I noticed that a lot of the cartel market discounts this week are GSF-centric. Is Bioware throwing chum in the water to see how many bites they get?

I noticed that a lot of the cartel market discounts this week are GSF-centric. Is Bioware throwing chum in the water to see how many bites they get?

 

If so, this experiment is completely flawed from the start.

 

The only one of those ships worth buying is the Dronecarrier, and it was on much bigger discount not a month ago.

 

The Strike is an alternate of a mid-tier Strike that everyone starts with.

 

The Gunship is an alternate of a top-tier ship that all subscribers have, and which only costs 2500 fleet to acquire. Also it has only one real viable build (with a one variation for shield choice).

 

Even as someone who is normally a GSF spending whale, I see no reason to make any purchases here--not even just to support GSF.

 

Now what BioWare should do is just offer new versions of each Cartel skin which duplicate more interesting ships. Perhaps a ship that looks like a Gladiator but is in fact a Clarion/Imperium. I'd buy a ton of those. Or a ship that looks like a Mailoc but is in fact a Jurgoran/Condor. Or a ship that looks like a Firehauler but duplicates Decimus/Sledgehammer. I would buy any of those--they are all useful and have multiple viable builds.

 

I'd prefer new models for T3 duplicates, but at this point I know that's too much work. So just change the name of each existing Cartel ship and make it duplicate the T3 of its class.

These are good discounts, but they need to stop the foot-drag on the IL-5. Honestly, 1000cc should just be the new permanent price of all of them.

Actually, what they should do is just produce brand new skins altogether and put them on old ship styles. I think people would shell out for a new skin of their favourite ship style. Picture a Rycer frame that looked more like a TIE Defender or a Sting that looked more like a TIE Phantom. I think there's some real coin to be made by Bioware there and with virtually no game altering or breaking. Who wouldn't pay for a new skin of their most prized ships? Hell I'd even drop some CC on new paint schemes, paint colours, gas canister colours, engine reactants etc. I'd pay good $ for the actual TIE fighter engine sound, it's already in-game ala starfighter battle camera toy!!

Actually, what they should do is just produce brand new skins altogether and put them on old ship styles. I think people would shell out for a new skin of their favourite ship style. Picture a Rycer frame that looked more like a TIE Defender or a Sting that looked more like a TIE Phantom. I think there's some real coin to be made by Bioware there and with virtually no game altering or breaking. Who wouldn't pay for a new skin of their most prized ships? Hell I'd even drop some CC on new paint schemes, paint colours, gas canister colours, engine reactants etc. I'd pay good $ for the actual TIE fighter engine sound, it's already in-game ala starfighter battle camera toy!!

 

Noooo move away from tie's and xwings. it's supposed to be like 20000 years in the past. Give us something that looks NOTHING like they're from the movies. I refuse to believe that there has been 0 aerospace engineering and design changes for 20000 years in a galaxy that is in a state of civil war 99% of the time.

Noooo move away from tie's and xwings. it's supposed to be like 20000 years in the past. Give us something that looks NOTHING like they're from the movies. I refuse to believe that there has been 0 aerospace engineering and design changes for 20000 years in a galaxy that is in a state of civil war 99% of the time.

 

Imperium, Rycer, Quell, Warcarrier and Rampart aren't exotic enough for you? They really look nothing like pre-existing Star Wars ships.

 

And guess what--for over a century now, planes have been built with fuselages, elevators, ailerons, rudders, and propellers.

 

Carts have been around thousands of years and yet still all use round wheels.

 

Technology, especially when based on macro-manipulation of physical properties, eventually reaches a limit where further advancement is about optimization of existing components, not inventing new components.

 

The Star Wars galaxy we see is one where the fundamentals of design for spaceships, blasters, architecture, etc. were optimized millennia before even the time of KOTOR1. All the variation we see, throughout KOTOR, SWTOR, the prequels, and the classic trilogy, is not about raw advancement, but instead is about specialization and optimization for specific uses and environments, both physical and tactical.

