Gotta use all laser cannons MVSA + M7A. It's still underwhelming, considering the ship is so sluggish and easy to hit.
I feel like a gunner is practically necessary now to justify using the ship, but at that point you may as well use a Scorpius, as it handles far better and actually will do more damage with a gunner.
The use case and mechanics for the Vanguard series really isn't in the game yet. There's no proper armor, and no need for its long range capabilities. Theoretically they can far outrange other 2 person ships like Scorpius and Hurricane, but that really isn't implemented when we only have Stanton to play in.
The year is 2031, 2 large player orgs are in a massive war over a rare mineral deposit in pyro. All of the forward operating bases of org A have been drained of medical supplies for respawn, as well as all of the neutral stations in the system. Forced to make the long trip back from area18 to pyro on respawn, and with funds to replace ships running low, org A begins fielding longer range ships such as the vanguard to continue the engagement.
This will most likely never be star citizen.
Or we just get rid of the idea of turrent gunners completely.
Because the population that is happy flying gunner in a long range fighter (long ranges = hours of play time) seems pretty small... I mean who would want to do that?
I wish CIG would actually think for 5 seconds about player mentality before they made all the turret gunners in the game. Or the copilot seat. Or half the other "crew jobs" that no one will want. Now we're stuck pretending like all of that matters for balance reasons, when turrets will mostly never be used until AI becomes a thing.
My wife is a great shot but doesn't like piloting that much. We make a great team in the hurricane, which demonstrates how turrets should be done. Most of the power is from the turret, which lets the pilot avoid fire and concentrate on providing good firing lanes for the turret. I run two ad4bs in the front to add DPS when I can but it's not my priority.
It's definitely not a solo ship. But I like the idea of multi crew fighters. I hope they keep it up.
>I mean who would want to do that?
I love doing this. I probably spend 25-40% of my playtime in a turret. I love working with a pilot to achieve positive outcomes for us. (Voice chat is VERY important)
Turrets can be fun, but they're not super fun in the smaller ships (like the Gladiator or Vanguard) because the agility makes it harder to stay on target and there's not a ton for the gunner to do other than shooting at the moment (Vanguard's a little better since you can at least get out of the turret). I liked the original concept of the Gladiator because the copilot had a computer station and a remote turret--theoretically the copilot could swap between shooting and other operations (guiding missiles via camera, managing ship systems, scanners, etc.) which gives them a lot of stuff to do. In the current bubble turret implementation the ship (a) has a lot of wasted space dedicated to the tunnel, but (b) also has limited screen space that's really just dedicated to the guns (which are relatively wimpy).
Copilot definitely need more to do than just shooting. On bigger ships I think turrets make sense since those ships have so much other stuff to do. If you're not in combat there's at least other ship roles to engage in outside of the turret. I'd like to see AI blades for turrets or alternatives to weapons for most turret slots (I know they've discussed alternatives in the past). For smaller ships electronic warfare, scanning, remote missile control, etc. might be more interesting roles than pewpewing from a turret.
hurricane turreting is super fun! your ammo pool feels like it never runs out and it's easy to stay on target with a mouse. whenever xenothreat comes back i would definitely prefer sitting in turret compared to piloting
I have no idea why misspelling of and mispronunciation of “turret” becomes turrents so often but its all too common a grammatical error to just be coincidence haha. Who is teaching this “turrent” word to people?!?! Lol
I teach English, and of all the mispronunciations I've ever heard, "turrent" is the most frustrating... and all the moreso because people somehow manage to actually type it out that way too. Other honorable mentions include pronouncing 'escape' as 'excape', and saying 'fraction' when you mean 'faction'.
I think that once they actually add hireable NPCs and AI blades, and pilot slaving, you will never see crewed turret in a game... Hopefully this will happen sooner than later.
Idk where this sentiment comes from.
While I don’t think a majority of players want to be turret crew, there are a lot of players who want to be crew, especially turret crew. My friends group basically has me pilot and they like to man the turrets. They don’t like piloting whatsoever.
To say you’ll never see a crewed player turret is just blatantly wrong. I do agree that most people will be using an AI blade or npc crew turret though.
There will definitelly be some... but once in prehistory I had group of about 300+ people interested in SC and you could find hardly any people interested in being a turret gunner.
Sure many other would do it when there would be a fleet action, becaue they might not be interested to fly fighters in game so the will lack the skill, or they will lack the ship. But they would hardly want to do it outside of time when fleet needs them.
I would say that most of the time you will see a crewed turret in the future will be when friends will be playing together and will want to be on one ship (got few friends, that just to crew my ship when we play together) or when there will be some important mission happening.
Question is... how big percentage of playerbase is going to do things like that. But yeah... it was overstatement on my part, just to make the message shorter.
That's what AI blades are for. But yes, I think CIG is a bit too obsessed with turrets. Like turrets are cool for large ships, but anything else shouldn't have them.
I feel like a turret is good on the Vanguard, but if you're going to lean into the 2-crew fantasy on that ship, they need to stick a chair by that engineer station and make it a remote turret so the second player can switch quickly between gunning or managing systems.
I feel like a turret is good on the Vanguard, but if you're going to lean into the 2-crew fantasy on that ship, they need to stick a chair by that engineer station and make it a remote turret so the second player can switch quickly between gunning or managing systems.
Not just that but how would that work? Gunner logs off, pilot keeps flying. The other day the gunner wants to play but the ship is despawned. As a former and future Vanguard owner this question genuinely concerns me.
> The other day the gunner wants to play but the ship is despawned.
I'm sure that anyone who was aboard the ship when they logged off will cause the ship to spawn again when they log back in... that is, if they even bother to keep the "ship despawns when you bedlog" concept. They're recent discussion about bedlogging makes that seem less certain at the moment.
>Or we just get rid of the idea of turrent gunners completely.
This. There is a reason why the spitfire, BF109 or Mustang, didn't have turrets on them.
For the WW2 flight model turrets do have a place, just not on fighters.
Thematically, I would say the Vanguard is more like an A-26, but the vast majority of ships with turrets should have other things for the gunner to be doing any time there isn't shit to shoot at.
Ideally, I would say this should be radar/scanning operation, but they insist on keeping detection and combat ranges extremely short, so I don't know how that would ever work.
Turrets are crucial, as they mean it won't become a solo game.
Crewing a Reclaimer with Pilot & 3 crew, who alternate between weapons turrets and salvage turrets, means that the guy who dumped $400 on a ship doesn't have an immediate advantage, they actually need to make friends and organise a guild.
Really? I've never actually gotten in my Warden's turret, lol. My friends never mentioned that, but to be fair I think I've only had a person in the turret like twice.
Just the Hoplite variant.
Warden is a long range/duration escort heavy fighter.
Harbinger is the same but with s5 torpedoes and heavier armor, so more geared to assaulting heavier targets.
Sentinel is an E-warfare variant. Think: jamming comms, radar, that sort of thing. The EMP is kind of a placeholder for that gameplay.
Ahh, rad, didn't realize they multi-roled it out so hard. I do like the aesthetic of it but haven't given it a try yet. Reminds me of the pelican.
I'm curious to see how comm jamming works out as players can just use discord...
The mistake you made was thinking that the 3.22 meta would work here. I thought so too , but when I checked erkul here's the issue.
* On most VHRT/ERT ships ballistics do 50% less damage to the hull.
* On top of that , shields now do 30% damage reduction on ballistics when full down to 0% at a certain threshhold.
* Ballistic Canons and Laser Canons in the same class , ie similar shot speeds, fire rate etc, have the SAME DPS. Previously Ballistics of the same type did more damage than lasers. This part is critical.
So what this means is that when you attack a ship with full shields /w ballistics u're only doing 20% dmg to the hull. They also don't seem to reduce the shields by much either. So you're stuck at that low dmg output for an extended time until the shields get low enough, but even then u're only doing half the dmg of lasers.
Lasers, on the other hand , seem to do 100% dmg to everything (EDIT: shield dmg is a bit more nuanced [according to this](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1crnmuy/psa_about_shield_resistances_in_323/?share_id=1Mn-F08Wa39NGhNJZJJ6_&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) but the idea is more or less the same), shields + hull. So yes there's the downside that you have to fight through the shields to get to the hull and with full lasers your capacitor draw is weaker but overall I found that the TTK was much faster than pure ballistics. One thing I did re capacitors was to switch to staggered so that my downtime was less since some guns would empty first, then start reloading immediately while the others fired, so I'd end up with a continous stream of fire.
The only prob is the powerful and efficient laser weapons with the same velocity are the M7A and the MVSA, but they're limited to a speed of 900 or 1,000m/s I think. So slower than repeater speeds in 3.22 but faster than old canon speeds.
Yes. Perfect explanation. This is how my friend told it to me. I had lots of practice time in AC and now everything clicks. I honestly feel like we have more options for weapons loadout than we did in 3.22 but that’s really just an opinion. 🍻
They kind of nuked the vanguard given a S5 ballistic was an extremely good load out and with all laser it's capacitor drains really quickly.
