Gamer Blog - T2 to T3 transition

Game Discussion Levelling and Economy
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After lengthy in-game discussions with a fellow pilot, I thought I would create a blog of sorts about my experiences of trying to enter the tier. I will be honest about everything and try to give as much detail as I can, and I’ll even speculate, where I can, on why I feel the way I do about things.

 

So, first off… ship and loadout! (see the screenshot).

 

I have started out with the Phobos Aura for three reasons…

 

  1. I used to own it before the transition to 0.8.0 and wanted it back.

  2. I like Empire ships and I wanted to stay with Empire.

  3. I The only other ship I have T3 modules for is a Tackler… and I had no intention of buying the entire Fed ship tree just for that!

 

So, let’s talk action!

 

Entry One: Dipping of the toes

My biggest complaint about T2 remains how weak Rank 4 ships feel. On the occasions I have gone back to flying the Hercules Arrow (once my favourite vessel, and still to my mind the best looking ship in all of Star Conflict) I was left shocked by how bad it is compared to the Rank 6 ships. There is absolutely no reason to fly a Rank 4 ship unless you haven’t got access to anything better.

 

Guess how I feel right now? Yeah, that’s right - I’m flying a Rank 7 ship and I feel like it belongs in Tier 2, not Tier 3.

 

More frustratingly, I am flying a Gunship and yet I have unloaded my Overcharged Heavy Lasers into a stationary Recon Interceptor and he didn’t even notice. That moment dragged the entire game down for me, and it’s the apex of a nagging sensation I’ve had in every T3 game so far - I feel weak.

 

Now I can understand that some ships are not built for raw power, but a Gunship is not one of them. I am willing to admit I have gone off the Gunship in Tier 2 and it might be that if I went back to my Deimos-2 I might feel the exact same way. Actually, I might just go and try that for the sake of comparison. Back in a moment…

 

 

Yeah, it’s Tier 3. In Tier 2 my Gunship feels like it has power. I kick in with the Overdrive and I feel like I can shred anything that comes into my gunsights. Something happens between T2 and T3 that seems to render the Gunship impotent, and that’s an issue when I don’t have another ship to transition into. I can see now why some people believe Engineers are way overpowered; they certainly feel that way in Tier 3!

 

More shall follow as the T3 mission count rises.

 

Edit: I decided to dip into the PvE world for a mission to see how the Phobos handles there. Wow… I like this ship in PvE! It’s not ideal and I think the more I play with it the more I am going to realise this does not fit my playstyle, but the sheer damage it can cause is awesome!

post-240349-0-71265200-1370276005.jpg

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 you probably will feel different once you have maxed out its synergy. I noticed my first rank t3 ship sucked until I got it almost maxed out. Now it acts like I would expect

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Here comes some tough love.

 

You are weak in T3 because you are inexperienced. That isn’t the fault of the tier. Gunships can be very powerful in T3, and I don’t believe yours is set up correctly.

 

In T3 and T4, you will go up against the best corporations and pilots in the game much more frequently. You are also flying with and against pilots who fight them on a regular basis. All these pilots do is get better. Don’t think you can just waltz out there and own the place. You are nothing but fresh meat right now. Don’t be discouraged, either. You have just hit a wall and need to overcome it, and that will take some time.

 

In T3 there is an increased focus on teamwork to get things done due to the increased power of ALL ships, not just engineers. Yes, the Phobos Aura is not the strongest of ships. It’s time you made up for that by placing yourself in situations that play to your ship’s strengths. Focus your fire. Ping and get help. Work with the team.

 

You have opportunities to improve in every match you play.

 

Learn from those who killed you. What did you do leading up to that?

Learn from those you cannot kill. What are they doing right? Who is helping them?

 

Don’t write off losses as “these ships are OP” or “my team is full of bads”, etc. These are the frustrated excuses of players who refuse to accept they too made mistakes. Attitude is everything. You don’t improve by blaming everyone else. You improve by getting your xxxx handed to you and saying “Well, I just have to get better and work harder.”

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The difference is of T2 and T3 is the skill level of the players. T2 you might run into some guy that only has 50 games played and in T3 you might run into someone with 5000 games played and has been around the block. Also JasanQuinn you should tell people about how many games so far you have played in t3. I’m not going to tell you how to build your ship but in T3 you cant be a solo hero any more and it takes team work and target focusing.

