Tier?
T4-T5
word on frigballs: 1-2 guards, 1-2 engineers to tank the damage, and have a wonderful ecm, covert and bubblegun party! throw some spy drones in there for uber-healing-nerfage (seriously godsend on guards/engi), add tacklers for that extra umph, and em torps for some more spice.
i all else fails: use the tactical warpgate, luke. ie: just ram one of your engineers into theirs ;p
T4-T5
Oh, haha. Up there, too? Awesome.
word on frigballs: 1-2 guards, 1-2 engineers to tank the damage, and have a wonderful ecm, covert and bubblegun party! throw some spy drones in there for uber-healing-nerfage, add tacklers for that extra umph, and em torps for some more spice.
i all else fails: use the tactical warpgate, luke.
We’re trying to avoid Frigballs, not incentivate them.
We’re trying to avoid Frigballs, not incentivate them.
what? 1-2 guard and engis isnt a frigball, it’s a squad… frigball is like 4 guards and 3 engi.
plus, you can’t expect to properly engage enemy fleets without some tank to absorb the damage… it’s a given.
guards make excellent spearheads for taking beacons for example, especially if they can use cover to get close to it. then just make a decisive push using cover and proper evasive action, meanwhile all guns blazing, torps firing, and actives humming away…
haha can’t forget this one game. capture the beacons, i die twice due to lack of team effort/support. i get mad and call them trolls, pull out my guard, and proceed to spearhead an assault at full speed, even across open terrain, completely stomping 2 enemy LRFs, 2 engineers and some inties/fighters… obviously my team got behind me after i called them trolls ;p esssentially took 2 beacons and forced a spawncamp on them. i eventually died 30 secs into the spawncamp.
it was completely preventable though if they had reacted sooner (and they had plenty of time), and did enough damage to me to force me behind a rock during the push.
Oh, haha. Up there, too? Awesome.
We’re trying to avoid Frigballs, not incentivate them.
It’s even worse up there, they have absurd hull/shields on the Empire/Jericho frigs and even my lighbringer with purple bubble gun cannot kill them fast enough because they know to immediately focus down gunships.
As for the bomb, maybe the system autocorrected due to lag, and turns out someone else was supposed to have the bomb instead?
Quite possible, I probably only picked up the bomb client-side.
Starting to think engi and command should swap modules… Just to see how frigballs react.
Starting to think engi and command should swap modules… Just to see how frigballs react.
Mobility of a command with heals + combat drones and not needing to preserve energy for that stupid shield anymore? They’ll be everywhere!
Devs would even consider redoing the roles ?
My thoughts revolved around 2 alternatives to doing heals in SCon (was some time ago)
- Stereotype RPG healer class
- Consumable Limited Heals
Stereotype RPG Healer
Your typical single player RPG healer is:
Fragile
Fast so it can avoid combat
Either medium powered long range weapon or
Stronger than normal low ROF close range weapon meant for self defense
Weak AOE heal
Medium self heal
Powerful Single target heal
Sacrifice self to revive another
Our Healer is:
Tanky
Slow and cannot avoid combat
Powerful Long Range weapon
Powerful Medium Range weapon
Powerful Close Range weapon
Medium AOE Heals
Powerful Self Heal
Weak Single Target Heal
We could try an RPG healer on an interceptor or even a fast fighter
(perhaps replace the dysfunctional tackler, ECM taking over speed and res debuff )
Fighter weapons do fit the RPG stereotype healer profile
Low Survivability with Cloaking fits the Fragile and Fast - able to avoid combat description
Then swap healing rates as follows to keep consistency
AOE Heals = Current autonomous repair station rates (40-50 hp/s T3)
Single Target Heals = Drone + Shield regen + Restoration rates (+400 hp/s T3)
Self Healing = No change, relies on Repair Kits and natural regen inc passive on hulls (170’ish hp/s T3)
Range: Needs Major nerfing as in. point blank range healing
Healer has to actively evade in order to stay alive so AOE heals should be really close < 2000m
Healer has to consciously select it’s single target patient (just like in RPGs) < 500m
It’s fighter class mobility should allow it to move about the field, exposed to dangers and requires constant escort.
Consumable Limited Heals
Much simpler. Engineer remains as the Medic on team
But Heals are consumable.