 

I can only hope the third movie doesn't break this pattern. It would be a shame if The Force Awakens shows a bunch of supertechnology beyond what was seen in the original trilogy, purely because 30+ years have passed. At this point in the Star Wars galaxy, 30 years is nothing. 300 is nothing. 3000 is nothing.

 

I do not believe an X-wing is significantly more advanced than a Clarion. It's just different. Perhaps the X-wing has different refueling requirements. Perhaps it has more off-the-shelf parts. Perhaps it requires more or less training than a Clarion does.

 

Conversely, a TIE Fighter is not weaker than an X-wing because the rebels are more technologically advanced than the Empire. It's weaker because the Empire uses mass production and swarm tactics, with ready access to carrier capital ships, whereas the rebels have few pilots and even fewer carriers.

 

That being said, TIE Fighters would make a lot more sense if the pilots were clones. Then it would make sense for the fighters to be cheap.

 

But if TIE Pilots are well-trained graduates of some academy, then it makes little sense that the Empire wouldn't give them state of the art fighters. I mean, the Empire must spend a ridiculous amount of money on AT-AT's, which are extremely impractical and mainly used to inspire terror.

 

If you think about it, the original trilogy actually gives very little indication that TIE's are inferior to X-wings in any way. A New Hope presents TIE's as faster, and we see both X-wings and TIE's destroyed or barely surviving single laser hits. The whole trope of TIE's being fragile came from video games, where you (the hero) pilot an X-wing that needs to have several hit points to make the game winnable, and you have to shoot down dozens of TIE's to get points.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Nemarus

I do get where you're coming from but it is a Star Wars universe and people do play it because SWTOR parallels a loved franchise. We still have blasters, lightsabers, Hutts in skiffs, bounty hunters are still viewed as "Jedi hunting imperials" where they could work just as easily for republic chasing sith. It's the themes and nostalgia that bring people here. Does the Clarion not look like an ARC-170 starfighter? Does the Star Guard not look like an X-Wing minus the second set of wings? Do jawas not have sand crawlers on Tatooine?

 

It's the theme of familiarity but in a different era that brings people here but allows Bioware creative freedom to do as they please hence the parallel universe. Bioware knows what sells for them and that's movie-like immersive stories. They wouldn't have creative freedom if they had to worry about Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker they made their own parallel - Revan. That's why they moved away from Neverwinter Night, which restricted their creativity and story writing and developed Dragon Age, their own franchise of a sword & sorcery fantasy. So while I do understand your desire for "new and shiny" I do play the game for the lightsabers and TIE fighters

I do get where you're coming from but it is a Star Wars universe and people do play it because SWTOR parallels a loved franchise. We still have blasters, lightsabers, Hutts in skiffs, bounty hunters are still viewed as "Jedi hunting imperials" where they could work just as easily for republic chasing sith. It's the themes and nostalgia that bring people here. Does the Clarion not look like an ARC-170 starfighter? Does the Star Guard not look like an X-Wing minus the second set of wings? Do jawas not have sand crawlers on Tatooine?

 

It's the theme of familiarity but in a different era that brings people here but allows Bioware creative freedom to do as they please hence the parallel universe. Bioware knows what sells for them and that's movie-like immersive stories. They wouldn't have creative freedom if they had to worry about Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker they made their own parallel - Revan. That's why they moved away from Neverwinter Night, which restricted their creativity and story writing and developed Dragon Age, their own franchise of a sword & sorcery fantasy. So while I do understand your desire for "new and shiny" I do play the game for the lightsabers and TIE fighters

If you think about it, the original trilogy actually gives very little indication that TIE's are inferior to X-wings in any way.

