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Honest questions from a GSF noob


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Is there desync in GSF? (Can’t imagine there is but I’ve seen what looks like pvp Desync happening in GSF).

 

Is there a secret way to park inside a satellite you are guarding so you can capture it but can’t be destroyed?

 

Is there an ability you can learn so you can fly through asteroids and not be destroyed?

 

Is there an ability that lets you fly backwards while shootiing?

 

I ask these questions because they are all things I’ve seen the last few days and I want to know how to learn the abilities so it’s a more even fight.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Is there desync in GSF? (Can’t imagine there is but I’ve seen what looks like pvp Desync happening in GSF).

Well sometimes but it’s usually on the end of the player who is lagging.

 

Is there a secret way to park inside a satellite you are guarding so you can capture it but can’t be destroyed?

No not legitimately. The satellite does have a lot of legitimate nooks and crannies and it is possible to slip in them as a bomber or really any ship, and drop your mines/drones. If you only use blasters they can hit the deployables instead of the starfighter. They're called tick-bombers. It's good use of line of sight, but you shouldn't sit still for long in GSF. It’s easy to counter though and most players who resort to that tactic can be easily defeated. You have to fly under the satellite about 7km or so to be able to get a clear shot. Alternatively you can use aoe attacks like Ion railgun, EMP Field, and EMP missile targeted at something else and hit them indirectly. If you think you have an instance of a player actually inside an object illegitimately, record or screenshot and report it as you would for ground pvp.

 

Is there an ability you can learn so you can fly through asteroids and not be destroyed?

Nope, but I’ve never seen that in my years of playing GSF. However there are some asteroids that have holes in them from space mining.

 

Is there an ability that lets you fly backwards while shootiing?

Yup, it’s called Retro Thrusters. Very handy. Its available on strike fighters and on some scouts. And one gunship I think.

 

I ask these questions because they are all things I’ve seen the last few days and I want to know how to learn the abilities so it’s a more even fight.
Edited by phalczen
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In general, GSF seems free of exploits. I can't think of ever seeing one. Desynch or lagshield or however you call it comes closest, and certainly looks shady - somebody ends up porting all over the map, spinning in random directions, being pain in the rear to hit. This is how people appear when they suffer from serious lag. Never once I've seen somebody suffering from this to solve a match. If they are impossible to hit, ability to interact with surroundings in meaningful way is just about as impossible for them.

 

Back when I was new, I figured rocket pods must have been an exploit. Or in general, I kinda assumed people attacking me would always do it via missiles too, so I'd hear the helpful impossible to miss alarm. So anyone nuking me down with lasers or pods-> exploiter!! At heart of my mistake is a move that remains a useful tactic even today. Most people, vet pilots included, often take few seconds too long to realize you are shooting them with lasers. So sometimes, you wanna think twice before alertring them about your attach by using your missiles.

 

Piledriving T1 Strike is a ship that must scream " exploit" to new pilot of 2021. Piledriver=They roll with heavy&quad lasers and are either very spammy and/or very good at switching between the two lasers just at the right moments. So that tiny 0.2 second(or w/e) cooldown between shots is never there, you are simply firing another laser during it. If it works out and they get the rhythm just right, flying directly at them or away from them is pure muder. So don't do that! They need a straight line to work. So movement to any direction besides directly at them or away from them kills the DPS of piledriver right there.

 

 

About flying backwards(retro thursters)

Retros are actually a pretty good example of how balance in GSF works. You need to consider gains if you pick them vs what you miss out for choosing them over the rest. Majority of components available are not an obvious upgrade to another, just different. Retros are a great offensive tool and very useful around satelites to boot. You can fire them up and not really end up switching your position that much, which is unusual for an engine ability. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Roll with them, and jousts (1 vs 1 fights) tend to go your way. But you miss out on travel/escape potential of barrel roll, near immunity to missiles you potentially get via KT, or mad versatility of power dive.

Edited by Stradlin
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A bit more detail on lagging in GSF.

 

Stutter boosting is a legitimate tactic to make it harder for people to hit you, especially in chases around satellites in Dom matches. In this case the target scoots forwards, but the movement path is continuous and heading changes are continuous and geometrically tangent to the movement path. It also depletes your engine energy really quickly because starting to boost is more expensive than maintaining boost.

 

Induced lag is subtly different. The ship still stutters across the screen, but it's jumps/teleports rather than typical boost mode acceleration, and the big telltale is that the direction the ship is pointing is often significantly different than the direction the ship is moving. It is possible to do this deliberately by a variety of means, many of which involve just saturating the lagger's internet connection with other traffic and therefore aren't really detectable as cheats by SWTOR's servers. It does make targets somewhat harder to hit if you don't know exactly how the game treats this.

