[Vehicle] Rebalancing the Galaxy...

Assuming standard HA saturation in squads.. that's about 3 lockon launchers they probably have. A pair of MBTs, and Skyguard, and those HA's are going to melt that Galaxy in short order. This is without adding bursters to the mix.

I know because I've done it, its a juicy kill when you knock down 12 people at once. And I've done that with 3 people on the ground.


If those people on the ground are as coordinated as you suggest, then they have no issue dropping what they are doing to engage a Galaxy about to precision drop a squad on their base. They will know that is far more important to deal with at that current moment than whatever it is they are doing.

But like I said.. it doesn't take 12. It literally takes three. If they are willing to cooperate. If they aren't, its not a design problem, its a leadership one.

If you haven't got anything constructive to say, then don't say it.

People have been agreeing, as well as some disagreeing, over the health nerfs. I will note that this is fundamentally the only real nerf I have called for on the Galaxy, aside from making it less capable to defend itself, and the main purpose of this thread was to put forward some ideas of extra functionality for the Galaxy. Did you even bother to read the OP? Did you see that the Galaxy has 75% more health than a Main Battle Tank? Have you not read the replies afterwards - some people agreeing that the issue is that the Galaxy can soak up so much damage, and some disagreeing?

I respect that you do not feel that the Galaxy needs a health nerf, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, I feel that it does, because it allows the Galaxy to single-handedly spearhead pushes, (rendering the ESF and to some extent the Valkyrie useless in this respect), can actively hunt down ESFs due to all its fire-power and how there are guns dotted around the entire fuselage, (while a crew of at least 5 is an optimum, a Galaxy can defend itself with just one gunner changing seats rapidly), and can ultimately do everything that other aircraft can do. People have suggested with constructive criticism that the health nerf might not be necessary, though to compensate, extra areas of vulnerability or a weakness against certain weapons could work.

I have fundamentally said "Hey guys, I think that the Galaxy is too strong, and can fill too many roles. Let's weaken it, then give it a bunch of extra abilities to add to those it can already do to add to the role of a support aircraft". The only real nerf I proposed was its weakening and lessening the Galaxy's ability to defend itself. I then included a bunch of ideas made by myself and other forumites on how to add to the Galaxy's supposed role of support aircraft. If you want to check them out, please read the OP.

The ideas I've proposed is to really give that troop transport role a kick up the rear, and adding some extras that expands its support role to not just aircraft, though ground vehicles as well, (ammunition box drops, for example), giving the Galaxy even more of a niche when it comes to teamwork. Though I feel that the Galaxy can soak up way too much damage for what it is; some people have agreed with me, and likewise, some people have disagreed with me, as is to be expected that everyone will have a different viewpoint having come from different aspects of play - Galaxy pilots will have different views to AA gunners and ESF pilots, for example.

I have not said "OMG Galaxy1 OP11 plzz nefr11111". I have expressed that I feel it can soak up more damage than I feel it should, and is hence too able to defend itself, and so have proposed a nerf in this aspect. I then put forward a group of ideas to add to the Galaxy's current role and expand its niche, in the hope that it will make the Galaxy even more of a support aircraft in terms of mass troop transport, proximity repair for other aircraft, dropping ammunition boxes for infantry and ground vehicles, (heck, dropping actual ground vehicles for that matter), and dropping terminals. There have also been mixed responses on these.

This is not a Galaxy whine thread. This is a thread that suggests stuff - let's worsen it in this aspect and improve it in this one. If you want to reply, and express how you feel that my ideas are "stupid", then at least have the courtesy to give some constructive criticism, or maybe even your own ideas on the topic. Please don't go throwing your weight around in threads, belittling them, because all that does is sour relationships.

Well I will point out that the Transport ability for the galaxy was something the devs wanted to add back in but nothing has been brought up about it in months. Likely back burnered due to the move, and reorganization into DBG. However, there is still stuff that needs to be done ingame to get certain things working to do it properly.

As for the Health decrease or adjust the damage resistance values, as someone who flies it as a transport most of the time this change would make it impossible to reach the Drop point. Start flying it quite abit and you will see how fast it goes down. If your server is seeing them stay up for as long as they are check out another server during its prime time.

Funny how a lot of you think a single person should be able to destroy a 12 person vehicle. A single burster max or skyguard will chase off a galaxy making it fairly balanced. You don't need to kill something to be effective. The only thing I feel is unbalanced on the Gals is the ability to repair each other.

It applies to Sundies as well and there is no issues there with them being soloed by infantry... Also as all air a single Gal with bulldogs on the wings can sit on top of a canyon and bomb the living daylight out of any small fight with impunity with a single person it. What's needed is to separate the Gal to transport (heavy protection) and Gunship (weaker protection) as it suffers the same issue as the Sundy or ESF of to many roles on one chassi.

