So, this the 1000th post. It seems to be a consensus that the best way to buff strikes is through buffs directly to the frame. just go ahead and give some small buffs to all of the stats. I think giving a substantial buff to range on primary and secondary weapons would go a long way to balance strikes and give them a purpose.

I concur. The specific buffs are not something the community can really choose, even if we all have our particular favorites, but this seems more a class wide issue than a large Pike-specific issue, medium Starguard-specific issue, and small Clarion-specific issue. A frame buff could also hopefully make multiple builds viable as well.

I concur. The specific buffs are not something the community can really choose, even if we all have our particular favorites, but this seems more a class wide issue than a large Pike-specific issue, medium Starguard-specific issue, and small Clarion-specific issue. A frame buff could also hopefully make multiple builds viable as well.

 

I agree, but I think that component switches are also needed on the Starguard and Pike - namely, the Starguard should have an armor component, and the Pike should get a reactor. This won't fix them, but it will improve them.

Yes make the Strikes have 10% more engine shield hp speed range sensor biceps

Although, the strike fighter seems to suffer from a lack of class 'depth'. for other ship classes the 1 button tends to do something useful, or switch between effective weapons like rail guns.

For the star guard, it's switching between lasers that are proven less effective then those on other fighters (who's number 1 buttons can augment their primary weapon damage)

for the pike... it's switching between missiles and more missiles, feeding into the missile break-cool down debate

give em something like rocket pods and they can at least try to do some frontal DPS compeition with other meta ships

the third strike fighter's number 1 button does useful things and it's favored by 'meta' pilots.

meaning it has more depth, despite it's weapons being a bit second rate, it is possibly the most useful strike to it's team.

across the board upgrades to the frame would help alot

increases to strike's weapon ranges and accuracy might give them a place in meta, perhaps even edging the scouts back to specialist fighters. Sure ace flash fire pilots will probably still be nasty, but they won't be able to wade into a pack of strikes and kill them all with impunity. Each of those kills is another player trying to play the same game.

I put this in the suggestion box and GSF forums already, but I figure more people could look at this here, as this is the official "let's improve strike fighters" thread.

 

Before I start, I should identify myself. I fly primarily on the Shadowlands as Tae-gun, Jiinara, Dal-ben, and Nyo-jin on the Republic and as Itania, Vydan, Tal'narus, and Marevia for the Empire.

 

As many Galactic Starfighter (GSF) regulars know, in the GSF meta the class balance more or less resembles rock-paper-scissors in that scouts eat up gunships which eat up bombers which eat up scouts. The strike fighter (with the exception of the Clarion/Imperium) generally has no stable place in this meta, since everything it does can be done better by one of the other classes.

 

So I've come up with a little something that I think might be useful to make strike fighters (in particular the Star Guard/Rycer) have a place in the GSF ship meta.

 

It would be a shield called Ion Hardening:

 

base cooldown 30s

base energy use 25

base duration 10s

activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%.

 

Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s).

Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10).

Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s).

 

These cooldowns and energy costs can of course be tweaked; my basic line of thought regarding the Tier 3 upgrades in particular were to give the T1 strike fighter in particular a unique resistance to ion effects, which as many pilots know are used frequently in the form of AoE ion railgun. Option A would permit strike fighters to effectively LOS AoE ion gunships but would still render them susceptible to direct attacks from another pilot supporting that gunship, and Option B would permit strike fighters to, while still feeling the effects of ion attacks, resist supporting attacks more effectively.

 

I envision this shield generator being available specifically for the StarGuard and Pike and their equivalents on the Imperial side; the Clarion/Imperium have a number of their own abilities that would disqualify them from being able to use this ability for reasons of balance.

It would be a shield called Ion Hardening:

 

base cooldown 30s

base energy use 25

base duration 10s

activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%.

 

Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s).

Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10).

Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s).

 

I don't like your idea.

 

The component isn't the big problem (though it is probably a bit too powerful because of the very low cooldown or the general immunity effect, and much too weak based on it being a "hate ship" against just component of just one ship). The problem is that if you did this, it:

 

> Would not help strikes in general.

> Would not help the T3 strike.

> Would mostly just prevent one specific type of attack.

> Would not give the ship a method to actually contribute much- a defensive cooldown versus one support ability won't be that amazing.

> Would not help the existing strike components, nor increase build diversity, nor help the relatively feeble offensive output of strikes.

> Requires vastly more effort than many of the existing recommendations. You could go well beyond fixing strikes with numbers fixes, you could make them vastly overpowered, and there's a big middle ground between that and here.

 

The problem with strikes is not "That Manglers exist". The problem with strikes is that strikes are too weak. This has been gone over and over, and the existence of this post means that the devs agree (and will assuredly buff them whenever they get funding to touch anything about GSF).

 

The broad frame buffs earlier would address the core strike isssue. An anti-railgun shield would probably be better for scouts (and probably best of all if it gave the most bonus at long ranges instead of medium or short- this would be a pretty solid option for disto, if we were going that way), but some method of defending against railgun shots better than the current shields (such as the "hard shield" or something that specifically mitigates railgun damage at some cost) would certainly be a welcome component. A specific ion-defense shield would probably be better as a passive or a crew member that reduced the crowd control of ion effects, to be swapped in based on your meta, instead of removing the fun of the existing shields. A big part of the draw of strikes for me is playing the regenerative shield correctly, and playing the directional shield properly- these are interesting and fun components that are a lot better when played correctly, but never hit the level of competition on the strike that they should, because of the core failings of the frame. A component that fixes their role by being vastly better than competing components is nowhere near as good a fix as one that fixes many parts of the strikes at once, and if the devs are in the mood to redesign and rebalance components we could get a lot of fixes across ALL of the ships.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Verain

Defense against ion railguns could be given to the T1 and T2 strikes much more easily by simply giving them both power dive.

 

That said, I don't think that Ion Railguns in their current incarnation are a particular problem for strikes, any more than they are for other ships.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Ramalina

Tha statement is contradictory isn't it Ramalina? Power dive is a terrific counter to ion. The clarion, condor, and sledgehammer prove that fact. So do the flashfire, novadive, and spearpoint. Although they can also realistically counter it with DF.

 

However, it is kind of lame that any ship that doesn't want to get eaten by ion has to equip power dive. It would be nice if there were options that let you use retro thrusters and not be at the mercy of ion.

Edited April 8, 2016 by RickDagles

Eh, I think the engine components are pretty great. I'm glad that Retro thrusters don't give the same benefits versus ion that Power Dive does. Retro Thrusters are good at their own thing. Engine components seem to be one of the few areas where most ships have two really good choices, and most have some use- I wouldn't say they are perfect, but they are miles ahead of primary weapons, shields, and crew components, and even ahead of things that have some choice, such as secondary mines and system mines.

Morning Flyboys and Flygirls!

 

Thank you immensely for all the feedback and discussion last week and over the weekend. Keep on going but I just wanted to pop in to let you know that we are reading and looking at options. No timetable but just an acknowledgement that we are here and listening/reading along.

 

Cheers!

 

I guess the changes to Strikes are going to be really comprehensive, right?

 

In all seriousness, I'm glad the devs are paying attention again, and I hope it goes somewhere this time.

Absolutely brutal necro