 

However, if you do know how the servers run this, it actually makes it easier for a skilled player to kill the lagger than if they weren't lagging. The game engine has conservation of motion. So if a ship is going in a certain direction at a certain speed, the server treats that game object as maintaining that direction and speed until it receives other information. To translate it into useful information: in the pause between lag jumps as far as the server is concerned, the lagging ship is going in a straight line at a constant speed. So if you line up just right and shoot at them during that pause, the server will treat those shots as being in the right place to hit. Also worth noting that as long as the start of a lag jump and finish of a lag jump stay within the firing arc the server counts the lag jump as a valid part of a missile or torpedo lock.

 

So it's a bit of a trade-off, the lagger basically can't dodge incoming fire if you line up right, but lining up right is a bit of a pain in the rear and requires practice and a good head for applied geometry in the same way billiards does. The easy way to deal with a deliberate lagger is to stand off a bit, place the firing arc of your proton torpedo so that you keep their current position just inside the circle so that when the lag-port happens you're leading the target enough so that they're still in the circle when they pop back in, and dump torpedoes into them until they die. Once you get used to it it's a bit annoying but deliberate laggers are effectively free kills if you know what you're doing. They appear to be auto-dodging, but in reality if you know the game mechanics they are basically depriving themselves of the ability to evade properly set up incoming fire.

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Is there desync in GSF? (Can’t imagine there is but I’ve seen what looks like pvp Desync happening in GSF).

 

Is there a secret way to park inside a satellite you are guarding so you can capture it but can’t be destroyed?

 

Is there an ability you can learn so you can fly through asteroids and not be destroyed?

 

Is there an ability that lets you fly backwards while shootiing?

 

I ask these questions because they are all things I’ve seen the last few days and I want to know how to learn the abilities so it’s a more even fight.

 

Pretty much every one has answered you, but I want to add something. Firstly, most of what you think you are seeing is not what is happening. You can't get inside asteroids or nodes. You can drop a drone inside a node, that bug exists, but no, not ships. I suspect you are seeing the Line of sight mechanic.Which to a newbie or the uneducated can make it look like a hack or like the ship is inside something. I made a video a while back to explain this. Here it is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8EcNknDNXo. In the video I called it an exploit, but to be fair, on reflection, we do not actually know if the game was designed this way. It would make sense for Gunships, which are the ships that primarily use it.

 

But the major thing I want to say is, there is no substitute for skill. You seem driven, and if that is the case and you really do want to level the playing field, then the best thing you can do is learn GSF thoroughly and, sorry to say it, but get good. GSF is complex, and requires something the ground game does not, aim. So it very much separates the skilled from the noobs, which is why one person can literally carry a match, which doesn't happen in ground pvp. If you are determined to get good, there are plenty of us willing to help you and train you :)

Edited by Ttoilleekul
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Thanks guys for patiently answering my noobish questions. I will definitely be looking at those abilities more to see how to set them up and use them.

 

One last thing though. My wife and I did witness a player camping inside a satellite in a couple of matches.

So I’m assuming from your replies this isn’t normal game play and it should be reported.

I’m also assuming it’s not common behaviour to cheat in GSF.

For future reference, does GSF have an email for reporting / sending video evidence to BioWare like pvp does?

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Are there BiS builds for GSF for each ship type? Ie component choices, crew etc.

And is there a BiS ship meta (like ground pvp has class metas).

I assume certain classes cancel each other out or are better in 1v1 situations.

Should I bother using my points to open up other ships. If so which ones and what happens to the ones I’ve already got.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Are there BiS builds for GSF for each ship type? Ie component choices, crew etc.

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=752217&highlight=drakolich+ship+builds

I think if you take a look at that thread, the first thing you will notice is that there are quite a few ways to skin a cat, and building a ship for Domination matches may be slightly different than building it for Team Deathmatch. Since the only way to have a "2nd copy" of a ship is for the few that have cartel versions, you have to be selective.

And is there a BiS ship meta (like ground pvp has class metas).

No, I mean, I don't think so. Except that I think a match consisting of only strikes would be very slow but probably pretty balanced. I'll say this, bringing your "hangar" of five ships to a GSF match is like bringing five of your toons, geared and disciplined certain ways to adapt to how the match is progressing. Imagine if you could bring a Deception Assassin, Medicine Operative, Immortal Jugg, Pyro PT, and Lightning Sorc to every ground pvp match and could freely choose among the five, with the only caveat that their gear, disciplines, and utilities were fixed for the match.

