Ok, yes this is a bit of a short rant but it is extremely frustrating:
Frigate/guard/Command - wow, where is the balance here? Seriously, far too much hp/shields. In T2 it was hard but in T3 these things are neigh impossible.
At T3 these guys completely own the battlefield as you can not take them down soon enough before them targeting you and *POOF* you’re shrapnel!
Do not only do they get high hp/shields but they get weapons that can destroy you damn near in 2 shots.
I am running Military Assault Plasma weapon (with 3% dmg increase + 8% module dmg increase), with reinforced hull & shields. Holy crap, everyone else hits like a tank yet I seem to be ‘weak’ in comparison which would be kinda ok if the Plasma weapons didn’t heat up soo fast!
Seriously on Frigates & Command ships, I can just get through their shields and already my gun is overheated… it’s just plain wrong.
As your statement even says, a Gunship is supposed to be a rare but devastating attack … well, “rare” is right and “devastating” is just a joke.
P.S. Snipers are a complete load of bs too. Can’t see them, once you find them they are armoured to hell, then they just turn and *BOOOOM* blow your face off. Frustrating, just plain frustrating.
You’re not using an aiming overcharge and you’re not carrying a needle reflector to switch to kinetic after shields go down, fix those things before complaining about lack of damage. Your tank is also weird, mixing shield and armor tank passives. You shouldn’t expect to kill a target before your guns overheat, you need to manage your heat.
To be brutally honest, you’re doing a lot of things wrong, and T3 is suddenly very unforgiving of that.
You’re not using an aiming overcharge and you’re not carrying a needle reflector to switch to kinetic after shields go down, fix those things before complaining about lack of damage. Your tank is also weird, mixing shield and armor tank passives. You shouldn’t expect to kill a target before your guns overheat, you need to manage your heat.
To be brutally honest, you’re doing a lot of things wrong, and T3 is suddenly very unforgiving of that.
Thank you for the feedback, I did not think about the Aiming Overcharge, but what I still will be confused about then is this;
Why do you call the passive mix odd? Shield & Hull (Thermal Hull as most people are using Laser), seems to be the best defense it appeared. What would you recommend?
To get their shields down, takes all that my gun can manage before it overheats. You speak of heat management but their is no way to prevent it other then to stop shooting until it cools down again. If the Gunship doesn’t kill it in those first few seconds it is dead, plain and simple.
In these battles with a 1 vs 1 scenario they take all of 10 seconds (with a Gunship vs frigate/command), there is not enough hp/shields to survive them when they turn around and kill you within a few shots. So even if I avoid some of their shots, I still have to wait on a long cooldown before I can start any damage again, far more than enough time for them to kill me.
Hi. Welcome to tier 3.
I’m a Federation fighter pilot who speed ranked to get the Wolf when I started - destroying my stat sheet along the way.
First off - Things will get better so don’t worry about it too much.
All the way from T1 to T2 — I flew tacklers and when I finally got my hands on that gunship - i thought hell yea. I was soon disappointed.
First thing I struggled with was overheating , just like you did. Took abit of experimenting and I settled on the fact that anything with less than 11 seconds was not gonna work. Which prompted me to start looking at frigate class weapons, Hail Plasma, Stabilized Rails and Lasers. Tried Lasers first and it surprised me how it simply fails in T3. Heavy lasers are alright if you can cope with slow barrels. Eventually settled on Stabilized rails as a personal choice. Expert Wolf pilots I see use either Hails or Heavy Plasma.
Once got my main weapon sorted out it dawned on me that I was getting shredded to pieces much more easily compared to when I was using the T3 tackler. Both had the same survivability score which I found weird. Predictably went thru the ‘lets-tank-this-sheet-up’ phase. Little did it do. Flew the tackler again for a week to before discovering what was going on. Mentality. The name GUNSHIP is misleading. You’d think you’re this badass frigate blender of death with the word Gun in your name. And that’s what’s getting me killed.
The Gunship is a Support vessel
Fly it like you mean it. Only for support. Let the guards and interceptors do the work up front. When they encounter heavies (Engineer-Guard-Command) wait till they’ve tenderize them down to hulls. Then swoop in. Activate Aim and Overdrive. Burn everything. Once mods are off - GTFO behind your frigate again. Keep enemies off your frigates in-between overdrives. Engineer dies, you die.
