This is going to be extremely unscientific, but in general, how do you feel about time to kill (TTK) in GSF?

TTK represents the window of time that starts when you are first aware someone is trying to kill you, and ends when they succeed and you die. Do you feel like you have enough time to meaningfully react?

Obviously impressions will vary based on not only what ship you are flying, but what ship/weapon is trying to kill you. Feel free to call out how you feel about different matchups, but I'm also curious how everyone feels about the overall average TTK, if such a thing can be judged.

Strikes and bombers give you plenty of time to do something. I might not always get away, but generally speaking I'll have time to not be surprised by my demise.

Scouts will melt quickly, but that's the nature of the class. No real complaints there. I was almost never one-shot even before the bypass nerf, and it's a very rare occurrence for me to die from half health suddenly to railgun. Almost always, I'll see it coming.

In my gunship, I'll need to be distracted badly by zoom to not have any chance to hit a cooldown.

So, in general, TTK is fine in my mind except when BO/TT+CF are up on a burst laser scout. That's pretty much the only combo that gives even a top pilot almost no chance to react. I tend to think BO needs only minor tweaks, if any. The big culprit is concentrated fire, and to a lesser extend targeting telemetry. The uptime on CF is bad, but when you have it with TT (which is amazingly long lasting), you get a 50% chance to crit with the burstiest close-range weapon in the game. High crit chance like that *may* be acceptable for a very finicky weapon, but it is trivial to hit with BLC, especially with TT's base accuracy improvement. I have no problems at all with the base BLC weapon, except that I think it's BS that it's the only weapon that doesn't seem to have a super close range accuracy penalty.

If concentrated fire increased crit chance much less, but boosted something else (rate of fire maybe?), then I think we're getting pretty closed to balancing the battlescout.

For the record, my sting uses booster recharge and a defensive crew skill.

When I mained NovaDive, TTK was either really really short or I managed to escape (and I won't count death from another attack one minute later into TTK). It felt alright, since escaping is life in Nova, so short TTK was justified well.

Now I main Clarion, and TTK is close to infinite. I can put power to shields, kill engine, put all shields into aft, and let some poor cattlescout shoot into my butt while I lock torpedo on something 8k away, then just power dive away when he breaches first arc.

Or I can put all shields in fore arc and literally charge gunship that is shooting me. I survive these insane situations more often than not.

I know it is not what a good pilot would do, but I just do these stunts because reasons and they often work, even against aces. (of course, as soon as someone brings Bypass, I am done)

I won't say that I don't feel awesome playing like that, but sometimes it feels unfair. Time to kill my stationary Clarion seems over the top, but on the other hand it is its only strength. I win my battles simply by tanking multiple enemies until they make mistake or run out of power or my teammates get them. My average damage received per battle is 24k, lately it is more like nearly 30k, with mostly 3 deaths per battle.

My only issue with TTK is probably that those new guys with their Blackbolts don't really have chance to solo kill me, because these basic scouts just do not have anything to scratch a Clarion with brutal shielding. I feel bad for them.

In balanced games though, TTK is a no-issue thing, well balanced.

Frankly ? I think it's too short in one hand, okay in the other hand.

Every ship can potentially kill another ship in 3s (after initial hit), even strikes attacking strikes. That's short, there's no other word.

But not only it's short, sometimes even getting out of deep S will get you severely punished, even with lightning reflexes. There are occasions where you are hugely damage by the alpha strike... No escape.

In some circonstances, these short TTK can lead to extreme frustration, as we have seen with SIM during their glory time, or "Gunship walls", or "Scout multi CD blowing", to give a few examples. Some are caused by a single opponent, other by group play. But fact is they frustrate people because they allow little to no counterplay.

However, this short TTK is also part of immersion... So far, in Star Wars movies, ships gets blown in one two shot. Extending the TTK may remove "the feel".

IMO, if anything should be done, it is taking care of over punitive alpha strikes (here meaning "everything that may be able to deal serious hull damage to a fresh ship in a relatively simply way for the attacker").

That way, the TTK remains short under sustained aggression for the immersion, but may leave more room for defense. More defense usually means longer effective TTK since it would be slightly more difficult to do real damage, the damage to hull.

Personally, I'm more or less fine with TTK for most ships except for CD stacking battlescouts. Sometimes TTK can be frustratingly long, but that's probably because I'm targeting battlescouts while flying a Thermite/MLC bloodmark, so missile breaks are more or less my kryptonite.

So yeah. Most elements of the game seem healthy, except for the 1 minute wonder battlescouts. SIM bombers were a problem, but I'm not sure whether they're still one after the Interdiction nerf.

