Galaxy OP in small engagements

Just tested

4 c 4 and 2 archer shots under the nose for an unarmored Galaxy

Yeah but it can fly and it's fast.

Not as fast to the frontline as a Lightning one base back.

On another note. I've used this tactic myself, pulling vehicles from bases behind the frontlines. In fact its where I normally pull my harassers and defensive sunderers as well as Skyguards if there is a troublesome aircraft. So I'm not telling anyone to do something I wouldn't or haven't done myself.

The issue is a 'defender's' fixation on spawning in the base that is under attack. Rather than using a deployed sundy or the base behind the front line. I mean the attackers do it, why can't the defenders? Well its a matter of principle for them. Not strategy. And that is why they lose such 6v6 or 12v12 or whatever engagement.

Then blame something other than themselves. Over principle.

This^

While I hate how the disparities between ground and air, this is how you get them out of the area, unless its a solid lib pilot. Then you're f*****.

Note: I listed the multiplier as 91.5% resistance in a previous post but the actual number is just 91.0% (not like that hurts much).

I guess you're right then. Let's buff the Gal.

Ok ok, take it from someone who has a full week of flying time in a Galaxy lol....

First, if you want to pigeon-hole my galaxy into being a transport with basically no weapons needing an air wing escort...basically turning into a troop transport and NOTHING else, then you had better d**** well sure do something about being able to redeploy so easily around the map. No one, and I mean no one is stupid enough to try and convoy or fly an infantry force across the map in those "troop transports". About the only thing they are useful for in the "transport" capabilities is for a gal or shield breaker sundy to take troops less than a couple hundred meters away past an obstacle, usually ending in that entire squad's death anyway (or dropping annoying troops from the sky, which even I agree was a stupid change). Without fixing the whole redeploying mechanic AND nerfing the gal (which isn't much of a problem anyways) you basically make the gal useless compared to a val, and make the gal meaningless to ever pull. (It already doesn't have more than 1 or 2 niche uses at this point)

That, and the simple fact that Gals are completely overshadowed by val's right now anyway. Why? Gals have to basically ONLY drop 7 people (in a full squad) if they want to keep their gunners, otherwise they either ditch the gal, or the gal flies off with no gunners or only one gunner which also results 90% in death (as long as the enemy is actively trying to do something to take you out). At that point might as well pull a val and just ditch the cheap piece of trash and save yourself some certs.

As for the anecdote used by the OP. You talked about a 6vs6 fight. So basically, you had 4 infantry and 2 people in a vehicle vs. your 6 infantry? You literally could have pulled ONE vehicle, with ONE infantry, and got that gal off your back. Either A a burster max, B a skyguard, or C and esf. Don't get me wrong, I believe infantry should be able to handle any threats thrown their way, but I never said it would be easy. Also, if you were REALLY getting bombed that hard by a bulldog, that thing was not only super close to you, but also probably not doing anything but hovering there. If all 6 of you shot even a dumbfire rocket at it, and at least 3 hit, that gal if smart would bug out, or he would die very soon after. It isn't like it can just "boost" away either. If 6 guys couldn't handle one gal with only ONE gunner, then you should have organized better, cause I can take care of a gal on my own lol.

Last but not least, for anyone who thinks you can just hop in the gal and be some super effective tanky flying machine you are nuts. There is a reason there are almost no more well known gal pilots anymore save for maybe me and 3 other people. The thing eats it to a lib, it eats it to 2 esfs and usually can't secure a kill against a single competent esf, its basically impossible to bring near large fights unless you are hovering uselessly at the flight ceiling, its slow, its clunky, the list goes on. Bout the only thing you can do in a gal, is take damage and try to outlast something. The only reason I can bring a gal into larger fights is cause I can try and hover it behind a wall, or a mountain, or something like that while keeping the bulldog wing just exposed enough to fire back while making my vehicle a smaller target. I promise you, it is much easier to learn how to use an ESF or a Lib and actually be effective (make certs, be useful on a battlefield, higher amount of exp) than it is to jump in a gal and make any certs at all. This is assuming you aren't fighting some brain dead group of junkies of course.

It shouldn't reach the base if there is a stalwart defense being put up that is not being contested. I mean imagine any RTS, where throwing unguarded transports at a hardened enemy line would be suicidal and result in high losses. Full Galaxies going down well before they hit the DZ should totally be a thing, because it teaches people to use better coordination.

