"Boost Skipping" with Tie Defender
I've recently discovered the concept of "boost skipping" (may have some other names within the community), which is basically engaging boost, then drift, and then boost again about 1/2 second later, ...
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I'm witnessing bombers use this to escape situations they should not be able to survive. Drift boost twisting on a timer + transcontinental lag and the guy is literally unhittable. Something feels off about this balance. I get that this feels high skill to some players who are just discovering it but the maneuverability and jerky speed is too high and too low in power demand for what they are accomplishing.
Bombers are literally just drawing full aggro from a bunch of people, making "glitch" maneuvers where there position isn't even displayed smoothly and letting the other players mop up the chaser to win dog fights. I don't see any other option but to change this as the bomber's already have high hp and it just feels like an exploit to anyone who has played other combat fighter sims. The reverse maneuver throttle detach is fine for spinning around to shoot at someone, but don't give anyone willing to learn this trick a free escape 90% of the time. It's just too damned effective in the current build (may- 2021).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN8EjDimhl0
This video is a match that shows some of what I was complaining about earlier. Two things are going on that shouldn't be.
1. The Tie defender and various bombers are skipping around like madmen and are unhittable as a result. Not just advanced movement, lag-hitching, hard 90 degree turns, two cycles of boost turns in under half a second and no limit to boost seemingly.
2. Targets are on my client stopping before my crosshairs and when I correct to shoot the frozen position, they suddenly reinvigorate to where they would have been without stopping so quickly making sudden jolting movements against my crosshair's direction. I'm also frequently noticing this with the AI where they seem to "know" where I'm aiming, making dodges against crosshair positions instead of actual gunfire, and doing the lag freeze, resume juke to make them extremely frustrating to shoot at.
I think the AI should be more numerous, and behave more like players, but this sort of omniscient dodging is way overdone and needs to be rolled back. Make them more consistent, more deadly more likely to turn on targets and hit structures, and less likely to sit in formations doing figure dances that defy possibility to waste time. The current meta of using bombs to kill formations is stupid to me and I'd prefer to see them more as "weaker" players swarming vs visual backdrop for points.
The fact that bombers are moving so quickly and and with so many rapid boost turns hitting 90 degree jolts is unreasonable and some sort of netcode optimization is needed to make the chasing player see a smoother pathway vs a track that can get very behind with ping and then suddenly spring to life somewhere else. Bombers have their tank to escape but should be requiring escort and peels to pull of escapes, not some sort of hero vessel that is guaranteed both to get frontal damage in and escape unless chased by auto-aim loadouts (which I would just remove from the game anyways). No one likes watching kill feeds where the player never even lead their path a single time and scored the kill while erratically aiming behind the player.