It's fine if you remove TT/BO+CF (and to a lesser extent, pods/quads) instant kills and slug railgun one shots. I don't think I've seen anything else that qualifies as "stupid" in my book. TTK feels reasonable with just about everything else.

I don't think I mind quads; while they do a nice big pile of damage, they can't natively pierce shields or armor and have no accuracy boost, so their strength is counterbalanced by being unable to really counter anything. I'd say the same for pods, but they get shield and armor pen by default.

While Slugs can drop a huge pile of damage, it's unlikely to oneshot anything that isn't already crippled, and evasive play can prevent them from killing you on their own.

I'm playing different games and I prefer shooter-like PvP over RPG-like. I like low TTK as long as it's not instagibbing and I don't like if there's too much CC involved.

Also I prefer when skill has more impact on the game than gear.

Imho GSF has all this.

While Slugs can drop a huge pile of damage, it's unlikely to oneshot anything that isn't already crippled, and evasive play can prevent them from killing you on their own.

But they can oneshot certain scout builds. It's a rare outlier (Requiring weaker shield build, full charge, and a crit), but can happen. My opinion is gunship TTK is more about psychological warfare than anything else. Then again, I use a slightly different definition of TTK than Nem does. My definition involves when they start trying to kill you rather than when you become aware. They could probably stand to have quicker charge time but less damage per shot to equalize it a bit more.

But they can oneshot certain scout builds. It's a rare outlier (Requiring weaker shield build, full charge, and a crit), but can happen. My opinion is gunship TTK is more about psychological warfare than anything else. Then again, I use a slightly different definition of TTK than Nem does. My definition involves when they start trying to kill you rather than when you become aware. They could probably stand to have quicker charge time but less damage per shot to equalize it a bit more.

The circumstance that an evasion-focused scout, of which one variety is arguably the best ship in the game (or at least TDM), can be eliminated by an 8% chance to crit, seems to me like a pretty huge outlier and no reason to make a change to the tempo of a ship line's core weapon. If you get tagged with a Slug crit as an evasion scout, you are the victim of some pretty bad luck and some pretty bad situational awareness.

If you get tagged with a Slug crit as an evasion scout, you are the victim of some pretty bad luck and some pretty bad situational awareness.

Bad luck ? Definitely.

(By the way, the crit chance is not 8%, but 16%)

Bad situational awareness ? No.

People get hit by things. Whether it be from cannons or rails, people are hit because they can't know everything happening.

And once you've been hit, you can't do anything but observe what it has done to you, hence why some people being not fond of things that can kill you or seriously damage you without even letting you do anything.

Everyone knows my thoughts.

T2 Scout kill to fast (even the devs have already said this dont know why we keep bringing it up.)

T3 Scout kill to slow

and Strikes kill to slow.

Gunships seem like in a good spot

T1 scout seems like a good spot.

Bombers I am unsure about, I feel good about Mine layer, but others I am unsure about.

I have mixed feelings about it... it's too short against noobs and too long against veterans.

There's a bunch of one-shots or near-enough that should probably go. There's the absurdity of BLCs, Blaster overcharge, Damage overcharge, and crits in general.

But then again there's all those semi-lopsided matches where I'm feeling pretty much invincible, as long as the enemy team didnt bring any good gunships or a battlescout with a grudge, I can outrun and outlive anything they'll throw at me...

Overall it seems to be balanced in a way that magnifies the skill gap. Burst is king, experienced pilots can evade and regenerate shields forever, newcomers are sitting ducks that can't hit anything... For a game that's not supposed to be competitive, it doesn't keep the casuals coming back.

Only an issue for scouts. TTK is fine everwhere else in the game.

As this comes from a gunship pilot, I will answer from the perspective of a scout pilot.

My current T2 scout build (burst,cluster - no damage cooldowns) has roughly a TTK of 3 seconds at point blank range (500m) against any gusnhip without upgrades. More realistic are 4-6 seconds because it's very difficult to get into 500m range of a target and sometimes shots miss.

It happens very often that I get hit by some gunship, almost being killed by it. I counter that with boosting those 15km through empty space attacking said gunship from the side and killing it (most of the time). That gunship pilot had more than enough time to prepare a defense or run away.

(By the way, gunships are the class with the highest kill potential against lowskilled/new players in deathmatches)

Now to a more general point of view:

From my experience, in almost every game, but especially deathmatch games. Most people seem afraid of dying. It happens very often that I get attacked by someone in a scout or strike then turn around, start shooting back and that person just runs away (futile - my booster lasts longer) instead of trying to fight me; he's giving up his advantage. Other people just ahve tunnel vision. They try to kill one of my teammates and don't care if they're being shot at - nothing easier to kill than some dude flying a straight line (this even works against bombers trying to get to some satellite).