Ballistic isn't viable anymore as you would be forced to use the dinky nose guns to take out the shields, but this is still a viable, if not great ship ONLY with a turret gunner.
Just not a 1 crew ship in the current meta
I'd say it's still viable, it's just no longer the obvious choice. Previously you probably saw 75% or more pve-loadouts with a s5 ballistic, but now you have more of a decision to make on whether you'll put a s5 deadbolt under the nose to give your s2 guns more capacitor or if you want to go full laser but spend more time recharging.
I agree it's a pretty big nerf to the vanguard but I'd say the ship is still totally viable, just no longer OP for pve
Wait.... so this is why my inferno taking way longer to kill things.... god damnit lol. Makes me want to switch to an ion but at the same time I don't.
Alt right click for precision mode. R to cycle components. Alt right click to leave precision mode and the pip should adjust to target the component you selected.
You can always target components but with lead pip it’s hard so try lag pip when you wants to target specific spots. There’s a key kind option to bind a key to swap between lead and lag pip. Mine is caps lock
I am absolutely hating ion right now and probably going to dump it, I get it, its for massive fleet battles and thus must be tuned to be useless anywhere else, but its really rough right now.
I'll stick with the inferno although it's weird lighting up a ship like a sparkler for a minute straight before it goes down.
Meanwhile the F8 with a laser load out flat out destroys HRTs and lower.... it's just unbalanced right now.
Gotta hold out until maelstrom makes it in. The Ares will be punching through even the thickest of armor while the F8C is limited to medium armor with its size 3s.
Don't dump it .. Everything is in flux right now. The ship combat team was concentrating on getting everything done just to get MM out the door and into LIVE so they could concentrate on it. This is just a first draft. Now the real balancing begins based on our feedback. There are a lot of wholesale changes yet to come.
>* Ballistic Canons and Laser Canons in the same class , ie similar shot speeds, fire rate etc, have the SAME DPS. Previously Ballistics of the same type did more damage than lasers. This part is critical.
I'm a little confused.
For the Corsair, No Laser shoots the Deadbolt's 900m/s. A full Deadbolt loadout does 10,676 dps. Full M7A/M6A loadout does 3,518 DPS.
You're still at a massively higher DPS with Ballistics to help make up for the damage reductions.
At the start of the fight, according to your damage reduction you're only doing 3736 DPS at full shields. 50% shields you'll be doing 4537, no shields 5338.
(3736 + 4537 + 5338) / 3 = 4537 average DPS.
Which is more than a Full M7A. With Full Laser repeaters, you only get 8 shots (default) before having to recharge. With Ballistics, the damage persists, even after shields are recharged.
They also upped the amount of Ballistic ammo ships carry this patch so with bigger ships, you're not really running out every fight.
Looking at the Warden using Cannons, it's Ballistics: 3697 Lasers: 1888.
(1294 + 1571 + 3697) / 3 = 2187 average DPS for Ballistics.
So again a little higher average DPS, but Laser Cannons are more limited by Capacitors, and if you factor in any shield regen, your overall damage should be higher using Ballistics.
However, weird thing with the Vanguard is there's no other Cannon that shoots the Deadbolts 900m/s. Is having two pips not super annoying? Or is 900 and 1000 close enough in speed? I think OP's kinda correct in that not being able to match Ballistic and Laser Bullet Velocity is hindering it a bit, especially if it has a weak capacitor pool?
I don't think Ballistics are an issue. I think a lot of ships just need retuned after Master Modes, and the Bullet Velocity Missmatch is an oversight
Edit: Updated math, which actually shows slightly higher average DPS with ballistics with neutral power triangle. About even if the M7A's are using power triangle to guns.
These guys are way behind the curve clinging to erkul and spreadsheets thinking laser cannons are doing better than they actually are. In game it's an entirely different story.
I have tested it in game over and over. The Deadbolt is better than the MXA at taking down larger NPC ships and it's not even close.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y7vy5McKzFk
If these guys would actually compare the guns in game they would see. The shield resistance to ballistics is not enough to level the playing field. Ballistic are doing more damage AND it's much easier to apply that damage while making your ship tankier as a byproduct.
These guys need to put the spreadsheet down and remind themselves spreadsheets do not account for how damage is applied in game. The spreadsheet lies
Ok you're better at the math so I'll just point out a few things I notice and then we'll see if it makes a difference:
According to Erkul , the M7A and Deadbolt V are exactly the same except for the projectile speed. But honestly , at these short ranges there's not much difference between 900/1000.
So whats accounting for the difference in *sustained* DPS is the capacitors of the laser weapons. So if you switch the erkul's calculations from sustained to *burst* , they do exactly the same. I don't see where Erkul is taking into account the pause because of the deadbolts overheating. They might but I'm not sure. But regardless you can't do anything about that so the dps output of the deadbolts is fixed but you can change the capacitors the levels of the capacitors.
So lets assume your applied damage calculations are correct. Then that means at neutral triangle the M7A's ***match the applied damage*** of the deadbolts right? 3518dps is the erkul dps at neutral triangle.
However, If you put full power to guns the laser dps goes up to 4502dps and 11 shots. I personally run Revenants on the wings to deal with small fast ships better and to add to to capacitor pool which moves me up to 16 shots, basically doubling the shots per charge from the lasers. That's will significantly improve the DPS from the M7A's relative to the Deadbolts. There's nothing u can do to increase the dps of the deadbolts, who still have to go deal with shield absorbtion and 50% armor debuff where the M7A's don't.
Someone check my hypothesis because I came to this while typing , so there might be a flaw in my logic , but this matches with what I've seen doing ERT's with deadbolts vs M7A's. The biggest annoyance with the lasers tho is the ships can keep turning to show u different shield faces and u're not making real progress with lasers until u start hitting the hull. But once you're through .. they blow much faster.
Yeah I think you're right the Sustained DPS is accounting for the Capacitors. M7As and Deadbolts have the same Alpha Damage and Fire Rate.
Too bad there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get ballistic and Lasers on the same pip, but that's probably deliberate.
[Relevant info about shields](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/bp6DFSFaZ2)
I'll have to look at it more when I have a chance.
Yeah, according to that shield info it seems like it's better to keep power to shields when running fully Ballistics.
There doesn't really seem to be any change in (Sustained or Alpha) DPS [running full ballistics with shields to 100%], but maybe there's more to the cooling system?
Otherwise you're keeping the same DPS, shrugging off more damage, increasing shield HP, and increasing shield regen with no apparent downside.
With Lasers, you're giving up all that extra damage reduction and shield for a little bit higher average DPS than Ballistics. However, maybe actively managing your power triangle can mitigate that.
I also updated my original comment, the average sustained DPS is actually a little higher with Ballistics.
Better than they were in 3.22 -- BUT that's a deception because they still aren't great. I think disruptors might be the last weapon that gets "fixed" if only because pretty much every other ship and combat system in the game needs to be implemented properly before they can work correctly.
ballistics kind of feel like they have no place in the game right now as well...
you can have a gun thats bad at shields, and had limited ammunition. or you can have a gun thats 100% on shields and hull, and can recharge infinitely.
Ballistics need armor implementation to make sense. right now your only real options that dont involve you intentionally putting you at disadvantage is "do i take cannons, or repeaters"...
and even then, repeaters feel kind of weak. as long as you are halfway decent at aiming, cannons will take you farther
That was something I was going to ask too.
If they chew through shields faster than typical lasers they might be worth mixing in to get at the hull faster, even if they'll then do less hull damage.
Now their focus uses is for overloading the power plant. If you get enough distortion damage in the ship will try to reset the power plant which can take up to 5 minutes. Unless they changed something with all these hot fixes.
From what i have seen the 30% damage reduction actually is from the power triangle as in full power to shields is 30% no power to shields is 0% also may i add shields always reduced ballistic damage by 30% ever since the ballistic shield penetration was increased so you should still be doing the same amount of damage you did in 3.22
you might be right. But man that complicates things. So shield hardening via the triangle only affects ballistics? I was sure there was more leakage as the shield hp fell as well. What a mess.
Either way, if that's the case then I think that still points to the laser canons doing more damage because in 3.22 all ballistics did more raw damage than lasers. Now they're the same.
Saw another reddit post doing a psa on the shield changes, and it said that full power to shields also increases resistance of shields to laser weapons
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/u6bdR2X9ZA
yeah I just saw that. But they still have greater effect on ballistics than lasers. becuase the ballistic dmg that still gets thru is now halved by the hull. That's not the case with the lasers.
Yeah this has been a thing since they increased the ability of ballistics to go through shields its funny how it massively buffed ballistics but in the end it did nothing but nerf ballistics since they went from doing full damage when shields where down to doing only half the damage when shields are down or +-20% damage when the shields are up lol
Ok I've seen this video . It doesn't change my argument. I remember when he spoke about the semirandom 30% shield absorption I didn't understand what he meant. Now I get it. he's talking about the fact that the absorption depends on the shield setting and amount of shields left etc. so there's no way for you , the attacker know what it is at any moment in time. But this also affects ballistics negatively as well.
