And a ship standing still IS much easier to lock onto. The willing trade of being a total sitting duck for long-range firepower is pretty explicit in the design of gunships as a ship class.

Not really significantly easier in practice. There's that little issue with lock warning tones instantly alerting the gunship to the fact that it's being targeted.

There's the exception for clusters because of their very short lock time, but in general if you want to kill a gunship you don't use a missile at all until after it has blown both it's engine maneuver and distortion field.

Starting a missile lock isn't what you do to shoot a missile at a gunship, it's what you do to encourage the gunship to either run or to start shooting at you.

The problem that MMORPG players have with gunships is that they lack combat flight sim experience and therefore make the mistake of thinking that gunships are starfighters.

Gunships are not starfighters. They are medium range large caliber mobile air/space defense artillery. Treat them as air defense units and they really aren't a problem. For that matter, they aren't even very good air defense units.

However, if you know absolutely nothing about combat flight in places where air defenses might be present, one of the things that you don't know is that ignoring the air defenses to chase other fighters is a really good way to get shot down.

The really brief checklist for how to deal with that situation is:

1) Be paranoid about air defenses

2) Be more paranoid, because you weren't paranoid enough during step 1

3) Make sure you see them before they're close enough to shoot at you

4a) Then stay the **** out of their range or

4b) Use standard SEAD/DEAD techniques to kill the **** out of them before

5) Going off to play at dogfighting with other fighters.

That holds for GSF just as much as it holds for a higher fidelity combat flight sim. The chief difference is that the gunships have a depressingly short respawn time, so you can spend a whole match killing them without really accomplishing much. Of course, in the absence of real combat objectives like bombing a convoy, taking out a command post, or sinking a warship it does give you something to do in a GSF match.

Besides, combat pilots are supposed to hate air defenses with a passion. If people weren't complaining about gunships (medium range air defenses) and bombers (short range air defenses) it would be pretty good evidence of serious over-nerfing of those classes.

Of course, GSF is missing the fundamental core of combat aviation, delivering bombs on target on time. Dogfighting is the cool element in popular imagination, but a truly skilled combat aviator doesn't become an ace by shooting down five enemies with cannons and missiles. They take out whole squadrons by bombing the enemy base in the middle of the night when they're all asleep.

The problem isn't the gunship playing alone... but 2-3 or more, "gunship wall" tactic with few GS covering each other.

 

And I agree with one thing - the game would fare much better without gunships or bombers.

Mr. Gunship, tear down this wall!

1. Get 1-2 ion railgun gunships on your own team.
   
2. Ion spam on enemy gunship or sentries / bomber
   
3. Gunships without weapon pool to shoot & no mines or drones
   
4. ??????
   
5. Kill
   

The problem isn't the gunship playing alone... but 2-3 or more, "gunship wall" tactic with few GS covering each other.

 

And I agree with one thing - the game would fare much better without gunships or bombers.

Right, because everyone taking Stingfires is the recipe for NONSTOP EXCITEMENT. Give me tactical variety any day. Some compositions are harder to break than others, depending on the situation, but it forces people to plan ahead and to react appropriately on the fly. It will ALWAYS disproportionately hurt new players, because they won't have the experience to do either.

Bad players will always complain about something. If it's not getting 2 shot by a railgun from 15km it'll be someone popping a CD and wasting them in 2 shots from up close.

The only thing that actually bothers me in GSF right now is railgun sentry drone, because that is just cheap. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is fair game, though I may hunt people down for annoying me with it *cough* Sabo Probe *cough*.

IGunships can prevent dogfighting, or at least maim any scout caught unawares. Thats why you keep an eye out for them, always be looking / tabbing. Try to take them out of the mix first since they are your biggest threat. Once they are gone work on the other scouts then the strikes etc

It's not that they are the biggest threat. It's that, out of all the threats, it's the one that will absolutely devastate you if you ignore it, while doing essentially nothing to you if you chase it. If you ignore a gunship, within the next ten seconds you'll eat a railgun. If you go for him, you likely will not, and neither will the rest of your team.