Revise the healing rates to Low AOE, Medium Self and Strong Single Target
Each one takes up one active slot
You purchase ‘ammo’ for active slots (like cap boosters in Eve)
Ammo is fixed amount per match. Use them all up and you dont get refills on respawn
Two effects
-
People wont be as liberal with heals since they have to pay for them personally using Credits
-
Healers effectively chooses who he heals instead of AFK assist points scoring
problem with single target heals: in a rpg with a party list it’s really easy to click a health bar and cast a skill. in SC, not so easy. you couldn’t react in time. only possibility would be auto-heals like charge stations that heal the lowest friendly.
and the rpg monk situation varies. in guild wars 1, i could stack so many self-heals/buffs that i’d be next to invincible ;p but some do follow the pattern of providing advantages to smaller, faster monks.
however, monks can be split into protections and healing classes in guild wars. usually in gvg, the healers would be way at the back, unreachable by enemy forces except assassin attacks pretty much, which you’d have to deal with from time to time, but nothing serious.
prot monks are more useful in battle since they can negate damage via resistance, remove conditions and provide buffs, or immunities to certain disables. they could also heal a smaller amount, unlike commands.
and commands actually fill that role nicely in supporting inties. 20 second speed boost helps with fleet engagements, frigballs, slowing debuffs, beacon caps, etc… probably the most useful skill on a command. it can keep up with inties/fighters and support. provide extra dps to counter frigballs/engineers and mobile resistance support as well, without having to put your main healer at risk.
gw1, the healer actually had the fast revive, prot would carry a secondary revive. and you’d usually have one on a warrior or ranger.
you know what this game needs? condition removal :\
the problem is that mass condition removal would be OP, and you can’t target allies, so you can’t do single-target condition removal. anyways, having to target your ally wouldn’t be fast enough. they will prob be dead by then.
but IF it could be done, then engineer special module should probably be turned into a condition removal to give engineers something else to do.
maybe just remove the condition of the ally directly in your crosshairs, without having to select them as a target. can’t think of anything else.
but conditions need some sort of counter, and the only skill i can think of to replace on engi/command is the drone heal.
Anyone else having this problem to just randomly lose his lock on someone for no reason? And i don’t mean cloaky stuff or WNJ or camo or LOS / scan break. Just simply unlocking with no logic.
Starting to think engi and command should swap modules… Just to see how frigballs react.
COMMANDBALL!!
Anyone else having this problem to just randomly lose his lock on someone for no reason? And i don’t mean cloaky stuff or WNJ or camo or LOS / scan break. Just simply unlocking with no logic.
I’ve had this happen to me a few times, yesterday. The targets go behind a rock or something and my lock breaks, doesn’t matter if they’re getting shot by friendlies quite within their visual range…
Anyone else having this problem to just randomly lose his lock on someone for no reason? And i don’t mean cloaky stuff or WNJ or camo or LOS / scan break. Just simply unlocking with no logic.
I regularly have targets cloak that I successfully spy droned. The lag is the devil I tell you. 
I’ve had this happen to me a few times, yesterday. The targets go behind a rock or something and my lock breaks, doesn’t matter if they’re getting shot by friendlies quite within their visual range…
I regularly have targets cloak that I successfully spy droned. The lag is the devil I tell you.
So we gotta fight the misterious lag then…
So here goes: FIX THE LHAG!
I’ve noticed the missing locks. It’s really annoying when flying ECM, or anything else that has target based active mods.
Yesterday I was also getting times I could not enable weapons inhibitor but other mods were working.
In my opinion, at the T3-T4 barrier, the game feels disbalanced really by players and the ship combinations offered atm. which I would not call balance issues per se - to me. And of course laggy matches cost a bit aimtime.
T3 battles are really enjoyable atm. The lesser appearance of Tiered ships brings out a lot of very close matches, which are usually very entertaining, and are often not won by complete overkill most of the time, well except one team has completely random players with mixed tech and the others too many old players.
T4 battles are usually 3v3-5v5 for me, and most often are very quick and decisive battles, with most of times already set outcomes sheer by the players playing against each other. We had a 10 win killstreak until we clashed with higher T4-T5 early, still entertaining because of Slayer Of Immortals.
