them. It's a 0.5 second kill on a Gunship, there's almost no way to react to this in time if you don't see them coming before they shoot. Since a Piledriver ship is an excellent ship to scoop up Damage Overcharges constantly this is a very important marker for the build, learning to get the 0.5 kill often makes the build go absolutely nuts.

 

 

Now even without that, using only your math we can see that Heavy + Quads have superior kills times. The next huge reason I prefer to not use Ion is because of the lockouts, being Sliced or EMP'd into Ion Cannon only is absolutely brutal. Since you're often flying around in Ion's because you want to open with them it happens so often too. Where as with Heavy + Quads, you're always sitting on Heavy's since you want to open with that, and that's your preferred laser anyways so being locked into that is no big deal. If the worst does happen though and you get locked into Quads at some moment, having only Quads is still much better then only Ion.

 

 

Now having said all this, your initial point was that the Rycer/Starguard is still plenty powerful without Piledriving, and you're absolutely right. It's just that little bit better with it, propelling it up to the top of the meta with the likes of the Mangler/Quarrel Gunship and Slicing Clarion/Imperium Strike fighter. One of which (The slicing one) is a really good counter to Piledriving for those of you out there looking for a really great way to counter it.

Edited by Drakkolich
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Just so you know we actually run Damage Capacitor and not Ranged with it, because it does change the TTK's to use one less shot, so it makes it even faster. What that also does it help us consume less weapon power because the build is just starving for weapon power.

 

 

This is a good point I somehow overlooked for the last two years. It's been a useful thread for me if no one else :)

 

It also reminded me, I forgot to include the Power to Blaster (F1) bonus to damage (+25%). So I updated numbers, and also included Wingman, and changed the target distance to 5500m (because Ion Cannon with Drain Engine and Damage Capacitor only have 5750m range).

 

Build 1

- Ion Cannon (Drain Engine, Drain Weapon)

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Ignore Armor, Shield Piercing)

- Damage Capacitor

- F1

- Wingman is active

- stream of ion, quick-switch once, stream of HLC

 

Build 2

- Heavy Laser Cannon (Ignore Armor, Shield Piercing)

- Quad Laser Cannon (Reduced Power, Increased Hull Damage)

- Damage Capacitor

- F1

- Wingman is active

- quick-switch repeatedly

 

The target is a stationary gunship at 5500m, dead center, it has 23% evasion, 5% armor, 1870 shields, 1250 hull.

 

Build 1 minimum time-to-kill from the first hit = 1.741s

(0.000s) Ion +637 shield damage

(0.370s) Ion +637 shield damage

(0.741s) Ion +596 shield damage + 5 hull damage

(0.741s) HLC + 592 hull damage

(1.241s) HLC + 592 hull damage

(1.741s) HLC + 61 hull damage

The probability all 6 shots are not evaded = 99.1%

 

Build 1 average time-to-kill from the first hit = 1.744s

 

Build 2 Minimum time-to-kill from the first hit = 1.111s

(0.000s) HLC +466 shield damage +89 hull damage

(0.000s) QLC +367 shield damage +23 hull damage

(0.370s) QLC +367 shield damage +23 hull damage

(0.500s) HLC +466 shield damage +89 hull damage

(0.741s) QLC +205 shield damage +201 hull damage

(1.000s) HLC +592 hull damage

(1.111s) QLC +234 hull damage

The probability all 7 shots are not evaded = 66.3%

 

Build 2 average time-to-kill from the first hit = 1.370s

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...