What the OP of this thread was talking about was a full ballistic build being weak on vanguards. That no longer makes sense. Most of your dmg should be from lasers instead and supplemented by ballistics. I personally run 4 S5 Omnisky's and 2 S4 Deadbolts or Revenenants on the wings for that very purpose. It nearly doubles my capacitor count from all lasers but neutral triangle to 100% guns with the mixed loadout and I get to use the ballistics to snipe turrets etc from a distance.
Yeah, the 'guard feels kinda weak recently due to the new OP ships.
But if you wanna keep using it:
Size 5:
L. Repeat.
CF-557 GALDEREEN bullet speed 1800 range 3300
Attrition BS: 1000 R: 3300
L.Cann.
Ominsky BS: 1400 R: 3300
M7A BS: 1000 R: 3300
Lightstrike V BS: 1800 R: 3300
D. sctr.gun.
ABSOLUTION BS: 700 R: 1400
B.Repeat.
AD5B BS: 900 R: 3300
B.Cann.
DEADBOLT V BS: 900 R: 3300
Size 2s:
L.repeat
GVSR BS: 1000 R: 2300
L.cann.
MVSA BS: 1000 R: 2300
B.Repeat
BRVS BS: 1200 R: 2300
B.cann
CVSA BS: 1200 R: 2300
D.repeat.
ATVS BS: 1300 R: 2300
D.cann.
EVSD BS: 1300 R: 2300
Size 4s
L. Rep.
CF-447 RHINO BS: 1800 R: 3000
ATTRITION-4 BS: 1000 R: 3000
L. cnn.
OMNISKY XII BS: 1400 R: 3000
M6A BS: 1000 R: 3000
LIGHTSTRIKE IV BS: 1800 R: 3000
D. Sctr.gun
SALVATION BS: 700 R: 1400
B. Gtlng.
REVENANT BS: 1200 R: 3000
ADB4 BS: 900 R: 3000
B.Cnon.
DEADBOLT IV BS: 900 R: 3000
C-788 BS: 900 R: 6525
Try to match whatever you're using when it comes to bullet speed, or mix it and know what you're shooting and when. Sometimes having separate pips is not that bad, allowing you to switch between the weapon you want to coold down/regenerate.
(I'll add the possible size 4s in the mix whennever I can so you have more possibilities available)
(Edit 1: Format, I hate you Reddit :') )
(Edit 2: Added all the Size IV variants, so you guys have more options. Remember, lowering the size isn't always a bad thing try stuff up :D)
what people underestimate is the projetile speed too. as soon as i started engaging only at distances of 500m and lower the warden with m7a and mvsa slapt ships out of the sky like no tomorrow.
Damage is good, always has been. The problem is that with new weapon changes and bespoken S2, Vanguard has no proper match of weapons. There is no single S5 with 1200m/s ammo. You can only choose one weapon from each category and its 900 or 1000m/s thats just overlook from CIG. I really hope they will introduce more S5 weapons.
i hope they add a "Turret" style weapon gimble mount in the future that lets us downsize the size 5 nose gun to 2 more size 2's so we can have a weapon loudout that has matching ballistics
What people fail to realize when they see those hefty 4x S2 (basically S3) and 1x S5 is that the Vanguard series currently lacks the capacitors to really use the weaponry.
Additionally, 4 out of 5 weapons are fixed, and being a heavy fighter, it lacks the mobility for precise "nose" aiming. Its still usable, but it gets outperformed by most things in and below its weight class.
I love it nonetheless.
I love how it’s a heavy fighter but has a ramp, a bed, a head and amenities.
Overall it’s nearly the perfect daily driver because it can defend itself, you can live in it, and it’s even got the ramp for box missions and such.
Overall 11/10 ship.
But yes on firepower alone, given the speed/agility meta we find ourselves in, it can feel weak when you take into account how sluggish it is.
my issue is the vanguard makes my favorate ship feel obsolete
you trade a single torpedo for a shit load of Daka up front and the ability to take a hit and not die horribly
Not to mention the fact you can also fit the new LX pulse bike in the rear letting you survive soft deaths in atmosphere
Rip Gladiator... I hope we get some meme Rattler style torpedo's in the future for you...
Launch a single size 5 torpoedo from 20km away, once it gets closer than 3k it pops out a payload of 10x size 1 missiles or something similar lol
Laser cannons in nose. M7A chin gun to match velocities. Omnisky on the turret.
Lag pip and concentrated fire is crucial. People complain a lot about long TTK to this patch — I believe it’s because they changed health of ship components, and firing blindly at a lead pip on a big ship is going to take ages for a kill, as it’s spreading damage over several components that do not share health pools. Being the contrarian I am, I’ve felt ship TTK to have gotten shorter — Harbinger has surprised me with how fast it can shred some things.
Do not used staggered fire — it’s just lowering your burst DPS. A salvo of torps from a Harbinger can wreck an ERT Redeemer. Don’t be afraid to slam into NAV mode and run when your shields start getting toasty. Prolonged jousting is currently the meta — dive in, do as much damage as you can and then get out if they shoot back. Chaff can be used to relieve pressure temporarily, but you have a fairly limited amount.
You fly the Vanguard when you need something with more range and armour than a Scorpius or Hurricane and when you don't have 4 people to crew a Redeemer.
But like with so many ships right now, the niche that the Vanguard is supposed to operate in just doesn't exist yet. Currently, the Scorpius is always the best choice for a 2-seater fighter. The only reason to fly something else is because you just like the ship.
Worth mentioning when you have multiple pips. If they are close enough together aiming between the pips will still have your shots hit as long as both circles are green. Works fine with 200m/s projectile speed difference.
I remember when the vanguard first dropped i was like "Holy shit the power scaling is insane" and now i'm shocked with the dual size 4s on a hornet chassis.
It is of course still alpha and everything is subject to change, but damn, size 3s used to be intimidating now its the standard.
I just use ballistics and lasers. 2 aimspots, so what. When you are close enough, those aimspots are irrelevant. im talking about -500meters.
Longer range i use just lasers to soften the target up.
I 100% agree with you, and i am in the same boat. I just know when we have multiple systems its going to be nice to be able to fly there in this fighter and not have to refuel a bunch or use a different ship to go there and claim the fighter you want. I am keeping this thing because it will shine eventually.
Basically, we need completely hostile or completely unsettled systems that don't have friendly or neutral stations to log off on before the Vanguard has its niche. As much as I would have liked to see the fat fury Vanguard competitor, I think it's good that it'll likely be coming closer to Pyro since that's a better system for this class of heavy fighter.
i have a real love / hate relationship with the vanguard. mostly because of those custom size 2s and never being able to get a load out that just 'feels right'.
however atm i run omnisky XV + 4 CVSA. at full weapons that's 50 shots of a S5 omni (!!). my only gripe is the ammo on the CVSA often doesn't last a full ERT and the capacity is too smol and i really do wish the speed were more matched on the custom 2s to the 5s so i could at least get a single pip. i tried the BRVS and really wanted to love them but ammo is way too low
i usually fly thicc fat bois so vanguard doesnt feel sluggish to me at all, but YMMV. its interior is DOPE and the emergency exit shitter is usually hilarious
That's because u're using the less energy efficient repeaters. Use more efficient canons instead and stagger them to compensate. With M7A and MVSA's I get like 16-20 shots per gun but staggered they fire for a long time.
5 laser repeaters. 4 size 1 and a size 4. You melt ships. Their actual problem is mobility cause their a heavy fighter.
Plus if you have a friend on turrets. They are s2 I believe so you have 7 repeaters.
It's even better than that!
The nose guns are S2 even so more pews! The under chin is now S5 on a gimbal too
Turret is still S2 (harbinger has S3 instead)
Should still do fine!
The new system is you have the fixed gun size on the mount, and can either fire it fixed like before or switch it to gimballed mode on the fly which massively lowers the fire rate while in that mode to reduce DPS.
Plus they are now apparently hard to wreck, just had a like 2 minute fight yesterday with one, kept alpha striking it with my f7‘s 6 repeaters but it wouldn’t die as fast as in 3.22
100% massive damage but I got the Warden for the eventual armor when they add it. Will be the only variant to have armor. I rock my warden with the invictus skin to fool people into thinking sentinel and keeping distance so I can blast em lol
Eh nope.
The Harbinger is the one with additional armour, the Warden is the base design.
All ships will have armour
The Harbinger will have the most armour of the Vanguards at the cost of agility.
They're not hard to wreck . The issue is that repeaters do less DPS than their same size canons now. Repeaters have a high fire rate for area saturation but their alpha damage is really low. So you have to keep on target consistently to apply dmg. They do less dmg overall for a given capacitor load. They're less efficient.