 

 

Q: How would you characterize the gameplay experience in each of the different ship tiers?
A: T1-T2 is for new players or those who like less complicated gameplay. T3 is for farming credits and developing your chops as a veteran pilot, as well as good tier for F2P players. T4 has all the core ships for endgame play, clan wars, etc.

 

This is what i was talking about earlier when we talked in-game. This is in the developers Q&A section if you want to read more its there.

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Something that is really not helping me is that my crosshairs have suddenly developed a mind of their own, to the point where I can barely fight in Tier 3 at times because my guns will be aimed well off the mark. I’m finding myself going back to Tier 2 just so that my guns will work properly.

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Something that is really not helping me is that my crosshairs have suddenly developed a mind of their own, to the point where I can barely fight in Tier 3 at times because my guns will be aimed well off the mark. I’m finding myself going back to Tier 2 just so that my guns will work properly.

 

You’re using a Heavy weapon then. Heavy weapons have slow tracking barrels. Try using a weapon that doesn’t have “slow moving barrels”.

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Indeed… Heavy weapons… ESPECIALLY Lasers… if you dont let the turret / cross hairs meet up before firing, your going to have problems as the turrets move slower when they are re-aligning.

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also worth noting is that weapon damage did not scale proportionately with survivability from T2 to T3

 

ship health got a boost of ~50% extra relative to weapon damage.

 

couple that with the additional passive and active slots T3 ships got killing things got a wee bit harder

 

add better pilot risk management in general … chalking up kills on the scoreboard takes extra effort

 

the upside to T3 is you tend to get wiser team-mates. first thing I noticed when I decided to play that tier

 

but lately I’ve noticed more than a few ‘week old DLC buyers’ who didn’t know what’ll happen to them when they install that Desert Eagle, Bear, Dragonfly into their hanger slots before clicking launch. when too many are around, i tier back down :stuck_out_tongue:

 

might also be a good idea to avoid sector conquest when top corps are doing their thing in the last few hours before update

 

as for weapons - some just don’t work anymore in T3

and those that do, they only work when someone else other than you is also shooting the same thing

 

just had an epic 1 on 1 engineer vs guard that lasted almost 2 minutes (?)

fired off 9 missiles between the two of us and that barely got our shields down. my drones actually tipped the scales in my favor of all things.

 

anyways - when i found my main gun, things went alot better.

still on synergy 5 on my engineer/gunship/covops. should be all good when i get to max and mostly blues.

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The early bird frags the worm:

 

I’ve followed some advice and tried changing out my equipment. I’m left with the distinct impression that I am either going to have to do a lot of grinding, or get really lucky on the Military loot, to get this ship anywhere close to where it should be…

 

First match I flew with my new loadout I ran across a Guard Frigate who simply did not notice I was unloading into him. Admittedly I’ve had better luck with other fighters or when I’ve landed hits on an Inty that’s not paying attention, but I still feel like this ship is in the wrong match altogether. The Phobos Aura isn’t winning me over, and I don’t have the credits to re-tool a new ship, nor the inclination to waste money on premium equipment.

 

Honestly, that is getting me down. Even when I’m on the winning team it feels entirely due to the fact that my side had a Corp and theirs didn’t. I don’t feel like I’m contributing anything to a match (even if I’m top 3 in the scoreboard oddly…)

 

Since I earn considerably more in T2, I’m going back there. T3 is too expensive for my tastes right now.

 

Edit: I wandered back into the T3 scene briefly. Had much more fun this time around. I didn’t exactly rock the scoreboard, but it felt like a good match (even though we lost…).

 

The repair thing is still bugging the hell out of me though. I’m losing over half my earnings to repairs alone! If  I fly T2 I pay a third of the repair costs whilst earning almost the same money (more actually, since I can get a higher score in T2…).

 

This really needs to be fixed. It seems the more I try to fly this tier, the more the game tells me not to.

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Grab a license and play till Tier4 repair bill gives you cancer.

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i bring along a premium ship. Start the game using the credit ship i’m leveling. when that gets killed, i continue on using the premium. basically i allow myself 1 life per match on the credit ship when grinding for money.