I assume certain classes cancel each other out or are better in 1v1 situations.

Again, this is very dependent. It's not a clear "rock-paper-scissors game" in my opinion. Under the right set of circumstances, and the right build, it is possible for any one of three or four ships to be able to destroy an opponent in just a few shots. The biggest unifying factor bringing this capability to certain ships is Damage Overcharge, a power-up available in Team Deathmatch matches that doubles your damage:

1) A Targeting Telemetry build Flashfire/Sting/IL-cartel ship (so-called type 2 scouts) using Burst Lasers

2) A Starguard/Rycer/TZ-cartel ship (so-called type 1 strike) using the "piledriver" technique with Heavies and Quads

(Piledriving is described here: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=944782 )

3) A Quarrel/Mangler/VX-cartel ship (so-called type 1 gunships) using an Ion railgun fully charged followed by Slug railgun fully charged

4) A remote-slicing Clarion/Imperium (so-called type 3 strikes) landing a proton torpedo

 

If any one of these four types of ships gain Damage Overcharge, they can pretty much melt opponents in 1-3 shots. there are probably other builds which can do similar amounts of damage especially under the effects of Damage Overcharge, or DO, but these stand out in my mind. Powerups in GSF are not like the powerups in most ground pvp matches. They are far more useful ... like the powerups in Odessen Proving Ground.

Check out this great video by Despon:

And if you want to commit the possible locations where D.O.'s can spawn to memory, they are here: https://imgur.com/QAI25EL

https://imgur.com/a/zchJPHC

And the Battle over Iokath team deathmatch map specifically also has some clusters where Engine Overcharge powerups are located as well:

https://imgur.com/APg0kFk

 

(I got all these links from https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=963283 ) which also has some handy guides on many aspects of GSF.

 

Should I bother using my points to open up other ships. If so which ones and what happens to the ones I’ve already got.

Of course! It would be like having the option of bringing a variety of set bonuses for your character and swapping them in and out as the match progresses.

These are the five ships I usually have on my bar, as I almost exclusively solo-queue:

 

1) Type 2 Strike, the Pike/Quell

Rationale: I build this for doing domination. Strikes were upgraded in 5.5 to have a lot more boost endurance, so this ship can get to the node and still have some engine power left over for boosting or using a missile break. I can switch from clusters to EMP to put pressure on incoming enemies and light laser cannons to rapidly melt a targets shields with a forgiving firing arc. This ship does lack armor penetration, so it takes longer to eliminate the AI controlled turrets of a satellite owned by the enemy or heavily armor targets like some bombers.

2) Type 1 Strike, the Starguard/Rycer

Rationale: I build this for TDM, but it works just fine for DOM, if my job in the match is to hunt enemy gunships. The piledriver technique just melts targets, but its common enough that people have developed some counters to that gameplay. Its still very effective though.

3) Type 3 scout, the Spearpoint/Bloodmark

Rationale: I build this with Tensor Field for DOM. Honestly I love popping tensor and being the first on the node. I use Thermite Torpedos because I can use it to target incoming bombers who often lack the ability to break my missile. Most people like to use EMP Missile but I am not always with friends who can take advantage of the EMP I just launched. Many people will argue the type 1 scouts (Novadive/Blackbolt) are more useful especially because of EMP Field's ability to combat bomber spam. I don't disagree that EMP Field is a counter to bomber spam, but the type 1 scout becomes a one-trick pony in that scenario and I don't care for that. Unlike many people, I'll stay in my scout until I die, because Tensor helps me respond to nodes in distress, and with Repair Drones as my shield ability I can repair and reload teammates when I come to reinforce them. It doesn't have the survival power of strikes with repair probes or bombers with repair drones, so it is less useful in TDM, but I'll still use it then.

4) Type 1 Gunship, the Quarrel/Mangler

Rationale: This is the quintessential gunship in my book. I used to use a type 3 gunship because it was capable of dogfighting a little better than a type 1, but the reality is that ion rail is just too useful. This ship works in TDM or DOM. Use it to harass the enemy on Lost Shipyards, dislodge tick bombers wiping out your foolish teammates, or just stay with Slug railgun and hunt Damage Overcharge all match and one or two shot everyone

5) Type 1 bomber, the Rampart/Razorwire

Rationale: a hyperspace beacon can turn the tide of a DOM match. Its just that good. For holding a sat against lots of incoming, the mines of a type 1 bomber are superior to one railgun drone and a pair of seeker mines. That's not to say the dronecarrier-class of bombers can't hold a node until reinforcements arrive, or discourage a pesky scout or strike who thinks they can take a node solo, but against an onslaught I think the minelayer class is better.