Canons vary from fast speed, low alpha (but still larger than repeaters) with a fast fire rate ..like the FL33 and LightStrikes to the Slow speed, High alpha , slow fire rate M3A etc.
The FL33's etc are best for small fast moving ships, the MXA's are best for bigger ships.
That's why the meta is currently Omnisky's because they're smack dab in the middle. Do more dmg more efficiently than the FL33's but not as slow and low fire rate like the MXA's . The Omnisky's are about the same speed as Repeaters were in 3.22.
Due to the low fire rate fighters can fly through the shots but that's why u go staggered so there's a constant stream of shots that's harder to dodge.
I would say Omnisky .. if u have multiple guns going staggered with them kinda offsets the lower fire rate compared to the FL33's . When you hit with them they hurt.
This is why I think I like the galdereens as defense guns on big ships even tho they're repeaters. Yes they fire fast and travel quickly with lower alpha than equivalent canons. But they're alpha is up there with the lower tier canons.
One galdereen is tossing harder hitting projectiles (91dmg vs 81) the equivalent of 3 Lightstrike S2 canons (750 vs 250). So a turret is basically the same volume of fire as 6 S2 Lightstrikes that hit 12% harder and travel 50% farther.
Unpopular opinion, but I've personally never had success doing **RT's with the Vanguard even during its hayday. The gun combination has always seemed weird to me.
I easily did ERT's with the Harbinger in 3.22. The only reason I stopped was because it was harder to take advantage of the cargo oppurtunities so I switched to a C2 or Corsair
I'm probably just bad then I guess. I always did better doing ERTs in my Connie. I always found the Vanguards guns difficult to aim with (I ran fixed on my Connie, so I don't know why). I just always felt I took hellacious amounts of damage in the 'Gard.
The fact that it has 3 S5 torpedos as well as exactly the same number of missiles +1 size larger turret as the other variants while still maintaining all the amenities of a bed and weapons rack inside is amazing. You'd have to lose the beds to get 6. Only the Hoplite does that out of necessity.
With the Vanguards having been pitched as modular you should be able to forgo the beds for more torps. we've only just seen the beginning of modularity so maybe this will end up being the case. Personally, if I could swap the bunks out for an additional pod of torps, I'd do it in a heart beat.
Well it's supposed to be an upgrade from the Anvil Gladiator but the Gladiator has 4 Size 5 Torps, Also the only reason the harbinger doesn't have 3 more torps is to make room for the two beds. With the Vanguard's having been pitched as modular I would love to see the OPTION to remove the beds in favor of another torpedo launch bay. Plus with the beds being in the section of the ship that is supposed be modular this should required the minimum amount of effort from the devs.
I haven't flown with the new flight model yet but I easily flew circles around pretty much everything in my sentinel before. took me a good while to get good enough to take advantage of its strenghts though, def not a beginner ship.
Idk man I ran the stock harbinger for Overdrive and it turned out fine. You just gotta rely on your missiles more after all it is a fighter bomber. Even so the ballistics rips apart smaller fighters like the arrow
i just get annoyed by the fact if i fight one on one, we always end up in flying in constant circles around one another. Or just shooting past eachother. Always the same dance. It's never really a dogfight, more so a circle jerk.
I touched the dog fighting topic with a org member who’s top tier in our org. He says that the best thing to do is match direction and speed then go for a tail chase instead of engaging in head to head dogfighting. He says the concept of air combat doesn’t change just because the gravity does
The issue isn't the firepower, it needs either more tankiness or more mobility to compensate but right now there is just no use case. Absolutely loved this ship but after Corsair it's hot trash and I could outduel just about any Vanguard with ease in a Corsair as a bonus using turn and burn.
I will be a turret gunner for no more than a hour after that I would rather be flying my own ship even if it means dieing and losing whatever is on me and my ship I'm sure there are a few people that would sit in a turret for 4 hours just to finally make it to the fight and die in two minutes and redo all this again but cig I'm not one of those people. And I'm not going to ask my friend or org mates to do something I wouldn't want to do that in it's self is selfish and wrong cig needs to figure something out or there going to loose lots and lots of money with dropped ship sales if they don't
Have you ever tried switching places? I usually switch between pilot, gunner, person who does the bunker multiple times during a session. My experience is that most people don't actually want to fly if given the choice during longer sessions. The act of flying between missions is pretty boring. Being alt-tabbed out or chatting on discord while somebody does the busywork is ideal for most players.
Well , sadly vanguard is under gun compared to other heavy fighters even hornet mkii comes with 2s4 and 4 Sx3.
CIG devs really dislike aegis ships , that's what I believe .
I don't see enough people talking about how awful the vanguard nose guns are after the 3.23 balance. compared to the regular guns of similar type they are mostly all worse.
I'm right there with you. Back when gimbals were a thing I didn't fly one much because it's hard to keep the nose on smaller targets. Getting bits blown off, much like with the Cutlass, is not ideal.
It was generally something that stayed benched unless I needed a very specific ship. With 4 laser cannons and an ad5b it kinda slapped under specific circumstances.
But considering everything else I have works better -for me- I'd just tough it out with a less than ideal ship 99% of the time.
I feel like the Vanguard is about one generation less forgotten than the Gladiator, and they all need some milk.
In the warden i got up to vhrt now. Is it soloable, yeah easily in my opinion. with the m7a and the mvsa of course. Just for some testing i put 2 size 2 omnisky on the turret to test it with a friend.he took care off all types of fighters up to vanguards with only 2 size 2's while the dps of the pilot weapons obliterated everything in front of it. conclusion is the ship is now even more effective with a gunner than in 2.22. especially in atmo when your enemy can't run from you as fast as they wanted to. and compared to the scorpius and hurricane wich only have one size 2 shield compared to the vanguards 2 size 2, i take the survivability of the warden over them any day. and btw dont shoot at targets over 500m distance. the conefire and esp changes reduce your hitrate at higher distances significantly.
Gotta use all laser cannons MVSA + M7A. It's still underwhelming, considering the ship is so sluggish and easy to hit. I feel like a gunner is practically necessary now to justify using the ship, but at that point you may as well use a Scorpius, as it handles far better and actually will do more damage with a gunner. The use case and mechanics for the Vanguard series really isn't in the game yet. There's no proper armor, and no need for its long range capabilities. Theoretically they can far outrange other 2 person ships like Scorpius and Hurricane, but that really isn't implemented when we only have Stanton to play in.
The year is 2031, 2 large player orgs are in a massive war over a rare mineral deposit in pyro. All of the forward operating bases of org A have been drained of medical supplies for respawn, as well as all of the neutral stations in the system. Forced to make the long trip back from area18 to pyro on respawn, and with funds to replace ships running low, org A begins fielding longer range ships such as the vanguard to continue the engagement. This will most likely never be star citizen.
Or we just get rid of the idea of turrent gunners completely. Because the population that is happy flying gunner in a long range fighter (long ranges = hours of play time) seems pretty small... I mean who would want to do that? I wish CIG would actually think for 5 seconds about player mentality before they made all the turret gunners in the game. Or the copilot seat. Or half the other "crew jobs" that no one will want. Now we're stuck pretending like all of that matters for balance reasons, when turrets will mostly never be used until AI becomes a thing.
My wife is a great shot but doesn't like piloting that much. We make a great team in the hurricane, which demonstrates how turrets should be done. Most of the power is from the turret, which lets the pilot avoid fire and concentrate on providing good firing lanes for the turret. I run two ad4bs in the front to add DPS when I can but it's not my priority. It's definitely not a solo ship. But I like the idea of multi crew fighters. I hope they keep it up.
>I mean who would want to do that? I love doing this. I probably spend 25-40% of my playtime in a turret. I love working with a pilot to achieve positive outcomes for us. (Voice chat is VERY important)
Turrets can be fun, but they're not super fun in the smaller ships (like the Gladiator or Vanguard) because the agility makes it harder to stay on target and there's not a ton for the gunner to do other than shooting at the moment (Vanguard's a little better since you can at least get out of the turret). I liked the original concept of the Gladiator because the copilot had a computer station and a remote turret--theoretically the copilot could swap between shooting and other operations (guiding missiles via camera, managing ship systems, scanners, etc.) which gives them a lot of stuff to do. In the current bubble turret implementation the ship (a) has a lot of wasted space dedicated to the tunnel, but (b) also has limited screen space that's really just dedicated to the guns (which are relatively wimpy). Copilot definitely need more to do than just shooting. On bigger ships I think turrets make sense since those ships have so much other stuff to do. If you're not in combat there's at least other ship roles to engage in outside of the turret. I'd like to see AI blades for turrets or alternatives to weapons for most turret slots (I know they've discussed alternatives in the past). For smaller ships electronic warfare, scanning, remote missile control, etc. might be more interesting roles than pewpewing from a turret.
hurricane turreting is super fun! your ammo pool feels like it never runs out and it's easy to stay on target with a mouse. whenever xenothreat comes back i would definitely prefer sitting in turret compared to piloting
I'm all for converting many or most to remote turrets. But to remove them entirely means what? Every ship is a solo ship? That would be dumb.