 

T2 used to make money faster because you get games going quicker and ends faster… but there are times during the day when ppl camp just as hard as in T3, tighter matches, more deaths, going to time etc… might as well play in T3. same or more credits in less games (time spent playing) - and synergy for your flagship.

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It’s not about number of games, it’s about the costs involved.

 

My typical profits from a T3 game are around… call it 60K for simplicity. I am paying over 30K for repair and another 10K to reload.

 

By contrast, I can rack up 70K in a T2 match and spend less than 10K on repair and reload combined!

 

I don’t know who wrote the Q&A, but that stuff about T3 being the place to grind for cash is total bollocks.

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The developers or Error wrote the Q&A. Also T3 is where the best of the best are at now. Are you using a license? Because if you are and you make top or second place in t3 you should come around 170k- 200k after the loot screen. .

 

[http://forum.star-conflict.com/index.php?/topic/19050-the-first-new-developer-qa-has-arrived/](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/19050-the-first-new-developer-qa-has-arrived/)

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As a side comment, I wonder if where you place in T3 – near the T2 threshold, the middle, or the T4 threshold – affects how much you earn in a match. I find it peculiar that you would make (not including repairs) less in T3 than in T2.

 

Like Zero said, even on a loss I can earn up to 100-120k (again, not including repairs).

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Wait, what? Zero… seriously? Are you drunk or something? You make a bloody huge song and dance about how I should make it clear that I have less than five hundred T3 matches under my belt, and how T3 is all about Corporations and teams with no place for loners (or “Pugs” as people so flatteringly call them)… and yet you expect someone who has just entered Tier 3, using a Rank 7 ship, should be able to routinely rock up into the top two positions whilst flying solo and clock 200K a match?

 

I don’t know what game you are playing, but I don’t think it exists for anyone but you.

 

On the licence front, I refuse to spend real money until I know for certain this game isn’t going to pull a bait-and-switch with its content. There have been too many shakeups and too many bad choices for me to commit real funds at this time, so no licence save when they give them away.

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The lower net profits you’re experiencing might also be due to the fact that you’re more comfortable in T2. Repair costs do stack up in T3 and so saving credits might be difficult, at least for a while, though you should never run negative income. For someone just entering T3, the transition is certainly tough. Your ships don’t feel right, your T2s might have better stats when maxed out on synergy compared to your new T3s, and the gameplay is different. As you become more accustomed to T3 however, you’ll notice that you’ll survive longer (lower repair costs) and excel more frequently in individual matches (higher baseline income).

 

For this reason, I encourage you to keep at it. It might be hard right now, and this is something that could definitely be looked into, but it is well worth your time in the long run.

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wrote the numbers down for my 1 hour session – about 40 minutes play, 20 minutes break = Net Profit 388,497

 

 

[t3hourincome.txt](< base_url >/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=6050)

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Jasan, ill pm you one of my secrets on saving credits. Ill also start a new thread with the same information… as I think its viable for all to know.

 

As for lower tier t3 ships being worse than high end t2 ships… totally true. Mix in 2 of your best t2 ships with a t3 trash ship and use your t2’s… repair costs will still be low. Ive done that a few times on accident… and still come in first spot on a t3 match.

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/moved at OP’s request

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In space, no-one can hear you matchmaking…

I had planned to do more T3 battles today, but the morning’s offerings were downright terrible. Long wait times and some stupidly small games put me off… I had a 3v3 match with four bots involved!

 

I am just getting so sick of Tier 3. I am tired of watching the scoreboard come up and being paid less than what I should be and being screwed with repair costs. If this is how the game is meant to be played, then I urge everyone playing Star Conflict to abandon it now.

 

I am come to resent my ship. I resent how enemies I could slaughter in Tier 2 can now effectively ignore me in Tier 3. I especially resent being paid 48K for a match - a payment I’d consider crap for a Rank 5 ship!

 

Ideally, by now I would jump ship to a new class and see if that improved things, but given the prices of Tier 3 ships that simply is not possible. There is clearly something fundamentally flawed about either the Phobos, Rank 7 ships in general or Tier 3 as a whole.

 

Edit: An insult to injury moment - the highest earning game I’ve had in a long time has just been completed… and I spend most of the match flying a Tier 2 Interceptor.

 

I really don’t know if I should care any more about this tier…