Anyway TTK may seem very short sometimes because you don't get a killscreen that tells you what actually killed you. And every so often you have more than one enemy shooting at you.

This game also is about awareness. If you know where your enemies are you have a huge advantage. If you don't look at the triangles on your hud, and you therefore miss an enemy approaching you will be down half your hitpoints before you realise what's going on. And awareness has something to do with practice. If you're new to the game the last thing you look at are those triangle indicators, but you need to do that.

As this comes from a gunship pilot, I will answer from the perspective of a scout pilot.

My current T2 scout build (burst,cluster - no damage cooldowns) has roughly a TTK of 3 seconds at point blank range (500m) against any gusnhip without upgrades. More realistic are 4-6 seconds because it's very difficult to get into 500m range of a target and sometimes shots miss.

It happens very often that I get hit by some gunship, almost being killed by it. I counter that with boosting those 15km through empty space attacking said gunship from the side and killing it (most of the time). That gunship pilot had more than enough time to prepare a defense or run away.

(By the way, gunships are the class with the highest kill potential against lowskilled/new players in deathmatches)

 

Now to a more general point of view:

From my experience, in almost every game, but especially deathmatch games. Most people seem afraid of dying. It happens very often that I get attacked by someone in a scout or strike then turn around, start shooting back and that person just runs away (futile - my booster lasts longer) instead of trying to fight me; he's giving up his advantage. Other people just ahve tunnel vision. They try to kill one of my teammates and don't care if they're being shot at - nothing easier to kill than some dude flying a straight line (this even works against bombers trying to get to some satellite).

 

Anyway TTK may seem very short sometimes because you don't get a killscreen that tells you what actually killed you. And every so often you have more than one enemy shooting at you.

This game also is about awareness. If you know where your enemies are you have a huge advantage. If you don't look at the triangles on your hud, and you therefore miss an enemy approaching you will be down half your hitpoints before you realise what's going on. And awareness has something to do with practice. If you're new to the game the last thing you look at are those triangle indicators, but you need to do that.

Running away in Deathmatch is how you get your team to win. It's not about outrunning a pursuer forever (though outrunning even a T2 Scout is possible with some builds). It's about recognizing when you've lost the element of surprise, realizing when you won't reliably win 1v1, and then going evasive to make it take longer for the other person to kill you.

During that time, that person chasing you is now removed as a threat to your allies, and in turn he is vulnerable to your allies coming in to kill him.

This is the biggest mistake new pilots make in TDM, and why they get farmed and their team loses. They focus purely on offense, with the mindset that they have to gets as many kills as possible before they themselves die. And then they end up getting 0-2 kills at most before they are shot down.

Good pilots know that wasting an enemy's time (especially if that enemy is an ace) offers far more potential for victory than just laying down and dying.

And many aces will give up on a difficult target who goes evasive, so that they can instead get multiple kills on other easier, more distracted targets.

The hardest person to kill is someone who is trying to kill you, especially if it turns into a turning war (which BLC's will always win). It's far easier to kill someone who is busy with someone else.

this thread got me thinking: what is the time to kill for a stock ship vs a mastered ship, so I did some basic math (lots of rounding numbers, probly some errors, point em out if you see em) on 3 possible scenarios, starguards firing rapids at each other at less then 500m, backbolts firing rapids at 3km and noob rapids blackbolt vs mastered blackbolt with laser cannons. all of these maths are factoring in evasion, armor, accuracy, shield vs hull damage amounts (assuming you took the more damage to shields option) and shield bleed-through for rocket pods.

this also assumes that there is no movement and both ships are firing with their ships perfectly facing each other and have perfect aim. In fights where you are firing at the edge of your screen, accuracy and evasion will count for more, not less, so these are best case scenarios for the stock ships.

for the TLDR here are my results:

starguards less then 500m rapid fire:

stock time to kill mastered 6.36 seconds

mastered time to kill stock 3.33 seconds

blackbolts 3km:

stock time to kill mastered 5.49 seconds

mastered time to kill stock 2.41 seconds with RFL 2.32 with LC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my bad math notes:

starguard/rycer RFL compairison

maxed

3600 +30 per second shield

1450 hull

stock

2880 shield

1450 hull

4.33 seconds for stock to break shields

2.11 seconds for maxed to break shields

2.03 seconds for stock to break hull (vs 14% armor)

1.32 seconds for maxed to break hull (vs 5% armor)

stock time to kill 6.36 seconds

maxed time to kill

3.33 seconds

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

scout duel 3km rockets and rapids

stock:

722dps at 85% accuracy

405dps at 90% accuracy 20% pierce

13% evasion

2080 shield

950 hp

0% armor

max:

rapids

1145 vs sheilds

9970 vs hull

91% accuracy

rockets

437 96% accuracy 28% pierce

2080shield

950 hp

9% armor

33% evasion

stock effective dps:

rfl: 341 (722* .52)*.91

rockets: 210 (405*.57)*.91 20% pierce = 168 vs shields 42 to hull

sum: 509 dps with 42 bleed per second

time for shields: 4.08 seconds, bleed in that time: 171 leaving 779 effective hp

1.41 seconds after to kill hull

total ttk: 5.49 seconds

max effective dps:

rfl 893 sheilds (1145*.78) hp 777 (997*.78)

rockets 362 (437 * .83) 28% pierce = 260 vs shields 101 to hull

sum: 1153 dps with 101 bleed per second

time for shields: 1.8 seconds, bleed in that time: 182 leaving 768 effective hp

0.61 seconds after to kill hull

total ttk: 2.41 seconds

now i'm going to try with normal laser cannons on the max (what I normally fly with)

1164 vs shields, 986 vs hull, 101% accuracy

effective dps:

vs shields 1024(1164*.88) hp 867(986*.88)

rockets 362 (437 * .83) 28% pierce = 260 vs shields 101 to hull

time for shields: 1.69 seconds 170 bleed in that time leaving 780 effective hp

0.63 seconds after to kill hull

total ttk 2.32 seconds

2.32s TTK against a stock scout under ideal circumstances seems fine to me. Usually the target will move and evade or will not be stock or will not be a scout (other ships have roughly 1.5 times the combined shield+hull hitpoints of a scout or more).

Under ideal circumstances (<500 range, no misses, etc) a stock scout is a 3 shot kill for my T2 scout build. That's around a 1.5s TTK (either 3 shots from BLC or 2 BLC + cluster volley).

Keep in mind that most "real" fights are engaged at more than 500 meters, against moving targets that may try to evade and most of those targets are either not stock or not a scout meaning they have more hitpoints. Mostly that leaves me with a TTK of around 3 seconds - more than enough time to react for the target.

Under ideal circumstances (<500 range, no misses, etc) a stock scout is a 3 shot kill for my T2 scout build. That's around a 1.5s TTK (either 3 shots from BLC or 2 BLC + cluster volley).

3 shots make a 1s TTK. The first one is at t=0s, then 0.5s between each shot if no frequency improvements.

3 shots make a 1s TTK. The first one is at t=0s, then 0.5s between each shot if no frequency improvements.

According to dulfy fire rate is 92 rpm including frequency capacitor. So it's 1.3 seconds then.

My bad, you're completely right. For a reason in my head RPM was 120 instead of 80.

My memory is not at its fullest these days.

I don't think the TTK calculated here has *much* importance. In an MMO there's the expectation of some degree of uptime that just isn't present in GSF.

I think it's fair to talk about whether there's response times and warnings and interactivities. Like when I complain about the TTK on scouts, it is largely because the scout can hard swap to a new target, pop a cooldown, and get a generally hard to counter kill, even while people are on him. Partly, this is an issue with latency as well- the scout's client is registering shots that you have no chance to really respond to, even if YOUR connection is flawless.

Gunships pop up here too, but the necessity of holding still to charge a shot means that there are meaningful counters, especially including cooldowns, line of sight, and heals.

Meanwhile, I think strikes are not threatening enough. The reliance on lock on missiles choreographs their interest and intents, and allows for meaningful counters pretty much every time.

I don't think the TTK calculated here has *much* importance. In an MMO there's the expectation of some degree of uptime that just isn't present in GSF.

 

I think it's fair to talk about whether there's response times and warnings and interactivities. Like when I complain about the TTK on scouts, it is largely because the scout can hard swap to a new target, pop a cooldown, and get a generally hard to counter kill, even while people are on him. Partly, this is an issue with latency as well- the scout's client is registering shots that you have no chance to really respond to, even if YOUR connection is flawless.

 

Gunships pop up here too, but the necessity of holding still to charge a shot means that there are meaningful counters, especially including cooldowns, line of sight, and heals.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I think strikes are not threatening enough. The reliance on lock on missiles choreographs their interest and intents, and allows for meaningful counters pretty much every time.

Hey verain I had a Thought, probably not a good thought but its a thought. What if missiles only gave the launch tone instead of giving the warning tone the entire time they were being locked, that would make them a little less choreographed.