 

I find that with these five ships on my bar, I can respond to a variety of scenarios, as a nearly exclusive solo-queuer. In truth, I would probably want a sixth slot because I do miss flying my type 2 bomber, the Warcarrier/Legion. These bombers were probably intended to be more for TDM, and they are extremely effective there, but a railgun drone and repair drone can really help to solo-defend a satellite in DOM for long enough for your team to reinforce you. If push came to shove, I'd probably replace my Pike/Quell with the Warcarrier/Legion if I needed to, as then I would have three ships that can be used in both game modes.

 

Also, when you redeem a minor or major ship requisition grant, it grants the same amount of ship req to every ship you own, so the more you unlock, the more ship requisition you build up for each ship. Not only does this help you build up the ships you do want, but you can pay cartel coins to convert ship req on other ships, perhaps ones you know you won't be flying, into fleet requisition, which you could choose to use to unlock more crew members or component upgrades.

Edited by phalczen
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Thanks guys for patiently answering my noobish questions. I will definitely be looking at those abilities more to see how to set them up and use them.

 

One last thing though. My wife and I did witness a player camping inside a satellite in a couple of matches.

So I’m assuming from your replies this isn’t normal game play and it should be reported.

I’m also assuming it’s not common behaviour to cheat in GSF.

For future reference, does GSF have an email for reporting / sending video evidence to BioWare like pvp does?

 

I'd like to see Screen shots because I am 99.9% certain they were not actually inside the node. Certainly you can't report it without a screenshot, but also new players get stuff like this wrong all the time. In 12k matches I have never seen someone actually inside a node. They just tick so well that there is only one angle from which you can actually see them.

 

And yeah actual cheating is extremely uncommon, again, in 12k matches I have never actually seen anyone using a hack. I and many others have been accused of cheating more times than I can remember, but again, its always by people who are relatively speaking, very inexperienced.

 

If memory serves, you are a hardcore ground PVPer, I think I remember your name from my PVP days? So if I may, can I urge you to remember what it's like for noob ground pvpers coming into the game claiming that XYZ is cheating and they saw this and that? And how often are they actually correct in what they think they saw?

Edited by Ttoilleekul
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Are there BiS builds for GSF for each ship type? Ie component choices, crew etc.

And is there a BiS ship meta (like ground pvp has class metas).

I assume certain classes cancel each other out or are better in 1v1 situations.

Should I bother using my points to open up other ships. If so which ones and what happens to the ones I’ve already got.

 

Phlaczen has answered this one comprehensively, so I'll just give you my ship builds. https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=993310

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Thanks guys for patiently answering my noobish questions. I will definitely be looking at those abilities more to see how to set them up and use them.

 

One last thing though. My wife and I did witness a player camping inside a satellite in a couple of matches.

So I’m assuming from your replies this isn’t normal game play and it should be reported.

I’m also assuming it’s not common behaviour to cheat in GSF.

For future reference, does GSF have an email for reporting / sending video evidence to BioWare like pvp does?

 

I'm betting it only looks that way, I've never seen anybody truly being inside one.That said, there are plenty of very devious bomber pilots out there. Maybe they placed their ship inside a turret, for example? That can be done and makes it tough to see or target the enemy, since turrets are non collidable. Satelite itself is very much collidable though. But as others have stated, it has lots of nooks and crannies, above and below both. You can easily circle a satelite and end up with an impression the bomber is inside it. If you imagine satelite is a person(because why not :o) a devious ticker bomber sits in the armpit of the person. Fly directly below and you'll see the louse!

 

All that said, of course it is entirely possible you've encountered something unseen. Its def good idea to report exploits and stuff like clear intentional chain suiciders. I'd imagine capturing them on video is the best option, in case you got stuff like shadowplay. communitysupport@swtor.com is prolly the adress to use here.

Edited by Stradlin
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I'm betting it only looks that way, I've never seen anybody truly being inside one.That said, there are plenty of very devious bomber pilots out there. Maybe they placed their ship inside a turret, for example? That can be done and makes it tough to see or target the enemy, since turrets are non collidable. Satelite itself is very much collidable though. But as others have stated, it has lots of nooks and crannies, above and below both. You can easily circle a satelite and end up with an impression the bomber is inside it. If you imagine satelite is a person(because why not :o) a devious ticker bomber sits in the armpit of the person. Fly directly below and you'll see the louse!

