Artillery Support

[BronzeElemental]

Why can't we order in mortar strikes or long-range ground support? It's a vital part of large scale warfare that has been missing from PS for as long as I've played. We need high-angled indirect fire!

What if squad leaders could call it in on specific spots or mark targets for bombing runs? What if there are missile strikes that people can call in from time to time as a reward for capturing objectives or maybe kill streaks?

[Coreldan]

I would prefer this to be actually player driven thing. Like take the concept of Flails (but preferably a whole new vehicle that is more like real artillery) and improve on that making the teamwork between the commanders and the artillery guy somehow better.

So yes, but I think the artillery-thingies should still need a player to operate.

[Death2All]

Anything that remotely resembles the Flail is bad news.


Although they did hint at a possible "siege" ability for your tank further in the skill tree.

[WarChimp130]

I wouldn't be surprised if we did see it. I mean we had the Flail(which people hated if I remember correctly), but I'd like to see another incarnation of an artillery vehicle and Infantry used Mortars. How much ass would that kick to be able to lob shells into CY's from up on hills?

I guess to a certain extent the Scorpion served this need, but it was kind of shitty and annoying.

[Valdae]

We had the Flail. And it was annoying as hell.

As for missile strikes, well, we have this instead:

[CutterJohn]

I'm not terribly keen on the long range style artillery in a flail as a playstyle. It has little redeeming gameplay quality. Point at reticle, fire, wait 20s for kill spam. Not very compelling.


A short ranged mortar for clearing out nasty infantry infestations might not be bad.

[Rbstr]

Don't start the kill streaks nonsense again. Higby already said we weren't getting COD-style streak bonus things.

I'm all for some better artillery options.
But don't make it out like these things don't exist in some form. What is an OS if not a called in high angle artillery strike analogue?
Honestly, if more artillery shows up it should be player served. Like the flail but more like a howitzer. So you can actually blow it up and prevent its use.
Man portable mortars would also be cool.

Also: Squadleaders have things called waypoints, which can be used to mark specific spots...what exactly new are you suggesting there?

[Valdae]

That said I liked the mortar strikes in BC2. At least it gave players a chance to get the hell out of the way, unlike insta-death flail.

[DviddLeff]

So you want to call in a magic artillery strike or bombing run... when you could just ask a real player to fire the cannon or man the bombers?

Ridiculous.

Manned artillery such as mortars and bombers should be a part of the game; and it should be totally teamwork dependant. Oh, and the OS should be removed from PS2, unless you can have a player in orbit firing the cannon...

[BronzeElemental]

I was kinda meaning that the squad leader marks a target for bombardment/bombing/whatever and then if someone else from the same empire completes that request both the squad leader AND the player who completed it get a bonus of some kind (extra xp or whatever).

That way you have incentive for people to actively help each other. Also we have unmanned drones and unmanned airstrikes/missile strikes in the real world and PS is supposed to be set in a future with more advanced technology so it makes sense that you should be able to call down SOMETHING without another player having to sit around in a chair waiting to push a button.

[WarChimp130]

I also agree that they shouldn't make it so long ranged like the Flail. Something with shorter range.

[HELLFISH88]

I for one liked the flail, it was the most "realistic" game artillery I have ever seen in term's that it was still operated by a player, accommodating laze targeting and a ludicris range.

[basti]

The Flail was awesome, heck the flail is awesome.

It requires at least one guy to actually fire the thing, and one guy to find and pinpoint targets.

What sucked was the ability to just spam them at certain points. Having 5-10 flails bombing a base over long long range made it impossible to pull vehicles, means you cant actually kill the flails. A much slower ROF would fix that. Let a single hit do much more damage, taking out everything it hits directly and damaging everything close quite heavly, but make those shots count, like with a ROF of 1 shot per minute. On top of that, let people require that the target is lazed in order to shoot. That pretty much denies to possibility of spamming that thing, and forces players to cooperate to use it.

In addition, make the atillery easy to kill, very easy to kill.

[DashRev]

Originally Posted by basti

The Flail was awesome, heck the flail is awesome.

It requires at least one guy to actually fire the thing, and one guy to find and pinpoint targets.

What sucked was the ability to just spam them at certain points. Having 5-10 flails bombing a base over long long range made it impossible to pull vehicles, means you cant actually kill the flails. A much slower ROF would fix that. Let a single hit do much more damage, taking out everything it hits directly and damaging everything close quite heavly, but make those shots count, like with a ROF of 1 shot per minute. On top of that, let people require that the target is lazed in order to shoot. That pretty much denies to possibility of spamming that thing, and forces players to cooperate to use it.

In addition, make the atillery easy to kill, very easy to kill.

I'm also pretty fond of the flail, although I would never use it myself in its current iteration. I think if you took the current flail, slightly increased the projectile speed and added a requirement for the target to be lazed by someone in the area, you might see more players open up to it.

If you designed it like that, you'd see virtually no random flail spam, and it would actually require teamwork (like a Libby or Vulture) rather than luck.

It would also add another role for cloakers to fill in large-scale open-field. Find an AMS or a Lodestar, laze it, and watch as the flail projectile comes roaring in and clears everything out.

[Zerikin Loukbel]

Making artillery that had multiple shells with smaller splash radius like a real arty would also make it better. When the first shell hits you can try and run for cover at least.