Gunboat Balancing & Fixes

Gunboat Balancing & Fixes
This idea/suggestion is Open. You can respond to ask questions or discuss the idea and either vote it up or down if you believe it should or should not be implemented, respectively. Popular suggestions and ideas will be considered by the development team to become reality in-game.
ksully09

ksully09

Galactic Senator
Proposal
Increase Frigate damage at space battles to Gun Boats only by 25%

Remove Chaff from Gun Boats

Add collision damage to Gun Boats only (maybe everything?) ((If someone runs into the Gun Boat, the Gun Boat and the other ship will take damage))
Justification
When a gun boat enters a space battle, typically the Space Battle is over, even when its not fully crewed. They should be powerful, but no "OP". Many players and gun boat crews can either ignore the player fighters while taking down the frigate or ignore the frigate and take on fighters. Theres a common agreement that Gun Boats at Space Battles are just too strong.

Removing chaff from Gun Boats makes bombers (which should be a weakness to gun boats) an actual weakness, but with chaff, the large shields, the slower bombers usually never land many bombs, and are too slow to avoid hits from the gunners. Making it so their long locking bombs actually hit, bombers will pose more of a threat to Gun Boats without chaff. No, chaff on gun boats, may balance multiple bombers, vs a Gun Boat, but then may unbalance Gun Boat vs Fighters.

To combat the fighter vs Gun Boat fights, we need to swing it back in the Gun Boats direction now that they have no chaff, and add in collision damage to prevent fighters just staying ultra close and bouncing off the Gun Boat's hull. (PvP flagged ONLY)

This also will make it more difficult for unintended play, solo gun boating PvE content at PvE space battles, and other PvE content where solo gun boaters can just chaff everything and tank multiple AoA waves, and or Factional duties. The intent for gun boats isnt to park solo in the middle of a space battle and tank everything.
Motivation
See justification.
Would like to get community feedback on the discussions about gunboats - this needs to be a multi-addition/ balancing all at the same time.
 
Upvote 3 Downvote
lutely pointless because of how space battles work.

A gunboat will shred a frigates weapons before it even half shields 25% increase or not.

That's instantly killed the 25% suggestion. It serves absolutely zero purpose.

Space battle NPCs are not locked to players like a duty does. They are there as ornament to create an ambience of this is a space battle. The only time they will actively target a player is if shot at or the player is sat right where they spawn.

So gunboats or not can just sit there and never take any agro from the moment a frigate is stripped.

Nor can you click that switch to make them target player because frankly no player in a fighter is surviving 25 ships on them.

You can add a seperate reinforcement system which runs an area check for players and reinforces a side with additional spawns that do have the player switch turned on but I'd look at that type of thing more as a balancing tool than a anti gunboat tool.
 
smogs said:
lutely pointless because of how space battles work.

A gunboat will shred a frigates weapons before it even half shields 25% increase or not.

That's instantly killed the 25% suggestion. It serves absolutely zero purpose.

Space battle NPCs are not locked to players like a duty does. They are there as ornament to create an ambience of this is a space battle. The only time they will actively target a player is if shot at or the player is sat right where they spawn.

So gunboats or not can just sit there and never take any agro from the moment a frigate is stripped.

Nor can you click that switch to make them target player because frankly no player in a fighter is surviving 25 ships on them.

You can add a seperate reinforcement system which runs an area check for players and reinforces a side with additional spawns that do have the player switch turned on but I'd look at that type of thing more as a balancing tool than a anti gunboat tool.
Click to expand...
Meant that gunboats can ignore PLAYER fighters not npc fighters
 
smogs said:
lutely pointless because of how space battles work.

A gunboat will shred a frigates weapons before it even half shields 25% increase or not.

That's instantly killed the 25% suggestion. It serves absolutely zero purpose.

Space battle NPCs are not locked to players like a duty does. They are there as ornament to create an ambience of this is a space battle. The only time they will actively target a player is if shot at or the player is sat right where they spawn.

So gunboats or not can just sit there and never take any agro from the moment a frigate is stripped.

Nor can you click that switch to make them target player because frankly no player in a fighter is surviving 25 ships on them.

You can add a seperate reinforcement system which runs an area check for players and reinforces a side with additional spawns that do have the player switch turned on but I'd look at that type of thing more as a balancing tool than a anti gunboat tool.
Click to expand...
So you think a damage debuff for GS vs Frigate is better? I'm not opposed

As far as collision goes, it's a mechanism to discourage interceptors from hull hugging which makes the super hard for gunners to hit. That part is actually a buff to the GS.
 
So what is any of it achieving?

A dps increase that does nothing and removal of chaff that would only affect player missiles.

If a fighter can hull hug a fully armed GB good on them. If they are hull hugging someone and there alt even better.

There's a far simpler solution.

Stop people launching with alts. Who gives a toss about that one player who wants to try a niche dual box havoc build.

There ya go space battles fixed, aoa double dipping fixed, cheesing slayers fixed.
 
Maxal said:
So you think a damage debuff for GS vs Frigate is better? I'm not opposed

As far as collision goes, it's a mechanism to discourage interceptors from hull hugging which makes the super hard for gunners to hit. That part is actually a buff to the GS.
Click to expand...
I think you would need both to truly discourage GS at space battles and probably more.