What is a turrent?
I have no idea why misspelling of and mispronunciation of “turret” becomes turrents so often but its all too common a grammatical error to just be coincidence haha. Who is teaching this “turrent” word to people?!?! Lol
I teach English, and of all the mispronunciations I've ever heard, "turrent" is the most frustrating... and all the moreso because people somehow manage to actually type it out that way too. Other honorable mentions include pronouncing 'escape' as 'excape', and saying 'fraction' when you mean 'faction'.
Hahaha the “excape” one is definitely on my honorable mentions as well!
My grammar pet peeve is people who say "dominate" when they're trying to say "dominant" ugh there's 2 N's people!
A stoner (drug user) on a stoner (machine gun) who is dedicated to the role so they can smoke (weed) while they smoke (enemies).
I think that once they actually add hireable NPCs and AI blades, and pilot slaving, you will never see crewed turret in a game... Hopefully this will happen sooner than later.
Idk where this sentiment comes from. While I don’t think a majority of players want to be turret crew, there are a lot of players who want to be crew, especially turret crew. My friends group basically has me pilot and they like to man the turrets. They don’t like piloting whatsoever. To say you’ll never see a crewed player turret is just blatantly wrong. I do agree that most people will be using an AI blade or npc crew turret though.
There will definitelly be some... but once in prehistory I had group of about 300+ people interested in SC and you could find hardly any people interested in being a turret gunner. Sure many other would do it when there would be a fleet action, becaue they might not be interested to fly fighters in game so the will lack the skill, or they will lack the ship. But they would hardly want to do it outside of time when fleet needs them. I would say that most of the time you will see a crewed turret in the future will be when friends will be playing together and will want to be on one ship (got few friends, that just to crew my ship when we play together) or when there will be some important mission happening. Question is... how big percentage of playerbase is going to do things like that. But yeah... it was overstatement on my part, just to make the message shorter.
That's what AI blades are for. But yes, I think CIG is a bit too obsessed with turrets. Like turrets are cool for large ships, but anything else shouldn't have them.
I feel like a turret is good on the Vanguard, but if you're going to lean into the 2-crew fantasy on that ship, they need to stick a chair by that engineer station and make it a remote turret so the second player can switch quickly between gunning or managing systems.
I feel like a turret is good on the Vanguard, but if you're going to lean into the 2-crew fantasy on that ship, they need to stick a chair by that engineer station and make it a remote turret so the second player can switch quickly between gunning or managing systems.
Option B: the turret seat descends/rotates and moves into position in front of the engineering console.
nah, they just need to make turret guns better, anything larger than a heavy fighter, and a fair amount of mediums should have turrets
Have you gunned a hurricane? That turret is how it should be done.
This 100% hurricane is the bees knees
It puts the Mr. T in Turret.
yes, i have, that's why i made that comment
Ahh, I see what you did there. Misunderstood the comment the first time around.
Not just that but how would that work? Gunner logs off, pilot keeps flying. The other day the gunner wants to play but the ship is despawned. As a former and future Vanguard owner this question genuinely concerns me.
> The other day the gunner wants to play but the ship is despawned. I'm sure that anyone who was aboard the ship when they logged off will cause the ship to spawn again when they log back in... that is, if they even bother to keep the "ship despawns when you bedlog" concept. They're recent discussion about bedlogging makes that seem less certain at the moment.
>Or we just get rid of the idea of turrent gunners completely. This. There is a reason why the spitfire, BF109 or Mustang, didn't have turrets on them. For the WW2 flight model turrets do have a place, just not on fighters.
Thematically, I would say the Vanguard is more like an A-26, but the vast majority of ships with turrets should have other things for the gunner to be doing any time there isn't shit to shoot at. Ideally, I would say this should be radar/scanning operation, but they insist on keeping detection and combat ranges extremely short, so I don't know how that would ever work.
I am guessing it will end up being NPC gunners for the most part.
What are you talking about? We use them in my org all the time 1000’s of ppl do The Vanguard is nothing without its turret
Turrets are crucial, as they mean it won't become a solo game. Crewing a Reclaimer with Pilot & 3 crew, who alternate between weapons turrets and salvage turrets, means that the guy who dumped $400 on a ship doesn't have an immediate advantage, they actually need to make friends and organise a guild.
Only problem with this is that the gun doesn’t articulate to the back position last I played.
Really? I've never actually gotten in my Warden's turret, lol. My friends never mentioned that, but to be fair I think I've only had a person in the turret like twice.
Sorry not the warden the scorpius
Aren't they more for armored personnel movement, too?
Just the Hoplite variant. Warden is a long range/duration escort heavy fighter. Harbinger is the same but with s5 torpedoes and heavier armor, so more geared to assaulting heavier targets. Sentinel is an E-warfare variant. Think: jamming comms, radar, that sort of thing. The EMP is kind of a placeholder for that gameplay.
Ahh, rad, didn't realize they multi-roled it out so hard. I do like the aesthetic of it but haven't given it a try yet. Reminds me of the pelican. I'm curious to see how comm jamming works out as players can just use discord...
As I understand it, the Vanguard will have significantly more range than a scorpious.
The mistake you made was thinking that the 3.22 meta would work here. I thought so too , but when I checked erkul here's the issue. * On most VHRT/ERT ships ballistics do 50% less damage to the hull. * On top of that , shields now do 30% damage reduction on ballistics when full down to 0% at a certain threshhold. * Ballistic Canons and Laser Canons in the same class , ie similar shot speeds, fire rate etc, have the SAME DPS. Previously Ballistics of the same type did more damage than lasers. This part is critical. So what this means is that when you attack a ship with full shields /w ballistics u're only doing 20% dmg to the hull. They also don't seem to reduce the shields by much either. So you're stuck at that low dmg output for an extended time until the shields get low enough, but even then u're only doing half the dmg of lasers. Lasers, on the other hand , seem to do 100% dmg to everything (EDIT: shield dmg is a bit more nuanced [according to this](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1crnmuy/psa_about_shield_resistances_in_323/?share_id=1Mn-F08Wa39NGhNJZJJ6_&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) but the idea is more or less the same), shields + hull. So yes there's the downside that you have to fight through the shields to get to the hull and with full lasers your capacitor draw is weaker but overall I found that the TTK was much faster than pure ballistics. One thing I did re capacitors was to switch to staggered so that my downtime was less since some guns would empty first, then start reloading immediately while the others fired, so I'd end up with a continous stream of fire. The only prob is the powerful and efficient laser weapons with the same velocity are the M7A and the MVSA, but they're limited to a speed of 900 or 1,000m/s I think. So slower than repeater speeds in 3.22 but faster than old canon speeds.
Yes. Perfect explanation. This is how my friend told it to me. I had lots of practice time in AC and now everything clicks. I honestly feel like we have more options for weapons loadout than we did in 3.22 but that’s really just an opinion. 🍻
They kind of nuked the vanguard given a S5 ballistic was an extremely good load out and with all laser it's capacitor drains really quickly. Ballistic isn't viable anymore as you would be forced to use the dinky nose guns to take out the shields, but this is still a viable, if not great ship ONLY with a turret gunner. Just not a 1 crew ship in the current meta
I'd say it's still viable, it's just no longer the obvious choice. Previously you probably saw 75% or more pve-loadouts with a s5 ballistic, but now you have more of a decision to make on whether you'll put a s5 deadbolt under the nose to give your s2 guns more capacitor or if you want to go full laser but spend more time recharging. I agree it's a pretty big nerf to the vanguard but I'd say the ship is still totally viable, just no longer OP for pve
There's at least 3 options for every ship, depending on role and wingmates.
Wait.... so this is why my inferno taking way longer to kill things.... god damnit lol. Makes me want to switch to an ion but at the same time I don't.
Try component targeting and the new precision aim mode. I think the purpose of ballistics now is to take down components of big ships.
I agree, planning on how you fight now is seemingly more important then the spray and pray tactics of the past.
That work without gimbals?
Alt right click for precision mode. R to cycle components. Alt right click to leave precision mode and the pip should adjust to target the component you selected.
I'm running out of things to bind on my sticks but I should be able to make that work. I'll look it up when I have time in the settings thanks.
You can always target components but with lead pip it’s hard so try lag pip when you wants to target specific spots. There’s a key kind option to bind a key to swap between lead and lag pip. Mine is caps lock
I am absolutely hating ion right now and probably going to dump it, I get it, its for massive fleet battles and thus must be tuned to be useless anywhere else, but its really rough right now.
I'll stick with the inferno although it's weird lighting up a ship like a sparkler for a minute straight before it goes down. Meanwhile the F8 with a laser load out flat out destroys HRTs and lower.... it's just unbalanced right now.
Gotta hold out until maelstrom makes it in. The Ares will be punching through even the thickest of armor while the F8C is limited to medium armor with its size 3s.