IMO bombers and gunships are not out of place in this "dogfighting game" . They are tactical additions that add depth to the battlefield. Making it so that a dogfighter has to keep his eyes peeled and not just focus fire targets one after another.

Totally agree. If the gunships and bombers were GOOD at dogfighting while also bringing new strategy and tactics, I would be very displeased. As it is, I think that they are solid additions that define the area.

Tell me how gunship pilots are "flying" in these engagements.

 

They're not flying at all. They're sitting perfectly still not doing a damn thing that resembles flying.

A stationary target is extraordinarily vulnerable, especially to quads and pods, but honestly to anything. Gunships spend a lot of time flying and managing their resources- much more so than scouts, whose very efficient boosting is a massive aid to their play.

And I agree with one thing - the game would fare much better without gunships or bombers.

Lol. Deleting half the classes in the game would make it super shallow. You have a hard time choosing anything but the type 2 scout now, could you picture in a world without bombers?

The problem that MMORPG players have with gunships is that they lack combat flight sim experience and therefore make the mistake of thinking that gunships are starfighters.

 

Gunships are not starfighters. They are medium range large caliber mobile air/space defense artillery. Treat them as air defense units and they really aren't a problem. For that matter, they aren't even very good air defense units.

Nailed it.

The only thing that actually bothers me in GSF right now is railgun sentry drone, because that is just cheap.

You aren't alone in despising this. I love this drone- I think it's great. But Stasie and others dislike that this thing always is doing hull damage if you are within range and LOS of it, and it whittles you down, even if you can outfly the entire enemy team. My opinion is, it's good that something serves that role- the ability to outfly enemies should ultimately have some meaningful check that doesn't care about how much distortion you stacked and how skilled you are. At some point, the numbers of enemies should weigh against you meaningfully, and I think the railgun sentry drone nails that pretty perfectly.

They had made it slow paced and boring as hell. Wonder why less and less people play gsf...

I'm not sure if less people do. But if they do, it's being countered by interesting ships like bombers and gunships, and caused by lack of maps and modes. The real thing is that many MMO players are shockingly awful at this game, and I think the devs routinely forget how derp much of their audience can be. I mean, I've seen bad players in WoW battlegrounds and even SWTOR warzones who, while terrible, still have hit points, still have cooldowns, and still can meaningfully understand and use their surroundings. Meanwhile, a new pilot can just get waxed SO HARD. The ships are meant to be evasive, and one not boosting will just die in less than three seconds, something your fresh max level WoW guy won't do. It's like, I mean, it's honestly surprising how terrible a new player can be. The skill floor is MUCH higher in GSF than in the groundgame or elsewhere. If anything else, that's the contributor.

The best thing for GSF would be some solid PvE missions. Which is essentially asking for a new X-Wing game to be put inside this game, so I don't think it would happen. But understand that the SCOPE and FRESHNESS of the game normally determine who plays the game, and for how long. If the game was really just "gunships are gods" like some baddies think, but otherwise super compelling to everyone naturally, then you'd just see the game constantly be queues popping into eight gunship games- everyone would play it, but in this example, the balance issue would be visible in what ships get picked. Instead, we see moderate participation with a reasonable set of ships. Given how cheap this game was to make, I'm sure they are pretty pleased with the results.

But I'm so tired of "everyone quit because of MY pet peeve, which happens to be class balance (always)". Games with class balance issues as a driver of player participation don't look like this one.

Alright, I played two matches of GSF last night. Regular all-out dogfights, I'm hit-or-miss. That Domination style match? I defended a node and pretty much made it "my house." Scout tried to come in? Dead. Fighter? Dead.

Two gunships - or actually, the same one twice - tried to take me out. I frequently do nothing more than slowly circle the node really close to it while hitting tab and looking at where it's directing my target and their range, so I was able to spot them before they could snipe me. Both times, I flew straight towards the gunship with all power diverted to shields and locked on with my missiles. Both times, I blew them up without them blowing me up. I was badly hurt since they only got a shot from their main cannon off, but I survived and went back to the node to get fixed up.