Heck you can outright ban them if you so wished. It's possible.
 
smogs said:
So what is any of it achieving?

A dps increase that does nothing and removal of chaff that would only affect player missiles.

If a fighter can hull hug a fully armed GB good on them. If they are hull hugging someone and there alt even better.

There's a far simpler solution.

Stop people launching with alts. Who gives a toss about that one player who wants to try a niche dual box havoc build.

There ya go space battles fixed, aoa double dipping fixed, cheesing slayers fixed.
Click to expand...
I'm not arguing to decrease Gunships at space battles. I'm arguing that they should fear going to pvp battles without escort fighters.

They should be primary targets for enemy bombers. 32 chaff makes erases that danger. This would fix that.

They should not be the primary target of interceptos. This would fix that.

Any interaction between GS and frigate that would make the battle last longer (more pvp chance) vs the gunship burning it all down, I'm for. But my initial interest here is that it's giving bombers something to bomb, which jtl has missed the mark on from the beginning.
 
This might only solve the issue for PvP Battles. But how about a check that you can only flag overt with 3 different accounts on the GS? So people could bring a GS if it really matters to win the space battle. But there is a inconvinience to get 3 different accounts into one GS.
That would prevent people from going solo in a GS with an alt in the turret. This would also mean, that when you blow the GS you should get 3 times the reward in terms of kills, GCW and points.

Plus whatever you need to make to balance fights for GS vs Interceptors...
 
Maxal said:
I'm not arguing to decrease Gunships at space battles. I'm arguing that they should fear going to pvp battles without escort fighters.

They should be primary targets for enemy bombers. 32 chaff makes erases that danger. This would fix that.

They should not be the primary target of interceptos. This would fix that.

Any interaction between GS and frigate that would make the battle last longer (more pvp chance) vs the gunship burning it all down, I'm for. But my initial interest here is that it's giving bombers something to bomb, which jtl has missed the mark on from the beginning.
Click to expand...
Totally agree on the chaff side of things and I'd remove the PvP debuff for nukes on pobs.

Although I'd still rather it given a proper timer across the board than an outright removal. That can be specific to pobs.
 
ksully09 said:
Edited the wording - collision would be PvP flagged only.
Click to expand...
How do you seperate it from other stuff when PvP flagged?

What happens if flagged and bump into a NPC or the frigate?

What happens if PvP flagged as a pair doing a duty and run into each other?

Sorry but think collision damage sucks and not a fan of splitting mechanics across game modes.
 
Agree with Smogs. Stop letting people dual box a gunship and that eliminates most of the problems with gunship superiority. AoA bounties and space battles are trivialized by this method. If there’s a way to code it such that alts can launch in a Havoc/ARC (starfighters) then even better.

Instead of removing chaff from gunboats, perhaps make the EM Emitter launcher the only possibility for gunships. They’re higher mass (40k+) and lower quantity packs (7-9 currently but maybe bump this lower too) not to mention much higher resource cost.
 
smogs said:
How do you seperate it from other stuff when PvP flagged?

What happens if flagged and bump into a NPC or the frigate?

What happens if PvP flagged as a pair doing a duty and run into each other?

Sorry but think collision damage sucks and not a fan of splitting mechanics across game modes.
Click to expand...
To answer literally every question, someone (player) that’s red that runs into the boat.
 
Iffey said:
Agree with Smogs. Stop letting people dual box a gunship and that eliminates most of the problems with gunship superiority. AoA bounties and space battles are trivialized by this method. If there’s a way to code it such that alts can launch in a Havoc/ARC (starfighters) then even better.

Instead of removing chaff from gunboats, perhaps make the EM Emitter launcher the only possibility for gunships. They’re higher mass (40k+) and lower quantity packs (7-9 currently but maybe bump this lower too) not to mention much higher resource cost.
Click to expand...
I’m not saying this is a wrong idea, I do like the first item.

The second idea is a solid idea, but the point was to make it so Bombers are a threat to the gunboat. Still need 3 bombers to stay alive for 2 runs at the GB each, to even begin to do damage to the GB. Bombers are easy for turret gunners to hit.
 
ksully09 said:
I’m not saying this is a wrong idea, I do like the first item.

The second idea is a solid idea, but the point was to make it so Bombers are a threat to the gunboat. Still need 3 bombers to stay alive for 2 runs at the GB each, to even begin to do damage to the GB. Bombers are easy for turret gunners to hit.
Click to expand...
Put it on a long timer 20 secs or so

Chaff stays as is for fighters (even though personally feel it should have a tiner tied to effectiveness not click click click)

EM becomes the pob ships countermeasure and has a timer so it could for eg counter 1 in 3 nukes (if a single ship) if working as a pair or more then more nukes are getting through.

(Not massively straight forward but doable)

I'm not sure if restoration applied the PvP reduction to GBs (before my time) if so remove it. (I presume 1 line in a script) there's a handy pob exception in the codebase already.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
SWG Restoration is a fan-made, non-profit, community-driven, project.
Not affiliated with nor endorsed by Daybreak Games, Lucasfilm Entertainment, Electronic Arts or The Walt Disney Company.
Star Wars ™ & © Lucasfilm Ltd. No marks or intellectual property are owned by or licensed to SWG Restoration.
Top Bottom