If your tank is sitting there able to be free to lob shells at a Galaxy, where are the enemy aircraft that are supposed to be engaging you with Hornets? Or the enemy tanks that are engaging you? Or smaller advanced parties of troops dropped by Valkyries? The truth is that if the Galaxy was not being screened on approach, then it should pretty much go down in flames.

After all, you have to consider that a Galaxy drop needs to be balanced against alternative forms of transport. For example, compared to a Valkyrie insertion. Or a Sunderer battle group fighting its way through the enemy. Or even just hoofing it. Right now Galaxies and Sunderers are too easily deployed from base to base, which makes other forms of movement much less desirable. A properly balanced game means that Gal drops, Sunderer zergs, Valkyrie insertions, or footzerging all have pretty much equal value.

Haha no, that's called using your brain to counter something which most forumsiders seem to have a problem with. By your logic all vehicles are OP when near your base.
HE tanks shelling the base? Redeploy and get an AP tank.
Fight taking too long and friendlies can't push to enemy sunderer? Redeploy and get a tank or harasser with tank mines/c4.

Galaxy is not OP and can be easily countered - pull a libertator and kill it with tank buster in 3 seconds. If it has 2 or more gunners and you can't kill it solo it's because you're outnumbered, simple as that. So unless you're good with solo libbing get a gunner and dalton it from distance. Getting rid of galaxy is easy if you use simple logic instead of sitting in your spawn and crying how OP the galaxy is.

Valkyries can keep their gunners and die for it

Have you tried the Valkyrie guns? Theyre the definition of awful

Youd be better off with a one gun Gal than a half full Valkyrie in alot of cases

And theres no need to have a full manned gal

You could keep 2 gunners if you want to be safe but one is good enough to chase anything but a liberator away

Lets be honest. If a lib gets close enough to nose gun you youd die with a full set of guns or noone gunning at all just the same

I've got my issues with a Valk, I really do. But to say they are easily nosegunned by a Lib is a stretch. The agility of a Valk isn't much worse than a Reaver. Both of which can avoid the nosegun pretty easily. Vektor might be able to do some damage, but not enough to kill it. And Tankbuster needs to get too close.

Unlike the Gal, the Valk can avoid getting Tankbusted. That's about the only benefit it has over the Gal.

Of course.. getting blindsided.. (a user error on the Valk pilot) means they'll get one clipped. But a Gal can do that to a Lib too by Skywhaling it.

The point I was making had nothing to do with the strength of the Val's guns, I fully expect people to just ditch it after a quick use. What I'm stating is that no one save for very skilled Gal pilots are going to make it worth it to keep a gal up in the air, and even then it depends on your situation. So, if you are going to ditch your vehicle anyway, would you rather pay for the cheap val, or the more expensive gal? Think of it this way, everyone in the val drops out and you ditch the val, that's 6 people on the ground (vehicle made for small groups). Everyone who isn't a "gunner" in a gal drops out (to try and milk as much usefulness out of that resource investment as you can) and congrats 7 people on the ground ( a whole ONE more than a freaking val). And while yes, if everyone in the gal drops out you can have more people, it isn't a frequent situation that either A you will be with a squad that can coordinate such an action, and B you will probably all die anyway because almost no one knows how to do "real" gal drops anymore (and C as a gal pilot, now I'm pissed my freaking gal is totally defenseless which makes NO sense because it is supposed to be the transport for large groups and I can't even keep my gunners and transport ONE squad at the same time?) How often do you want to completely waste 450 of your resources for a ditch taxi and/or knowing you will be totally defenseless when everyone jumps? Not exactly fun.

In addition to that, one gunner is only good enough for one ESF at a time (assuming the pilots are at your same skill level). The second 2 ESFs jump you with one gunner, you are toast unless you are one hell of a good gal pilot (or they are really really bad esf pilots). Without at least 2 people manning the guns, your gal can only chase off a single ESF, anything else WILL kill you no matter what, unless you think you will outrun an ESF or Lib perhaps? Again, this is assuming those pilots are at least at your skill level (and not crashing into **** or the gal).

And truth be told, with a full compliment of guns, Id totally take on a lib in certain situations, a gal CAN do it, but it definitely CAN'T do it with less than 2 gunners. Without at least 2 gunners if you see a lib, kiss your butt goodbye because you will only escape that thing if he is still very far away. With a full set of gunners though, I can bring a walker/walker/bulldog (any combo of those three) and dps him down as long as I stay away from its belly cannon.