Ultimately, the main reason I created this thread was to put forward some ideas on how to improve its support role, and give it even more of a niche than it has at present, by increasing troop capacity and giving it some more capabilities to be used alongside the ones that can already be mounted. Even so, I'll stick with my guns and say that I think that the Galaxy is a little too tough, considering its health when compared to a Main Battle Tank, and even though it is true that a single ESF shouldn't be able to kill one easily, it takes an awful amount of time to so much a make one smoke; in which time even if you have only one gunner in your Galaxy, you can easily scare off the ESF, (one gunner can jump around each station according to the direction of engagement).

I've been in a Galaxy many a time and have been shocked to see how underwhelming AA and flak is against it. The biggest drawback of the Galaxy is its size, which means that it can be hit at greater ranges by flak. Though that thing sure can soak up damage like a sponge, then throw it in your face in the form of Bulldogs or other guns the thing can mount.

As I mentioned before, Skyguard TTK against a Galaxy is about 30 seconds.

Each Bulldog shot does 1,000 damage. Against the top of a Lightning, this is reduced to 42% and then to another 70% due to weapon type. So that Bulldog round does 294 damage to the top of a Lightning, resulting in 11 shots to kill.

With one 4 second reload, the total TTK of a single Bulldog against a Skyguard is 17.75 seconds... far less than the TTK of the Skyguard against the Galaxy.

In other words, a Galaxy has about at 12 second TTK advantage over the Skyguard... and that's not counting if the Galaxy decideds to Goomba-stomp the pesky Skyguard in the first place!

Theoratical TTK vs practical TTK. For a skyguard hitting a Gal is easy, for a Galaxy bulldog gunner hitting a lightning not so much.

And yet the point of -- infantry are in the exact same position vs armor as armor is vs air remains. Why is it ok for infantry to be x weak vs armor but if armor is weaker vs air (NOT as weak as infantry is vs armor I might add) it's unfair? It's a complete hypocritical fallacy. If what you say is true -- then armor would have to take the same nerf to infantry that you are saying air should take to armor.

This is totally relevant. However, it is simply not true in practice. As the other guy said -- practical TTK vs theoretical TTK. Take the Gal, unfair vs stationary armor targets like skyguards? Absolutely. The bulldogs will smash skyguards every time. And they shouldn't -- but again -- this is assuming that the lightning is just chilling. Any lightning even SLIGHTLY mobile will avoid the majority of bulldog shots changing the TTK completely. On the other hand -- the Gal cannot dodge the skyguard -- and nothing the Gal does will reduce the Skyguard's time to kill. Skyguards have a skill ceiling to reach to which improve their survivability -- Gals do not.

Skyguards not being able to do relevant damage to Gals sitting at the flight ceiling dropping troops? Totally an issue. I am an air pilot but I absolutely will admit that this is stupid.

But this is complete crap. You choose, arbitrarily, certain things to compare and ignored everything else. One could also say:

Infantry- Limited efficacy vs armor. Vulnerable to 100% of the weapons in game.
Aircraft- Significant efficacy vs armor. Vulnerable to most of the weapons in game.
Tanks- Significant efficacy vs armor. Vulnerable to less than 10 percent of weapons in game.

If I arbitrarily choose those factors, all of a sudden a different 1 of these things is not like the other.
And we can arbitrarily cherry pick whatever factors all day and keep getting a different set. Misleading and worthless.

Again -- stop wasting time and discuss all factors in a situation instead of ignoring more than half of it.

I am not saying Gals are fine. I am not saying Gals are broken. I am saying misleading questions and statements that actively avoid the situation hinder reasonable discussion and prevent people from coming to an agreeable consensus.

If we could all discuss things in their entirety and reasonably -- we might come to a consensus that makes the overwhelming majority of the community happy. If we did THAT, the Devs might actually take our suggestions from these forums. The game might actually improve as a result of the community. I thought that was WHY we talked about this stuff on the forums -- is that not why you are here?

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OP, as far as your opinion on making gals different goes -- I don't know. I like all of the ideas that you put up for Gal utility. Obviously if Gal utility was buffed in this manner, Gal combat effectiveness would need to drop. I don't see why you said "Buff armor health" in the original post. That has nothing to do with making Gals less effective in combat -- at all.

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Thanks for the feedback mate. It means a lot to know that people actually like my ideas. As for the potential proposing of an armour health buff, well, that's simply a means in relative terms to bring up other vehicles' hit-points in proportion to that of the Galaxy, if people think, (which many of them do), that a health nerf is out of line. Moreover, it's fundamentally to bring up the health of other vehicles nearer to the Galaxy's, so that even if its health is nerfed, at least it won't be able to tank more damage... ...than a tank... ...as they can do now.