I chose stabilized rails over hail because I normally come out for overdrive when I see hulls. We also get more missiles than we used to with the wolf. Use them to send interceptors flying defensively, even if for a few seconds.
If you find yourself fighting 1 on 1 in tier 3 - you’re doing it wrong.
I’m using an Empire gunship and I never had problems on taking down Engis, Guards or Commands in 1v1 situations and that’s my build:
http://s17.postimg.org/r56tawk5a/screenshot_130613_203557.jpg
I never had problems in terms on damage, I know that my ship is way better than yours because it’s premium and that stuff, but I had Phobos Aura and I could do more or less the same.
If any experienced player have any suggestion to change and improve my ship I will be very grateful.
Kine; you will be drastically changing my play style - yeah, exactly how to wrote it is how I’ve been thinking… I was wrong. Thank you 
Residente, for some odd reason the picture does not load for me, wish I could see the build :(
As a 1500 rated mostly solo player I use the following fit on my wolf-m:
Hit and run playstyle. Wait for overdrive, go in, unload, get out and defend your frigates until you’re ready to dive in again. My gunship weapon of preference has always been rapid fire railguns because they have a great alpha strike with 3 charges, and decent DPS on a weapon that doesn’t overheat and gets full advantage from overdrive.
Kine; you will be drastically changing my play style - yeah, exactly how to wrote it is how I’ve been thinking… I was wrong. Thank you
Residente, for some odd reason the picture does not load for me, wish I could see the build :(
I have edited the post showing the link, tell me if you see it
@ Lucky - no engine overdrive ???
ok - goddam ship really got on my nerves. took me 12 games to relearn how the boat steers. dunno why you pros fly it. I actually switched to interceptors because I got frustrated with the wolf-m
same fits as Lucky - except I have engine overdrive instead of flares and anomaly generator instead of mines. and no purples or blues heh.
Do’s and Don’ts videos:
hail on first vid but fell back on a familiar gun, rapid rails on second. I didn’t stack rate of fire passive coz i got paranoid by that time. had horizon on instead so I could start shooting things earlier.
I used to have engine overdrive before the particle purge. It’s just too good to pass on, as it gives you incredible AoE ability. That said if you start dying too much, or want more ability to run around, engine overdrive is great.
The third build is actually purely shield based, you stack shield size implants and mods so your particle purge hits like a truck. I haven’t bothered trying it yet, but I had a distinct (dis)pleasure of experiencing it on my interceptor leading me to prioritize good gunship pilots to rip off their shielding before I engage others.
On a final note, flares are a must have. I view them equally mandatory to emergency barrier on any non-frigate because of T8 implant that grants me movement impairment immunity on flare use.
ah kk. I thought combat reboot was enough to cancel debuffs.
I was playing engineer with still a fair amount of hulls left when NEUTRON from STAR parked right beside me and activated the purge. I got toasted instantly. Sifted thru so many combat logs but I couldn’t find the one for that game, otherwise I could tell you exactly how powerful it was but it is indeed ridiculously good.
As a 1500 rated mostly solo player I use the following fit on my wolf-m:
Hit and run playstyle. Wait for overdrive, go in, unload, get out and defend your frigates until you’re ready to dive in again. My gunship weapon of preference has always been rapid fire railguns because they have a great alpha strike with 3 charges, and decent DPS on a weapon that doesn’t overheat and gets full advantage from overdrive.
How much time did you need to make such a good ship?
Thank you Residente - I can see it now
How much time did you need to make such a good ship?
I have a bit over 200 hours spent in battle if that’s what you mean. I made my account on 02.03.2013.
When you fit a ship make sure the fitting is pure, 1-3 out of:
-
damage
-
tank
-
buff
-
tackle
-
debuff
-
mobility
-
repair
-
other…
Don’t mix them up to have a little bit of everything because you will end up with just an average ship, which gets owned by any other ship respecting that purity simply because they excel at what they are fit for. Of course, if you’re mad skills, fit everything, but be prepared to know how to make use of all the little tricks you installed.
