My lion has epic bubbles fitted.
Its kinda hard to get in range to use them with the denial area guards have.
Also, look at the screenshot… isnt it a bit “suspicious” that they only fitted frigates?
Actually the problem isnt here that its the “bad” Guard (Inqui S would be much worse), its just the frig-balling on a micro level (with all the benefits from it, see earlier posts).
Still sufficient enough, since 2/3rd of the team used frigs.
The problem seems to be that Guards break one of the fundamental rules of good game design: you don’t give snipers armour. 8km range on the toughest ships in the game is ludicrous!
I’d personally cap Guards at 2 - 3km range, with 3.5 - 4km being possible with implants / modules. No more than that. Make them get in close, and the counter becomes obvious - outrange and peck them apart. When Guards cannot survive solo, and need fighters / interceptors to escort them, their popularity will drop to normal levels again.
This got to be the most balanced matchmaking i have ever seen…
Note: he was flying rank 8 and lower
The problem seems to be that Guards break one of the fundamental rules of good game design: you don’t give snipers armour. 8km range on the toughest ships in the game is ludicrous!
The weapon itself is not as powerful, especially at this distance. But I will try to look more into this matter.
The problem seems to be that Guards break one of the fundamental rules of good game design: you don’t give snipers armour. 8km range on the toughest ships in the game is ludicrous!
I’d personally cap Guards at 2 - 3km range, with 3.5 - 4km being possible with implants / modules. No more than that. Make them get in close, and the counter becomes obvious - outrange and peck them apart. When Guards cannot survive solo, and need fighters / interceptors to escort them, their popularity will drop to normal levels again.
Well, tbh at thar range is quite difficult to do any real damage to anything smaller than an asteroid. You are disregarding all damage bonus to get range bonus, so your DPS is not that big.
Of course I’m talking about T3. I don’t know if in tier 4 and tier 5 you have more options to apply damage so far. In fact, in both my guard and my gunship I have disregarded the use of range ammo, just because is very situational. And with the horizon module and the rank 2 fed implant, the range is already quite good.
Well, tbh at thar range is quite difficult to do any real damage to anything smaller than an asteroid. You are disregarding all damage bonus to get range bonus, so your DPS is not that big.
Of course I’m talking about T3. I don’t know if in tier 4 and tier 5 you have more options to apply damage so far. In fact, in both my guard and my gunship I have disregarded the use of range ammo, just because is very situational. And with the horizon module and the rank 2 fed implant, the range is already quite good.
In my case there were a few problems:
Due to speed nerf its easier to hit with Lazors (Lion is quite a big target for a fighter).
Map had a lot of open space on the one beacon. Engaging Lazor-Frigs on open space is suicidal.
Due to (2) they were able to “wash off” my cap since minor Dmg is enough to prevent from capping. Hiding behind the beacon isnt possible when they shoot from different angles.
Tbh. Lazors are still not the strongest weapon, but the range is too much. 4km maybe 6 on LRF is enough.
I’m thinking that removing range-boosting mods altogether could help with balancing. With them gone flat bonuses / penalties can be applied. Penalise Guards, buff range on LR. Let them “snipe” with conventional weapons. Engineers can be midway between the two, sat in the fighter screen.
Dunno.
It could be that people don’t use enough bubble guns. Now that Guards have a bit OPish vibe, it at least seems that the game is “back” to rock-paper-scissors style, that it used to be way back ago. Guards die with bubble. They have counters (not enough though. E.g. maybe CovOp should be immune / have a way to be immune to the slowing effect e.g. when cloaked? Dunno.).
I assume this is a view-point question: “I like to play this one class and thus each ship (or at least MY preferred ship) should be able to solo equally each other ship” versus “Thematically, Frigates constantly dying easily to one interceptor is a bit silly, they should be tougher ships, there should be rock-paper-scissors style structure”.
But I agree, some minor tweaking is required definitely. Also, I would change the name of that Frigate. “Guard” is poor name for such offensive ship. (Or maybe it is ironically named? Like naming war ship as the “Peacemaker”).
PS: I profile myself as an interceptor pilot.
Singularity is currently exceptionally bad against guards. Using it means you’re well within effective range of all their mods, their EM torpedoes and their coil mortars. That means that you’re flying a ship that is slower than guard, less maneuverable than guard, about five times less survivable than guard that does much less burst damage than guard and is about on par in terms of DPS over longer time. Which is irrelevant because you will not live long enough for DPS to matter vs burst.