 

All that said, of course it is entirely possible you've encountered something unseen. Its def good idea to report exploits and stuff like clear intentional chain suiciders. I'd imagine capturing them on video is the best option, in case you got stuff like shadowplay. communitysupport@swtor.com is prolly the adress to use here.

 

Life hack (I know you know this) blow up the turret, and taadaaah... the bomber is exposed!

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Life hack (I know you know this) blow up the turret, and taadaaah... the bomber is exposed!

 

Indeed^^ Or keep cylcling through closest enemies til you spot it. Still prolly end up hitting turret and/or mines as much as the bomer. Til turret and mines are gone.

 

 

(a bit too long)TLDR about GSF ships

 

T1 Scout Blackbolt - Can be very evasive and hard to kill. Has a handy/nasty AOE debuff which also does a tiny bit of AOE damage without you having to aim.

T2 Scout Sting - Bit less evasive and bit more lethal than Blackbolt. Think of a sneaky hobo with a shotgun.

T3 Scout Bloodmark - Support. Give your friends a speedbuff and drop healing drones. Speedbuff is vital at start of Satelite matches. Has EMP missiles, which are awesome. Can also heal your friends and give them ammo.

T1 and T2 scout both take lots of skill to fly well. Both work great if you fly them well. Bloodmark is bit less lethal and bit easier to operate.

 

 

T1 Strikefighter Rycer - Versatile jack of all trades. Fairly easy to operate, lethal. Relies on two sets of cannons. Great for beginner.

T2 Strike Quell - Same as above, relies on two sets of missiles. Fairly easy to operate once you figure out how to use missiles.

T3 Strike Imperium - Support. Either heal your friends or slice your enemies. Bit less lethal than other strikes,bit clumsier. Has high survival.

T1 and T2 Strikes are awesome ships. Both are basically closest things to FOTM GSF has. Both are great for beginner, both can be build for either DMs or Satelite matches.Both can be build to do well in both!

 

T1 Bomber Legion - Drones! Heal your friends or debuff your enemies with snares. Drop turrets that shoot railguns or missiles. Think of an engineer in some team fortress FPS.

T2 Bomber Decimus - Clumsy strikefighter as much as a traditional bomber. Debuff your enemies with snares.

T3 Bomber Razorwire - Comes with Hyperspace Beacon which is a vital ability in satelite matches. Also good supplement of really nasty mines.

It is fairly easy to do the basics on a bomber. At least on Razorwire. It is difficult to fly them well and truly be devious in one. All bombers are clumsy and , unlike all other ships, typically don't have an engine ability to escape missiles.

 

T1 Gunship Mangler - The archtypical default GS. Ion cannon to do aoe and strip shileds of your enemies, railgun to finish them off. Think of a sniper rifle in some normal FPS.

T2 Gunship Dustmaker - Perhaps the only ship in GSF that is without a clear, unique purpose. Hard to come up with a situation where this ship would do better than other two gunships. Odd mix of components that don't work well together.

T3 Gunship Jurgoran - Interesting mix of T1 GS and a clumsy T2 scout. Has railgun for sniping and decent toolkit for surviving, escaping or even winning dogfights when necessary.

It is easy to do certain baselevel performance in a GS, it is difficult to keep positioning well, knowing when and where to move, knowing how to deal with pressure and attention from enemy strikes or scouts.

 

Cartel ships are just cosmetics and identical to normal ones in all ways.

Rep and Imp ships are identical, just different looks and names.

GSF is in great balance atm, all ships have their own role and path to victory. With possible exception of Dustmaker.I bet even that one has its devil's advocates.

 

Most stater friendly ships (100% subjective) More Ås=starter friendlier!

Rycer ÅÅÅÅÅ

Quell ÅÅÅÅÅ

Bloodmark ÅÅÅÅ

Mangler ÅÅÅÅ

Razorwire ÅÅÅ

Blackbolt ÅÅÅ

Imperium ÅÅÅ

 

 

Out of all the ships really, Rycer performs best even in 100% stock condition. All the rest you have to build at least a bit for them to work. Blackbolt for example is very hard to operate as stock.

Edited by Stradlin
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T2 Gunship Dustmaker - Perhaps the only ship in GSF that is without a clear, unique purpose. Hard to come up with a situation where this ship would do better than other two gunships. Odd mix of components that don't work well together.

 

Back in the day I never saw what Krixarcs got out of flying the T2 GS, other than an opportunity to flex on how good a pilot he was.

 

Recently though, I gave the T2 some flying time, and I have to say, I really liked it. I was surprised.

