Vastly overpowered rebel ships
Oh my.... So rebel ships completely dominate in all dogfight matches so far...easily. How discouraging. I dont mean by a little bit. Its a complete stomp every game....28-2, 28-3
Forum Discussion
@ScarecrowES wrote:More than anything else, it's just that the Republic ships can tank hits thanks to the shields... I mean, obviously. But the idea in balance was that the Empire ships would be able to out-damage or out-maneuver the Republic ships to make up the difference in performance. I just think Motive greatly overestimated how much the tiny damage, speed, or maneuverability advantage Empire ships might have would actually help. It's really just not enough to equal out the very clear advantage of the shields. This is ablified when fighting at range or in the open. TIEs simply dont have a remedy for shields.
If a Republic ship can land a few hits on a TIE Interceptor, it's toast. You don't even have time to react to make use of the speed or maneuverability... or to shunt energy to hull. And the paltry damage advantage doesn't mean much when shields effectively give Republic ships double the hits. 10-15%, or whatever the actual numbers are for the performance differences, just doesn't make a difference if you don't survive long enough to use them.
I'm not sure how to balance this. As others have said, Empire vs. Republic was never a straight up fight. Imperial ships were meant to work in numbers and overwhelm Republic fighters and ships. 5 v 5 probably was never going to work without giving TIEs serious individual buffs. But this brings in all kinds of problems for balance outside of dogfights. If you make the damage output of TIEs higher to make them better in a straight up fight against Republic starfighters, then they will dominate against capital ships in Fleet Battles.
The only option to address balance is to work with the intangibles. It can't be straight up health or damage... or even speed and maneuverability really. The goal would be to further
For instance, Imperial ships could be given some light aim assist by default. This should increase the hit ratio of TIEs and allow them to make better use of that maneuverability. Plus, it does absolutely nothing against targets that are already easy to hit like capital ships. Republic ship missiles could be given reduced speed and poorer tracking which would make them easier to evade. Again, this changes nothing against capital ships, but makes missiles less effective against Imperial ships at range. We can further improve laser recharge rates for Empire ships, as well as increase the positive effect of transfering power to engines while reducing the negative effect. Also we can improve the effect of transfering power to the hull.
This all has little to no effect in TIE performance against capital ships but makes them more formidable against starfighters without having to mess with damage output, speed, maneuverability, etc.
This is exactly it..everything you just said. The minor increase in damage/handling does not compensate for shields
I've been constantly getting told to "git gud" essentially. That it's just my flying and not the fact that Imperial ships aren't worth the credits the Empire paid for. No it's the Rebel fighters being broken.
For your standard X-wing while the damage is lower, it's recharge rate as well as rate of fire are much better. So where the Empire has to boost its power, the X wing instead can just open fire. The X wing as well can just fire longer meaning that for the damage it's output is just significantly better than your TIE. Nothing about the Empire's modifications are good making dogfights a waste of time since if you don't catch them unaware the X wing is going to win every single time.
But the biggest offender here is the A wing. The A wing for it's faults (if any) can shred enemy starfighters and a fully shielded Reaper before it's guns overheat. A team of them is going to decimate Imperial players. I've regularly seen pilots just give up if they don't just leave since they're just going to loose anyways.
Who thought this was balanced? Imperial ships should hit hard and be squishy to compensate. I feel like they have the right idea but the numbers are all wrong. Like this might've been fine in a vacuum but once the player base has gotten ahold of it, it's abundantly clear what pilots are favoring. The X and A wing are just better fighters compared to your TIEs. You just can't be competitive in an Imperial fighter.
Switch sides and fly rebel ships. You aren't going to do any better. Its not the ships.
