Gunship suggestion to go with the shipyard

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:28 pm

My reaction was the same as spidey's: so, you're proposing a neutered bomber? Why not just get gunships for free when bombers are researched, so people have the option of taking out a $250 (fast) gs or a $500 (slow) bbr?

Again, I have to ask -- what exactly is the problem you are trying to fix? "No one uses X" is not necessarily a reason to perk X. Why do you want GS to be used more often? Do you want garrison to be a techpath on par with exp, sup, and tac? Do you want commanders to have the option of buying gunships in lieu of enh and then adv tech? Or do you want other factions to get the same "early game boost" that Bios gets for getting gunships? If so, do you understand how that would impact the global balance of the game (e.g., why would Giga ever buy patties again if they could just rush GS?)

GS have a very limited role in this game (Bios, occasionally Rix, other factions in unusual "we $#@!ed up" scenarios). But isn't that OK?

Maybe the "right fix" is to remove GS from the game except for Bios who has the option of researching the "mini-Corvette" under starbase.

spideycw · Post by **spideycw** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:17 pm

SpaceJunk wrote:QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Jul 28 2009, 03:44 PM) Call it gunboat and give the pilot nan guns, so con/miner escorts can carry some newbies to shot at things.

please stop posting

guitarism · Post by **guitarism** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:09 pm

Lets look at this a different way.

Adept, what is wrong with the current GS? is it the price tag to get it? The fact that it mounts skycap? It's faster then a bomber? Lt boost?

Once we identify the problem it becomes easier to fix.

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:27 am

guitarism wrote:QUOTE (guitarism @ Jul 29 2009, 02:09 AM) Lets look at this a different way.

Adept, what is wrong with the current GS? is it the price tag to get it? The fact that it mounts skycap? It's faster then a bomber? Lt boost?

Once we identify the problem it becomes easier to fix.

Logic is good. Here's my take.

Effective price tag is 10k for bios, 20k for most, 22k for IC (correct this if I misremember, it's 4:14 AM here).

That is enough to make it pretty much bios only, but since GS is in starbase, and starbase is hardly ever brought in early game, it nails the coffin pretty much shut. Rix coms sometimes rush heavy scouts, so there a GS may occasionally make sense, but else wise starbase is seen only later in game when adv tech has rendered gunships pretty weak.

Gunships used to mount AC's, and gats for the pilot. I didn't make that up. It also didn't use to have lite booster, and skycap rate of fire was much lower. Oh, and gunship was in garrison.

Why do I dredge up the past like that? To show you it's been beefed 500% since then. These days a gunship is fast for a medium size ship, has good punch with the beefed up dual skycaps and pilot mini AC, and is starbase tech which restricts it to one or one and a half factions in actual use.

So to answer your question it's the combination of all those, and it being starbase tech. I actually like the lite boost and general zippiness of the ship, I just think in combination with the skycaps it creates bad cheese. Spidey's suggestion of Mini-SCs will fix a lot of that of course.

A gunship should be in garrison, but we immediately being to see problems with that. Why would giga for instance not hit the research gunship button instead of researching patties? The reason for that is that as they are, they are way too overpowered at the moment. The reason they don't feel so bad is that Giga has the 10 min research time to slow them down.

A good solution to stop the GS rush would be requiring a techbase or a starbase to get gunships. That would be fair for all. It will also allow other factions to get a GS up at the 10 min mark, and you'll see how powerful they are as they are now.

guitarism · Post by **guitarism** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:31 am

tl;dr version at bottom
Part of the way it's been changed currently was because of the very things you've said. The only people who ever got it were BIOS, and people complained loud and long to Noir that they were WAY too overpowered. Go look at the DN forums to see. So he removed their ability to rip to carriers and their ability to drop mines. If we were to move the GS to say, Garr and make it require a techbase then your basicily putting GS up on the same level as enh tech, which it isn't (not without a SY for sky2 at least).

I've always thought of the GS as the stopgag measure, mainly for BIOS until they get their tech base up, and then the next 10minutes until they get their enh tech. When you see it from another faction, usually rix it's because rix's range and damage bonuses make it that much more powerful, able to step above some factions enh tech on occasion.

But the crux of the issue is - do we want GS replacing enh tech? No. Not at all in my opinion. We move it around to garr or make it techbase dependable it's going to become a piece of tech no one buys, because you'll have better ships by that point. GS is not Enh tech. Any factions Enh tech should be able to kill a GS for the amount of people on it/or less

1 GS = 3 pilots + 1 nan (if your lucky) Total - 4 pilots
4 enh figs - beats GS
4 ints - beats gs
4 sfs- beats gs

All of the above are faster, more capable and far more cost effective for the same amount of money then a GS (as enh tech).