 

Part of it is that the components don't work together easily. You have the classic railgun stop and go style, but if you take a HLC-Protons build, a right click of the mouse comes pretty close to turning you into a strike fighter under a weak snare effect. The result is that if you can juggle your movement and secondary weapon selection well, you always have excellent options for hurting any target more than say 4-5 km away. There's also just the fun of those occasions when you launch a long range proton, and manage to land a fully charged Slug shot just as the Proton torp hits.

 

I also get a different feel from the overall playstyle. In the other gunships I'm either railgunning, desperately trying to survive, or fooling around at close range against weak opposition. If not using railguns, something is going wrong. For the T2, the other options aren't so much desperate measures. It's more: "Do I want to kill them with railgun, do I want to kill them with proton torpedoes, do I want to kill them with HLCs, or do I want to kill them with all of the above?" It's a contrast with the excellent long range and mediocre short and medium range of the other gunships, instead giving excellent long range and medium range but very weak short range.

 

My biggest problem with it is that I have to remind myself that the railgun is the most productive weapon on the ship and that if I really want to fly a Starguard with an empty energy pool I should just swap to a Starguard and boost a lot. In the absence of meaningful armor due to the overabundance of AP, I'll settle for a gunship that turns into a slightly debuffed strike fighter at the click of a mouse, even if the original armor busting theme is irrelevant.

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Back in the day I never saw what Krixarcs got out of flying the T2 GS, other than an opportunity to flex on how good a pilot he was.

 

Recently though, I gave the T2 some flying time, and I have to say, I really liked it. I was surprised.

 

 

Hmm...but when one feels like flying a GS that LARPs a bit clumsy Strike, why not step in to a Jurgo instead? Well, that's more of a clumsy scout larp, but still. Do you feel Dustmaker does something better than Jurgo in this hybrid department? I suppose my main issue is with optimal ranges involved. HLCs, torpedos and railguns are all answers to pretty similar questions. Short and long range feels like a better toolkit for most situations.

 

All that said, I've not flown Dust..or heck, gunships that much in a long time, so def not peddling my pov as some great truth about this. Plus I've always had a really strong personal dislike towards medium range weapons. Lookin at you, Quad lasers. Dust's HLCs aren't medium range, but you end up taking them out in annoying medium range situations! So they HLCs larping quads! Lots of larping involved with Dustmaker, trulyoO

 

Ofc when it comes to going fun factor 1st, all bets are off! Iremember sometimes trying Dustmaker with 2 x missiles for the heck of it. There's prolly also some strange fun factor and/or potential in trying to manage some sort of a weird dot build with it.

Edited by Stradlin
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Hmm...but when one feels like flying a GS that LARPs a bit clumsy Strike, why not step in to a Jurgo instead? Well, that's more of a clumsy scout larp, but still. Do you feel Dustmaker does something better than Jurgo in this hybrid department? I suppose my main issue is with optimal ranges involved. HLCs, torpedos and railguns are all answers to pretty similar questions. Short and long range feels like a better toolkit for most situations.

 

I'd say that I feel like in the T3 the toolkit is really about trying to escape back to railgun range. If you're lucky or out skill the opponent you might hold your own more or less at C in Lost Shipyards, but unless it's for lolz you don't really want to be in BLC/Cluster/Interdiciton range. The budget scout thing only works if you're holding in cover tight enough to make up for the lack of mobility.

 

In the T2 the range overlap lets you supplement the railgun without having to really leave that ideal range. P-torp is a solid long range weapon, and it gives you something productive to switch to when your blaster energy pool is empty. HLCs can be nice if you're in a place where there are fleeting shot opportunities where it doesn't make sense to hold a charged rail shot and just hope that the target will come out from cover before you run out of energy. It feels like once you have it down you can spend more time on offensive output. The downside of course, is that if anything gets close enough that HLCs aren't working for you any more, you're doomed unless someone peels for you or you manage to open up a gap again somehow.

 

I suppose it's also possible that over the years I've spent enough time in Ion Railgun snared T1Fs that I just feel at home in a T2GS with HLCs and Protons. ;)

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A bit more detail on lagging in GSF.

Induced lag is subtly different. The ship still stutters across the screen, but it's jumps/teleports rather than typical boost mode acceleration, and the big telltale is that the direction the ship is pointing is often significantly different than the direction the ship is moving. It is possible to do this deliberately by a variety of means, many of which involve just saturating the lagger's internet connection with other traffic and therefore aren't really detectable as cheats by SWTOR's servers. It does make targets somewhat harder to hit if you don't know exactly how the game treats this.