 

It sort of does. Rebel pilots discuss shielding tactics as tech chatter, and the ship clearly has a lot more and larger guns. TIE Fighters get gunned down pretty hard on the Falcon, and many guns shoot and miss the X-Wings. Notice that one thing that is mentioned is deflector shield, so just viewing the movie we can't dismiss the possibility that the shield was meant to prevent the ship from being struck, not absorb energy like in Star Trek. The guns firing at the X-Wings during the trench run could have been intended to show the shields preventing the fire from hitting the ships at the time for all I know.

 

The whole trope of TIE's being fragile came from video games, where you (the hero) pilot an X-wing that needs to have several hit points to make the game winnable, and you have to shoot down dozens of TIE's to get points.

 

I actually thought it came from a book or something? I can remember clearly "knowing" that X-Wings had shields and TIE Fighter's didn't before I played any games, but that doesn't prove anything. It does make me curious, however.

Technology, especially when based on macro-manipulation of physical properties, eventually reaches a limit where further advancement is about optimization of existing components, not inventing new components.

 

I've sort of thought that their technology might be based on several assumptions and handed down tricks- I don't think that they are really at the level of "we are constantly probing the limits of reality with science" or "this is the best technology that can exist in reality". But I definitely agree that even Star Wars (later retitled to "A New Hope") and pretty much all of Holy Trilogy imply that science and technology is just something that is, and that engineering is mostly where they are driving progress from- the hints that their society doesn't involve massive technological changes isn't explicitly stated as Old Republic sort of needs it to be, but it is rather implied.

 

 

I do not believe an X-wing is significantly more advanced than a Clarion. It's just different.

 

I actually would assume that it's more powerful- but significantly? Now that you put letters to screen, I can actually see them just being different, being a thing. I was sort of assuming that there was a technological game being played- for instance, I would assume that superior shielding or deflection tech would make the railguns able to be mounted shipwide a lot less useful, just by virtue of there not being anything like that in their modern era- when I saw the gunship, that was my implicit assumption to parse that. I was like "oh, ok, in this era, railguns can't be defended against yet, so they are an effective sniping weapon". But even if that was someone's intention, I very much doubt Bioware wants to add some Lore Entry like that, to get categorized on Wookiepedia (and then have to maintain it forever).

 

Perhaps the X-wing has different refueling requirements. Perhaps it has more off-the-shelf parts. Perhaps it requires more or less training than a Clarion does.

 

Maybe, actually. One thing that I think is interesting is the astromech droid decision. That's one of the cooler pieces of fiction pretty much stated in original- you'll see the rebels all use the droids as navigators, and they'll chatter with them as the droid makes hyperspace calculations. Why risk all that? Why not put the computer in the X-Wing? It didn't look like these implied questions were meant to be answered (though I'm sure EU guys have some whole screed), but rather make you wonder about it in the back of your mind.

 

 

But if TIE Pilots are well-trained graduates of some academy, then it makes little sense that the Empire wouldn't give them state of the art fighters.

 

The TIE pilots we see are dehumanized so much (so we don't feel bad about them getting axed) and are wearing environmental suites (so the possibility of the TIE being open to space remained for later writers, but it could have been intended) that it's hard to know much about them. Certainly the lore we got out of the TIE Fighter game was pretty strange- that these unshielded craft would be used as a trick to get the most possible guns at the most possible vantage points, and that everyone was this highly trained pilot whose life was utterly expendable for some reason. I don't think it's a coincidence that the game immediately puts you into ships that have shields and are super powerful, resulting in there not being much time actually spent in a TIE Fighter, TIE Bomber, or TIE Interceptor, compared to all the woozle-doozle supercraft (all of whom have generous shields).

Edited March 18, 2015 by Verain

Well, fascinating sidetrack aside, I will spend some money this week simply out of a desire that Bioware see some income from GSF stuff. I know the ships they're offering won't mean a lot. Personally I would have rather had the scout in the mix instead of the strike. But I'll give them a few "sales" to show that someone cares.