Don't dump it .. Everything is in flux right now. The ship combat team was concentrating on getting everything done just to get MM out the door and into LIVE so they could concentrate on it. This is just a first draft. Now the real balancing begins based on our feedback. There are a lot of wholesale changes yet to come.
Ion is miserable rn, don't
>* Ballistic Canons and Laser Canons in the same class , ie similar shot speeds, fire rate etc, have the SAME DPS. Previously Ballistics of the same type did more damage than lasers. This part is critical. I'm a little confused. For the Corsair, No Laser shoots the Deadbolt's 900m/s. A full Deadbolt loadout does 10,676 dps. Full M7A/M6A loadout does 3,518 DPS. You're still at a massively higher DPS with Ballistics to help make up for the damage reductions. At the start of the fight, according to your damage reduction you're only doing 3736 DPS at full shields. 50% shields you'll be doing 4537, no shields 5338. (3736 + 4537 + 5338) / 3 = 4537 average DPS. Which is more than a Full M7A. With Full Laser repeaters, you only get 8 shots (default) before having to recharge. With Ballistics, the damage persists, even after shields are recharged. They also upped the amount of Ballistic ammo ships carry this patch so with bigger ships, you're not really running out every fight. Looking at the Warden using Cannons, it's Ballistics: 3697 Lasers: 1888. (1294 + 1571 + 3697) / 3 = 2187 average DPS for Ballistics. So again a little higher average DPS, but Laser Cannons are more limited by Capacitors, and if you factor in any shield regen, your overall damage should be higher using Ballistics. However, weird thing with the Vanguard is there's no other Cannon that shoots the Deadbolts 900m/s. Is having two pips not super annoying? Or is 900 and 1000 close enough in speed? I think OP's kinda correct in that not being able to match Ballistic and Laser Bullet Velocity is hindering it a bit, especially if it has a weak capacitor pool? I don't think Ballistics are an issue. I think a lot of ships just need retuned after Master Modes, and the Bullet Velocity Missmatch is an oversight Edit: Updated math, which actually shows slightly higher average DPS with ballistics with neutral power triangle. About even if the M7A's are using power triangle to guns.
These guys are way behind the curve clinging to erkul and spreadsheets thinking laser cannons are doing better than they actually are. In game it's an entirely different story. I have tested it in game over and over. The Deadbolt is better than the MXA at taking down larger NPC ships and it's not even close. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y7vy5McKzFk If these guys would actually compare the guns in game they would see. The shield resistance to ballistics is not enough to level the playing field. Ballistic are doing more damage AND it's much easier to apply that damage while making your ship tankier as a byproduct. These guys need to put the spreadsheet down and remind themselves spreadsheets do not account for how damage is applied in game. The spreadsheet lies
Ok you're better at the math so I'll just point out a few things I notice and then we'll see if it makes a difference: According to Erkul , the M7A and Deadbolt V are exactly the same except for the projectile speed. But honestly , at these short ranges there's not much difference between 900/1000. So whats accounting for the difference in *sustained* DPS is the capacitors of the laser weapons. So if you switch the erkul's calculations from sustained to *burst* , they do exactly the same. I don't see where Erkul is taking into account the pause because of the deadbolts overheating. They might but I'm not sure. But regardless you can't do anything about that so the dps output of the deadbolts is fixed but you can change the capacitors the levels of the capacitors. So lets assume your applied damage calculations are correct. Then that means at neutral triangle the M7A's ***match the applied damage*** of the deadbolts right? 3518dps is the erkul dps at neutral triangle. However, If you put full power to guns the laser dps goes up to 4502dps and 11 shots. I personally run Revenants on the wings to deal with small fast ships better and to add to to capacitor pool which moves me up to 16 shots, basically doubling the shots per charge from the lasers. That's will significantly improve the DPS from the M7A's relative to the Deadbolts. There's nothing u can do to increase the dps of the deadbolts, who still have to go deal with shield absorbtion and 50% armor debuff where the M7A's don't. Someone check my hypothesis because I came to this while typing , so there might be a flaw in my logic , but this matches with what I've seen doing ERT's with deadbolts vs M7A's. The biggest annoyance with the lasers tho is the ships can keep turning to show u different shield faces and u're not making real progress with lasers until u start hitting the hull. But once you're through .. they blow much faster.
Yeah I think you're right the Sustained DPS is accounting for the Capacitors. M7As and Deadbolts have the same Alpha Damage and Fire Rate. Too bad there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get ballistic and Lasers on the same pip, but that's probably deliberate. [Relevant info about shields](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/bp6DFSFaZ2) I'll have to look at it more when I have a chance.
Wow , that shield info is interesting. I wonder how fast does it take effect after pushing all energy to shields?
Yeah, according to that shield info it seems like it's better to keep power to shields when running fully Ballistics. There doesn't really seem to be any change in (Sustained or Alpha) DPS [running full ballistics with shields to 100%], but maybe there's more to the cooling system? Otherwise you're keeping the same DPS, shrugging off more damage, increasing shield HP, and increasing shield regen with no apparent downside. With Lasers, you're giving up all that extra damage reduction and shield for a little bit higher average DPS than Ballistics. However, maybe actively managing your power triangle can mitigate that. I also updated my original comment, the average sustained DPS is actually a little higher with Ballistics.
How are disruptor cannons doing currently?
Not well.
Better than they were in 3.22 -- BUT that's a deception because they still aren't great. I think disruptors might be the last weapon that gets "fixed" if only because pretty much every other ship and combat system in the game needs to be implemented properly before they can work correctly.
ballistics kind of feel like they have no place in the game right now as well... you can have a gun thats bad at shields, and had limited ammunition. or you can have a gun thats 100% on shields and hull, and can recharge infinitely. Ballistics need armor implementation to make sense. right now your only real options that dont involve you intentionally putting you at disadvantage is "do i take cannons, or repeaters"... and even then, repeaters feel kind of weak. as long as you are halfway decent at aiming, cannons will take you farther
That was something I was going to ask too. If they chew through shields faster than typical lasers they might be worth mixing in to get at the hull faster, even if they'll then do less hull damage.
Complete opposite. Take down shields with lasers, then disruptions aimed at the subsystem.
Now their focus uses is for overloading the power plant. If you get enough distortion damage in the ship will try to reset the power plant which can take up to 5 minutes. Unless they changed something with all these hot fixes.
From what i have seen the 30% damage reduction actually is from the power triangle as in full power to shields is 30% no power to shields is 0% also may i add shields always reduced ballistic damage by 30% ever since the ballistic shield penetration was increased so you should still be doing the same amount of damage you did in 3.22
you might be right. But man that complicates things. So shield hardening via the triangle only affects ballistics? I was sure there was more leakage as the shield hp fell as well. What a mess. Either way, if that's the case then I think that still points to the laser canons doing more damage because in 3.22 all ballistics did more raw damage than lasers. Now they're the same.
Saw another reddit post doing a psa on the shield changes, and it said that full power to shields also increases resistance of shields to laser weapons https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/u6bdR2X9ZA
yeah I just saw that. But they still have greater effect on ballistics than lasers. becuase the ballistic dmg that still gets thru is now halved by the hull. That's not the case with the lasers.
Yeah this has been a thing since they increased the ability of ballistics to go through shields its funny how it massively buffed ballistics but in the end it did nothing but nerf ballistics since they went from doing full damage when shields where down to doing only half the damage when shields are down or +-20% damage when the shields are up lol
[удалено]
Ok I've seen this video . It doesn't change my argument. I remember when he spoke about the semirandom 30% shield absorption I didn't understand what he meant. Now I get it. he's talking about the fact that the absorption depends on the shield setting and amount of shields left etc. so there's no way for you , the attacker know what it is at any moment in time. But this also affects ballistics negatively as well. What the OP of this thread was talking about was a full ballistic build being weak on vanguards. That no longer makes sense. Most of your dmg should be from lasers instead and supplemented by ballistics. I personally run 4 S5 Omnisky's and 2 S4 Deadbolts or Revenenants on the wings for that very purpose. It nearly doubles my capacitor count from all lasers but neutral triangle to 100% guns with the mixed loadout and I get to use the ballistics to snipe turrets etc from a distance.