 

There was a guy who used to deliberately do this. He'd run his heal bomber on Domination matches and just basically be a complete nuisance, since he could defeat missile locks or consistent laser hits simply by triggering his lag. So you couldn't do enough damage to him to kill him, and since he'd be dropping seeker mines, healing drones and a interdiction drone while you'd be trying to kill him, he could kill you while being almost unkillable. If you pulled off to go after his drones/mines, he'd just reap the benefits of the things you weren't shooting at, plus it would just get him closer to finishing off his cooldowns. Basically you needed to have two gunships shooting at him at once, who would have to ambush him rather than continually shoot at him so he wouldn't be triggering his lag to evade them.

 

He would wreck Domination matches, but he was absolutely terrible on Deathmatches, because the other team wouldn't have to bother with him, and he wasn't particularly good as a straight player. On Domination, he could basically hold down a satellite by himself while the rest of his team dealt with the other two.

 

But that wasn't what ultimately got him banned. Turned out while he was doing this he was also warping, so in desperate situations, he could blink across the map to get where he needed to be. When a bunch of us started seeing him doing that, he vanished from the game less than a week later.

 

This was the only time I'd ever seen someone clearly cheating in GSF, even though I hear about supposed cheaters regularly.

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Is there such a thing as speed hacking in GSF (like in ground pvp). Start of the match and enemy is already capping a satellite as we warp in. Is that even possible playing under normal conditions? Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Is there such a thing as speed hacking in GSF (like in ground pvp). Start of the match and enemy is already capping a satellite as we warp in. Is that even possible playing under normal conditions?

 

More likely that the other team had a T3 scout using Tensor. The combination of tensor and engines built for speed is considerably faster at reaching sats in the beginning of a game.

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Is there such a thing as speed hacking in GSF (like in ground pvp). Start of the match and enemy is already capping a satellite as we warp in. Is that even possible playing under normal conditions?

 

They just used Tensor. You can make a very fast ship with that build. If you use interdiction drive its even faster. If I may say, please get away from this mentality of thinking everything you are seeing is a hack. As myself and a few others said earlier in this post, we have never seen a hack in years of playing. I fully understand the mentality coming from ground PVP to assume hacks, but this is not ground pvp. Defaulting to assuming something you don't understand must be a hack, will absolutely hold you back. I have never seen anyone make it to the stratospheric levels of being an Ace and still think people hack. Conversely, those who accuse people of hacking, are always low skilled players with limited understanding of the game. If you see something you don't understand, ask. There is always an answer.

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Is there such a thing as speed hacking in GSF (like in ground pvp). Start of the match and enemy is already capping a satellite as we warp in. Is that even possible playing under normal conditions?

 

What is your latency to the servers?

 

Do you pre-select "Ready" for you ship choice or do you select your ship and hit ready at or just after the timer counts down to zero?

 

The reason I ask is that as someone who due to accidents of geography has latency in the 30 to 50 ms range, I can tell you that not everyone spawns into a GSF map at the same time.

 

I usually wait before tensoring. I shift power to engines, then just sit there till I start seeing ships fly past me, and then hit tensor. The reason is that if I hit tensor and boost as soon as I spawn in, only 1-3 players (counting me as one of them), will get the speed boost. Everyone else won't have spawned into the map yet. By the time half of a team has spawned in, I can potentially already be halfway to a satellite. By the time the last person spawns in, I can potentially be about 75% of the way through solo capping a satellite. The problem is that holding a sat 1 v 6 in a Spearpoint/Bloodmark is rough going, so it's better to wait longer and share the Tensor with the rest of the team, even if they're slower to phase in.

 

So if you spawn in, and a fraction of a second later a sat turns, it's almost certainly someone with a full speed build Tensor scout who has really low latency and was not polite enough to wait and share their tensor with teammates.

 

It's a valid strategy if you have the network connection needed to make it happen. Not entirely fair perhaps, but until they make modems that work based on "spooky action at a distance" we're stuck with fiber-optics and copper, and the signal delays that go with them.

 

 

I assume that the spawn in delay is to support making sure that the server positively knows which ship you have selected. So that's a round trip to confirm the ship choice, and then perhaps another round trip for actual spawning. If each trip is a big chunk of a second, or more than a second, the folks that are boosting with the Tensor buff are going to have covered some serious distance.

Edited by Ramalina
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They just used Tensor. You can make a very fast ship with that build. If you use interdiction drive its even faster. If I may say, please get away from this mentality of thinking everything you are seeing is a hack. As myself and a few others said earlier in this post, we have never seen a hack in years of playing. I fully understand the mentality coming from ground PVP to assume hacks, but this is not ground pvp. Defaulting to assuming something you don't understand must be a hack, will absolutely hold you back..

