Alas, destroyers have come, but they brought with them the new meta of ‘Destroyerballs’. Every PvP game I play now that has more than 1 or 2 Destroyers per team will ultimately result in the destroyers camping in the back, balled up together, making them almost impossible to kill.
I have several speculations on what has caused ‘destroyerballs’ to come to be.
There are no mechanics in the game to help prevent them, despite the devs saying there would be mechanics to prevent destroyerballs.
Repair costs are far too high. I mean seriously, 750k repair cost? C’mon… This only encourages people to play reserved and to ball up in their destroyers. Everyone is too afraid to die because they don’t wanna go broke because they died.
Destroyers static shields can be shot through. Unlike Engineer static barriers, the destroyer static shields are one-way shields. This creates a huge problem, as the destroyer can still keep shooting at his target, when his target won’t be able to shoot at him in return.
How can we prevent ‘destroyerballs’?
There are several things that should be done in order to prevent destroyerballs. No one of these would entirely fix the problem, but some combination of these may help and/or fix the problem.
Fix destroyer repairs. Lower the repair costs so people aren’t afraid of dying. This will help break up those ‘destroyerballs’ as players will be more willing to charge in to the fray. FIXED. removed from poll
Fix static shields. Static shields should be two-way. Neither enemies nor the host should be able to shoot through them.
Implement a resistance reduction on all Destroyers. Similar to guards, I think destroyers could go with a resistance reduction, so that they aren’t quite so tanky.
Increase the recharge of destroyer turrets powerup. Currently, the can have a recharge 20.8 seconds for the powerup, which is extremely overpowered against pretty much every ship. I think the recharge for that should be (at the shortest) 45 seconds. This way the turrets can still fire on their own normally, but the powerup for them will not be occurring every 20 or so seconds.
Implement a damage or resistance penalty to destroyers when there is another destroyer within a certain proximity. This way, destroyers would become less effective when close together, but would still be powerful ships, as they are designed to be.
They work fairly well against each other, but due to the campy meta everyone is taking (mostly due to high repair costs), the destroyers rarely see each other. And when they do, they rarely focus each other, as shooting at the other team’s normal ships is easier kills than focusing down an enemy destroyer.
With organized squads removed, there isn’t really an effective way of countering destroyers. A 3 or 4 man squad could definitely do something against them and focus due to better communication and organization, but the devs hate teamwork, so yeah…
All you need to damage them through their shields is explosives. Even something as simple as a Phase Suppressor or whatever that inty weapon is. Go coils and it’s even worse. And if the destroyer isn’t prepared, a well-placed torpedo will take down a good third of their shields.
And did I mention that you can hide within their own shields and hit their hull and structures directly?
And without an engineer, their hulls are very vulnerable, as they cannot directly heal their own hulls.
Yesterday i’ve encounter 4 of them in enemy team (non in our team). My first reaction was O MY GOD! WE’RE GONNA GET CRUSHED! But when I almost solo one destroyer with my guard Anaconda I stopped worried. They are not so tough. And yes we won.
Lol. They are just like any guard now, really. Their only genuine benefit in combat is their special turrets. Aside from that, I can easily solo them in my CovOps. Xp
I found out that destroying their structures deals a ton of damage to them, so if you knife in the right spot you can take them out in a matter of seconds.
So after letting the patch sit for a bit and playing some more, destroyerballs don’t seem to be as big of an issue. I think this is mostly due to the lowered repair costs, and buffed destroyer stats, so people aren’t afraid to die any more. However, what I have noticed, is that in most cases, whichever team has the most destroyers wins (granted this doesn’t apply to Detonation).
Take LRF. Jump over Destroyer. profit.
Take a tackler. Cloak. Go to the bottom. Fire. profit.
Take a covops. Cloak. Go to the weak spot. Fire. profit.
Take a gunship. Get bubbles. Kill Destroyer’s turrets through the static shield. profit
You got the drift?
Problem with most of those (aside from LRF) is it requires good ping to actually do that reliably, and against good Destroyer pilots. Covops are very hard to fly with 250 ping (RU servers for me), even with 180 (EU). Bubble gunships can work with higher ping, but the more mobile fed gunships that work best with bubbles and for flanking destroyers are hard to fly with high ping, same goes for bubble tacklers.
The only good tactic for countering destroyers for players with high ping is coil spam. While this works, it also forces players to fly a frigate (likely an LRF) just to counter a specific ship. This is not a good thing for a game. It is the same reason that having so many US players forced to play with high ping most of the time is bad, because it makes people have to settle for things, instead of being able to fly what they want.
I honestly think the best thing to both balance the fact that the team with more destroyers wins as well as help destroyers become powerful tools, is to make squadding easier. Not bring 4-man squads into T3, but make it so 2-mans don’t need squads on the other team. This way players can coordinate tactics against destroyers easier, but players can also use destroyers in a more coordinated fashion.
shield havok is a good way to disperse destroyers. Aside from that, they’re vulnerable to lrf’s blueballs and explosives. Aside from that, if they’re sitting in the back not contributing to game objectives, then why fly over to them when you can just complete the objectives? It’s easier to attack a destroyer ball when they’re on objectives because they’re so slow they get torped, supernovaand shield havoc into oblivion.
also, when I’m playing a destroyer, when I havel like 6 coil mortars shooting at me at the same time I can’t even see anymore.
Lol. They are just like any guard now, really. Their only genuine benefit in combat is their special turrets. Aside from that, I can easily solo them in my CovOps. Xp
I found out that destroying their structures deals a ton of damage to them, so if you knife in the right spot you can take them out in a matter of seconds.
I just roll over to keep them away from my capacitor. For those of you who are wondering where all your destructables are, fly your destroyer over to water harvest or any other area with an aoe damage hazard and it will strip everything destroyable off your ship. Also, that bit that lights up when you change cap modes, that’s your capacitor.
A well-placed plasma arc will wipe out the majority of active modules and turrets on a destroyer. Well placed means approach the destroyer from the ENGINE and arc the engine. Everything else will be caught in the arc radius.
Destroyer pilots can counter this by warping away.
first you say coilgun fires explosives and now you say turrets aren’t destructable on destroyers. Is it a lack of reading comprehension, a lack of capacity for abstract thought, or trolling?