Taking on a gunship with a scout vehicle is possible. You just have to play chicken with them and be ready to gamble it all on a crazy maneuver.

Taking on a gunship with a scout vehicle is possible. You just have to play chicken with them and be ready to gamble it all on a crazy maneuver.

Sure, if you have a scout pimped up heavily and you face a standard-equipped gunship.

On my experience a pimped-gunship is capable of 1-shot-1-kill poor standard scouts and that shouldn't be possible with any weapon at max level.

Anyway I see the problem in another way: gunship=camping; bomber=mines/drones-pooping. Actually this is what fails the gameplay. Star Wars was always seen as an icon of frenetic and crazy space battles now here reduced in camping and mine/drone fielding. Again I ask: why in the space they come out with the idea of rail-guns and bombers in these scenarios we have? Really I know the answer: money. Pay for this thing (horrible even to see) and you'll win 75% of times. Ok, I can see the point and even understand it but please create some scenarios for bombers and such and don't pretend to treat them like fighters in what we have now. Or just redesign them (impossible even to thing as people spent money for those things and they will blame heaven and hell if something is changed)...

Anyway I'll keep playing those battles even if I win 1 game over 15 or 20, no matter: I can use the conquest points anyway.

Something for the gameplay should be done though. My proposal? Remove rail-guns, Lower evasion to 0.00 to standing-still-camping ships no matter of any bonus they can have and remove bombers for those scenarios we have now and implement some bombing scenarios where everything could be more then a field of drones/mines.

I think my scout ship only has a few things added to it that aren't standard "straight out of the box" items, and only a few things have that first upgrade level bought. Like, I bought those 10k range homing torpedoes for it since I like those things. Think I have rapid-fire blasters, also. Don't know if anything else was significantly upgraded, but it's pretty much a basic vanilla fighter (I did very few matches of GSF total - maybe 12? With 6 wins, 6 losses?)

It could also be that I got lucky against someone who wasn't very good with a gunship yet, or I had a dead old wizard talking to me while playing. Damn my audible hallucinations!

Edit: Meant "basic vanilla scout ship." Not a fighter. I've noticed I don't do too well with the fighter ship - I need the speed of the scout to really excel, as I use mostly hit-and-run and "gang up on someone else" tactics. I get a missile lock? I barrel roll (if possible) and gun it the hell out of Dodge. Plus, tweaking your power settings helps - I almost always run in full shields mode, unless I'm "objective running," when I throw it all to my engines.

Sure, if you have a scout pimped up heavily and you face a standard-equipped gunship.

On my experience a pimped-gunship is capable of 1-shot-1-kill poor standard scouts and that shouldn't be possible with any weapon at max level.

Anyway I see the problem in another way: gunship=camping; bomber=mines/drones-pooping. Actually this is what fails the gameplay. Star Wars was always seen as an icon of frenetic and crazy space battles now here reduced in camping and mine/drone fielding. Again I ask: why in the space they come out with the idea of rail-guns and bombers in these scenarios we have? Really I know the answer: money. Pay for this thing (horrible even to see) and you'll win 75% of times. Ok, I can see the point and even understand it but please create some scenarios for bombers and such and don't pretend to treat them like fighters in what we have now. Or just redesign them (impossible even to thing as people spent money for those things and they will blame heaven and hell if something is changed)...

Anyway I'll keep playing those battles even if I win 1 game over 15 or 20, no matter: I can use the conquest points anyway.

Something for the gameplay should be done though. My proposal? Remove rail-guns, Lower evasion to 0.00 to standing-still-camping ships no matter of any bonus they can have and remove bombers for those scenarios we have now and implement some bombing scenarios where everything could be more then a field of drones/mines.

You can have one-shots on scouts, but it will require a crit, which is a 15k tier upgrade for slug railgun, and only gives a 16% chance, even if they can beat the baked-in RNG of scout evasion and maneuverability and HIT the scout. If the scout did not even both with the early 1k survivability upgrades, or was just wandering along in a straight line, I have little sympathy. Situational awareness and piloting skill will give a fair bit of immunity to railgun fire. If you get surprised with a railgun crit, well, it's not that different from getting jumped and burned down at close range when you weren't paying attention.