Strangely, the Valk is actually highly resistant to the Tank Buster. I think it takes an entire extended mag clip at max damage range to kill, though keep in mind that I have't done a lot of Liberator stuff lately, and thus haven't faced a lot of Valk's.

In the valkyries case it isnt the nose gun so much as everything else

Including that it doesnt have any kind of viable defense against a liberator attack

Ive gone up against a few of these and usually end up ramming it and abandoning ship

Im not a skilled pilot in any sense of the word and dont have terribly much experience with any planes aside from Valkyrie suicides

I can say from experience that other than liberators there hasnt been much that could actually stop my galaxy runs.

Again from my own experience fighting off 2 ESF isnt difficult unless youre standing still

I fly away from them in a a direction and let the tail gunner chase them off while avoiding rockets as much as possible if any. Probably wont get kills but definitely wont get killed unless they have ground fire helping them.

Theres also healing gals and armored and heal gal convoys. Sit a gal on a launchpad or near an ammo resupply and see how much youll outheal everything around you. Or sit somewhere high with a few engineers and abuse the AoE of the grenade launchers because the amount of DPS needed to viably kill you wont exist unless its in large numbers and even then you can back off a little and heal

I just saw a gal one shot a liberator last night. The team abandoned their galaxy and it fell on top of their allied liberator and made the most beautiful team kill this game has ever seen

Wish i had recorded it....

I'm really tired of people taking what I said out of context, and then applying the "by your logic" tagline to it.

That's no longer "my logic". It's yours! Because I didn't say that.

We have dedicated AA weapons in this game. The second you say "pull a Liberator" to fight a Galaxy, is proof the Galaxy is too strong and/or AA too weak.

I said pull AA (a skyguard) and you told me that was imbalanced as well. That's borderline sounding like an Agenda than any real thought into balance.

I get that you guys don't want vehicles ruining 'good fights' at the small level. But the fact of the matter is, vehicles are here. They impact small fights disproportionately. And that's not imbalanced. If it was a match based shooter with what you have being all you will ever have. But you can increase your number of defenders to deal with the threats if needed. You can call in support. Or you can match the threat on the ground or in the air.

This is PVP, things aren't always going to be fair. You might go back to a prior base or two, and find an infiltrator camping it. Course then its not a 6v6 anymore but a 6v7. In reality its actually closer to a 200-300 vs 200-300 vs 200-300 (assuming primetime). Everyone on the continent and technically on the server is in the same map. Maybe not the same area. But they have an influence and you have to understand that they will influence fights in many different and dynamic ways.

But the same could be said for the defending faciton (or the ones who decided to defend a base in this example. Everyone has choices. In a 6 v 6 means 6 skyguards could just gib that Galaxy. Or one could chase it away to give breathing room. The six have a choice. They made it. In the OP's case they chose to keep coming out of the spawn room one by one. A bad choice, but it was theirs to make.

To be fair

Skyguards are riddled with issues of their own

Problem is that this isn't an RTS. It CAN play like one (it isn't however), but if you give it too low of health it becomes less viable as a transport. You'd quickly start seeing the Valk being the primary troop transport instead of the galaxy. The galaxy is WAY too big of a target to not get destroyed easily.

Also on the point on wheres the enemy armor/general AV engaging me and watnot... I nail galaxies at render range with my tanks, tell me how not giving them a large health pool is going to make that any more fair. Not to mention I run stealth on all of my mbts so its not like I make my tank easy to find.

Is that a bad thing?

Everything has issues. But the Skyguard hitting a Gal is not one of them. The Gal literally cannot hide from it, even behind a building the flak will still explode and hit it. And a Bulldog can't silence a Lightning before the Skyguard does enough damage to bring down the Gal. Assuming they start firing at the same time.

Which wouldn't be the case if they pull it from a location I said to pull it from. Remember, there's a pilot and a gunner. That means only 4 on the ground to deal with 5 (one in the Skyguard). With that Gal being the source of spawning for those 6.. they're in a tough spot.

Even if the 6 defenders are lone wolves.. it only takes ONE of them to pull a Skyguard. Just one. And they can make a difference against a 6 man group. If you ask me.. that makes the attackers on the underpowered side. Coordinated groups IMO should equal 4x their number. As in those 6 attackers should be able to take on 20 defenders.

In this case they don't even equal 2x their number. Because if the number of defenders rose.. that Gal is going to have a ton of ordinance coming at it. But that's just the way things go. I just take things as they come, I don't make threads about instances where I got beat.