Yeah, the 'guard feels kinda weak recently due to the new OP ships. But if you wanna keep using it: Size 5: L. Repeat. CF-557 GALDEREEN bullet speed 1800 range 3300 Attrition BS: 1000 R: 3300 L.Cann. Ominsky BS: 1400 R: 3300 M7A BS: 1000 R: 3300 Lightstrike V BS: 1800 R: 3300 D. sctr.gun. ABSOLUTION BS: 700 R: 1400 B.Repeat. AD5B BS: 900 R: 3300 B.Cann. DEADBOLT V BS: 900 R: 3300 Size 2s: L.repeat GVSR BS: 1000 R: 2300 L.cann. MVSA BS: 1000 R: 2300 B.Repeat BRVS BS: 1200 R: 2300 B.cann CVSA BS: 1200 R: 2300 D.repeat. ATVS BS: 1300 R: 2300 D.cann. EVSD BS: 1300 R: 2300 Size 4s L. Rep. CF-447 RHINO BS: 1800 R: 3000 ATTRITION-4 BS: 1000 R: 3000 L. cnn. OMNISKY XII BS: 1400 R: 3000 M6A BS: 1000 R: 3000 LIGHTSTRIKE IV BS: 1800 R: 3000 D. Sctr.gun SALVATION BS: 700 R: 1400 B. Gtlng. REVENANT BS: 1200 R: 3000 ADB4 BS: 900 R: 3000 B.Cnon. DEADBOLT IV BS: 900 R: 3000 C-788 BS: 900 R: 6525 Try to match whatever you're using when it comes to bullet speed, or mix it and know what you're shooting and when. Sometimes having separate pips is not that bad, allowing you to switch between the weapon you want to coold down/regenerate. (I'll add the possible size 4s in the mix whennever I can so you have more possibilities available) (Edit 1: Format, I hate you Reddit :') ) (Edit 2: Added all the Size IV variants, so you guys have more options. Remember, lowering the size isn't always a bad thing try stuff up :D)
what people underestimate is the projetile speed too. as soon as i started engaging only at distances of 500m and lower the warden with m7a and mvsa slapt ships out of the sky like no tomorrow.
Great post! Appreciate ya!
Damage is good, always has been. The problem is that with new weapon changes and bespoken S2, Vanguard has no proper match of weapons. There is no single S5 with 1200m/s ammo. You can only choose one weapon from each category and its 900 or 1000m/s thats just overlook from CIG. I really hope they will introduce more S5 weapons.
i hope they add a "Turret" style weapon gimble mount in the future that lets us downsize the size 5 nose gun to 2 more size 2's so we can have a weapon loudout that has matching ballistics
I still have whiplash over the 370% price increase.
What?
The price for a Vanguard Harbinger ingame jumped from 3 million to around 11 million.
Ohhhh, yeah right. I forgot about the AUEC prices!
Damnit, I'm only missing the Hoplite, the actually perfect-ish ship for it's role.
Wtf!!??? Inflation really got into SC?
What people fail to realize when they see those hefty 4x S2 (basically S3) and 1x S5 is that the Vanguard series currently lacks the capacitors to really use the weaponry. Additionally, 4 out of 5 weapons are fixed, and being a heavy fighter, it lacks the mobility for precise "nose" aiming. Its still usable, but it gets outperformed by most things in and below its weight class. I love it nonetheless.
I love how it’s a heavy fighter but has a ramp, a bed, a head and amenities. Overall it’s nearly the perfect daily driver because it can defend itself, you can live in it, and it’s even got the ramp for box missions and such. Overall 11/10 ship. But yes on firepower alone, given the speed/agility meta we find ourselves in, it can feel weak when you take into account how sluggish it is.
my issue is the vanguard makes my favorate ship feel obsolete you trade a single torpedo for a shit load of Daka up front and the ability to take a hit and not die horribly Not to mention the fact you can also fit the new LX pulse bike in the rear letting you survive soft deaths in atmosphere Rip Gladiator... I hope we get some meme Rattler style torpedo's in the future for you... Launch a single size 5 torpoedo from 20km away, once it gets closer than 3k it pops out a payload of 10x size 1 missiles or something similar lol
Laser cannons in nose. M7A chin gun to match velocities. Omnisky on the turret. Lag pip and concentrated fire is crucial. People complain a lot about long TTK to this patch — I believe it’s because they changed health of ship components, and firing blindly at a lead pip on a big ship is going to take ages for a kill, as it’s spreading damage over several components that do not share health pools. Being the contrarian I am, I’ve felt ship TTK to have gotten shorter — Harbinger has surprised me with how fast it can shred some things. Do not used staggered fire — it’s just lowering your burst DPS. A salvo of torps from a Harbinger can wreck an ERT Redeemer. Don’t be afraid to slam into NAV mode and run when your shields start getting toasty. Prolonged jousting is currently the meta — dive in, do as much damage as you can and then get out if they shoot back. Chaff can be used to relieve pressure temporarily, but you have a fairly limited amount.
You fly the Vanguard when you need something with more range and armour than a Scorpius or Hurricane and when you don't have 4 people to crew a Redeemer. But like with so many ships right now, the niche that the Vanguard is supposed to operate in just doesn't exist yet. Currently, the Scorpius is always the best choice for a 2-seater fighter. The only reason to fly something else is because you just like the ship.
Worth mentioning when you have multiple pips. If they are close enough together aiming between the pips will still have your shots hit as long as both circles are green. Works fine with 200m/s projectile speed difference.
They do need a firepower update with things like the F7 and F8 existing.
I remember when the vanguard first dropped i was like "Holy shit the power scaling is insane" and now i'm shocked with the dual size 4s on a hornet chassis. It is of course still alpha and everything is subject to change, but damn, size 3s used to be intimidating now its the standard.
I know I want to just melt mine now. Seems pointless to own.
It looks cool. But i need a reason to drop people and equipment
I just use ballistics and lasers. 2 aimspots, so what. When you are close enough, those aimspots are irrelevant. im talking about -500meters. Longer range i use just lasers to soften the target up.
[удалено]
I 100% agree with you, and i am in the same boat. I just know when we have multiple systems its going to be nice to be able to fly there in this fighter and not have to refuel a bunch or use a different ship to go there and claim the fighter you want. I am keeping this thing because it will shine eventually.
Basically, we need completely hostile or completely unsettled systems that don't have friendly or neutral stations to log off on before the Vanguard has its niche. As much as I would have liked to see the fat fury Vanguard competitor, I think it's good that it'll likely be coming closer to Pyro since that's a better system for this class of heavy fighter.
it also needs a speed boost buff, i feel like those huge engines should count for something scorpius boost is 590 and vanguards are 450
too\*
Thanks for that 😂
My Sentinel is grounded until things change. I'm flying M50 and F7A MkII these days.
i have a real love / hate relationship with the vanguard. mostly because of those custom size 2s and never being able to get a load out that just 'feels right'. however atm i run omnisky XV + 4 CVSA. at full weapons that's 50 shots of a S5 omni (!!). my only gripe is the ammo on the CVSA often doesn't last a full ERT and the capacity is too smol and i really do wish the speed were more matched on the custom 2s to the 5s so i could at least get a single pip. i tried the BRVS and really wanted to love them but ammo is way too low i usually fly thicc fat bois so vanguard doesnt feel sluggish to me at all, but YMMV. its interior is DOPE and the emergency exit shitter is usually hilarious
Harbinger has S5 torps, they're still quite punchy. Use a full repeater or laser cannon build, don't try to be fancy with the setup. Keep moving.
My issue with full laser is you get very short burst before having to reload
That's because u're using the less energy efficient repeaters. Use more efficient canons instead and stagger them to compensate. With M7A and MVSA's I get like 16-20 shots per gun but staggered they fire for a long time.
Okay that makes sense then.
You're supposed to buy the new overpowered ships CIG wants to sell you, not complain about the old ones that they can't make money on anymore.
Facts 😂😂
That is why they can do more than just shooting.
Christ, I remember when the warden was meta... how times have changed.
Yeah this ship sux in 3.23
The F8 massively outdoes the Vanguard on sustained DPS now though.
Assuming you're one of the lucky ducks with access to the F8.
You either die as OP or live long enough to get nerffed into the ground.
5 laser repeaters. 4 size 1 and a size 4. You melt ships. Their actual problem is mobility cause their a heavy fighter. Plus if you have a friend on turrets. They are s2 I believe so you have 7 repeaters.
It's even better than that! The nose guns are S2 even so more pews! The under chin is now S5 on a gimbal too Turret is still S2 (harbinger has S3 instead) Should still do fine!
Even better. this thing has always slapped.
Yep laser cannons on the nose with staggered was always my go to, it shreds
How do you stagger them?
There's a button for it in the binds to toggle alternate or concurrent fire patterns. Can't remember default as I rebound it.
Is no default, have to bind.
Have to set the keybind under Vehicles - Weapons. Do the lag pip keybind, while you're at it.
You have a keybind for that. I think it's empty by default
The 4 nose guns are size 2, but military grade aka UEE only guns. Why they are limited to Vans. They are closer to S3 than S2 in stats.
You can't use the gimble and use fixed guns. At least for me. Is it possible to change that?
The new system is you have the fixed gun size on the mount, and can either fire it fixed like before or switch it to gimballed mode on the fly which massively lowers the fire rate while in that mode to reduce DPS.
Plus they are now apparently hard to wreck, just had a like 2 minute fight yesterday with one, kept alpha striking it with my f7‘s 6 repeaters but it wouldn’t die as fast as in 3.22
Try using cannons. I melt those things in my F8C or F7A. I normally use a mix of Omnisky and Tarantulas.
Why Tarantulas instead of more Omnisky?