Look at Luckyo’s wolf - pure damage (ship mods, actives and passives all complete each other), with a few get-away tricks (not tank).
As for the frigate stacks - yea, overpowered, one squad of these makes a huge difference.
I find that one lone frigate is easy to take out. The problem is when they are in a group, especially a coordinated group.
-If it is an engineer, fire a missile to take out its drones since that would be what, 8k in shields it could regenerate from them. In addition, most engineers that are hard to take down are of the cerberus 2 model, 20k+ hull and mine personally has practically 100 resist for each category, about 50% damage reduction.
-If you see a long range, well, that should be an easy kill, just use cover as you move up on it.
-A guard frigate is supposed to be hard to kill, as someone has stated earlier, equip the damage type changing weapon mod and switch back and forth, the guard will either try to compensate for the damage type and waste energy, or you will do more damage by avoiding the resistance of its shields.
Also, what implants are you using? As a gunship there are a couple that you absolutely need: Empire rank 2 implant, increases critical chance by 10% and decreases lock on time by 75% and the Federation rank 6 implant, critical damage increases by 50%. Also to a lesser extent the federation rank 4 implant to increase missile speed and turning velocity, makes missiles a bit more reliable but you still have to learn when to fire a missile to avoid rocks and other terrain.
In addition use the weapon mod to increase critical chance, I also like to run projectile speed increases for more mobile enemys and of course if you can fit it, the weapon damage type changing mod.
The choice of the above three mods depends on if you want to be a interceptor and fighter killing or a frigate killer. Crit and Projectile speed, frigate killer (guard) crit and thermal damage mod.
This is why Particle Purge is so deadly…it does damage equivalent to your shield strength. So with the -25% cooldown Empire rank 8 implant I can Particle Purge for almost 6600 dmg every 14 seconds.
I bring a shield booster to get my shields back up for my next particle purge and use a shield strength passive and shield mod to make it pack a punch. I also have around 30% base crit chance on my stab rails even before I get the extra 44% from aiming overcharge. Also I’ve found that stab rails really don’t need any more projectile speed…mine are already at 5810 m/s which is more than enough since most of your encounters are at the 1-3.5km range in the first place. I’d rather have the +16% crit rate railgun weapon mod.
With this build it pays to stay near an engineer that can heal your shields back up after a particle purge. I usually go in for the kill and use my engine overcharge to book it out of there once my target is dead. I don’t use flares either because I’ve gotten pretty good at dodging missiles by putting an asteroid or structure between me and the missile and that’s a a module slot I can’t spare.
look at all the fighters!
I would give my advice about interceptors, but its up to the fighters to assist us as we distract the enemy.
My Katana S is optimized to survive a gunship attack from mid range, especially using plasma which is the most common damage type. I will pop the shield to take the brunt of the fire and then slowly wear you down at long range, since the Command’s goal is to AOE buff, not primarily to damage people. The short range rapid fire rail build is much more dangerous since it is a less common damage type, has hideously high burst which can leak through the shield, and operates close in where my ship is weakest. Leave the long range sniper builds to T2.
Well I definitly agree that the Cerberus 2 is one of the most OP ships in the game, it has 10% more main weapon dammage, as well as buffs in both ranged hull and engine healing. Oh and by the way: its base hull+shield hitpoints equals the same level guards hitpoints. WTF? Isn’t a guard supposed to be the toughest enemy on the battlefield? In this case it stops to be!
The Cerberus 2 has the same properties as a guard and to top it off can heal himself! The only way a regular guard can be tougher is if it is accompanied by a said engineer. That makes no sense to me.
I believe that engineers should have hitpoints ranging between the sniper frigates and guards, making them more managable one vs one and leaving the “tanking” exclusively to the guards! Right now, I feel more confident going head to head against a guard wich is less mobile than a frigate (having a speed and rotation penalty wich the engi doesn’t have). This shouldn’t be the case.
I’ve seen plenty of guards go down with a single covert ops interceptor but even for those strong buggers an engineer is a strong nut to crack. I hope engis get nerfed (hull and shield wise) because right now they’re ruining the balance.