And a stock scout WILL shut down a gunship if properly played. There's no gunship build that can casually ignore a charging scout. Even the best close-quarters gunship, the T3, does not have immunity by class design to being shut down. Approach in a rapid corkscrew while boosting, and enter a turning fight with the gunship. Even the top gunship pilots will have a hard time hitting you with a railgun on that kind of approach pattern. Once you get within the minimum effective range of a railgun, If you're a better pilot, you are very, very, likely to kill the gunship, and almost guaranteed to prevent him from contributing meaningfully to the game until he gets help or respawns and gets back into the fight.

As for the "money" quote - you're deluded. If you want to play gunships or bombers, play the game enough to get them - if you're a subscriber, who gets coins for free, it takes at MOST one weekly's worth of matches. Do you expect to get geared in PVP or PVE after a few rounds in a WZ/operation? I have 12 maxed ships, and enough requisition to max several more, and I have never bought a single cartel coin to do it. Kindly take your pay 2 win red herring and learn 2 play.

That's kind of what I did with this guy, Fractal - I was "listing lazily to the left" on my approach. Plus, I managed to fire off my torpedoes and only managed to blow the ship up usually a few K from the enemy in question, like my guy opened his cockpit and shot the pilot with a handgun on his way by.

Mind you, all power diverted to shields, and me limping away in the yellow / red zones of my hull. Doable, but a razor's edge of doable - someone backing up the gunship would have found me easy pickings unless he tried shooting my rear bumper.

That's kind of what I did with this guy, Fractal - I was "listing lazily to the left" on my approach. Plus, I managed to fire off my torpedoes and only managed to blow the ship up usually a few K from the enemy in question, like my guy opened his cockpit and shot the pilot with a handgun on his way by.

 

Mind you, all power diverted to shields, and me limping away in the yellow / red zones of my hull. Doable, but a razor's edge of doable - someone backing up the gunship would have found me easy pickings unless he tried shooting my rear bumper.

Stock strikes have a larger and smaller margin of error against gunships all at the same time. Larger in that they are more durable and unlikely to be oneshotted even in the stock vs mastered scenario. Smaller in that they don't have the easy access to base evasion or boost efficiency to pull the radical closing maneuvers that give you the best chance against gunships.

Was the gunship in your scenario a type2? If it were a type 1 or type 3, it's very hard to land proton because of the double missile break. They have to be under quite a bit of missile pressure or you have to finesse the approach a lot. To kill them down you do often really have to close to primary weapon range.

Scouts are generally perceived as being highly effective against gunships. I will say that a gunships that will attempt to tank a scout in melee is going to get what he deserves.

I will say that as you increase the gear on your scout, you'll become very likely to deal more damage in a small window, and very likely to avoid incoming damage, but you won't really be able to take any more shots total.

In your example, you sat at a node, so you had adequate purple, blue, and yellow. When an enemy moved into position, you aggressively charged him. That's a pretty solid strat, but many of the folks that cry- in some cases logging over to try their hand at wordsmithing- normally get in a turn fight with a strike fighter away from any line of sight. They tunnel their enemy, and are beginning to win, when a gunship puts it in both holes. This angers them because they wanted to have their little solo fight, and were bothered that their total obliviousness to the rest of the map got them killed.

Yeah, I don't worry when stuff like that happens. I see the gunships as like snipers in a shooter match - if you sit in one spot and try to kill everyone without moving much, you'll be taken out yourself fairly quick. If you move, take a shot of opportunity like you described, then move to another spot, that might do better - you become harder to track and you might not top the leaderboards, but you're invaluable to your team when they get into a one-on-one fight and might be outmatched.

I try to do the same when it's a big all-out brawl - see someone fighting with another guy and just try to throw a wrench into the works, make it a sudden 2-on-1 situation. At best, we kill the guy. At worst, we drive him off to have him lick his wounds.