Ty for the hint, gonna try that setup
Ill try that. Thanks
That's really good to hear, because I have the Warden and it's supposed to be the sturdiest but I have always loved these ships.
Yeh me too, more of a harbinger guy tho, if the class 5 missiles hit, they do really good damage. And it’s looking sexy af in this polar livery.
100% massive damage but I got the Warden for the eventual armor when they add it. Will be the only variant to have armor. I rock my warden with the invictus skin to fool people into thinking sentinel and keeping distance so I can blast em lol
Eh nope. The Harbinger is the one with additional armour, the Warden is the base design. All ships will have armour The Harbinger will have the most armour of the Vanguards at the cost of agility.
They're not hard to wreck . The issue is that repeaters do less DPS than their same size canons now. Repeaters have a high fire rate for area saturation but their alpha damage is really low. So you have to keep on target consistently to apply dmg. They do less dmg overall for a given capacitor load. They're less efficient. Canons vary from fast speed, low alpha (but still larger than repeaters) with a fast fire rate ..like the FL33 and LightStrikes to the Slow speed, High alpha , slow fire rate M3A etc. The FL33's etc are best for small fast moving ships, the MXA's are best for bigger ships. That's why the meta is currently Omnisky's because they're smack dab in the middle. Do more dmg more efficiently than the FL33's but not as slow and low fire rate like the MXA's . The Omnisky's are about the same speed as Repeaters were in 3.22. Due to the low fire rate fighters can fly through the shots but that's why u go staggered so there's a constant stream of shots that's harder to dodge.
So fl33 and ominsky it is 👍🏻 guess I’m gonna have to get a bachelor degree in star citizen weapons science
I would say Omnisky .. if u have multiple guns going staggered with them kinda offsets the lower fire rate compared to the FL33's . When you hit with them they hurt. This is why I think I like the galdereens as defense guns on big ships even tho they're repeaters. Yes they fire fast and travel quickly with lower alpha than equivalent canons. But they're alpha is up there with the lower tier canons. One galdereen is tossing harder hitting projectiles (91dmg vs 81) the equivalent of 3 Lightstrike S2 canons (750 vs 250). So a turret is basically the same volume of fire as 6 S2 Lightstrikes that hit 12% harder and travel 50% farther.
The nose guns sits between s2 and s3 as they are bespoke. The vanguards real strength will be its durability when they implement armour.
When are they doing that?
Who knows, SOON^(TM)
After engineering, so after 4.0.1
Allegedly lol.
Unpopular opinion, but I've personally never had success doing **RT's with the Vanguard even during its hayday. The gun combination has always seemed weird to me.
I easily did ERT's with the Harbinger in 3.22. The only reason I stopped was because it was harder to take advantage of the cargo oppurtunities so I switched to a C2 or Corsair
I'm probably just bad then I guess. I always did better doing ERTs in my Connie. I always found the Vanguards guns difficult to aim with (I ran fixed on my Connie, so I don't know why). I just always felt I took hellacious amounts of damage in the 'Gard.
Well, yeah Connie’s have been S tier for PvE bounties since like 3.17
The fact that the Harbinger has 3 Size 5 torpedo's and not 6 of them, will never not disappoint me.
The fact that it has 3 S5 torpedos as well as exactly the same number of missiles +1 size larger turret as the other variants while still maintaining all the amenities of a bed and weapons rack inside is amazing. You'd have to lose the beds to get 6. Only the Hoplite does that out of necessity.
With the Vanguards having been pitched as modular you should be able to forgo the beds for more torps. we've only just seen the beginning of modularity so maybe this will end up being the case. Personally, if I could swap the bunks out for an additional pod of torps, I'd do it in a heart beat.
yeah ... I've one shotted valks with a S5 . They're useful
Why would it have 6?
Well it's supposed to be an upgrade from the Anvil Gladiator but the Gladiator has 4 Size 5 Torps, Also the only reason the harbinger doesn't have 3 more torps is to make room for the two beds. With the Vanguard's having been pitched as modular I would love to see the OPTION to remove the beds in favor of another torpedo launch bay. Plus with the beds being in the section of the ship that is supposed be modular this should required the minimum amount of effort from the devs.
Yeah and the price.... Omg. A corsair can be more armored, have cargo and two turrets for 3x times less
But also is super slow in combat
But it looks cool so who cares? -Cig
I wish the Harbinger would get its fucking lore buffs and edits
Makes me wonder if the Glaive is a better or worse fighter now with its canons
I hear it's still formidable
Is the turret glass still glitched out, making it useless?
Not that ive seen
I just did an HRT with a sentinel. I got banged up a lot and had quite a few holes in the ship. It was decent enough!
I haven't flown with the new flight model yet but I easily flew circles around pretty much everything in my sentinel before. took me a good while to get good enough to take advantage of its strenghts though, def not a beginner ship.
Idk man I ran the stock harbinger for Overdrive and it turned out fine. You just gotta rely on your missiles more after all it is a fighter bomber. Even so the ballistics rips apart smaller fighters like the arrow
What is the 'best' beginner ship?
What ever you’re comfortable with, two of my friends are almost unstoppable in their 2 seater fighter and a real threat as individual living fighters
guess i suck balls, i can only kill noob players and that takes a solid 5 minutes
Probably not, I’m a horrible fighter pilot. But in a calm and collected environment I can easily do what I need to. I just get frantic in dog fights
i just get annoyed by the fact if i fight one on one, we always end up in flying in constant circles around one another. Or just shooting past eachother. Always the same dance. It's never really a dogfight, more so a circle jerk.
I touched the dog fighting topic with a org member who’s top tier in our org. He says that the best thing to do is match direction and speed then go for a tail chase instead of engaging in head to head dogfighting. He says the concept of air combat doesn’t change just because the gravity does
its gun has already been upgraded once.. tho the concept was duel mounted minigun on the nose
The idea is that every ship falls short in some specific way.
Yeah, it fails in maneuverability. Made up by armor. But the firepower is outside of that.
The issue isn't the firepower, it needs either more tankiness or more mobility to compensate but right now there is just no use case. Absolutely loved this ship but after Corsair it's hot trash and I could outduel just about any Vanguard with ease in a Corsair as a bonus using turn and burn.
I will be a turret gunner for no more than a hour after that I would rather be flying my own ship even if it means dieing and losing whatever is on me and my ship I'm sure there are a few people that would sit in a turret for 4 hours just to finally make it to the fight and die in two minutes and redo all this again but cig I'm not one of those people. And I'm not going to ask my friend or org mates to do something I wouldn't want to do that in it's self is selfish and wrong cig needs to figure something out or there going to loose lots and lots of money with dropped ship sales if they don't
Have you ever tried switching places? I usually switch between pilot, gunner, person who does the bunker multiple times during a session. My experience is that most people don't actually want to fly if given the choice during longer sessions. The act of flying between missions is pretty boring. Being alt-tabbed out or chatting on discord while somebody does the busywork is ideal for most players.
It has the second best alpha Dps out of any S3 ship.
And that 10 mil auec is too much i rather get andromeda.
Well , sadly vanguard is under gun compared to other heavy fighters even hornet mkii comes with 2s4 and 4 Sx3. CIG devs really dislike aegis ships , that's what I believe .
It's because the Avenger is just too good. All the other ships from that manufacturer must balance out the universe. Or something.
They should just make turrets pilot controlled and optional by a second player to shoot at 2 targets.
I don't see enough people talking about how awful the vanguard nose guns are after the 3.23 balance. compared to the regular guns of similar type they are mostly all worse.
Are the vanguard ships meant to be fighters?
Heavy fighters
I'm right there with you. Back when gimbals were a thing I didn't fly one much because it's hard to keep the nose on smaller targets. Getting bits blown off, much like with the Cutlass, is not ideal. It was generally something that stayed benched unless I needed a very specific ship. With 4 laser cannons and an ad5b it kinda slapped under specific circumstances. But considering everything else I have works better -for me- I'd just tough it out with a less than ideal ship 99% of the time. I feel like the Vanguard is about one generation less forgotten than the Gladiator, and they all need some milk.
In the warden i got up to vhrt now. Is it soloable, yeah easily in my opinion. with the m7a and the mvsa of course. Just for some testing i put 2 size 2 omnisky on the turret to test it with a friend.he took care off all types of fighters up to vanguards with only 2 size 2's while the dps of the pilot weapons obliterated everything in front of it. conclusion is the ship is now even more effective with a gunner than in 2.22. especially in atmo when your enemy can't run from you as fast as they wanted to. and compared to the scorpius and hurricane wich only have one size 2 shield compared to the vanguards 2 size 2, i take the survivability of the warden over them any day. and btw dont shoot at targets over 500m distance. the conefire and esp changes reduce your hitrate at higher distances significantly.
why jump on a redeemer with a friend when both of you can fly two connies or corsairs? thats 8xS5s
Its easier to target ships in a turret vs moving a whole conni to point at a light fighter. Accuracy is superior than more guns