CALLING ALL Starfighter pilots!!!

[WoWGoneBad]

Hey guys Im gonna get started on doing PVP Starfighter runs and could use some insight on gearing my ships.

What is a good cannon setup for Gunship and Striker ships. I like the Light cannons for rate of fire but are they effective for ships of this type. With missiles, what should I invest in.

Basicly I can use some good gear strats and fighter strats for PVP any suggestions or tips are nice My fighter skills suck i tried lol.

[moff]

I dont like the strike fighter, I think the scout is better in anything the strike fighter can do
I treat them both the same, so maybe thats a mistake. here is my setup for them:

strike/scout: I recommend the quad laser, i does the most damage and has high accuracy. the only downside is energy consumption, but in combat you should put all power to lasers anyway, so it wont be that big a problem.
for dogfights, I recommend the cluster missile. simply because they have the shortest lock on time.
you can additionally equip the strikeer with longe range missiles, which can come in handy. for the scout I recommend overcharge, with this you can kill anything quite fast.
for both I recommend the shield regeneration, in pvpv, healing is very important and my experience with this has been very good in various situations
co-pilot ability: the droid with the hull heal, same reasons as above
I recommend the kolgaran turn for both, the 180° turn is tactically the most valuable on in my opinion, its very easy to boost away from a dogfight, use the kolgaran turn and you'll have the enemy in your crosshair in most cases.
for the other parts, I always recommend to go full damage. upgrade your weapons first, especially the lowered enegy consumption for the quad laser comes in handy.

for the gunship. I didnt play it much, but I think the standard parts are pretty good.
the only important difference is the co-pilot ability. I recommend to use bypass (khem val has it on imperial side)
it allows you to ignore some enemy shield, which is devastating with the gunship and you dont need heal, since you stay away from battles.
your role is to kill and annoy enemies so that they come away from the objevtive and attack/kill you.
lure them even further away if you can, but even if you die instantly and come back 20seconds later wo keep harrassing enemies, you have fullfilled your role.

overall advise:
always difert power to what you need with the F keys.
power to boost in the beginning and whenever you want to catch up or get away from an enemy.
power to lasers whenever you shoot them.
power to shield when you are defending, going into survival mode

always stay close to the satellites, when attacking or defending. thats the most single important thing. there MUST alway be someone at the satellite. this wins or loses the game.
if you put power to shields and just fly close around the satellite, you can survive a long time. even alone this buys enough time till your team comes to help.

[Verain]

Strike Fighters probably need buffs because no one is demanding that they be nerfed.

The first strike fighter- the one with two weapon choices- I'm pretty torn on what the best setup is. I normally TRY to use Ions to strip shields and then switch to quads, but the flipside is, run heavy for range and something else for short distance (heavy gets huge accuracy penalty but doesn't diminish with distance, the other two choices are kind of opposite.). It is frustrating because at THIS level, I just want to throw req into ONE gun and make it actually good, and then worry about a second gun later- I think that's an issue that all the two weapon guys have. I mean clearly, "switch guns" is supposed to be powerful- strikes have it instead of, say, rapid fire.

The second strike fighter I had to ask for help on. What I was told is good, and it's this: run those fast lockon cluster guys, and then also run either protons or concussions. I like protons because their damage and range is incredible, but when I tried running protons and concussions it was stupid. I'd start my lockon at 9k, and the guy would break it and then be within 6k so I'd swap to concussions and still often not get my missile. Now I threaten with protons from a distance and if they get close I can usually use the cluster effectively.


Gunships, don't even upgrade the blaster first. When do you do get around to it, you want the Burst Laser Canon. Burst canon diminishes with range, but has a low penalty for tracking. Gunships are trashcan in a turn fight, so you can't meaningfully get things to the center regardless, and the damage they do is large. And if something IS at range, you don't eff with blasters, you railgun that guy right in the railhole.

Spend your upgrades on railguns. The combos right now are basically:

> Plasma is your worst pick, but it is the highest damage. If you can get a fully charged plasma off on someone in a dog fight, the debuff makes him take more damage and he has a dot and it hurts his shields and the other guy is still on him- this makes it very good support, and it's probably the best bet outside of your damage cooldown.

> Slug is your BEST pick. With a fully upgraded slug and the use of the copilot ability Bypass, you can one-shot certain scouts and bring almost anyone to sub 25% hull with a single shot. That hull isn't coming back, and a second hit will definitely get you the kill- but more importantly, his ability to extend and be effective is greatly reduced. Even if you don't get that kill, that much hull damage ruined his whole spawn, period.

> Ion is a solid pick, but it needs the snare upgrade or the sappy one. You need a fully upgraded ion for it to be worth using, because fully stripping one shield and nothing else is a waste of a railgun shot. If you have this, you can pepper opponents with quarter charge full duration full effect snares, and generally grief a whole team of defenders like nothing else.


I always pick barrel roll on any of these guys. It reduces spawn time, and lets me retreat to allies or quickly dash into range.

[Warlord Booty]

I'm all about the Scout. I amp the main default guns and go full absorb shields with hull repair co-pilot. The strike fighter felt... slow and lazy. After I tried Scout, i only went back to strike fighter maybe 2 times, so in honesty, i didn't try other things. Felt like the missiles were useless due to their long lock on time (no one can ever lock onto my scout for instance).

[Deleted]

I'm all about the Scout. I amp the main default guns and go full absorb shields with hull repair co-pilot. The strike fighter felt... slow and lazy. After I tried Scout, i only went back to strike fighter maybe 2 times, so in honesty, i didn't try other things. Felt like the missiles were useless due to their long lock on time (no one can ever lock onto my scout for instance).

The unlockable scout is def worth picking. The first one is nice, but the missiles it can load aren't all that great: Either darts that require careful aiming, or missiles with a loooooooooooooong lockon time. Seems like the probes are the best pick. The second scout has acces to cluster missiles which are basically the last word in terms of missile loadouts because these are the only ones where you can expect to actually finish the lockon more than once or twice during a game. Just IMO, of course

[moff]

yep, cluster missiles are the way to go. only the unlockable scout can have them.

[goobernoob]

If you are going gunship I would advise maxing out your engines first, folks like me always gun for them. For any ship that can equip them, the dodge shields are best, they let you survive a head on engagement and unless i'm mistaken the dodge chance works for your hull as well.
When you are sniping try to avoid getting tunnel vision, most of the time the folks that come for you are approaching nearly head on. if you get ganked, try to run your attacker to your starting area where turrets will kill them or into your allies.

With all of that said though, the unlockable scout is the best ship bar none imo, a gunship or two per match can be useful to break up camps on a beacon and I have seen a couple players really shine with them but their lack of agility hurts them.

[Warlord Booty]

I haven't done a starfighter battle in a week. How are the queues? Are people still quite into it or... other? I've been leveling with someone, so when I do get to play, I have a leveling partner and haven't had a chance to even do normal PVP.

[goobernoob]

I haven't done a starfighter battle in a week. How are the queues? Are people still quite into it or... other? I've been leveling with someone, so when I do get to play, I have a leveling partner and haven't had a chance to even do normal PVP.

The queues are fairly fast, anywhere from 10 seconds to 4-5 minutes in off times, about the same as the normal pvp que. On my server, the republic wins the vast majority of the imp/pub games and about 1/3rd of the matches pub side are pub/pub.