The only way fighters can do more than be victims to guards is to use lasers from far away and run when guard approaches to range closer than 3km or just meatrush knowing that you will lose several fighters to take out that one guard.
P.S. Currently profiling yourself as “interceptor pilot” in higher tiers is equivalent to profiling yourself “a masochistic baddie”. That is the only role that interceptors currently have in game in those tiers. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, as I prefer flying interceptors to other ships simply because I enjoy the speed. But in current meta, there is no place for fast low damage fragile ships.
I did not see the need to “even out the speeds” over the tiers anyway, so the intent itself was in my eyes invalid. There was no problem with T3 being around 650, while T4 and T5 were easy at 700 for the speedier ships. Not every stat has to “increase gradually”, actually, that type of thinking is in many ways the greatest problem of balancing in this game.
Balancing should not be about trying to push players forward. Even moving up some modules to higher tiers was pretty weird, instead of re-thinking T4 and T5 in terms of modules, if something might be “addable” to specificly increase the tiers’ depth there.
I like the new Queues in this patches, I whish every tier would have “compensation queues” which are only valid if you are in a squad. But not sure if it would work.
In terms of interceptors however, not the covops, but the recon is actually the ship to go against a guard, and if you plan to do more than “make it vulnerable”, you even have to go shotgun, because some of them eat mines like bowls of cereals.
I’m thinking that removing range-boosting mods altogether could help with balancing. With them gone flat bonuses / penalties can be applied. Penalise Guards, buff range on LR. Let them “snipe” with conventional weapons. Engineers can be midway between the two, sat in the fighter screen.
as somebody who plays fed guards, and love offensive engineers, with all the penalties i get in fed line for this sort of fit, i am not really for this. instead, make “other stuff” more viable, like having modules to counter overheat in the cpu deck. I don’t have problems with Guards having the optional way of sacrificing the possibility of being an unbreakable nugget in the sky. Especially the removal of range modules would hurt the fed engineers, which usually have the possibility of going acceleration coils + range + positron, which very much feels like an M24 DMR soldier on the field, and can counter other frigates very well.
Also, if we talk about Guards here, I think most of the people mean Jericho Guards, right? Because Fed Guard does not feel like the OP ship, however it can be fitted to be an energy beast with speed and offensive power, you still sacrifice a bit of defense for this.
Antibus any info about the lost speed indicator…?
I really miss it…
Antibus any info about the lost speed indicator…?
I really miss it…
Was it not included in this patch… hm.
To make sure: are you talking about this speed indicator?
Was it not included in this patch… hm.
To make sure: are you talking about this speed indicator?
Yes m8…that’s it, exactely that small indicator wich i likes so much 
Yes m8…that’s it, exactely that small indicator wich i likes so much
If it was not added in this patch - it will be added a bit later (this week or next)
If it was not added in this patch - it will be added a bit later (this week or next)
ok thanks m8…
This got to be the most balanced matchmaking i have ever seen…
Note: he was flying rank 8 and lower
if you que on EU only you will get tons of games like that
just to make that clear: on eu you get only such matches… but i was chosing “any server”. after the patch half of my matches were 1vs1 or 2vs2, i am queued in low t4/high t3 atm
just to make that clear: on eu you get only such matches… but i was chosing “any server”. after the patch half of my matches were 1vs1 or 2vs2, i am queued in low t4/high t3 atm
This isn’t about matchmaking, but about the fact that PvP population is all but dead right now in upper tiers. Everyone is playing PvE until superguards are fixed. Just try to queue up for blackwood, I never had to wait more than 30 seconds today when queuing solo.
yeah i also do a lot of blackwood now, but tbh pve is just so boring…
Neat. How long did you wait?
Five minutes. I had just dealt with a client crash in PvE, but I was able to restart the program and rejoin the match, next launch ended up being PvP.
This isn’t about matchmaking, but about the fact that PvP population is all but dead right now in upper tiers. Everyone is playing PvE until superguards are fixed. Just try to queue up for blackwood, I never had to wait more than 30 seconds today when queuing solo.
It’s not just guards, it’s people avoiding bot matches. If I were reasonably assured that I would not have to deal with 1v1 matches with a wait time of longer than a PvE game, I might play some T4 PvP on occasion. That’s unlikely with less than six hundred people online.