 

I have absolutely seen someone using a speed hack in GSF, and it didn't look anything at all like tensor field. It was a bomber who solo spawned at the end of a Lost Shipyards Domination match who managed to go from the default spawn point to Satellite C (which his team did not have possession of) in under a second. (For an unassisted bomber, this would usually take over 20) Unfortunately for him he didn't quite know how to use his hack and he crashed into the drydock around C and died, but he absolutely hacked to get over there in that time. I watched it happen myself. Again, he was the same guy who'd manipulate lag in order to defeat missile locks and consistent targeting of him. We always suspected that he was hacking the lag, because it always served him. It would never hit him when it was inconvenient, but he did that for months without any repercussions. He only vanished from the game after an entire team watched him do a speed hack to cross the map in under a second.

 

Just because a majority of the hack accusations have no basis, don't assume they ALL do.

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More likely that the other team had a T3 scout using Tensor. The combination of tensor and engines built for speed is considerably faster at reaching sats in the beginning of a game.

 

Not unless they can instantly port to the furthest satellite from their start point and start capping in 2 seconds of the match starting.

 

And yes I’m a complete noob, but even I know that’s not an ability at the start of the match. I’ve also been in the game a long time and know there is currently a speed hack working in ground pvp. So it’s not unreasonable to think GSF is not immune to this sort of hack.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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I have absolutely seen someone using a speed hack in GSF, and it didn't look anything at all like tensor field. It was a bomber who solo spawned at the end of a Lost Shipyards Domination match who managed to go from the default spawn point to Satellite C (which his team did not have possession of) in under a second. (For an unassisted bomber, this would usually take over 20) Unfortunately for him he didn't quite know how to use his hack and he crashed into the drydock around C and died, but he absolutely hacked to get over there in that time. I watched it happen myself. Again, he was the same guy who'd manipulate lag in order to defeat missile locks and consistent targeting of him. We always suspected that he was hacking the lag, because it always served him. It would never hit him when it was inconvenient, but he did that for months without any repercussions. He only vanished from the game after an entire team watched him do a speed hack to cross the map in under a second.

 

Just because a majority of the hack accusations have no basis, don't assume they ALL do.

 

I'd need to see video evidence to believe it, or have it verified by someone I know for a certainty wouldn't mistake what they are seeing. Not impossible, but I have never come across an accusation of cheating that was not explained by lack of understanding / knowledge of the game.

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Not unless they can instantly port to the furthest satellite from their start point and start capping in 2 seconds of the match starting.

 

And yes I’m a complete noob, but even I know that’s not an ability at the start of the match. I’ve also been in the game a long time and know there is currently a speed hack working in ground pvp. So it’s not unreasonable to think GSF is not immune to this sort of hack.

 

Here is the thing though. You play the game for 5 minutes, and you conveniently see a hack. I play for 12,000 games, and never see one.

 

By your own words you are a noob in GSF. Really trying not to point the finger here, but come on, how much credibility would you give to some noob in ground PVP who is claiming hack every 5 minutes?

 

You might not even be spawning as quick as you think you are. In fact the odds are quite in favor of this being the case. I am very fast out of the gate when the game starts. Very fast. As most top level players are. Most of my team, in any given match, is easily 2-3 seconds behind me. They probably think they spawned "immediately." They didn't. Period. Watch any of my videos on my channel and you will see this. Even many long term players are slow out of spawn. Another very common thing is spawning relatively quick, but being slow to boost. So if I am on the other team, using tensor, and I literally do spawn at 0.000 seconds, and you think you spawn at 0.000 seconds, but actually spawn at 2.000 seconds, then yeah, to you its going to look like I have a speed hack. I am willing to bet my reputation that your spawn procedure is not as good as you think it is. Which is going to factor heavily in your claims of how fast said person made it to the node.

 

But look, we can stop debating this and solve it very easily. Record your games. If nothing happens of a suspicious nature, delete it immediately. If something does happen, you've caught it on camera and can post the video for the experts to analyse. If the experts see a possible hack, we can support you in reporting it. Until I see video evidence -which conveniently people who always claim hack, never bother to get- I am going to keep suggesting people learn the mode better. Because without fail once someone's understanding / knowledge of the game reaches a certain level, all accusations of cheating suddenly stop. I used to be that person, and I have also seen the progression many times.

Edited by Ttoilleekul
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