I fully advocate for a Galaxy health nerf. It's just myself trying to appeal to a wider audience and offer an alternative should one not cut it.

Thanks for replying.

The Galaxy is fine. Nerf redeploy.

On the other hand Skyguard TTK is also theoretical... because the Galaxy, being both faster and capable of movement in 3D space, can take advantage of a good deal of cover.

Because infantry cost nothing? Whereas both air and armor cost things... and therefore it is more reasonable to compare air versus armor and armor versus air than throwing infantry into the mix.

Uhhh... the Galaxy could do what every other aircraft does... fly nap of earth, take advantage of cover that the Lightning cannot, chase down the Lightning, etc.

In PS2 aircraft have every advantage in firepower, manuverbility, and even HP. It's not too much to ask that aircraft lose that HP and survivability bonus.

Fair enough. I am not sure about the Gal myself. They can soak a ridiculous amount of damage - and have a lot of firepower (almost on par with Libs.) I see WHY they have so much health in the first place -- so that they can survive in a large 96+ battle long enough to drop troops off at the point. However, when used in small fights they require a relatively large percentage of people to switch to AA and focus on them. Your suggestion of using another vehicle to soak ground fire is actually great. Even with a large health decrease it would keep their effective HP vs ground lock ons similar to what it is now -- but decrease survivability vs ESFs and Flak that was properly aimed.

However, I think they way forward is adjustments to damage resistances. Instead of a simple health drop - I would advocate a change to which weapons damaged them how. For example -- lock ons shouldn't do much more damage (relatively) than they do now. However, dumbfires, esf guns, flak could do more damage reasonably. Lib tank buster resistance could be raised because, as it is, Libs kill Gals way too fast. Stuff like that. Then add some of the utility suggestions you made and it would be a more tactically viable vehicle that was more easy to deal with.

You are ignoring that tanks can take advantage of cover that the Gal cannot. And they are more agile. 3d space is all well and good, especially against tanks and their limited turret inclinations -- but the truth is being able to go up and down is of limited use when dealing with lock ons, flak, secondary guns, basically everything designed to kill them, etc. Being able to move in a direction and then completely change direction on a dime (looking at you lightning) is far more valuable in terms of effective health. ESFs have that option and it is why they can be effective in a fight even with significantly lower health than Valks, Gals, and Libs. Don't downplay the value of the lightning's breaking and reversing abilities. Get a good skyguard driver, put a gal or lib (or even an ESF with tomcats to some extent) overhead and watch the lightning dodge a fair amount of the incoming fire.

I'm not saying that aircraft should be more mobile, dangerous, and damaging than armor. I am saying that the traits of aircraft are being portrayed out of context (often intentionally ) making them seem different than how they actually function. Hence, your suggestions of how to 'fix' the armor/air dynamic are usually lacking and simply replace one problem with another. If you (and many other tankers) would actually acknowledge the full context of the situation and all the factors therein we could actually all probably come to some sort of agreement. And as I said in my last post -- devs might appreciate such rational and unselfish dialogue and maybe even take our advice.

Is this what sc1n calls the warp?

I agree that the Galaxy cannot be made into a more diverse platform until it is more killable. Mixing effectiveness and survivability is just a recipe for terrible balance.

What if Gals could select between Loadout options:
1) current health + current Gal use + nothing else
2) lower health + current Gal use + other roles

I currently find Gals pretty pointless. Either they:
1) do a super powerful Gal Drop (high impact, low risk), thereby trivializing much of the game (Units, map content, players, logistics, etc.), or
2) they lumber around the sky awkwardly, harassing ESF and ground or dying

It would be neat to see the Gal role expanded. It would also be neat to see the Gal Drop not be such a negative to the meta.

I think they should do, transport, with current armor, but also the ability to hook on 2 harassers under their wings, and/or a single lightning.

The other, is the gunship, with liberator-like cannons and heavy guns on the sides, including the current weaponry. With heavier armor, and very bad speed, and very bad maneuverability. Also it loses the ability to transport people, however let it still spawn in people, because it's not always so fun and easy to land and collect troops in a fight.

If my Annihilator can instagib a ESF, sure... /sarcasm

Galaxies are important to team play. Allot of pros AND noob fly it. Its overall "hard" (laymen wise) to do in context of drops and so on. Nerfing it would just remove Gal tactics for the majority, while only pleasing a very low number of ESF pilots.
So my vote regarding nerfs is a clear NO!