I leveled gunships from prometheus fire, which I had to play 4>7 or so. I currently have lightbringer. I successfully crushed ESB squads in my R11 castor when they were flying their standard R15 and I got to be the captain in CR. It’s very much doable.
The “oh noes I’m in a low ranked ship compared to them” in T5 is a 20% real issue and 80% low skill player’s cop-out as a “I lost not because they outplayed me, but because they had better gear”. In vast majority of the games, a good squad flying R10 ships will utterly destroy most random people flying full synergy R15s. And it’s entirely possible to trash even ESB squads flying R15s with R10/11/12 ships. You simply need to successfully outplay them. It’s hard, but doable, as it should be.
The #1 problem in T4/T5 right now is fear of ESB. The #2 problem is that ESB squads function like cancer when people fear them, and slowly destroy the tier by demolishing people in those 4v4 and 5v5 games in a way that makes people quit the tier entirely. Just like cancer slowly kills the organ by growing its own dysfunctional cell structure all over the organ until it fails. Those small games are indeed largely unwinnable because the only thing needed to win them is usually focus fire. But if people stopped fearing the evil space cancer and more 12v12 games were played, you’d see that they are far from undefeatable.
So quit crying here, put your big boy pants on and queue up for T4/T5 to fix the ESB problem. It’s completely in your hands folks. Devs aren’t going to segregate them, so the fate of T4/T5 is in your hands.
I laughed, the cancer-parallel is just funny.
Still, you have a very valid point. +1
On the other Hand: Imagine for a moment that the “russian corps” would vanish completely, I bet PPL will start complaining about NASA and WPK, since they will become the “new cancer”, because: srsly who doesnt like shooting at things or seeing explosions. I guess it would take about 2-3 Months till NASA or WPK will be feared.
So, team up before you go T4/5, since you cant expect to win with randoms vs. a full squad of ESB (but that is also true for other Corps), especially not in 4v4s.
I really hope the barrier between T4 and T5 comes soon, its ridiculous.