I do not have endgame stuff in T4, but of course I had my set of military stuff to cover for it, so learning here, that my main weapon damage actually has impact on the MM feels kind of really unneccessary, usually you opt to change your weapon first, and much is decided by the quality of your passives, and I honestly think some people need more fitting help.
It also feels like the Servers used to support this game need more resources, we need more servers. I suspect this could be simply by the fact that usually you set up a limited testing resource before release, so I would suggest to increase that by deploying additional servers, to get stable to 3-4k users. I see this as a good sign for the game. I really hope the MMO lobby and the instance servers are separated and it is not really the number of players online limiting us, but simply the available computing space for battle instances. I hope the glitches of the patch are revisited, and the netcode is (getting) sober at the moment.
If the team is currently busy making exactly this process work, I whish you good luck.
I want to say thanks for the license issue after the patch glitches, this was really appreciated, and had a positive feel for all people involved I think.
I hope events continue to be done, because I start to like them. I would also really appreciate returning events to help different areas of grind increase. I also hope, the lockouts or abuse securities, like capped synergy gain, are looked into, or raised, so people can also enjoy a lucky grind farm better. Synergy feels a lot slower than reputation, and also credit income can become still quite a time factor. Even with running license and 2 DLCs, my advancement feels embarassing. I pity some of my team mates who simply strive to reach goals which were only days away months ago, like getting R12, if they play the game without license. Short term goals, like gaining Sensei however made the game a lot of fun.
I think, golden ships are great, but the free synergy is still an issue to be solved correctly.
Surplus synergy transfer rates are quite an issue. I hope you have some integer overrun security in place. I am already a multi-millionaire in that area. *smirk*
To Frigballs I can only say one thing: I had a lot of games on both ends and never whined, and never will, because you can lose a game with a frigball, and win a game with a frigball. Period.
I saw completely disbalanced teams with random stuff breaking a frigball simply because 1-3 people pinged the team correctly. Sometimes you have to ping tactically, by trying to take out the biggest problems first, like eliminating the guard because we have nukes and stuff, or eliminating the engineers, because they are too supporty and stuff. Sometimes we have to kill those archers, because the archers are cutting us down. Sometimes it’s wise to keep moving on the objective, because of mobility and stuff. But sometimes it is wise to work with a different strategy, like taking out the named ones. Enemies, you know are good in a specific ship, and even if it looks tactically absurd, the real power of the frigball is because this one player plays this role exceptionally good. Take their Capitals. Which can become devastating, if you stick to it and the enemy realizes it, and starts trolling you by pulling the team into enemy fire. It can lead to victory, or it can show off as an unwinnable game - but those unwinnable games usually have nothing to do with Frig balls and end in a Spartacus episode where every Roman counts, no matter what ships they take.
You see my point. Fighting the Whale is basicly a situation, but it can be devastating if the whale has no brains and always can lead to epic victories.
If at any point I feel every game is a Frigball, I might say something, but honestly, I do not feel this is the case. Especially not in Detonation. Capture the Beacons can end devastating if the Frigball is broken for that team. It might end up in the end having the lose team having more Frigates than the enemy or losing their beacons trapped away. Mostly a good Defense will actually force the enemy to have only Frigates at their disposal, anyway, in that gamemode. Depends a bit on the map.
New medal: Frigballfest for every Frigate killed if the team has 98% frigates on the field. Ceptorfarm and Figtherflush respectively. *grin*
the named ones.
he who shall not be named
T3 and T4 inties are not doing enough damage.
Haven’t played a T3 / T4 game where a frigate team totally locked us out like the ones in 0.8.x did
Matches where frigballs felt unbreakable were really a case where the needed elements to disassemble that ball was not on the field or weren’t timed effectively. Locking different missiles to ship roles don’t help much either where strangers working together are concerned. But more than anything, I’m seeing alot of people speed ranking up to T3 and it shows. Some I suspect have never had to deal with Frigballs previously and they continue to zoom around in CovOps like it’s T2 thinking it’ll win games if they only used that nuke right.
Frigballs making a comeback will be a good thing in T3. I learnt alot playing in that environment and I believe it can be a positive thing for newer pilots who are starting to specialize to see that side of the conflict at work. Makes for better decisions when people decide to progress further up the tiers.
T3 and T4 inties are not doing enough damage.
Say what? The T3 battles I play the interceptors do most of the damage, frigates the least. I certainly shred a frigate quickly enough in an inty.