So in summary - GS are less then Enh tech. Why do we want to make them easier to get for factions at the start to give them an overwhelming advantage at the 2/3 min mark? Everyone will buy GS then. As it is, they are a niche ship usually for defensive manuvers only, and usually only seen in BIOS games as a stopgag until real tech comes up.

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:57 am

I agree 100% with Gui. Do you really think the game will be better if everyone buys GS? Or are you solely looking at one tech and saying "how can I make this used more often"? Any tech can be used more often if you make it cheesy enough. But just because something can be used more often is no reason why it should.

GS is a dead-end tech, a stopgap (*cough*) solution for situations where you either can't get tech up fast enough (Bios) or, in extemely rare circumstances, need a tech to defend with while you can get your techbase back up.

Xeretov · Post by **Xeretov** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:44 am

guitarism wrote:QUOTE (guitarism @ Jul 28 2009, 10:31 PM) Stuff that makes a lot of sense

Gui's post is right on the money.

GS are fine as they are now. Somebody said a while back that its one of the more balanced pieces of tech in the core and I'd have to agree with them.

It makes Bios very hard to attack in the early game, true, but it still takes them at least 10 minutes to get those gunships up. And once you have mini2 ints or gat2/dumb2/boost2 enh. figs they are very easy to kill with even numbers. I'd say the only reason people think they're overpowered is because those same people are rushing the GS alone trying to be heroes.

A Bios team using GS for miner or base D are tying up 3-4 people minimum (3 in the GS, one nan) and in your average 15-15 game that is quite a bit of manpower. It just means the other team has to form up before attacking the GS and miner rather than stream in one by one.

I vividly remember a bomb run where 3-4 scouts crossnanned each other through GS fire long enough for the bomber to destroy a techbase and a garr in the same sector. When the GS closed in near the end it got slaughtered by the AC turrets as they still couldn't kill the nans.

We've done a bit of idiot-proofing to this core so far but I don't agree with nerfing every ship and piece of tech that voobs can't overcome by trying to be the hero.

Solamnus · Post by **Solamnus** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:03 am

IMHO rushing GS is not very useful atm. GS are useless once the enemy has AdvTech, so why try to nerf it? It is good with the way it is.

jbourne · Post by **jbourne** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:16 am

The reasoning is that GSes are very powerful for bios early on without any good reason for them being there... its not like bios needs any more cheese and their figs already mount prox for defensive purposes... Using figs vs using GSes is like using adv ships vs TF ships with lead indicators (to many its unjustified cheese that takes away skill out of the equation).

We all know that enh tech > gs, but we all know from experience the havoc GSes can wreak in a game and how sick they are for bomber D. Yes, it takes 3 pilots to man a GS, but it takes only 1 pilot with a clue (the driver) and possibly another one to nan to change a GS into a sick, moving ownage platform. (It takes much more organization and manpower with a clue to D vs GS then it takes to stage a successful run).

Also, you may not agree on that, but these are purely words of wisdom:

QUOTE A good solution to stop the GS rush would be requiring a techbase or a starbase to get gunships. That would be fair for all. It will also allow other factions to get a GS up at the 10 min mark, and you'll see how powerful they are as they are now.[/quote]

As it is right now, GSes are bios only. If you are okay with how they are, why not give fair access to them to other factions? Unless it is a design principle to allow for sick defensive tech (and gses absolutely rock on miner D as well) at 10 minute mark so that bios can then much more easily get their sick adv tech up and put early pressure on the enemy. My understanding always was that bios is so powerful later on cause it should be proportionally harder to get adv tech up (proportionally to how strong bios adv sup + starbase or how strong cloaking htts are).

Pedowich · Post by **Pedowich** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:23 pm

Bios has a tech hole right now. You have at least 10 mins for ANY tech, but they filled that with nice figs that can drop prox. Most games I've played Bios techbase isn't up before GS, so let's assume you have a tech at 10 mins in for argument. Then you have an additional 10 mins before you get ENH tech.

Between that 10-20 mins you have GS, which aren't completely uber but are better than basic figs. They aren't mobile, and they tie up a lot of players, but they work for miner/con d early game, when your basic figs would otherwise be up against enh/adv tech.

Without GS, or the THREAT/possibility of GS, Bios would be bomb rushed before 20 mins in 80% of games, because they wouldn't be able to stop it.